Nice image, shame about the marketing

It is generally agreed that the covers to the three books in my Maliha Anderson series are very nice indeed, and get steadily better. I agree too, I think they're great.

See. You can see the consistency of design, the common elements which communicate that this is a series (not just the silhouette but the cloud shapes), and there's the Art Deco styling which tends to place the period. Apart from that the stories are something about a boat, a city and an airplane.

All good stuff. Well, no, not really.

There is an excellent article that has passed through my stream a couple of times about book cover clichés - and why you should have them.

Yes, you read right (and I wrote right): Why you should have a clichéd cover.

What's the genre of these books? Well, okay the title is a bit of a giveaway on the first one. There's a murder, the second says something about blood and the third ... ? Who knows.

There's probably a woman in the stories as well, and it's a reasonable guess it's the same woman in each.

But what we actually have are murder-mystery/steampunk mash-ups. Do these covers say "murder mystery"? No. Do they steampunk? Again, no. A cover is part of the sales tools of a book. These covers, no matter how pretty they are, are not pulling their weight when it comes to telling the potential reader what sort of book it is.

Of course if the series was selling well I wouldn't be bothered. But sales are a bit flimsy, though the reviews are generally good, so I'm looking at ways to improve the sales. And one way is to change the cover to something that will work for a certain type of reader.

In order to do this I have decide which genre I'm going to target. The steampunk in the stories is pretty lightweight and the murder mystery market is much bigger so has better potential for sales. So I'll target that group with just one cover as a test.

The cover is going to need to communicate several things: The period, have the usual "murder weapon and blood" elements, plus put across the steampunkness in some fashion, even just some metalwork would be sufficient. Oh, and they are usually photographic rather than drawn.

It will be interesting to see what, if any, results I get from that.

You can read the original article about covers here.

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What's on the turntable? "Rubycon, Part One" by Tangerine Dream, from "Rubycon"

Good news, bad news.

One of my favourite writers on the subject of screenwriting is Bill Martell, he's a dedicated writer of action scripts and is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to make your action sequences worthwhile and memorable.

The following is all gleaned from his daily script tips and the applied to some prose writing I've been doing recently (in fact I've been writing stories almost exclusively for the past year - it's all part of a cunning plan).

So, I've been serialising a Steampunk story, set in 1874, on Google Plus (my social medium of choice), and it's been getting good feedback. The writing itself is a bit rough in places because I'm essentially publishing a first draft. I write it on a train on Friday afternoon, it gets read over by me and my alpha reader and published within 12 hours (usually less). Luckily, my first drafts aren't totally appalling.

The episode I wrote yesterday was an explosion of action after weeks of building the tension as the first three men in space, discover they aren't and board an apparently derelict spaceship, only to find evidence of fighting and finally someone alive who pulls a gun on them.

What happens next is the good news-bad news approach to action sequences, as delineated by Bill Martell. You can read what he has to say here: Reversals in Action Of course this uses movies as examples because, well, Bill is a screenwriter.

But this works perfectly in prose writing as well, it should it's about suspense and engagement.

The following is a description of the action good news-bad news. If you haven't read it then this will completely spoil it. You can read it here first.

Our protagonist has just thrown his helmet at the man who has his gun trained on the three crew, exploring the apparently derelict ship, to distract him.

Good news: He's distracted! And fires off a random shot.

Bad news: There's an explosion in the hull and the air starts rushing out into space.

Good news: The bad guy retreats, presumably to get his own spacesuit on.

Bad news: Protagonist's helmet is being pulled towards the ruptured hull.

Worse news: He's hanging in the air weightless, with no way of moving.

Good news (phew): The Captain deliberately bumps into him to push him to the wall.

Bad news: It's going to be a close thing but

Good news: He launches himself to get his helmet.

Bad news: He misses and comes up against the window.

Worse news: Our protagonist looks through the window and sees three men in spacesuits, and guns.

Good news: The Engineer grabs his helmet and blocks the escaping air with his body.

Better news: Protagonist gets his helmet.

