The other writing secrets

Posted on September 18, 2009 by piersb

Danny Stack did a brilliant series of posts last year called Professional Screenwriter. It’s ten blogsworth of advice about how to succeed as a writer and it is, as the kids say, full of win.

If you haven’t read them already, you can get ’em here:

Reading
Writing
Networking
Industry Insider
Get an Agent
Discipline
Attitude
Choosing Work
In the Know
Doing the Do

In addition to that, James Moran has revealed the big secret of how to be a writer. It’s four words long, and it’s answered in the very first question of his enormous writing FAQ.

So, there you go. Those eleven posts are all you need to read about how to become a writer.

But there’s a whole bunch of other useful stuff, too. Things that you can do to make your life easier, that aren’t exactly about writing itself, or how to make a career of it, but will come in really useful over the years ahead.

So, in no particular order, here are the other writing secrets.

Learn Proofing Marks

When you’re working on a draft, you need to mark it up with your notes: delete this, move that to there, add in a whole bunch of stuff here.

The typesetting industry has a standard set of marks, which are easy to read and which anyone in the print industry can understand – once you learn them then you’ll be able to mark up changes to your own drafts quickly and clearly.

This page introduces the basic marks and links to a two-page PDF which you can print out and keep next to your desk.

Learn to touch type – preferably using a Dvorak keyboard

Touch typing is faster than pick-and-peck, which means you can get the words out faster when you’re drafting, and change them faster when you’re revising. There’s nothing more annoying than having the right words in your head and simply not being able to get them written quickly enough.

There is one problem with learning to type, though, and it’s that the QWERTY keyboard is not a good design for touch-typists.

The Dvorak keyboard was created in 1932, and was specifically designed to make touch-typing easier. As well as increasing your typing speed, it’s easier to learn. And as your fingers don’t move so much across the keyboard (because the keys are in sensible places), many writers (myself included) have also found that it reduces symptoms of RSI.

It takes less than five minutes to switch your computer to a Dvorak layout, and you can find Dvorak typing tutors here.

Buy a laser printer

You might have had a printer thrown in when you bought your computer. Probably a colour one, these days.

But scripts aren’t printed in colour. And you’re going to be printing an awful lot of scripts.

You can buy a laser printer for less than a hundred quid, and it’ll save you money in the long run.

A laser printer cartridge is more expensive than an inkjet one, but it lasts longer. A lot longer. And over the life of the printer, that means it’s actually cheaper to have a laser printer.

Get a sensible email address

While I’m certain that cat_lover573@yahoo.co.uk is indeed a lovely email address that expresses your personality perfectly, it doesn’t exactly scream Scriptwriting Professional.

firstname.lastname is a good bet. It’s also easy to remember.

In an ideal world, you’d have your own domain (the .com thing) and maybe even put a website there saying who you are. Failing that, the largest free email providers are Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.

Act

As a screenwriter, actors are going to have to read your words and perform your actions at some point.

Taking an acting class or performing in some amateur theatre productions will give you an excellent grounding in some of the joys and problems of that.

A little bit of acting experience will not only help you to understand how an actor constructs their performance around the text, it’ll help you to provide character and, yes, even motivation.

Stand up

If you’re a comedy writer, do a couple of sets of stand-up. Many comedy clubs have open mic nights where you can get up on stage and perform for five or ten minutes. (Five minutes is more than long enough for your first set.) Performing your own material is an excellent way to hone your skills on seeing where the laughs are, and getting more.

You’re not going to be as good a standup or actor as anyone who does it for a living. But what you will get is new tools for your writing toolbox.

Learn basic typographical design

The Non-Designer’s Design Book is a book which teaches the basics – and just the basics – of print design.

We’re not talking about anything fussy or fancy-schmancy here. Just some easy ways of laying out your text on a page to make it look nicer.

It won’t help you with scripts – they have a standard layout for a very good reason – but for things like covering letters, show bibles, or pitch documents, being able to lay them out in a sensible, beautiful, easy-to-read way will set you ahead of the pack.

