When you begin crafting a story have you taken into consideration the needs and wants of your main characters?
You should. Because when you get down to it, those are the driving forces of your story.
Now many people may jump up and yell, no, it’s conflict! “If there isn’t conflict, there isn’t a story.” But where does that conflict come from?
Second-guessing buyers seldom gets anybody anywhere in the wonderful world of showbiz.
Not in books, TV, films, you name it.
Over the years it’s become clear here at TVWriter™ that the big TV writer-creator-producer successes are those who write what they want to see and are fortunate enough to discover that their sensibilities are in sync with both audiences and TV development executives.
I’m indebted to Fox News anchor (and blogger) Todd Starnes. About three weeks ago – okay, I’m late to the party again – he posted a commentary entitled “Superman defends illegals against angry American.”
In his complaint, Starnes gripes about a scene in the most recent Action Comics where “Superman comes to the rescue of a group of illegal aliens – under attack from a white guy wearing an American flag bandana and waving around a machine gun… Instead of rounding up the illegals and flying them back to where they came from, the Man of Steel snatches the white guy and with a menacing look snarls, ‘The only person responsible for the blackness smothering your soul – is you.’”
This upset Mr. Starnes no end and has provided me with grist for this week’s column.
Normally, I caution writers to keep a safe distance from the net for fear of flushing all their writing time down the dark hole of social media and/or just surfing to the point where they don’t actually write.
Today though, I’m just going to throw websites at you. Here’s my usual caution. First, they aren’t all related to screenwriting. We already know Larry Brody’s TVWriter.com is the best around for TV Writing. But, they’re writing related. Also, don’t get sucked into the web. Go, check out a site if it looks like it could be helpful to you, then get back to writing. Don’t let yourself get sucked into an all day info-search that only flushes that day away.
Okay, that said, here we go…
This blog was never supposed to be about screenwriting.
Well, maybe a bit. Because I write screenplays. But when I first created davidperlis.com, my goal was to write wandering David Perlis thoughts, and post David Perlis photos, and talk about David Perlis art and ideas and experiences.
Instead, it somehow turned into a full-force commentary on dramatic structure in screenplays. And I think that explains to a great extent my anxieties and self-doubt and overall directionless feeling these days. By the way, I’ve been filled with anxiety and self-doubt and directionless these days.