Awful news: It's got a hole in it from the random gunshot!

Good-ish news: The engineer starts to remove his own helmet to give it to him.

Bad news: The engineer is shot by the men outside.

And that's it. This also illustrates the importance of stakes. We've been with the protagonist for a few weeks and, though he's a bit of a wimp, he's a decent guy in a strange situation. I knew this scene was coming so I spent the previous two episodes building up the engineer, because until he'd been something of a non-entity. And we needed to care more about him so that this scene had more impact.

I hope that's valuable.

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What's on the turntable? "Second sitting for the Last Supper" by 10cc from "The Original Soundtrack"

Selling books like Hendrix playing

In the various communities of writers you often see posts from people saying "I've just self-published my first book how do I promote it?" which, roughly translated, means "how do I make people buy my book?"

The answer to this question is very simple: You don't. The very last thing you want to do is waste energy (or worse, money) trying. Seriously, just don't. And here's why:

You're on stage with your guitar, standing behind your amplifier. You play a single note. It rings out strong, filling the auditorium and then fades to nothing. Gone.

That's what happens if you publish one book (although you will get some sales forever). But what if you could do this:

You stand in front of your amplifier, you play that same note and it sings out forever - because the sound from the amplifier vibrates the string, which gets played out of the amplifier, which vibrates the string, which gets played out of the amplifier and so on, ad infinitum. Or at least until you get bored or someone unplugs the amp.

That is positive feedback and that's what you're looking for regardless of whether it's traditional or self-publishing. It's just a lot easier to achieve in self-publishing.

Positive feedback in publishing? Yes indeed.

If you have just one book...

When you first publish a book (on, say, Amazon) they give it a little bit of a kick to help it along. Why not? They'd love to make money out of you. So a few people buy the book, pushes it up the chart a bit, makes it a little more visible but once they've bought it they've bought it, so sales drop, the rating drops,visibility (or, more accurately "discoverability") becomes less, which makes it even less likely anyone else will buy it. The sales tail off and die.

You can do some advance marketing, this can help. The start-up kick is bigger but the people who are going to see it and buy it will buy it and after a while it drops down the charts.

Or, maybe you get lucky, maybe this really is a popular book you've written (think Fifty Shades of Grey) and the kick is big, but word of mouth pushes more sales, discoverability goes up and more people buy it. It gets in the news, and sales explode. This is a positive feedback loop but even this eventually tails off, everybody who's going to buy it eventually does and the decline sets in.

What if you have more than one book?

This is stretching the analogy but a single guitar string is equivalent to one book. Every book you publish adds a string like this:

Let's say you take the first option above, you publish a book and don't promote it. Instead you write another book (preferably a sequel). That's published and gets some sales, people like it and they come back and find you have another book, so they buy that. Two sales where before you had just one.

Third book: three sales for one launch. Four books? Four sales. And so it goes on.

But here's the point: As you build the number of books your discoverability increases (you have more books) and when you get a follow-up sale that's another kick in the discoverability of that book. And with all your books cross-promoting each other and pushing each other up the charts you now have positive feedback.

And the analogy completely breaks down.

Because a book is not a recyclable sound wave and guitars seldom have more than six strings.

Once a person has bought a book they don't need to buy it again. So while you can reach a sort of positive feedback point, you still have to keep putting out books to keep triggering a round of further sales. (And reach new people.) If you stop producing the sales will eventually tail off, not to zero but some low level.

Notice that unlike traditional publishing ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks can always continue to be produced. They are always in the shop waiting to be bought.

Additional factors

If you can't write nothing in the universe will make the positive feedback kick in, I don't care how many books you're written. (Fifty Shades may not have been a very well written book but it was readable and caught the public imagination.)

Speed of getting them out. The faster you can produce books the sooner you'll reach the positive feedback point. Although naturally that depends on lots of other factors.

Pricing is not a major point, as long as you don't price too high.

Once you have a number of books available you can then indulge in promotion and marketing but deciding the point at which it becomes worthwhile is an imponderable. These things work best if you are already doing well.

