I read here a beautiful transcript of Ann Coulter in an interview on the CBC, being busted for being an ignoramus. (The original report is from Rumor Control.)
Had an interesting discussion with a prospective Yalie (I do interviews for my alma mater) talking about the odd state of civil rights in Canada. There is a Charter of Rights in Canada, but the provinces can and do opt out if they feel like it, under the infamous "Notwithstanding Clause." The provinces themselves have charters of rights, but these, like any other law, can be changed by provincial parliament. Which means that the individual provinces can treat civil rights any way they like. If Alberta wants to suspend habeas corpus to help with the mad cow problem, it could. The only thing stopping it is, well, that wouldn't be very Canadian, would it? If Quebec wants to trample on English-speakers' language rights, it can. That wouldn't be very Canadian, either -- ohhh, right, the Parti Quebecois doesn't think they're Canadian, anyway.
So on the one hand you have the US, where rights are enshrined by law, and trampled now and then by the government, and then you have Canada, where rights are not enshrined by law, not really, and aren't trampled particularly more than they are in the States. (I can't say Canada's better because of that nasty Bill 101 in Quebec.)
At least our tv journalists are real journalists, though...
Monday, January 31, 2005
EPIC FORM
In epic form, you start in media res, "in the middle of the thing," go back to the beginning and then tell the whole story, going up to the place you started and then through to the end. The Odyssey is the classic example (in fact, the classic Classic example).
Lisa suggested that the problem with The Circle Cast is it starts off slow. It builds to a bang at the end of the first few chapters, but it's a bang we're familiar with -- Morgan le Fay's being sent away from her mother after Uther Penndragon kills her father. And even then we don't know who Morgan is going to be -- an angry, powerful sorceress bent on revenge on the man who killed her father. The book tells the story of how Morgan became that sorceress.
(I wrote the book because Morgan's teenage years go untold, except for this one line from Malory:
Necromancy not being on the curriculum at most nunneries, I thought it was worth investigation. For the record, I utterly reject The Mists of Avalon. The ladies are far too reasonable. None of those people in those days were reasonable.)
So, suggests Lisa, start the book with Morgan sailing back from exile, ready to attack Uther Penndragon, before she finds out he's dead. She's become the sorceress she will. She's burning with revenge. And she's turned her back on a good man who loves her, because she cannot love anyone if she is to accomplish her revenge.
So, naturally, I thought, why have her just sailing? That's a contemplative scene. A contemplative scene is just as bad in flashforward as it is in chronology. So if she's going to be sailing, why not have her sailing in a storm?
That's much better. Then if she's remembering the events of the book, she's also trying not to drown.
But I already have a storm, when she sails to Ireland in the first place. What's the difference between the storm then and the storm now?
Ahhh, that answers itself. When she's sailing back, she can invoke the powers. She can control the weather.
Now that's an opening for a novel.
Lisa suggested that the problem with The Circle Cast is it starts off slow. It builds to a bang at the end of the first few chapters, but it's a bang we're familiar with -- Morgan le Fay's being sent away from her mother after Uther Penndragon kills her father. And even then we don't know who Morgan is going to be -- an angry, powerful sorceress bent on revenge on the man who killed her father. The book tells the story of how Morgan became that sorceress.
(I wrote the book because Morgan's teenage years go untold, except for this one line from Malory:
And the third sister, Morgan, was sent to a nonnerie, where she became a grete clerke of necromancie.
Necromancy not being on the curriculum at most nunneries, I thought it was worth investigation. For the record, I utterly reject The Mists of Avalon. The ladies are far too reasonable. None of those people in those days were reasonable.)
So, suggests Lisa, start the book with Morgan sailing back from exile, ready to attack Uther Penndragon, before she finds out he's dead. She's become the sorceress she will. She's burning with revenge. And she's turned her back on a good man who loves her, because she cannot love anyone if she is to accomplish her revenge.