So there you have it. Seven useful writing tips that have nothing to do with writing.

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Letters from America: Words, words, words.

Posted on September 1, 2009 by piersb

originally posted 11th April 2004
—

So I attended the Game Developers Conference in San Jose a couple of weeks ago.

We know a lot about engendering emotion through novels and films. While telling a story in a game uses different methods of presentation (via cut-scenes and in-game dialogue, for example), we don’t need new theories to talk about how to make characters and story affect people.

Most of the writing presentations at the conference were concerned with emotion through story and character, but one looked at the emotions you can experience through gameplay itself.

The speaker was Nicole Lazzaro, President of User Experience Research company XEODesign. If any of you are thinking of developing games any time soon, I highly recommend you get in touch with her.

A large portion of the talk covered the emotions that you probably know about already: anger, frustration, wonder, awe, excitement, relief, amusement, and schadenfreude. All can be brought in via gameplay or design rather than story or character.

In a way, she’s proved that it’s simply not necessary to have a compelling story to have an emotionally involving game. But I guess those of you who’ve played Tetris or Solitaire already know that.

The most important things I took away, though, were two words.

Fiero and Naches.

Fiero is an Italian word. It’s the emotion you experience when you finally overcome adversity, or solve a problem. It’s the thrill you get from filling in a clue in a crossword puzzle, or beating the end-of-level boss. It’s the moment when you clench your fist and say: “Yes!”, or throw your arms above your head.

Naches (the ch is pronounced as in chutzpah, or reich) is from the Yiddish. It’s the emotion of pleasure or pride at the accomplishment of someone you’ve helped or trained. It’s the feeling you get as a parent, teacher, or mentor, when someone is able to succeed because of what you’ve shown them.

Now the point is, we’ve all experienced these two emotions.

But before now, I had no way to talk about them. I had no way of defining these emotions, or discussing them with other people. I had no way to consider how to analyse or engender these emotions, no way to understand or discuss them.

Without these words to define the concepts, I had no way to even *think* about them.

Today I can do things that I couldn’t do before, have thoughts and experiences that I simply couldn’t have a fortnight ago, just because I know two new words.

And now you can too.

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A serious flaw with the standard SIZR model of zombie infection.

Posted on August 18, 2009 by piersb

While the recent publication of When Zombies Attack! Mathematical modelling of an outbreak of Zombie Infection [1] represents a great step forward in our scientific understanding of the process of a zombie outbreak, their model posesses a flaw which must be addressed before we can truly say we understand the process of infection.

Their model assumes that ζR represents the number of Removed who subsequently become resurrected. Any undergraduate student of Zombie Virology would realise that there is a further state T from which the Removed may become Truly dead, viz. when their brains are destroyed.

As this T state would remove a certain number of individuals from the R state, the transmission rate for the virus would necessarily proceed at a lower rate. This would inevitably lead to a slowed increase in the number of active zombies, thus increasing the length of human survival to a period of time longer than the standard SIZR model would predict.

In addition, in the SIZR-Q model, zombies and the infected would almost certainly be moved to the T category within the length of any serious outbreak as those quarantined are killed permanently by brain-destruction.

Surely this is something that peer-review should have caught.

1: Munz, Hudea, Imad, Smith? 2007

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Running with the Bulls

Posted on August 8, 2009 by piersb

I went running with the bulls in Pamplona this year.

If you’re not aware of this particular pastime, it’s like this:

Six bulls run through the streets of the town.
You run in front of them, until they catch up.
Then you run alongside them and let them pass.
That’s it.

It’s known in Spain as the encierro, and the original purpose of it was to move the bulls from their overnight holding pen to the bullring for the day’s bullfighting.

My girlfriend was born in Pamplona, the site of the largest encierro in Spain during the festival of San Fermín. (He’s the patron saint of the town.) The Sanfirmines encierro is broadcast live across Spain throughout the festival.

So I thought it would be nice to run with the bulls one year.

Why not? It looks like fun, it’s something that brings me closer to Loli’s culture and, let’s face it, bullfighting will probably be outlawed within my lifetime. Might as well experience this while I still can.

