read: Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood (5 of 5 stars)

Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood by J. Michael Straczynski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Straczynski has used his considerable storytelling skills to tell his story. It is personal, unflinching and deeply moving, telling a rags-to-riches, hard-work-pays-off Hollywood story without being cloying, sensational  or scandalous. If you're a fan of Babylon 5, Superman, Spiderman, or comic books in general, this is required reading. If you're a writer struggling for inspiration, you'll find it here. If you're just looking for an engrossing story of endurance and overcoming circumstances, this is what you want.

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Quick, Good, or Cheap. Pick Two

I was recently reminded of this old project planning adage and it got me to wondering if it applied to my current occupation as a part-time writer. I've seen it worked out time and again in various software projects at the places where I work full-time. Please stay with me as I think this through.

Good + Quick = Expensive

This makes sense to me. In order for a writing project to get done quickly and well, you need one or more experienced writers focusing on it full time. The bigger the project or the quicker you want it, the more (or better) writers you'll need (although there is certainly a point of diminishing return, as shown by Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month). This is probably why most television shows use a small army of writers to get a teleplay written every week--divide and conquer. Plus, the more experienced the writer the more expensive (in theory) they will be.

This doesn't preclude, of course, the serendipity of an experienced (or even inexperienced) writer singlehandedly pouring out a complete and polished first draft in an amazingly short period of time. But from what I've been reading and experiencing, that is the exception and not the rule.

Good + Cheap = Slow

This seems to be where I am at, no matter how much I'd like to change it. Since there is only one of me and I am still learning how this writing stuff works and I have only so many hours in the day (of which many are filled by my day job and other obligations and desires) and I want what I write to be good, it's taking me a while to get things done. I've been working on the outline for a new screenplay for over a month now and it's still not quite there. Likewise the planning for a couple of novels. I did manage to whack out a first draft of a short story in a week. But it still needs a rewrite or two (or more) before it's ready to submit to anyone other than my wife and friends.

On the other hand, there is a hidden cost to constantly not having finished a project (or at least a step of the project). There is a point where (A) it's just got to be done (no more procrastinating) and (B) it's good enough. This is the battle I'm fighting.

Quick + Cheap = Inferior

As I wrote above, there are probably times where a single writer can finish a great work in a short amount of time, even if they are inexperienced (I've read that Mickey Spillane wrote his first novel, I, The Jury, in nine days, disregarding any arguments about how great it is, it's certainly been influential). But again, that's the exception, and not the rule, and is not what should be expected of most writing most of the time. If I were to bang out a novel in nine days, it would probably be crap. Heck, I've knocked a novel in 30 days during National Novel Writing Month, and all four times it's been crap. But I've learned about writing and about my writing. And now I've at least got four (almost) book length manuscripts saved to my hard drive.

Where does that leave me? I'm a part-time writer. I'm just way too practical and settled in my lifestyle to walk away from a high paying job and write full time. But I've been bitten by the writing bug, so I'm going to keep on writing. I just have keep my perspective and not expect to have a novel or screenplay pop out of my computer every few months. I also have to read more books, read less Internet nonsense, and write more words.

Writers Needed (1909)

In Scientific American for June 2009: 100 Years Ago

JUNE 1909
WRITERS NEEDED— “Moving pictures are exhibited in about ten thousand theaters and halls in the United States. With the rapid spread of this new amusement has also come a marked change in the public taste. Spectators were once quite content with a view of factory employees going to and from their work, the arrival and departure of railway trains, and similar scenes. Nowadays, a more or less coherent story must be unfolded, for which reason the makers of moving pictures have been compelled to write plays (or at least to conceive them) and to have them acted before the camera.”

Screenwriting Books

I'm back in the fight to outline this screenplay. Last night, my slightly mushy brain came up with a pretty decent idea to fix the whole thing, and it continued to work on it overnight. By this morning it seemed like the new approach was pretty workable and I started writing it down. I'd like to say a couple of words about how I'm approaching that.

I previously mentioned Blake Snyder and Alex Epstein as influences on structuring my work. It's pretty hard to really name a favorite between their two books. The couple of books I'd read before them, Writing Screenplays That Sell by Michael Hauge and Screenplay by Syd Field, were useful overviews, but were vague on specific techniques. Yes, they discussed the three acts. Michael even offered a way to format an outline, but his approach seemed both heavily burdened with detail about what to track for each scene and lacking in practical advice on how to figure out what scenes to include.

Then I read Alex Epstein's Crafty Screenwriting. This was helpful. He started with the basics on developing a hook and then gave solid, practical advice about plot, characters, dialogue and the rest. I used his guidance while working on my second screenplay. But I guess the part of my brain that's good at organizing some things just didn't quite absorb enough about the process to make me successful at organizing the screenplay. It still ran out of gas about halfway through. I needed more.