So, naturally, I thought, why have her just sailing? That's a contemplative scene. A contemplative scene is just as bad in flashforward as it is in chronology. So if she's going to be sailing, why not have her sailing in a storm?
That's much better. Then if she's remembering the events of the book, she's also trying not to drown.
But I already have a storm, when she sails to Ireland in the first place. What's the difference between the storm then and the storm now?
Ahhh, that answers itself. When she's sailing back, she can invoke the powers. She can control the weather.
Now that's an opening for a novel.
CHILLING EFFECTS
Terrific FAQ here about what's parody (protected under the First Amendment) and what's intellectual property theft (not protected). If you're making fun of somebody with more lawyers than sense of humor, check it out.
Q. CAN YOU COPYRIGHT A TREATMENT?
A. Yes. You can copyright anything. Just get the right form from the Library of Congress. For Performing Arts, you generally need the Form PA. I think it's $30 now.
Copyrighting is much better than registering with the WGA/WGC, for reasons I go into in detail in my book.
Copyrighting is much better than registering with the WGA/WGC, for reasons I go into in detail in my book.
GOD BLESS THE WGC, AGAIN
The WGC seems to have resolved yet another credits dispute my way. This is the nth time I've had to go to them, and they've backed me. What would we do without them?
Share our credits with producers and directors and their personal fair-haired rewriters, that's what we'd do.
Share our credits with producers and directors and their personal fair-haired rewriters, that's what we'd do.
SAFARI SO GOOD
Since I started running Panther (Mac OS 10.3), I've been using Safari and Mail instead of Netscape and Eudora. Gotta say Safari and Mail win hands down. It took me a while to figure out how to get Safari to do tabbed browsing, and to get it to import Netscape bookmarks properly you need to use a wily hack to enable Debug Mode. But once done, they are far more robust and elegant. Oh, and unlike Eudora, free.
Now if only Mac would release a word processor so I could dump evil Microsoft's Office X.
Now if only Mac would release a word processor so I could dump evil Microsoft's Office X.
TV WRITING AND NOVELS...
I got a very nice note from someone whom I was hoping would recommend my novel to an agent up here. She thought it was "a great idea" and she "enjoyed the story" but felt it could use some revision.
I'm a bit depressed about that. I'm also a bit depressed that now, taking a look at the novel, I'm not exactly swept up in it. I've gone very far away from who I was when I wrote it. I'm not really interested in the Matter of Britain (the Arthurian cycle) any more. It was a very big deal to me once. I'm not excited about Morgan le Fay and her quest for vengeance.
Lisa had a perceptive comment though. She pointed out that all the TV writing has given me a much more popular sensibility. I used to try to write popular stuff but really I wrote stuff I was interested in and few else; the success I did have was out of sheer craft I guess. Screenwriting doesn't really fix that, because a movie is your vision as much as a novel is, there are just fewer stories that want to be movies than books. If I were to perpetrate a novel at this point, I'd probably start with a screenplay, just to get the plot right.
I'm always impressed with people who can just sort of write their way into a novel. But I rarely read their novels. And I don't envy them the horrible rewriting.
Neil Gaiman is an example of one I do read, but he comes out of comics, so his plotting instincts are well honed already; he has structure in the back of his head even if he's not paying close attention to it when he writes his first drafts.
I think writing for TV is probably excellent training for writing spec movie scripts. Trying to be fresh within a well defined template teaches you how to be fresh in a much looser form. You probably shouldn't write free verse before you can turn out a sonnet.
On the other hand I couldn't have made as much headway in TV if I hadn't had all that practice writing spec movies scripts... so I guess it doesn't really matter were you start so long as you keep writing all the time.
I'm a bit depressed about that. I'm also a bit depressed that now, taking a look at the novel, I'm not exactly swept up in it. I've gone very far away from who I was when I wrote it. I'm not really interested in the Matter of Britain (the Arthurian cycle) any more. It was a very big deal to me once. I'm not excited about Morgan le Fay and her quest for vengeance.