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What's on the turntable? "Red House" by Jimi Hendrix

A Writer has 3 Heads

Or How to be the Worzel Gummidge* of writing.

I am very vehement and opinionated -- we could put a full stop there but let us continue -- about how writers should feel about their work. I think you should love your work, love it now, love it in a year and enjoy reading it again in ten years.

Yes, you might see how you could have done it better, after all you have ten years more experience but you should be able to read it and enjoy it. I do. And I think it comes down to interchangeable heads.

Most people talk about the Writer and Editor heads. But I would also add the Reader head.

Everyone in the writing game will tell you: Don't edit when you're writing. This is excellent advice. When you're writing you should only be wearing your Writer head. If you wear your Editor head as well you'll be forever correcting your work and you'll progress so much slower, it's also confusing. And if you have the Reader head in place you'll be noticing how bad your writing is when it's first draft. Well the first draft of anything is shit as Ernest Hemingway eloquently observed. No reader is going to like it.

So then you get to the editing stage. Again the popular advice is leave your manuscript alone for two weeks to a month. Why do they say that? It's so you have time and space to remove your Writer head in relation to that piece of work, so that you can put your Editor head on properly. If you keep your Writer head on you will be arguing with yourself about whether something needs correcting or changing. The Editor head knows what's wrong. The Writer head does not. (And the Reader head doesn't get a look in for the same reason as before.)

What happens when you get notes from other editors or beta-readers? You put your Writer head back on, and see how you can creatively fix the problems. Sometimes it's obvious, but there are times when it isn't.

One problem writers have is knowing when something is ready. A writer is a creative person and can go on creating and recreating forever. Tweaking and changing. Same with the Editor head you can always make improvements. And that's why you need the Reader head, there must be a point where you can don the Reader head, and go through your work as if someone else, completely separate from you, wrote it. I'm not going to claim it's easy, it needs to be practiced.

And if the Reader head likes it, can enjoy it without running into poor sentence construction or plot holes, then you know it's ready.

As you become more skilled and experienced you will learn to swap heads faster and more completely, which is just as it should be. Cultivate your Reader head. (Possibly by planting it in compost - old Worzel would approve.)

* Worzel Gummidge - a scarecrow character from a series of children's books by Barbara Euphan Todd, and played in the 1979-1981 ITV series by Jon Pertwee (Dr Who) and Una Stubbs (most recently in Sherlock) as Aunt Sally. The character had different heads for different occasions.

Worzel Gummidge, ITV

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What's on the turntable? Closer to Your Heart by Clannad from Lore.

May you live in interesting times

Normally I'm very British about things but on this occasion I am going to forego the whole British reserve thing and just say:

I am excited.

Seriously I am very excited.

Why? Well, because the whole writing thing is really coming together, finally.

• My second novella Blood Sky at Night will be released in about two weeks.
• I'll be launching the free sample issue of The Lazarus Device comic book somewhere in that time.
• I'm planning a major non-fiction book related to my day job to be released in the summer.
• My serialised story Frozen Beauty continues to develop on the Voidships website.
• And, at long last, I have been commissioned to write a feature film script for real money. (To be delivered in eight weeks or so, and filmed this summer - they're on a deadline.)

Not that I can afford to give up the day job yet, but this is all just brilliant.

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What's on the turntable? "Hljómalind" by Sigur Ros from "Hvarf/Heim"

Fighting your way to square one.

I'm sorry I've been away for so long. I have been very busy on all sorts of projects but everything has been in such a state of flux that, on the one hand, I didn't feel I had time to write a blog while on the other I wasn't sure I had anything worth saying.

But things are beginning to come together.

In my last post back in March, I ended by saying we had a new plan and that's what I've been working on. I will be going into detail about these things later but let's take an overview.

The big goal is to create a "platform" on which we could base another crowd-funding exercise to fund the making of The Lazarus Machine web-series. (That's actually not the biggest goal but it's the one we're concentrating on.)

