Random Question #32

If your partner decided s/he wanted to look up an old ex and restart a platonic friendship, how would you respond to your partner?

Random Question #28

What makes you feel powerful?

Which Story Should You Write?

Back when we were discussing Abbot Management and the various issues related to feedback, a friend emailed me a very simple yet profound question:

How do you know when to listen to feedback and change your story?

This question really gets to the heart of it. Superficially, it is pretty easy to know if you agree with feedback telling you beef up a scene, hit a story point harder, punch up dialog, etc. But what about real, substantial change? What do you do when listening to feedback would fundamentally change the very story you originally set out to tell?

In terms of Abbot’s feedback on Supervillain, one of their readers wanted more comic book superhero action. He said this is what the audience expects and what the genre provides, and despite an action-oriented opening and climax, my script suffers from a lack of it. Superhero action is fun, it’s visual, it’s dramatic and external, and it fills seats and sells popcorn. He’s right. But here’s the thing: it is fundamentally inconsistent with my premise. In my story, the superhero desperately wants comic book action - it would solve all his problems. The superhero tries to get it, he makes pitiful ill-fated attempts to generate it, but there is no superhero comic book action. This is the source of the comedy. That’s my premise. So if you add comic book superhero action to my premise, you get… a different premise.

It would be like adding a time machine and car chases to Aftershocks; these would transform it into Back to the Future. Back to the Future is fun and Back to the Future is great and Back to the Future is better than Aftershocks, no question. But I didn’t want to write Back to the Future. I wanted to write Aftershocks.

So what do you do? I can hear all us artist types laughing, saying it is obvious that this reader

When Do You Get Your Ideas?

Ideas are funny things. I seem to get my best/most interesting ideas (story-related or otherwise) when I am busy doing something else. If I sit down at the computer needing to come up with a great idea, I can’t do it. But get me busy doing something completely different, and I just might come up with something.

After months of dead ends, I finally got the idea for the (twist) ending of Aftershocks in the middle of the night, when my then-18-month-old son woke up crying and wouldn’t stop. As I trudged down the hallway to his room 99% asleep, it just hit me. The direction it took me in was a complete surprise. Years later, I got the idea for Psycho Ex while walking him home from school one day. As he spoke it was obvious that he had a serious crush on his first-grade teacher, and as I listened the idea materialized. And while I was out mowing the lawn last Tuesday, a trailer-worthy one-liner for Dead Guy was suddenly just… there.

So the best question for what I’m getting at here is not “Where do you get your ideas?”, because we all get them from the same place: life. I think the more precise way to ask the question is “When do you get your ideas?”. What are you doing when most of your ideas come to you?

It seems like (for me at least) the mind wants to

Quote of the Day

It is true that many creative people fail to make mature personal relationships, and some are extremely isolated. It is also true that, in some instances, trauma, in the shape of early separation or bereavement, has steered the potentially creative person toward developing aspects of his personality which can find fulfillment in comparative isolation. But this does not mean that solitary, creative pursuits are themselves pathological….

[A]voidance behavior is a response designed to protect the infant from behavioral disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life which was not entirely, or even chiefly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships.

- Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self, 1989

Why I Didn’t Love Sweeney Todd

Last time I mentioned my opinion that Sweeney Todd was a good movie, but not a great one. It is probably Tim Burton’s most accomplished film. I liked it, respected it, admired it… but I didn’t love it.

Why not? Just like with Steely Dan, I didn’t find anything there to get attached to emotionally. I didn’t fall in love. And because of that, the ending, while inevitable and satisfying and ironic, pretty much failed. Why? Because it didn’t feel tragic - it didn’t emotionally devastate me, and I doubt it devastated anyone else in the theater either.

And this time I think I have some answers why. They don’t unlock the writing secrets to emotional involvement or anything, but they are helpful (at least for me).

Sweeney Todd is an obsessive protagonist. His all-encompassing obsession to exact revenge is

Helicopter Anderson

Mudflap prism
Standing shoes
Snowmobile rot conceal
Bleach(ed) white blues

Lipstick machete
Skullcap soil
Curtain rod confetti
Birdhouse boil

Easy-bake urinal cake
Switchback smug
Simon sand hand in gland
Rank reek rug

One day you will come around
Knock upon my door
Step lightly now stop show me how
Leave me on the floor

Telescopic mouthfeel
Limousine crow
Subtle stretch and softly retch and
I don’t know

Why (I Think) Writers Are Miserable

Stay with me here (I’m still figuring this out):

Last week we were invited by some friends to join their Thanksgiving festivities. One of the other guests (I’ll call him Chuck) was an aspiring Hollywood writer. I know this because it was impossible for anyone in attendance to avoid learning this. Or avoid learning how many spec scripts Chuck has written. Or avoid hearing again how tough it is for Chuck to get a break in this business.

This guy annoyed the crap out of me.

Now wait - wait a second. This post is NOT a mean-spirited rant about this guy or how miserable he is.