Blake Snyder's Save The Cat! was the book that put it all together for me. It really might be The Last Book on Screenwriting [I'll] Ever Need (but I doubt it, because I like books). From his insightful breakdown of the beats of a movie, to his useful taxonomy of story genres, to his step by step advice on breaking down a story using 'the board', this book is filled with the tools I think I need to finally put together a screenplay that works. All the other books have their place, but Save The Cat! is the one I go to first to figure out what I need to put into a script.

So, I'm back to it. My logline is revised to incorporate the new approach. I have two fresh pages of notes for how to outline about 2/3 of the story, sort of a synopsis. I plan to get the rest of the synopsis/notes written down tomorrow morning and perhaps even start arranging scenes on 'the board'. It's just possible that I'll get that done and be able to write out the detailed outline by Sunday night. We'll see. I am recharged to get back to work and might be a bit optimistic.

I still don't want to say to much in this forum about what I'm working on. What I will say is that it's supposed to be a comedy (if I can write funny) and it's supposed to be family friendly (I think I can do that). And if you read STC!, you'll find that Blake would put it in the genre of Out of the Bottle. So that, or OOTB, is how I'll refer to the project from now on. It's not really I Dream of Jeannie. More like The Brass Bottle meets Home of the Brave (though I'm still trying to find a better second feature).

Outlining Is Hard

Having written four almost-novel-length rough drafts for NaNoWriMo and three screenplays for ScriptFrenzy, I already know that long-form writing is real work. But when I'm in the day-to-day of writing chapters and scenes, it's fun and rewarding work. Even when I know what's going down on the page is crap, I know I will (or am supposed to) come back and fix it later and I can get in the flow.

In those projects, the rough spots I ran into always had to do with story--trying to come up with at least the semblance of a feasible set of characters, setting, and plot. But once I thought I had those in hand, I dove in and figured I'd be able to to push my way through. I guess I thought of myself as a seat-of-the-pants writer--a panster. I haven't been satisfied with the results.

On my latest project, a screenplay, I figured I should probably follow the sage advice of the teachers I've been reading and following, namely Blake Snyder and Alex Epstein, and do a real outline, with beats, a basic scene breakdown, and everything. As I noted in a previous post, the personal deadline for having the outline is this Sunday, so I can start writing scenes on Monday. I gave myself last week to finish off the logline (which I mostly did) and this past weekend to do the story beats and breakdown (using 'the board'). I got my ass kicked.

Procrastination and long-weekend mentality meant that I didn't really start until Monday morning. Of course, that meant that I had the whole thing to do in a day, but I figured I'd at least get the high points and fill in the rest this week. I guess what I found out is that what I thought were settled story points had not been giving enough thought, so when I tried to nail them down they kept squishing about like jello. To top it off, my other project, a novel, kept popping into my brain. Like an idiot, I figured I should try to stay focused, so I didn't capture those, either.

It all boils down to the fact that I now see that I am probably a week behind. I need to get these story points settled. Then I can break them down and fill in the beats. Then I can write up the outline. Then I can write the rough draft. I'm getting an inkling of why writers who do this for a living call it work.

Editing a Dead Horse

One of these days I'll be here. John August has some sage words of advice on his blog for those times when an author faces the n+1th revision of their long form story, be it screenplay or novel, and is going insane.

The most obvious is to use better words. The most challenging is to remove a seemingly important scene and make the rest of the story work.

But my favorite is to imagine a secondary plot we're not seeing. This appeals to me because it's something I'm trying to do anyway in order to make my plots more realistic. It goes along with another tip I've read and will have to locate an attribution for: every character is the hero of their own story. It's important to remember that everyone in a story is trying to accomplish something. And John's advice is to figure out what they're doing when they're off-screen/offstage/off-page.

Panama

Never been there. And I have very little desire to go on a visit, other than to see the locks. But what I do need is a plan. I've spent half a month pretending to get started on my next screenplay. I suppose I've been working on the idea, a bit. It's time to get serious.

On June 1, I intend to start writing the first draft. There. I wrote it down. Now I need to execute. According to the calendar, not counting today, I have 16 days to get my outline written. That's too big to track. Break it down. If I give myself 5 days to write the outline (including one or two drafts), I have to have the story breakdown in 11 days. That's May 26. That let's me spend Memorial Day weekend creating the beat sheet (thank you Blake Snyder). That's in a week. I have one (1) week to finalize the logline and title and get 30-40 scene possibilities written out. That's just over 4 per day.