Category: Resources

40 years worth of TV writing experience and info, yours for the taking.

JOHN OSTRANDER: WRITING TIDS AND BITS

writing-toolby John Ostrander

Absent any overall topic occurring to me, maybe we’ll try the ol’ shotgun approach – a bunch of writing tips with the idea that, if there’s enough of them, some should work. (My friend William J. Norris used to describe my sense of humor that way – if I just kept talking, a certain percentage of it was bound to be funny.)

Da tips.

Cast your characters. This can be short-hand for a character and can help with dialogue. Who would play your character in TV or movies or who would provide their voice if the character was animated? It doesn’t have to be a living actor; heck, it doesn’t have to be an actor at all. It can be somebody you know or knew, friend or foe or relative (the last can be a combination of the first two). It can be a politician or your boss or a co-worker. Somebody you find distinctive and whose voice is inside your head. read article

Characters are More Interesting When They’re as Flawed as We are

Even in the world of games, where this not-so-startling (to us cuz…flawed, you know?) factoid just recently came to light:

GosispGame characters are better when they gossip and lie
by Olivia Solon

Getting characters to lie, gossip, and manipulate could help to create more realistic video games, according to Jenny Brusk, a lecturer in computer science at the University of Skövde.

Brusk has been working on models to introduce socially competent non-player game characters who can understand natural language, rather than characters using goal-driven dialogue where the player is limited to a number of predefined response alternatives. read article

Peggy Bechko: Writers Love Their Readers

writerlylove

by Peggy Bechko

And not surprisingly they want them to keep reading.

So what is it that might make a prized reader just stop reading, set the book aside, give up? Fantastic to hear your book kept a reader up all night, okay to know they stick in a bookmark and take a break, just awful and nightmarish to think that reader won’t pick the book up again.

So why don’t they pick it up again? read article

How to to Better Manage Your Freelance Income

Our freelance writing incomes may not be much, but they’re ours. If we can hang onto enough of them to feed us, clothe us, house us, and/or – and this is the big one – give us the time and freedom to go out on more freelance writing gigs. Here’s some stuff we all need to know. (Don’t you love the word “stuff?”):

19gqwfr2t8l8wjpgby Walter Glenn

Freelancing is rewarding, but it is not for the faint of heart. Yes, you get to do work you love and you get to do it on (mostly) your own terms. You also have play roles you may not enjoy so much, like marketer, sales person, and bookkeeper, some of which we’ve talked about before. And one of the biggest challenges in freelancing is managing an irregular income.P

Before I started working for Lifehacker, I spent over twenty years as a freelance computer consultant and writer. I loved working for myself, almost as much as I love with the people here, but managing the boom and bust cycle of work was something that never came easy. I did learn some good lessons along the way, though. P read article

“Dilbert’s” Creator on Making Your Presentation Memorable

In other words, dude’s talking about how to make your concept memorable by putting it out there in a way nobody will forget.

We think:

scott-adams-03The Science of Making Your Story Memorable
by Scott Adams

When I created a Slideshare preview of my book How to Fail… I worked with Dr. Carmen Simon at Rexi Media to get the slides just right, from a design and message standpoint, but also from a cognitive science perspective. I thought my blog readers would enjoy a peek under the hood to see what techniques we used. This is useful stuff. read article