2010 in review and the power of Twitter

Well, it's the end of another year. I imagine this is one of those posts that'll get missed in all the holiday hoopla, so I won't waste everyone's time with a long year-end retrospective.

As I look back on the year, the posts I'm probably most proud of are the interviews. I did an in-depth interview with TV writer Robert Levine about his time on Jericho and Human Target. Later I interviewed fellow blogger and TV writer Margaux Froley about how the Warner Brothers Television Fellowship won her a staff position on Privileged. Both of these came about through fairly normal channels. Rob Levine is something of a casual acquaintance, and I had corresponded with Margaux through comments on her blog and a few emails here and there before arranging the interview.

Two other interviews I conducted came about through a more unexpected means: Twitter. I was somewhat late to embracing Twitter and finally joined a little over a year ago. I quickly graduated from tweeting mere updates to the blog and soon made it my mission to get responses from celebrities such as Wil Wheaton and Pat Sajak. (Mission accomplished in both respects, by the way.) As I write this, I have 1156 followers, which seems like it can't possibly be right... especially when I note a few verified celebrities are among my followers.

I can't swear to it, but I think I followed A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET's writer Eric Heisserer on Twitter first, and that likely led to my blog ending up on his radar. When Tripp Stryker filled in and gave an impassioned defense of reboots and remakes, Eric tweeted me, saying "Tell Tripp there's a signed poster in it for him if he likes the movie."

(I'm not sure if Tripp ever got the signed poster - but to be fair, Eric never promised it would be signed by anyone actually connected to the film.)

That was enough to open a dialogue, and I soon asked Eric if he'd be open to an email interview. He was quite generous, and in fact had the answers back to me less than 24 hours after I emailed the questions. As I had seen many reviews of the film - both positive and negative - I had the opportunity to ask him about some of the more controversial turns in the script. The result was a candid interview, and I'm left with the sense that Eric enjoyed being able to take us through his experience and show how the filmmakers arrived at the end result.

I didn't meet Eric in person until several months later at a panel of horror writers, and I found him to be an exceptionally friendly individual. We had traded a few emails before then, and he even took some time to offer some personal advice regarding some writing and career issues I was sorting out. Eric's one of of the good one's in my book, so if you ever have a chance to read an interview with him, or see a panel he's on - take it! You can find him on Twitter as @writerspry.

Twitter also put me in contact with Josh Klausner, the writer of Shrek Forever After and Date Night. If memory serves, he actually followed me first and I was ignorant of that fact until he tweeted a reply to some snarky aside I made. With the ice broken, I arranged another email interview, and Josh couldn't have been more generous with his answers. You can find Josh at @JcKlaus.

So that's a good use of Twitter - who knew? For an inappropriate use of Twitter, I could follow in the footsteps of a person a friend of mine was telling me about. This individual had over a 1000 friends on Facebook and decided to tell them all that if each of them gave him a dollar, he'd have enough for a new laptop. Classy, no? (On the other hand, I've got almost 1200 friends, so it strikes me if each person gave $.50, I could afford a new iPad... maybe class is over-rated.)

Anyway, I'm always humbled and flattered that people enjoy my writing enough to read my blog regularly and follow me on Twitter. If you haven't yet followed me, I'm @BittrScrptReadr on Twitter, and you can "like" me on Facebook by going here.

Let's hope 2011 is a great one for everyone!

Screenwriting Master Class with Scott Myers and Tom Benedek

I don't often endorse screenwriting products, programs or services on this site, and I usually try to have direct experience with a particular service before I offer any sort of endorsement. In the instances when I don't have that direct service, I make certain to admit that fact plainly and point out that my referral is based on the experience of others and not my own.

But there's one guy in the screenwriting blogsphere whose name is pretty much synonymous with "credibility" in my book - Scott Myers of Go Into The Story. Scott has been a long-time friend of the blog and his endorsement was key to putting this site on the map back in July 2009. Anyone who's read Scott's blog knows that he not only has a lot of screenwriting insight and advice to offer, he's also a damn good guy.