To that end it became imperative to build interest in the Voidships universe. "Voidships" is the name of the steampunk universe that Chris Payne and I have created, and in which The Lazarus Machine takes place. Even before the crowd-funding I had written and planned other stories in this universe. And there's a website devoted to it here.

However getting those stories out into the real world - just getting to square one - has been something of a marathon. Well the first story has been published and there are more to come.

And, as I said, I'll be going into this in more detail over the next few weeks.

To be sure you don't miss anything, go to Voidships and add yourself to the mailing list so you stay up-to-date on everything and can take advantage of the free stuff that's coming (it's a proper mailing list and you can unsubscribe easily if you ever want to). Let me leave you with this:

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What's on the turntable? "Your Gold Teeth II" by Steely Dan from "Katy Lied"

That is why you fail

The explosive success  of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign was caused muttering in the depths.

If you want to read someone's opinion about the mutterings, read Chuck Wendig who covers it quite effectively, if crudely. (Chuck has a potty mouth pen so if you're offended by that sort of thing, best not read it.)

But I'm not going to talk about that.

I'm going to discuss success instead, which might seem like a strange thing to do when our Kickstarter campaign (with an £85K goal) failed so miserably. However that's fine because, in the crowdfunding world, when projects fail they fail badly. It's the nature of things.

So why do some big projects succeed so easily and others fail? It's the same reason that studio execs bet on sequels, prequels and adaptations: Pre-awareness. And if anything the crowdfunding experience reinforces the idea that their approach is the right one.

It has been evidenced again and again that big campaigns require pre-awareness: the market is already there. Veronica Mars, Elite:Dangerous, Amanda Palmer, and the rest. People knew what they were, wanted it and did not require educating.

The only apparent exception I know of is the Mary Shelley/Ada Lovelace detective agency "Wollstonecraft" book. The author (a screenwriter, as it happens) wanted $4K and got nearly $92K. But even here there was pre-awareness of the individual elements (Mary Shelley, Ada Lovelace, kid detectives, Victoriana [well Georgiana really since it's 1826]) and the beautiful image that tied it together perfectly here.

It doesn't matter how big or how small the campaign. What matters is whether enough people understand what you're doing - and want to help - to provide the funds. And if it seems like I'm stating the obvious, well, yes, but it's an obvious that we and many other people manage to miss.

We made the mistake of going too big before anyone knew who we were, and what we were trying to achieve was simply too much to take in and easily comprehend. You might ask why we went early if we knew all this - and that would be a fair question. Quite simply, despite all the research we did (and believe me we researched a lot) this simple fact did not come up. Until a week after we started and examples, and articles about it flooded in.

We could have stopped but decided to continue since there was always the chance we might find the right wind and sail to victory. We worked hard on spreading the word - even had someone dedicated to the task - constantly finding new places to talk about what we were doing. But you can't rely on luck.

So we have a new plan - build the pre-awareness and then do it again.

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What's on the turntable? "What goes up, must come down" by The Alan Parsons Project from "Pyramid"

That Comic Book Thing

This time last year I decided that instead of writing a screenplay during ScriptFrenzy I would write a comic book script. After all I'm good at script writing and I have a very visual imagination, how hard can it be?

Very.

For the first year I failed at ScriptFrenzy. It was a technical win, you have to write 100 pages and I wrote 100 pages. But they were appalling. The story was intended as a sequel to my Rebel steampunk script featuring the same protagonist and supporting cast but moving on in time.

It was the worst story I'd written in a long time. Now it's easy to say it was a first draft, and that's true, but I write decent first drafts usually. (Not that's brilliant send it out first drafts, but they are usually coherent with good sequences and scenes, good clay for reshaping.)

The story might have turned out alright if I had been in the familiar territory of a screenplay but instead I was in a medium I believed I understood (having read my Eisner and Scott McCloud books). But theory is not practice.

There was another barrier to me realising I didn't know what I was doing: I had worked in print media, magazine production specifically, for many years so, of course, I knew all about printing stuff, didn't I? The first barrier to learning anything is thinking you know it already.

