Monthly Archives: October 2013

Elevator Pitch – Baltimore, MD

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Pitch

Get this: An awful pitch for a TV show based on a joke about the screenwriter’s hometown becomes a winner after she learns to love where she came from.

What is it? A film about a television screenwriter who is very negative about her (or his) childhood in Baltimore, Maryland. She pitches a medical comedy called Baltimore, MD about a doctor with the last name Baltimore but who does not actually live in Baltimore. While struggling with producers about the limitations of the gag, she is forced to return to Baltimore on family business, where she rekindles an affection for the city and eventually reworks the series concept around her hometown.

Working title: Baltimore, MD … of course.

BaltimoreMD

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Category: Elevator Pitch

Experiment in the Bare Bones of Storytelling : Pirates of the Caribbean Sequel Trilogy, part 3

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pirate-JNLYou may have seen the first two episodes of this experiment in the bare bones of storytelling, The Eye of the Wind and Cat o’ Nine Tails. If not, you should check out the final version on their new page, here.

The basic idea was to demonstrate how a few basic tent-poles of character (through dialogue), setting (through imagery), theme, and plot can convey the power of a story, over which the remaining cloth can be draped later.

As it turned out, the exercise is also a good example of how to incorporate the eight-sequence method, Brian McDonald’s “invisible ink,” and elements of Blake Snyder’s beat sheet to keep a story arc on track. Once you have this framework in place, it’s much easier to work out the filler scenes—which shouldn’t be thought of as “filler” material at all! These scenes should support, accentuate, and harmonize with the tent-pole material the way the rhythm guitar provides background chords for the lead guitar’s riff.

Tent-poles without tent-cloth are naked and useless. The “filler” is what makes a pillow more than just a weird, double-ply rectangle of cloth. What you put between the key points in your story arc matters!

If you’ve read the first two episodes, you can probably guess what sorts of filler scenes this hypothetical Pirates trilogy would need. They’d probably involve a little more attention to Cardinal Baldassaro and Captain Jules, although (as you may notice) the Cardinal exists primarily as a “lesser of two evils” throw-away villain to create contrast for the growing threat of Anne Bonny. Captain Jules, as you’ll see in this final episode, offers the “saver romance” required in any film featuring an element of romantic rivalry or conflict. Romcom fans know what I mean, and so will you when you read the tent-pole sketch for True Colours.

POTC-True-Colours_

Category: Advice From A Dude

Myths About Word Count – Rest Easy, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and NaNoWriMo Writers

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mytwocentsOn the eve of NaNoWriMo, the 50k novel-writing marathon, it might be a good time to talk word count.

Now, those familiar with this website know that I have a lot of gripes about this stuntfest. However, I’m not here to pick on NaNo this time, but defend it, because one complaint lodged against NaNoWriMo is incredibly unfair: the idea that 50k isn’t enough for a novel.

It’s ironic, actually, considering that NaNoWriMo is all about a monthly word count, daily word counts, and various accounting strategies for busting out the “winning” 50,000 words by St. Andrew’s Day. But my argument that the annual stuntfest misses the point of writing by fetishizing word count applies equally to NaNoWriMo’s critics who preach a weird dogma that 50k doesn’t qualify as novel-length.

In fact, specific to science fiction and fantasy, there is a widely held belief that 50k isn’t even half enough for a novel, November-written or not.

As this Writer’s Digest piece (amusingly billed as “The Definitive Post” on word count) asserts: “Science fiction and fantasy are the big exceptions because these categories tend to run long. It has to do with all the descriptions and world-building in the writing. With these genres, I would say 100,000 – 115,000 is an excellent range.” Even among non-sf novels, The Definitive Post claims that below 70k is “too short.”

I call double bullshit on that. Continue reading →

Category: Advice From A Dude, My Two Cents

Elevator Pitch – Antiques Roadshow meets Ghostbusters

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PitchGet this: Antiques Roadshow meets Ghostbusters

What is it? A buddy comedy about a regional television show on which viewers present heirlooms to get psychic readings. One of the two leads believes in the spirit world but the other is just a cynical showman and a skeptic. Everything goes haywire when a fan brings on an ancient statuette that gives the skeptic actual spirit-reading powers, and they only learn after the broadcast that the artifact is being sought by an evil Illuminati cult. Can they find (and save!) their fan and stop the cult?

Working title: Vintage Spirits

Tagline: “Some things are better left in the attic.”

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Category: Elevator Pitch

First Two Pirates Episodes Moved Now Their Own Pages

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pirate-JNLWhen I began the “experiment in the bare bones of storytelling” that spawned the notional Pirates of the Caribbean sequel trilogy, I expected the second and third installments to be cursory follow-ups to the first episode, The Eye of the Wind.

But, as I fleshed out Cat o’ Nine Tails and True Colours, I realized that even these tent-pole sketches merited closer treatment. Eventually, I decided to move the sketches themselves to pages, so they would be accessible from the face of the website. The main page is here.

