Writing, screenwriting, copywriting – just plain writing….
There are experts everywhere. There are articles coming out of our ears. There’s so damn much! And I’m writing one right now – see the little letters skipping across the page?
So, who do we, as writer, listen to? Well me, of course. Seriously, listen to everyone and no one. That’s helpful right?
This article about the new series LEGENDS OF TOMORROW could have been called “Geting It Wrong.” But writer Marc Alan Fishman takes a much more creative approach, which, fortunately, is neither kinder nor gentler than the subject matter deserves:
by Marc Alan FishmanJust as my ComicMix cohort, the Legend of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow Denny O’Neil, I have jumped gently back into the TV fracas again with DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Denny was quick to note in the macro that the show harkens to a very base pulp root – that of myth of the voyage. But my gaze is far more acutely focused on but a single moment from the first episode of the CW’s titular team up.
Shortly after The Doctor – um, I mean Rip Hunter – has pitched woo to each of his would-be Legends, we’re treated to the monotony of joining each member as they pack up their lives to go adventuring. With seemingly everyone on board, we assume smooth sailing… until we reach the immaculate home of Professor Martin Stein. There, amidst his country bumpkin bric-a-brac, Stein and his young ward (Jax Jackson, because all other actual comic-approved merger-buddies are not living…) minced mean words. You see Mr. Jackson, with his youth and a future in tact, wasn’t as elated to traipse across time and space with a band of would-be time cops. Stein frankly couldn’t care less.
In case you’ve missed what’s happening at TVWriter™, the most popular blog posts during the week ending yesterday were:
by Dennis O’NeilLong time ago, as I was coming out of one of those anonymous buildings that house the motion picture business, a lovely young woman smiled as though she recognized me. I didn’t recognize her, or almost anyone else in southern Califormia, so I had to assume that she had mistaken me for someone else: Director? Naw. Producer? Naw. Guy who changes the light bulbs? Maybe. Or did she perhaps think I was a writer? Well, as a matter of fact, that’s what I was. I had just been talking to an editor and a studio executive and been informed that a check would soon be forthcoming.
What I’d been doing there, that summer’s day in Hollywood, was pitching a story. My words were my pitch. Next part of the process would be a return to New York and the execution of a script. Now, I’d never before sold fiction to television, but the procedure I was involved in was pretty familiar. It was the procedure I’d followed in selling dozens of scripts to DC, Marvel, and Charlton, which were all comic book companies. Yep, the rituals for the initial contacts in the two businesses, comics and teevee, were virtually identical. (The monetary rewards, alas, were not, but that’s a lament for another occasion.)
That was then. This isn’t. My recent professional contacts with the funnybook dodge, over the last decade-plus, have been spotty, but all of them, with a single possible exception have involved my delivering a written pitch to an editor before beginning a script. The talking part of the editor-writer encounter seems to have vanished. Let us pause while we gnash our teeth, rub ashes into our sackcloth tunics, tear our hair (and good luck doing this to me) and then shrug and get on with our day. So the rules have changed. So what hasn’t?
by Team TVWriter™ Press Service…As well it should, and not only because of his work bringing DOCTOR WHO back to our screens. Mr. Davies is one of TVWriter™’s major heroes. We stand in awe of his amazing career.
Here’s the story, direct from the WGGB:
Acclaimed writer and producer Russell T Davies was presented the coveted Outstanding Contribution to Writing Award at the annual Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Awards at RIBA, in London, on 18 January 2016.