I’m only planning to do it the once. It’s a young man’s game, and I’m not getting any younger.

There are generally about two or three hundred injuries per year, and a death every four or five years. Unfortunately this year was one of the ones when someone was gored to death by a bull.

Anyone can run with the bulls provided that they’re

  1. Over the age of 18
  2. Not drunk or otherwise incapacitated
  3. On-site before 7:30am

As Laurence Olivier famously asked Dustin Hoffman, is it safe?

Well, provided you take a few simple precautions like knowing where not to run (the outside of the bends – the bulls can’t turn very fast, and might run into you) and what to do if you fall over (stay still – if you move they’ll try and gore you, but if you stay still they’ll ignore you), then it’s actually fine.

The run takes about four minutes. You choose your spot to wait for the bulls to come by, start running before they get to you, and finish when they pass. Don’t wave anything at them, give them room, and don’t touch the buggers. They get riled.

Personally I’d recommend Estafeta. It’s a nice street, quite wide, and there are various shop doorways to duck into should you have to. That’s provided they’re not full of cowering people, of course. It’s actually more difficult to run safely at the edge of the street, as there are more people there for you to stumble into. Took me a while to figure that out.

Through the duration of the festival, it’s traditional to wear a white shirt and trousers, a red neckscarf, and a red sash used as a belt.

When I say “traditional” I mean “practically everyone is wearing this”. You’d better too, if you don’t want to look weird.

So, would I recommend it to you?

Well, yes. There’s a small amount of danger, but not much provided you do a little bit of research beforehand and don’t do anything obviously stupid. And it’s an experience I can carry with me for the rest of my life.

And I think you should try something different, too. Something that you’ve never tried before.

It might be running with the bulls, or skydiving, or rock-climbing, or living in another country for a few months. Each of these has risks – but every day you risk death or injury crossing the road. Life is risk. And all of these risks are manageable.

New experiences make us better people.

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Letters From America: Rubber, Drugs, and PVC

Posted on July 26, 2009 by piersb

originally posted 26th March 2004
—

So, here I am in San Jose for the rest of the week.

The day before yesterday, I read a post on a screenwriting message board. It said “I have free tickets for the Game Designers Conference. Who wants some?”

So I said yes, emailed Susannah to check that I could crash at hers, and jumped in the car.

About an hour down the freeway, there was a loud bang and the car started shuddering. I made it to the side of the road safely, and started checking to see what had happened. Turned out my left rear tyre was shredded.

At this time a Highway Patrol officer pulled up and, after telling me to take my hands out of my pockets and return to my vehicle, asked me who I was and if I was transporting drugs from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

Fortunately, he seemed satisfied when I told him I wasn’t.

After limping on three wheels to the nearest garage I found an entrepeneurial member of the rescue services who offered to take my tyre away and have it fixed for the bargain price of $200 (down from $260). Having a rough idea of what a tyre costs, I drove slowly and carefully for another 14 miles and got it fixed for $40.

It’s an interesting environment at the conference. There are about 9,000 games developers here: programmers, designers, artists, suits, and even a few writers.

The general opinion of the writers is that writing in games gets no respect and Something Must Be Done. That’s about as far as they’ve got, though.

So there I was in the hotel bar speaking to the representative from the BBC (turns out I know him) when a little man came up and said:

“You don’t want to be drinking here. Why not come across the road to the PlayStation party, where all the booze is free? Use this to get in.”

So we did.

It turns out that a party sponsored by PlayStation is – well, just about exactly how you’d imagine.

Huge paper sculptures, coloured lights flashing all over the place, delicious food, free bars all over, and a fashionable band.

The band was called “Crystal Meth”, or perhaps “The Crystal Method”. An orbital-a-like. I know they were good because a) I liked them and b) Young People around me kept calling friends on their mobile phones and saying “Dude! You won’t believe this, but Crystal Meth are on stage, like, *fifty feet away*!”

