Tag: People’s Pilot Contest

The Psychological Benefits of Writing

…Something for all writers to remember:

writingtherapy

by Gregory Ciotti

When you attempt to envision a writer, I imagine many of you see a quirky recluse, hunched over a desk in some cabin, crumpled paper strewn about as they obsessively work on the next great American novel.

But writing is so much more. Prose is thought put to page, which makes all of us writers—even if we don’t have the chops to tangle with Faulkner. In most cases, writing is most useful as a tool for thinking, expression, and creativity; cabin-dwelling novelists be damned. read article

The Week at TVWriter™ – April 25, 2016

Thumbs-Up

In case you’ve missed what’s happening at TVWriter™, the most popular blog posts during the week ending yesterday were:

Kelly Jo Brick: The Write Path with Manager Zadoc Angell, Part 2 read article

John Ostrander: They Grow Up So Fast

H'wood's version of Mr. Ostrander's Amanda Waller of SUICIDE SQUAD
H’wood’s version of Mr. Ostrander’s Amanda Waller of SUICIDE SQUAD

by John Ostrander

I’ve been watching DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow over on the CW. Among the characters that have been appearing on the show are Firestorm and Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Well, not so much Hawkman any more, maybe. I didn’t create those three characters but I certainly played with them a lot and, for a while, left my sticky fingerprints all over them. So it’s interesting watching manifestations of them in other media.

I’ll be experiencing that big time come August when the Suicide Squad movie hits the multiplexes. I created Amanda Waller and I defined characters like Deadshot and Captain Boomerang and it will be exciting to see how they translate for the screen. I hope.

None of the character portrayals will translate directly from the comics to movies or TV. I’m okay with that; none of them have so far. Different media have different needs. That’s why they’re called adaptations. The material is adapted from whatever the source was. My only question about any given adaptation is – how true is it to its roots? Did they get the essence of the character or the concept right? If you’re going to do Captain XYZ Man, there should be a resemblance to what makes up Captain XYZ Man. Right? read article

Interview with SHREK Writer Terry Rossio

Like the article below says, Terry just may be the highest-paid screenwriter of all time. And he’s pretty damn good at the actual, um, storytelling thing too. So, without further ado:

by John Robert Marlow

terry_rossioTERRY ROSSIO is probably the highest-paid screenwriter in the history of the medium. He prefers to write with a partner, which is almost invariably Ted Elliott. Together, they’ve written the screenplay and/or story for films such as: Aladdin; Godzilla;The Lone Ranger, Shrek; the Pirates of the Caribbean, Zorro, and National Treasure movies; and far too many others to mention here. Terry also co-wrote (with Bill Marsilii) the record-breaking Deja Vu spec script—which sold for $5 million–andLightspeed, which sold for $3.5 million. Terry is also a producer. (Read Terry’s official bio here.)

I interviewed him for the book, Make Your Story a Movie: Adapting Your Book or Idea for Hollywood. And while much of Terry’s adaptation-specific advice appears there, it just wasn’t possible or appropriate to include (in that format) the wisdom he was kind enough to share on other topics. And so you find it here… read article

Writers Productivity Tips: Getting Unstuck

Uh-oh....
Uh-oh….

by Help Scout

All creatives get stuck once in awhile (or a lot, or just about anywhere in between). Time now to address this frustrating and often painful situation:

e first step (always the hardest, right?) in solving a problem is recognizing you have one.

We’re all familiar with the feeling of grappling with a head-scratcher for longer than we’d like. It can take a while to connect the time we’ve lost staring at the screen with the fact that we’re stuck on something and it’s time to try a new approach. Stuckedness isn’t always immediately apparent, and we arrive at the realization in different ways. read article