By the end of April (the month ScriptFrenzy takes place in) I was forced to acknowledge that when it came to writing comic books, despite everything I thought I knew, I was clueless.

Fast forward a few months to the London Screenwriters Festival, and a talk by awesome writer of scripts in many mediums: Tony Lee. Who in one hour covered the practicalities of writing for print comics. It was a revelation. You see my knowledge of the print industry was not worthless - I discovered it did have application in the subject but I needed someone who was familiar with the problems to join the dots and show me how to re-apply what I already knew to this new medium.

Consider this: A reveal in a print comic must be the first thing on a left hand page (otherwise a reader will see it before he reads his way to it). And this: you will typically have 22 pages to work with in an issue. That means your cliffhanger must appear on page 22 (it will be a left-hand page). You have no choice. And when Tony said these things, it all clicked together my existing knowledge of print and made perfect sense.

Comic books apply absolute restrictions with no wiggle room which means that unlike a novel or even a screenplay, you cannot wing it. You have to plan every sequence and scene to the very page it will appear on and make sure your reveals appear as the first thing on a left-hand page and your cliffhanger hits on page 22.

I think that's brilliant.

And the consequence of all that is I am converting an existing script to comic form. I have a professional illustrator lined up who loves the script (and, from her comments, sees what I see) so I'm putting together a few sample pages that she'll do some roughs for, just to see whether we're happy with each other's styles. And if that works we'll put together an issue.

But for ScriptFrenzy 2013 I have another feature script to write for the Voidships universe, new time period, new characters and hopefully awesome will ensue.

(And I'm also working on a Voidships novel.)

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What's on the turntable? Hergist Ridge by Mike Oldfield (often considered the poor relation to Tubular Bells being the follow-up but I love it just as much - and Ommadawn which came next.)

Don't read this, read that

I don't want to repeat myself so read this:

Screaming Pitch

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What's on the turntable? John Michel Jarre "Equinoxe"

Into space

Have you see that Lynx Space Academy advert? The one that's clearly targeted at young men?

Well, my daughter wants to go to - and why not?

I know I'm biased but she's pretty awesome:

• She's trained in martial arts since she was 5;
• In the top 5% in school in all subjects;
• When she was 18 she took herself off to New Zealand to do environmental work;
• Spent weeks in the Bolivian jungle building animal enclosures and then working with big cats that couldn't be returned to the wild;
• Zoo Biology at University;
• Her own show on student radio;
• And a total SF/Fantasy geek;
• And an actress (trained with the RSC for a while);
• And was a volunteer (Games Maker) at the London Paralympics;

Plus she was always the kind of child that people said to us as parents "you're so lucky". (Not to say she's perfect, oh dearie me no, the tales... but never mind that, she may be awesome but she's still human.)

So she wants to go into space. And why not? Especially when Lynx are offering the chance to whoever can get through their competition.

The first stage of that involves voting: each person in the top 200 goes through to the next stage which involves both physical and mental challenges - well that's up to her but what's up to everyone else is getting her through this stage.

And she's doing pretty well but she needs your help, she needs you to vote for her, another 250 votes will do it. That's just a mere 250 people deciding that she can go. But you have to decide to help, so please make that decision and vote for her:

https://www.lynxapollo.com/en_GB/107065/deanna-turnbull?image=0

Do it now - it only takes 30 seconds.

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What's on the turntable? (It's quiet ... too quiet.)

Energise!

I did go to the London Screenwriters Festival and it was good. Very good. I almost didn't go, I'm very glad I did.

But that's not what this blog is about.

It's about something screenwriters talk about in relation to scripts but something I have never seen defined: "Script energy".

This came to mind because of John August and Craig Mazin's podcast this week. You can listen here, the relevant bit is around 33 minutes - but why not listen to it all?

[Of course, it was a risk writing this before I finished listening to the podcast and, of course, they carried on and said much of what I wrote here, but less pedantically. But what the hell. I'll leave it, it was still my realisation, at the time.]