But my favourite part of the evening had to be the fact that when the band weren’t on stage, there were Asian girls in short PVC dresses, fishnets, boots, and chokers dancing in cages for no good reason.

Fair made my evening, that did.

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It’s people like you that spoil it for everyone else.

Posted on July 14, 2009 by piersb

So I go away for a week to visit my girlfriend’s family and run with the bulls – I’m fine, thank you for asking – and manage to avoid most of the Torchwood spoilers.

Some of which will likely appear in this post. You have been warned.

So I come back, gulp down the lot, and check out some of the reaction on the Internets. Why not? See how everyone else likes it.

(Very good, I thought. Nice work from all three writers, the director, and the actors. Reminded me a lot of the classic British TV SF of the past in style – A For Andromeda, the various Quatermass series and so on.)

And what should I find on the Internet but a bunch of fucking half-wits yattering on about how the writers have destroyed their favourite series.

Now, let’s be clear here. I’m a fan myself. I go to conventions, I read tie-in books, I’m watching all of Doctor Who in order from the start. I. Like. Science. Fiction.

The clear difference here is that I don’t consider someone else’s work to belong to me.

It’s known in psychology as a sense of entitlement. I love this series, therefore it belongs to me. I love these characters, therefore a threat to them is a threat to me.

And there seems to be a particular contingent of this madness in SF fans. I don’t know why. Perhaps they’re just more vocal about it than the average EastEnders fan when, for example, Tiffany Mitchell suffered a tragic road accident on New Year’s Eve.

So when a well-loved character died in episode four of the latest series of Torchwood, these people were outraged. And they have made their displeasure known.

Some of the opinions which I’ve read have included “I’m never watching Torchwood again,” – quite a common one, this – and promising never to spend another penny on Torchwood merchandise.

Possibly my favourite has the line “Thanks for your contributions to this fandom” in it. This fandom. Not the television series. Apparently it’s all about the fandom, and the series just happens to be vaguely associated with it.

But you know what? Fair enough. You can’t please everyone all the time, and a bit of polite disagreement never hurt anyone.

And then there are the others. The name-calling, the accusations of homophobia, of deliberately trying to hurt fans. The stupidest of the dumb.

Let’s be clear: you have a right to think whatever you want, whether it has any basis in reality or not. You might, for example, claim that “George Lucas raped my childhood” when he released The Phantom Menace.

No. He did not. He made a bad film. And taking it personally is not going to do anything other than make you feel bad about yourself. Because then you are granting power over your own happiness to something that you have no control over.

Because you are not in charge.

“They’re alienating the fans! We’ve supported them all the way! We should be consulted/informed/listened to!”

No. You do not get that right.

You took it personally. You decided that your sense of well-being was bound up in the lives of characters you have no control over. You.

You did this to yourself.

And to then attack the writer? To say “You didn’t do this the way I wanted to, so you’re at fault”? To insult them? To lay the blame on them for you not liking something?

For the last few years, Torchwood writer James Moran has kept a blog. In it he shared his journey from aspiring to professional writer, sharing what he’s learned, trying to give a little bit back.

Because, you see, he’s a fan too.

And now, thanks to the comments from fools on the Internet, he’s having to scale back his presence. To be a little less open, a little less helpful to those who are also trying to learn, trying to enjoy.

And you did this.

You.

God preserve us from people like you.

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Letters From America: A good day, on the whole.

Posted on July 2, 2009 by piersb

originally posted 8th March 2004
—

Draft Zero of the Enterprise spec is finished.

It’s not a First Draft. It’s not at that level yet. What it has, is enough words to fill fifty pages in screenplay format.

Now that the final “Fade out.” has been typed, I’ve printed it out and read it end-to-end for the first time.

The first act is pretty good, in my humble opinion. Unfortunately the other three-quarters of the script sucks big-style. Genuine queue-up-to-avoid-it type writing.

I read the whole thing for the first time a couple of hours ago. When writing the Zeroth Draft I try to not go back at all if I can avoid it – the temptation is too high to spend your life re-working the bits you know are wrong instead of finishing the damn piece.