Now, you can find them in the menus above, under Fiction. The final installment will be posted soon!

Category: Uncategorized

Elevator Pitch – “Cougar and the Boss”

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PitchGet this: A double studio album with John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen.

What is it? John remakes Bruce’s classic hits, and Bruce remakes John’s. Two working class heroes putting their own spin on each other’s best songs.

Working title: “Cougar and The Boss”

Cover art draft concept:

Cougar-and-the-Boss

Check out this live taste of what it might sound like: Continue reading →

Category: Elevator Pitch

Experiment in the Bare Bones of Storytelling : Pirates of the Caribbean Sequel Trilogy, part 2

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Tent-PostsI explained the theory of “tent-poles” in Part 1: What makes a powerful story is simply having tent-poles in the three spatial dimensions of setting, character, and theme plus the temporal dimension of plot. Little snippets of imagery for setting, dialogue/interaction for character, ideas sprinkled here and there for theme, and diagrammed events to sketch out a plot are enough.

Even if the language draped over these tent-poles is mediocre, the story will carry readers along. Take Dan Brown or George R. R. Martin as examples.

I think writers instinctively set up tent-poles when sketching out their narratives, but it helps immensely to understand the types of tent-poles. Miss one of these types, and the sketch suffers. Miss several, and you’re sketching a crap story. It also pays to keep them in mind when writing an effective summary for your query letter.

And a story blurb? Check out this format: “In a world where … [setting] … one man/woman must … [character+plot] … but can he/she do this and also … [plot+theme]?” The tent-poles are right there.

As an example, in Part 1 set up these tent-poles for the first of a hypothetical sequel trilogy in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. I wanted to use a world familiar to most readers so the absence of little details would not stand in the way. After you take a peek at Part 1, check out the tent-pole sketches for the next film:

POTC-CatONineTails

Category: Advice From A Dude, Short Stories

Another designer’s rather anemic, confused vision of US rail

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OneAmericaRailIf you’re a regular reader, you might be familiar with my One America vision for US rail.

The best (and only) website founded by people who used to run a propaganda mill and a fake newspaper, upworthy.com, is promoting a very anemic and simplified improvement plan that seems more like a band-aid plan than visionary. Isn’t this supposed to be a progressive site?

The name of the plan? “United States High Speed Rail System.” It certainly is … ummm … accurate. I guess we could call it US HS RS for short.

The US HS RS plan uses my color-scheming idea (nice…) but fails to connect the entire country by threading new lines between population centers through the emptier parts of the country. Rail development precedes settlement, not the other way around, so connecting only the populated parts of the country is remarkably backward and ignorant of the history of rail.

On the other hand, US HS RS inexplicably ends the high-speed rail line from Boston in Quincy, Illinois, instead of extending it to Kansas City ; are they expecting a lot of Quincy-to-Quincy travel? Another high-speed line connects Juarez, Chihuahua, with Cheyenne, Wyoming. Really?

When you absolutely have to get from a moderately populated Mexican state to the least populated American state as quickly as possible!

By neglecting lines connecting hub cities through less developed towns (thus reminding the inhabitants of those hub cities of those towns, and making overnight-stay business a possibility) while weirdly ending lines in low-population destinations like Cheyenne and Quincy, US HS RS offers a worst-of-both-worlds scenario. It’s a recipe for failure.

Worst of all, the plan shuns Canada’s midsection while connecting to Tijuana, Juarez, and Monterrey in Mexico. Now, I’ve got nothing against Mexico, but you don’t have to work for the border patrol or the Drug Enforcement Agency to understand how problematic running commuter trains across our southern border would be. It would be nice to eventually have satellite stations one or two cities deep for our tropical neighbors, but lots of economic, legal, and security challenges would need to be overcome first.

I’ll stick with my plan.

Category: Design

An Experiment In The Bare Bones Of Storytelling – Pirates of the Caribbean Sequel Trilogy, Part 1

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pirate-JNLThis is going to be one part writing advice, one part literary theory, and several parts fan fiction to show how it all works.

Back in 2011, I had been thinking a lot about what goes into crafting a good story.  Particularly, I had been struck by how awful the 1978 film adaptation of Chandler‘s The Big Sleep was, despite keeping the original plot structure, and how good the 1946 film was despite draining much of the force of the book’s plot with a Hollywoodized climax.  The Bogart version succeeded, I suspect, partly due to better casting and more faithful adherence to the original witty dialogue.

Also, while reading Bukowski‘s Pulp, I realized the power of wit in driving a story even when structure is weak or absent. Then, the worst of the Pirates of the Caribbean films (so far) was released on DVD.  Lots to think about, and it led to the realization that there are essentially four dimensions of story-telling.

_ Continue reading →

Category: Advice From A Dude | Tags: , ,