What Slogan?

I'm going to picket Monday in support of the WGAE. (I just found out they're not picketing tomorrow.)

What slogan should I write on my picket sign?

The reader who comes up with the best slogan wins ... a better DVD and internet download residual rate, God willing.

A While We're At It, How About an Artist's Union?

Lisa just posted the idea that the visual artists need a union.

No, seriously. If writers can have one, why not painters and sculptors?

No, you can't have scale payments for paintings (by the square foot? per hour? per bottle of vodka consumed?). But here's some things worth fighting for:

a. a health plan
b. a code of conduct for galleries -- no charging artists for "expenses," no "handshake deals," clarity that your paintings can't be locked up in court when your gallery goes bankrupt.
c. a royalty to the artist every time their work resold -- if auction houses can scoop 35% of the sales price as commission between buyer and seller, surely there could be 5% to Jasper Johns when a painting he sold in 1955 for $500 goes for millions.

Lisa made the interesting point yesterday that the two groups that most need unions are people doing jobs that nobody wants, and people doing jobs that everybody wants. Writers and actors, because we'd do it for free if we had to; and grape pickers and coal miners, because the kinds of people willing to go down into a hole in the ground already have their backs up against a wall, and can't afford to lose their jobs.

Yes, we're lucky to have our jobs. That's why we need this strike to succeed. Because once you let the studio's rollbacks go through, the slope gets oh so slippery...

The Three Most Important Things I Teach

Rabbi Hillel was asked to sum up the Torah while standing on one foot. "That which is hateful to you, don't do it to your neighbor," he said. "The rest is commentary."

Apropos yesterday's post, someone asked what the three most important things I teach are:

• The Hook
  
  You need a hook. See chapter one of CRAFTY SCREENWRITING, "The Hook."
  
  
• The Five Elements of Story
  
  According to page 43 of CRAFTY TV WRITING, a good story is:
  
  
  1. a hero we care about
     
  2. who has a compelling problem, an opportunity or goal
     
  3. who faces difficult obstacles and/or an antagonist
     
  4. if they succeed, they (or their world) will have something they didn't have (stakes)
     
  5. if they fail, they'll lose something precious to them (jeopardy)
  
  
  (Some stories have multiple heroes. Some stories have only jeopardy without stakes. YMMV.)
  
  A good screen story has these five elements, and can be told externally, through action and dialog,
  
  
• Pitch your story.

So now you know. Go forth, and don't irritate the neighbors.

On the Podium

I spent the day teaching. That was fun.

I ran a small workshop as part of Telefilm's "Feature It!" program, where writers sent in pitches for a 1.2M thriller to be shot in Quebec. The jury picked five projects (one writing team, so six writers). Today I yammered on for a bit about the Hook, and the Elements of Story, and Pitching Your Story. Then I had everyone pitch their story. Then we critiqued it and offered solutions.

That's fun. It's like a writing room, but for features. And we had an audience of 15-20 other people.

I like working on other people's stories. I like coming up with fixes. On one project, we all agreed that it might be stronger to change the movie from the crazy hero's story to his girlfriend's story. Sometimes a simple change like that makes everything better. On another, I proposed merging antagonists. On another, we proposed a slew of different endings. On some, we just identified places where we weren't buying the story.

I like teaching, but I find I run out of things to teach after about a day. I don't know how you keep talking about stuff, honestly. I can tell you the three most important things I know about storytelling in half an hour. After that, it's just a matter of doing it. I can critique an indidivual story till the cows come home, and even draw morals from it; but if I had to rely on imparting information one-way, I think I could plow through my whole book in a day. It's all about applying the process after that.

I guess that's because story telling is a live beast, and if you start micromanaging it, it dies.

Tomorrow we're headed down to New York, and Friday I'll see whether they'll let me borrow one of their picket signs.

A World Without Writers

I Like It When They're Smart

I was wondering why the WGA was only picketing at 9 am, when the trucks roll in at 7...

With the work stoppage in its eighth day, the WGA amped up the stakes Monday by mounting picket lines at more than a dozen lots at the crack of dawn, in hopes of turning away Teamster drivers.

Anecdotal reports indicate that significant numbers of drivers opted to honor the lines.

And, as you might hope, the writers are making sure that the media have a fresh story to tell every day:

With schools out for Veterans Day, many strikers and supporters turned out with their children in tow. ...

As for today, the WGA East will go to Wall Street because "media conglomerates keep boasting of their new media profits to shareholders while simultaneously crying poverty to writers." On the West Coast, SAG is staging a "Picketing With the Stars" rally at noon at Universal...

[Variety called it "Take Your Actor to Strike Day."]

Bet those will make some good visuals.

Let's see who wins the media war: the people who own the media, or the people who create it?

(Quotes from Variety's Strike Alert Edition.)

Worth 2.5% of a Thousand Words.

Via Ken Levine.

I Can't Stannit

I've been hoping to come back to FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS when it got better. But I guess that won't be soon.

On the other hand, I'm very much enjoying Neal Stephenson's The Confusion These here "books" are a pretty good way to spend a few evenings.