But now, reading it end-to-end for the first time, I had my Editor hat on. And the *structure* is mostly there. It’s just the words that need changing.

If I was a showrunner who received this script, I’d fire the original writer and pass it on to the person on my team that was good at dialogue to straighten the damn thing out.

Unfortunately, I’m on my own here.

But I can see where the problems are. Looking at it now as a final piece, I can see what the original author is trying to do in the script. Despite the fact that everyone wears their hearts on their shoulders and baldly states their point-of-view.

So what I’ll be doing over the next couple of weeks is taking the scenes apart and attempting to re-build them with real characters instead of the cardboard cutouts currently serving duty as place-holders.

Then maybe it’ll be worth showing to someone else.

But having said all that, finishing Draft Zero is worth celebrating. It’s a cut-off point, a waystation, a milestone.

So I treated myself. Since I moved into this apartment building, I’ve had my eye upon the big switch in the elevator marked “Emergency Stop”, and I’ve been saving it for just the proper occasion.

Worth the wait.

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And sometimes it’s not too hard to decipher the code at all

Posted on March 25, 2009 by piersb

As you may have heard, SciFi have recently taken the decision to rebrand as SyFy.

Why?

Well, the word SciFi (or scifi, or sci-fi) has been around since Forry Ackerman invented it in the 50s.

(Most serious SF buffs don’t like the term, considering it a bit gee-whizz, and prefer, well, SF instead.)

And as SciFi is a word in common use, that means you can’t trademark it. No brand extensions, no protectable spinoffs.

So they decided to rebrand, and this rebrand has the benefit of sounding exactly the same. Fair enough. It also has the advantage of moving away from the pure-geek connotations of SciFi among the general public.

I can’t say I have any particular feelings about it one way or the other.

But the interesting thing is this blog post from Landor, the branding agency who consulted with SciFi… er SyFy on the rebrand.

Now they don’t actually say the words “We begged them on our knees not to do it” anywhere in the article, but nevertheless it’s instructive to read.

The last paragraph is the meat of the matter:

“Yes, we worked with the Sci Fi Channel, and it hired us to consult on the project. However, Syfy was a name generated internally and pre-tested at the channel before our involvement. Once Landor was involved, we explored new names as part of the process, but it was the Channel’s call to go with Syfy.”

Note the specificity of the wording.

Generated internally.
Pre-tested at the channel before our involvement.
We explored new names.
It was the channel’s call to go with SyFy.

I’d love to have a look at Landor’s internal documents on the testing of this.

Because you don’t put this on a public-facing blog – even in code – unless you really want to move away from being associated with this rebrand, and fast.

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Unimportant Things

Posted on March 19, 2009 by piersb

Tagged by John Soanes.

1) Put the link of the person who tagged you on your blog.
2) Write the rules.
3) Mention 6 things or habits of no real importance about you.
4) Tag 6 persons adding their links directly.
5) Alert the persons that you tagged them.

Two out of five ain’t bad. Let’s see if we can improve on that.

Thing The First

In my early twenties I contracted Bell’s Palsy. One of the nerves in my neck became inflamed, swelling and trapping the other, which resulted in complete paralysis of half of my face.

This led to such exciting symptoms as drooling and being unable to close one of my eyes properly (meaning I had to smush my face against the pillow to go to sleep).

The first symptom was a taste of iron in my mouth. The second was that, while out in a pub with an ex, she asked me if I was leering at her. After denying it, she told me to check my face in a mirror, which I promptly did, to discover half of it wasn’t working any more.

The diagnosis was that almost everyone gets completely better, and it just takes time. This proved to be true in my case, and the only remaining symptom is that when I eat spicy food, I cry – but only from one of my eyes.

Thing The Second

My first novel was written in a school exercise book, and went through several drafts.

(Well, I thought it was a novel at the time. It’s a novel in the same way that The Young Visiters is a novel. But I think Ms Ashford has a better style, if less ray guns.)

If you imagine the potboiling SF novels of the thirties with a dash of V, you’ll be in the right ballpark.