So "energy": Craig is talking about scenes ending with an energy that propels the viewer forward. But what is this energy? Just saying "your script lacks energy" or "this scene lacks energy" is unhelpful. Am I supposed to fry it with 20,000 volts? Okay, disingenuous, but still. What. Is. It?

So I applied some of the old mind power. And this is what I came up with, you may feel differently.

When talking about this energy we're actually talking about the viewer's reaction. It's not actually energy in the script, it's the energy the script generates in the viewer. I got a grip on it by looking at a scene which lacks energy (a metaphorical scene, not a real one):

Let's say someone watches this metaphorical scene, and at the end of it they sigh and say "so what?" The scene engenders nothing in the viewer, or rather it engenders boredom, disinterest. An emotional state of nothing much really. That scene has no energy.

A scene that brings about any emotional state reaction is a scene that has energy. But that's not all of it.

A scene could of itself be complete, it could start somewhere, cause an emotion and then complete. It still wouldn't have the energy we're really talking about because at the end of it there is no impetus to continue. The viewer could just stop and be satisfied. And we don't want that. (Want to know a reason why you get out of a scene as early as possible - that.)

What we want is the viewer to cry out "What happens next???!!!" They want to know, they must know what happens next. They cannot stop watching they have to know.

And, in my view, that is the energy, it's the desire to keep going, keep watching, keep listening, to stick with it because they have to know. (In horror it's a kind of negative: they have to know, but they really don't want to, but they have to...)

'Nuff said.

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What's on the turntable? "BWV 1004 Chaconne by Bach" by Steve Hackett from "Tribute to Bach"

Blown trumpets

A quick follow-up to the previous post, in case the statement about me writing fairly decent first drafts might have been poo-pooed. One of my first draft scripts received the following comments:

"The greatest contributor to this screenplay’s enjoyabilty is perhaps its well-written dialogue, descriptions, and action sequences."

and from a different reader:

"Almost every page of this screenplay contains a new visual delight.  The screen directions are clear and economical, painting word pictures of each scene without bogging the reader down in unnecessary details."

But, of course, the reason why this script will never win any prizes as it stands, because it is a first draft: "sometimes plot elements are unexplained or become confusing" and "your plot is too rambling and lacks cohesion – plot elements crop up, seem important, and then are discarded". From the same two readers - but essentially saying the same thing.

The details may be fine, but the big picture is flawed.

Doesn't matter how good a first draft you write: It's not finished. Writing is rewriting.

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What's on the turntable? Nowt

First draft is the best

Yeah right.

As was stated recently by my blogger good buddy Kid in the Front Row: it's great how independent movies can be made nowadays with no interference from the big studios through the use of crowdfunding.

But there's one major problem with that: No quality control.

I have been generous with my funding of projects on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo - I want to do some major crowdfunding in the future and I have a "what goes around comes around" attitude. As you give so shall you receive and all that.

This has had one unfortunate result. My name is now attached to a product which suffers from a script that clearly has had zero quality control. Honestly, I have the greatest admiration for someone getting off their backside and actually making something. But please put the work in with the script first, it's the most important part.

(On the positive side I've also helped produce some very good stuff as well.)

But if you want proof positive? I have two scripts as quarter-finalists in Philip Gladwin's Screenwriting Goldmine competition. Now I'm not saying this as a boast because I submitted four (or was it five?) scripts in a fit of crazy overspending. (This makes me only 20% as good as those who put in one script and got it through.)

Of those scripts the two that got through were the ones that had received a massive amount of feedback. I'm mean, seriously, a lot - over a two year period in both cases. The others had had minimal or none. First drafts.

Now I know I don't write totally crap first drafts, they're reasonable and they're readable. But they aren't great. Screenwriting is hard work, all art is 5% creativity and 95% hard slog.

There are those who will tell you that buying feedback from script readers is useless because they'll always tell you that more work needs to be done. Or they don't know what they're talking about. Or some other excuse.

It's bollocks. The only people who will say this are those not willing to put in the work needed to make their scripts great.  I have had a script reader tell me that a script is as good as it can get - until a director gets his hands on it, of course. And that is one of the scripts that got through and I haven't touched it since he told me.