Lisa had a perceptive comment though. She pointed out that all the TV writing has given me a much more popular sensibility. I used to try to write popular stuff but really I wrote stuff I was interested in and few else; the success I did have was out of sheer craft I guess. Screenwriting doesn't really fix that, because a movie is your vision as much as a novel is, there are just fewer stories that want to be movies than books. If I were to perpetrate a novel at this point, I'd probably start with a screenplay, just to get the plot right.
I'm always impressed with people who can just sort of write their way into a novel. But I rarely read their novels. And I don't envy them the horrible rewriting.
Neil Gaiman is an example of one I do read, but he comes out of comics, so his plotting instincts are well honed already; he has structure in the back of his head even if he's not paying close attention to it when he writes his first drafts.
I think writing for TV is probably excellent training for writing spec movie scripts. Trying to be fresh within a well defined template teaches you how to be fresh in a much looser form. You probably shouldn't write free verse before you can turn out a sonnet.
On the other hand I couldn't have made as much headway in TV if I hadn't had all that practice writing spec movies scripts... so I guess it doesn't really matter were you start so long as you keep writing all the time.
WHERE TO FIND TV SCRIPTS?
My peerless assistant, Caroline, was kind enough to email me some questions to answer. One is, where do you find TV scripts to read?
I don't love Simply Scripts or Twiz TV because they can't always seem to tell the difference between scripts -- what the show's writers deliver to the production unit -- and transcripts -- what viewers write down painstakingly after watching the show. Oh, many of the transcripts are marked as such, and many of the scripts are actually scripts, but some of the scripts are transcripts put in something vaguely resembling script format. Transcripts are better than nothing, I suppose, especially if you take the trouble to retype them in proper screenplay format. But they don't tell you much about how the action is conveyed to the reader. All they have is dialog.
Drew's Script-O-Rama has quite a number of actual scripts -- sometimes even the actual scanned-in pages from someone's purloined copy of a real script.
If you live in LA, of course, you can just pop down to the Writer's Guild of America library and read'em on the spot. That's best. Or the Margaret Herrick Library at 333 S. La Cienega Blvd. in Beverly Hills (part of the Academy).
There are feature scripts at The Daily Script, but so far, only one TV script!
Script City sells TV scripts for the exorbitant price of ten bucks a pop. I'm not clear on how they can legally sell other people's copyrighted material, unless they've got a royalty deal going, which would surprise me quite a bit. I also don't know who's selling them the scripts. They do, however, have a large selection of this and that, for example around 20 "Third Rock from the Sun" scripts.
I don't love Simply Scripts or Twiz TV because they can't always seem to tell the difference between scripts -- what the show's writers deliver to the production unit -- and transcripts -- what viewers write down painstakingly after watching the show. Oh, many of the transcripts are marked as such, and many of the scripts are actually scripts, but some of the scripts are transcripts put in something vaguely resembling script format. Transcripts are better than nothing, I suppose, especially if you take the trouble to retype them in proper screenplay format. But they don't tell you much about how the action is conveyed to the reader. All they have is dialog.
Drew's Script-O-Rama has quite a number of actual scripts -- sometimes even the actual scanned-in pages from someone's purloined copy of a real script.
If you live in LA, of course, you can just pop down to the Writer's Guild of America library and read'em on the spot. That's best. Or the Margaret Herrick Library at 333 S. La Cienega Blvd. in Beverly Hills (part of the Academy).
There are feature scripts at The Daily Script, but so far, only one TV script!
Script City sells TV scripts for the exorbitant price of ten bucks a pop. I'm not clear on how they can legally sell other people's copyrighted material, unless they've got a royalty deal going, which would surprise me quite a bit. I also don't know who's selling them the scripts. They do, however, have a large selection of this and that, for example around 20 "Third Rock from the Sun" scripts.
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