So that's why I have zero hesitation about endorsing his new Screenwriting Master Class before it even officially launches. I even wish I had the disposable cash to take it myself, but that'll have to wait for some future date.

So rather than offering my semi-uninformed take on what Scott and his partner screenwriter Tom Benedek have cooked up, I'll let their promotional email speak for itself.


January 3, 2011 is the official launch date of Screenwriting Master Class and all but two of the inaugural course offerings are sold out. Thanks for your interest and support!

A few questions for you:

Have you ever started a script and not finished it?

Has it ever taken you 4, 5, 6 months or more to finish a script?

Have you ever gotten so lost when writing a story, you became incredibly frustrated?

Chances are you did not do enough story preparation. Don’t you think it’s time to approach writing like professionals do and break your story in prep?

We offer a 6-week online Prep: From Concept to Outline writing workshop, a step-by-step way to develop your story, enabling you to crack it before you type FADE IN. The beauty of this approach is three-fold:

* You can go into the page-writing part of the process with confidence because you’ve already broken the story.

* Since you won’t be overwhelmed with finding the story when writing pages, you can focus your creativity on characters, dialogue, mood, pace, etc.

* By devoting six weeks to prep, you will almost assuredly cut the amount of time you spend writing your script and increase the odds you will finish your draft.

At Screenwriting Master Class, we offer two concurrent sections of the Prep: From Concept to Outline class:

* Prep [Beginning to Intermediate writers]: Scott Myers is teaching this course from January 3-February 13.

* Prep [Intermediate to Advanced writers]: Tom Benedek is teaching this course from January 3-February 13.

There are a few spots available for both courses. We are also signing up writers for the next round of Prep courses beginning February 14. To enroll, go here.

Here are a few testimonials from writers who took the Beta version of the Prep: From Concept to Outline course:

“You gave us all just the right amount of ideas, encouragement, and support to discover, develop, and design a real workable blueprint to take into the page writing.”

-- David Broyles

“The Prep class has given me a set of practical tools to use to take the bare glimmer of a concept to outline in six weeks.”

-- James Tichenor

"I honestly can't wait to get started on this script now, and to use what I've learned in Prep to go back and rewrite other scripts."

-- Paul Labich

Approach your writing like the pros do: Break your story in prep!

Don’t forget, if you go to the Screenwriting Master Class website, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter and the free 28-page Spec Script Market Analysis.

Also follow @ScreenwritingMC on Twitter for all Hollywood lit sales – from spec scripts to pitches, novels to comic books – plus screenwriting business news.

If you have any questions, you may contact Scott and Tom here:

info@screenwritingmasterclass.com

Best of luck with the new program, gentlemen!

Tuesday Talkback - The worst of the year

I'm tired of debating the best movies of the year. Tell me, what films do you consider contenders for the Worst of the Year?

I think I actually did a pretty good job of avoiding the most universally derided movies of this year. Valentine's Day and MacGruber were probably the worst of what I saw, but there was a LOT I strictly avoided. If I saw everything that came out, those two probably wouldn't have even been in the bottom ten percent.

Bonus category - best bad films to Netflix and watch while drinking. Annnnnnd go! I need to fill up my queue.

Budgeting your time - try to write regularly

So I had a grand plan to finish writing a pilot before the end of this year. Not sure if that's going to happen. In theory I had plenty of time - two months. I'd even set a theoretical schedule, but that proved to be my undoing. I know that I like to write in long bursts - sometimes as many as 10-15 pages in a shot, so I convinced myself that any day I wasn't actually writing, I was still "working" as I was thinking about those pages. Thus, I was making it easier on myself because I'd only need three days or so to write the first draft.

Yeah, that was bullshit.

My problem was that I didn't set deadlines and stick to them. When I write for my writing group, I have a deadlines that six other people hold me to. With this, I was mostly on my own. Had I written only three pages a day, I would have written the theoretical 30 pages in the pilot within ten days.