If you're serious about being a screenwriter you need professional feedback. And you need to trust these guys and gals, because they know what they're talking about.

Are there any caveats? Yes, anyone can set themselves up as a reader - but I have yet to find one who was a fraud and I've used quite a lot of different ones. It is possible to come across one who doesn't quite have the same sensibilities as you. This does not mean they don't know what they're talking about but if you don't get on, it's not going to work so well. But that's just life.

If you can get two reports on the same draft that's good, but three is better. And rotate them, and try to get someone new on a draft because if a reader's seen it before their attitudes to the previous version will still be sitting there (though I know they try hard to read each draft as if they've never seen it before).

So what's the take-away? Scripts always need work. Get feedback so you know what to work on.

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What's on the turntable? "The Light Dies Down on Broadway" by Genesis from "A Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"

Research is ace

Sorry it's been so long since the last blog entry. I had a very draggy and stressful summer. Apart from my week's holiday with the family at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival which was great.

And it was at that we went to see a one-man show called "Winston on the Run". About (true) events in the life of a young Winston Spencer Churchill during the Second Boer War. Which included one incident that, if it happened in a story you would be disgusted at the author's use of Deus ex machina and yet it really happened.

I had been flailing around looking for something new to write - based in the Voidships steampunk universe - and this play inspired me. Yes, it will be about the early life of Winston Churchill - but an alternative Winston in our alternative universe - and that's all you're going to get on the content.

So this evening I forced my posterior into the chair and had a good hour and a bit researching the background to the book. I've already done some research on Winston and his family - really quite juicy stuff - but that's all very well but a story is really driven by the antagonist.

The best stories feature the best antagonists - and they have plans; good plans; plans that have genuine purpose; that have meaning. The antagonist is the hero of his story.

I can't say I have it nailed down, but I have an inkling. More thought required.

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What's on the turntable? "Dreamer" by Supertramp from "Crime of the Century"

Is that a good idea?

Do you listen to the John August/Craig Mazin podcast? You don't? Oh my, you should. The inside skinny (which is deeper than just "the skinny") on writing things, with particular reference to the Hollywood experience by two people who really know what they're talking about. Go here.

Anyway the interesting question of the week this time around was "Which script should I write next?" to which, in essence, the answer was: The one you'd love to see. The one you'd pay money to go and see.

Which is cool. It decided me on my next TV script (something which would be appointment TV for me) and just this evening, while watching the not-very-good Mummy 3, I had an idea. Just a concept really but, though I say so myself, it is awesome.

Scott at Go into the Story is keen to encourage writers to think of idea after idea (spend time each day just generating ideas), and learn to judge what are the excellent ones - anything less than excellent isn't worth working on. I admit I don't do that, at least not the way he suggests, but I do have ideas constantly. (I'll drive down the road, see someone standing by a wall - and invent a story idea as to why they're there based on the way they look, how they hold themselves and their emotional tone.)

Are you having enough ideas?

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What's on the turntable? "Wicked Windows" by Jethro Tull from "J-Tull Dot Com"

Abe Lincoln and the Axe

I saw Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter this weekend. It scores 6.4 on IMDb which is below what is a typical rating for a "reasonable" movie - and, reading the reviews, it definitely polarises viewpoints.

I liked it. As did my wife, daughter (21) and son (15). And it generated some after-movie conversation which is always a good sign. In fact we measure the success of a movie by how much after-movie discussion we engage in.

Many of the IMDb review criticisms are "it's not like the book" so we can ignore those: Some people just can't get past the fact that films are most often not like the book (even LOTR took huge liberties) and to go in expecting it will be is foolish. EDIT: As it turns out the screen adaptation was by the original author anyway, so no "not like the book" complaint is valid.

But the reason, I think, some people did not like is that it's thoughtful and, unlike most action movies, spans almost his entire life.

It's not a perfect film, there were perhaps two points where my screenwriting head went "what?", but it is not by any means a bad film.

