Category: Opinion

Ethics in TV Storytelling from ClexaCon

A Report on ClexaCon, Part 1
by Kathryn Graham

When you sit down to write a story, have you ever thought about whether or not you’re telling it ethically? I don’t mean does it have a lesson at the end. I mean, do you think about your characters, who you’re depicting, and if you might hurt real live people in tangible ways if you screw it up? I mean, is that really a thing? It’s ‘just a story’, after all.

The panelists at ClexaCon’s Ethics in Storytelling panel have a lot to say about that, and they’re here to help you make better decisions in your stories (and just be really damn smart in the process). read article

Peggy Bechko’s World of Character Names

by Peggy Bechko

Writing a script? A novel? A short story?

Then you have characters who need names, and not just any name, but a name that sticks, a name that echoes, a name that sounds good coming from an actor’s lips or on the pages of a script or manuscript. So, as with most everything, there’s a good side and a bad side.

The good side – you’re god when it comes to your story. You’re the one who creates the characters and tags them with the names that will stay with them…and with you throughout the process of writing said script or novel. Yay!? read article

Peggy Bechko’s World of Story

Ooh, the wonders of Panda clipart

by Peggy Bechko

Do you think about story? Do you write every day? Have you devoured every book on how to write scripts, novels, whatever, that comes out?

Well, this is going to be a very opinionated (mine) piece on storytelling, how it’s done and what it does to people. Don’t panic, it’s going to be fairly short.

Now, I can’t tell you how many people tell me, oh, I write by the seat of my pants. I don’t need to outline, research or any of that stuff, I just sit down and write. read article

Dennis O’Neil: PI’s

by Dennis O’Neil

Now as I was young and easy and gentlemen still trod the Earth and politics still made sense (a little… sometimes) I held that private eye fiction was about righteous men who had the courage to be alone. I was, at the time, living by myself in a small Manhattan apartment and so I guess I was seeking identification with heroes (and maybe seeking an excuse for my isolation.) But I was, I now think, wrong.

Which fictional gumshoes did I have in mind? My two favorites were Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and they were, indeed, solitary beings walking the mean streets seeking truth. And there were others sprinkled through the pop culture regions of pulp magazines, radio, B movies. (Comic books? Patience, please, we’ll get to them.)

If you’re looking for antecedents, cast a glance at the King Arthur stories. Arthur’s knights mostly roved without companionship on their quests for the holy grail or whatever. But they did have a whole posse of clanky buddies waiting for their return at that round table, not to mention the odd fair maiden. read article

How the worlds of TV and video game writing are moving closer together

Further proof that it ain’t yer father’s TV biz anymore. Who sez this isn’t the Golden Age of Electronic Media and, you know, writing for same?

Opportunity awaits. Time to make a move, yeah?

by Jimi Famurewa read article