Writing is like losing weight. You have to work at it every day. Working out ten minutes a day every day is far better for a weight loss plan, than cramming in one day a week of a 70 minute workout. Indeed, this blog is proof that I can stick to a deadline. I always try to make sure there's something new up here every weekday.

So my resolution for the new year is to be more disciplined about my screenwriting and TV writing. The binge and purge method I've used before has gotten results, but I feel I can be more productive still.

Friday Free-For-All - "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?"

Thursday Throwback - "Misogynistic violence against women"

This post first appeared on March 18, 2009.

This is one of those things that is hard to describe, but you definitely know it when you see it. My “best” example of such a scene was one scene where a woman met her end by being sliced in half lengthwise, starting at her genitals. If it wouldn’t get me sued, I’d describe that whole sequence in detail just to put in context how truly nasty some scenes can be. Rape scenes are also walking a fine line. It’s possible to handle them tastefully, but I’ve read a few where it’s felt like the rapist is standing in for the writer’s own fantasies – the kind of scene that after you read, you need to take a shower to wash the dirt away.

After more than five years as a reader, I now know far too many ways to mutilate, subjugate and sexually degrade a woman. I’m by no means a feminist, and there are plenty of instances where I’ve read an act of violence committed upon a female character and haven’t raised an eyebrow at it. Don’t misunderstand me – I’m not saying you should never hurt, injure or kill your female characters. That would be equally sexist. The problem sets in when it feels like the victimizer in the scene is a stand-in for the writer’s own sick desires.

This is one of those subliminal things that’s hard to point out without using specific examples, and unfortunately, to show the worst/best examples of such writing would likely get me sued. As blurry as the line gets, it most frequently gets crossed when some sort of sexual element is added to it. A scene where a woman is stabbed and her throat is slashed probably wouldn’t set off any alarms – but a scene where a woman is stabbed, then raped as the attacker takes obvious glee in her pain is going to be more repulsive.

Any creative attacks upon the vagina are also likely to trigger this response. Rape is a hot button for a lot of people, and doubtlessly there will be stories where such an act will serve the plot. (The Accused and A Time To Kill immediately spring to mind.) If you’re just trying to write a “fun” slasher film, I’d be careful about adding rape in there. If you’re writing torture porn, then you’re just a sick son of a bitch and there’s probably no saving you.

Yeah, I said it. I get the impression that torture porn gets bought less on the strength of its script and more on the cynical view of, “Well, this can probably make money in this market.” It seems like that genre is on its way out, and I for one couldn’t be happier. I don’t recommend writing it, but I don’t think too many readers like those scripts either, so you really don’t have anything to lose.

And don’t take it personally if agents, producers and managers who read the script think that there’s something strange about it. Readers often fancy themselves dimestore analysts, and we tend to think that a sick script is the product of a sick mind.

Overlooked Black List scripts

It's a holiday week and I don't have much enthusiasm for coming up with new posts. However, I have a number of blogs I read daily and it always frustrates me when they don't have new stuff, so how about some audience participation today?

I've seen a couple of Black List spoofs lately. You all seem like a very creative bunch - why don't you write in with fake loglines and titles for next year's Black List. Bonus points for coming up with a clever screenwriter to be the fake author of your premise.

I'll get us started:

THE ZOMBIES VS. ZOMBIES by Danny Niles
"The British band "The Zombies" might be humanity's last hope when their reunion concert becomes Ground Zero for a zombie apocalypse."
AGENT - Endeavor
Manager - Circle of Confusion


DUDE, YOUR MOM'S HOT! by Jon Schlossberg
(Original title: "I'D TOTALLY F*** YOUR MOM IN THE A**")
"A high school freshman finds his popularity fluctuating when his classmates discover his mom's a MILF."
AGENT - Creative Artists Agency
MANAGER - Circle of Confusion


FRIDAY THE 13th by Oren Farmer
"A reboot of the classic 2009 reboot"
AGENT - APA
MANAGER - Circle of Confusion