Didja ever notice how since Rupert Murdoch took it over, The Wall Street Journal seems like a truly ironic parody of itself?
Except that, you know, it’s real.
And if you overlook the attitudes of the WSJ’s writers you still can find some good stuff. For example:
Snatched from WritingClasses.Com, which in turn seems to have dug them out of Cameron Crowe’s book Conversations with Wilder.
We kinda like WritingClasses’ version better because it’s, you know, shorter:
- The audience is fickle.
- Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go.
- Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.
- Know where you’re going.
- The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
- If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
- A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.
- In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.
- The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.
- The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then—that’s it. Don’t hang around.
Amazing aerial footage, dogfight lovers.
Um, that’s airplane dogfighting, not, you know, dog dogfighting. We’ll leave that other arena to assholes like Michael Vick.
This is, of course, subject to change if I get a good enough offer. Meanwhile:
The SARFT is the State Administration of Radio Film and Television, described in Robert Cain’s fascinating (to me anyway) blog, ChinaFilmBiz.Com, this way:
From Peggy’s BlogSpot, you know, blog:
We do a lot of wandering in this blog about writing, writers, the craft of writing, websites for writers; pretty much anything writing related. This time around we’re going to get back to some basics and those basics apply to pretty much all writing.