It came in six chapters, at the end of each our heroes were knocked unconscious.

I still have it somewhere.

No, you can’t read it.

Thing The Third

I’m cross-dominant.

Surprisingly, this isn’t a kinky sex thing, but means that while my dominant hand is my right (for throwing, catching, and so on), my dominant eye is my left.

This is not generally a problem in everyday life. However it’s a known problem in target shooting.

Should I ever wish to take up shooting – or alternatively, should I be forced to fight for survival in a terrifying post-apocalyptic world – I should try and shoulder the weapon on my left, rather than my right, in order to aim correctly.

Thing The Fourth

In primary school, I was in a school play.

Unfortunately, when I got onto stage, I was completely dry. Nothing. The line-thief had come and stolen everything from my brain.

I stumbled offstage very embarrassedly, and was so mortified I didn’t get on a stage again until university.

Which is a shame, because acting’s great. It’s fun, and as a writer you learn a lot.

And when you’re not a child, you know what? The other people working with you will help you out.

So it’s not scary at all.

Thing The Fifth

I adore cliffhangers.

This is probably a result of being raised on Doctor Who and 30s serials.

I love the way that they force you to wait for a resolution. How will our heroes escape? What’s going to happen next? Cliffhangers help your imagination to engage with a text in a way that a revelation ending doesn’t.

It makes me quite sad that no-one really does cliffhangers any more, except for the occasional two-parter in Doctor Who.

The first series of Alias was also notable for having a cliffhanger at the end of every episode.

Sadly, the Network made them stop it after the first series. Which made me sad.

Thing The Sixth

I dress to the left.

I tag, in alphabetical order by last name, Jason Arnopp, Phill Barron, Michelle Lipton, Christine Patton, Stuart Perry, and Danny Stack.

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Letters From America: Welcome to the 21st Century

Posted on February 15, 2009 by piersb

originally sent on 24th February 2004
—

It’s finally happened.

Today, my Robotic Housemaid arrived.

OK, so unlike the robots we were promised in the 1950s it doesn’t do the dishes or make cocktails, but the Roomba is a fully-mechanised robot vacuum cleaner.

It’s about the size of a large dinner plate, and approximately four inches high. It has a little bumper on the front which tells it when it’s hit something, and a tiny dust collector which you need to empty after each room.

Some grainy pictures of the Roomba in action:
http://fatpigeons.com/pictures/2004/02/roomba1.jpg
http://fatpigeons.com/pictures/2004/02/roomba2.jpg
http://fatpigeons.com/pictures/2004/02/roomba3.jpg

You set it in the middle of the room and press a button. It sings a jaunty little tune, and then starts cleaning by circling around in a spiral. After a few minutes it starts zig-zagging its way across the room, vacuuming as it goes. After about half-an-hour, it stops and sings a different tune to let you know it’s finished.

An overnight charge from a wall-socket gives you about ten vacuuming cycles.

One thing it’s missing is the ability to run to a wall-socket and re-charge itself when the battery runs low. To be honest, I’m surprised they didn’t do this – it’s perfectly feasible with today’s technology and would mean I had to spend even less time worrying about vacuuming than I do at the moment. (You mean I have to actually plug it in to the wall every so often? I want my money back!)

I’m still trying to work out how it ensures it covers the entire floor. My guess is that it’s got some fairly simple rules that it applies locally, and just relies on the fact that over a long enough time it’s bound to have covered almost everything. Have you hit something? Turn forty-five degrees right and move on. Hit something again? You’re on a wall. Head along it for a while.

Every so often it stops and does what I’m currently thinking of as “seeking” behaviour – doing a half-a-dozen spiral turns before heading off again if it hasn’t hit anything.

It also has some quite smart programming to stop it getting trapped under tables – after it had tried turning through 360 degrees trying to get out from underneath a chair, it used a curving path to escape.

Not only is it cheaper than a cat (over the lifetime) it actually cleans your room for you. The perfect robotic pet.

Now – where’s my flying car, god-dammit.

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