###NON-SPECIFIC SPOILERAGE FOLLOWS###

What the film does suggest is that the war between the north and south in the US was because vampires find slavery ideal: They can own slaves and then do whatever they want with them without being questioned.

The first part of the film involves Abe fighting vampires on a one-to-one basis, but then moves into his political career where he knows he's still fighting vampires but at a distance instead. Ultimately he has to go hand-to-hand again for the final confrontation.

###END OF SPOILERAGE###

The vampiric theme is wound into the actual events of Lincoln's life and is treated as a metaphor for slavery. And I can't say that I disagree with the suggestion.

Weirdly enough, though a "summer blockbuster" this film is guaranteed to annoy and upset some people - because of what it says. As one positive reviewer said "You'll have to bring your brain to enjoy this movie."

And I find that rather refreshing.

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What's on the turntable? No idea.

On being a producer

I thought I'd share some thoughts on my experiences, thus far, in being a Producer.

What a Producer does is lead. They're the leader. It's true that the word has become devalued by excessive use in the film industry with all sorts of "producers" but ultimately the Producer is the one that makes it happen.

Which is where I was at about 9 months ago with the webseries WINTER. Or rather that's exactly where we weren't. No producer. Nothing happening. Until I went "if I don't do something this is never going to happen".

And that's the first step, you have to decide to make it happen.

But when you make that decision you become responsible. And if you're responsible that means things can come back and bite you. If you're worried about getting bitten I suspect being a Producer is not a good gig for you.

Personally I gave up worrying about that sort of thing a long time ago. I've made huge mistakes in my life, and I'm still here, living, breathing and having fun.

Get educated

So what comes after making the decision? I'd recommend some education, you have to make the decision first, then you can find out what it's all about. (Personally I think doing it the other way around is prevarication - trying to find out if you'll like it before making the decision is the behaviour of a person who's worried about making mistakes. You will make mistakes, get over it.)

But once you have decided, you do need to know more. What is a Producer responsible for?

That's easy: Everything except the creative decisions. The money, the crew, the cast, the food, the transport, the scheduling, the equipment. It's the Producer's job to ensure everything is in place so that the creative process can happen with the minimum of distraction. So the creative people can do their creative thing without having to worry about lunch.

But you know, I'm also the Writer. I created the original script. Doesn't that mean I have input?

As the Producer? No way. Yes, a Producer needs to control the budget and that may require negotiation with the Director and the Writer (if you haven't got the budget for a free-running sequence through the mall they have to think of something else) - the Director is not allowed to waste money. But the Producer is the one who puts everything in place so the creation can happen.

You have to get the idea of hats. Which one are you wearing? Each hat is different and you can't wear more than one at a time. I'm the Producer or the Writer. But not at the same time.

Sorry, back the point. Education. Well I looked up this guy Eric Sherman and he has a seminar he gave on DVD all about being a Producer (which he is) it's not cheap but it is valuable.

I've bought books, though they tend to be of variable quality: Some are out of date, some are purely US in viewpoint, some aren't worth the paper they're printed on.  To be honest with Eric Sherman's DVD I think I had everything I could get without actually doing the job. The books reinforced certain areas but didn't add anything fundamental. I suppose the main thing they did provide is a way to list everything that was needed.

Essential quality

There is one essential quality a Producer needs: the ability to handle the situations that inevitably arise which demand instant handling. And when I use the word handle I mean "resolve". That does not include panicking, shouting, screaming, running in circles, hiding in the toilet or anything which is simply: resolve.

At our shoot back in May the first thing that happened was the make-up girl called in to say there'd been a family emergency. That was not a serious problem, we could manage without in this instance. Then we discovered one of the leads had no costume. The wardrobe person also failed to turn up and even if she had she admitted she hadn't got all the costume together. (The other lead's costume had been acquired separately.)

It's a period piece and costume is critical.

So we looked at various solutions, phoned someone who was an expert in the period, and with their help figured out how we could create a costume from gear bought from Primark plus a brooch. And borrowed the Afghan shawl from the Cinematographer.

We lost two hours. But caught up by the end of the day.

Since then

We did the one-day shoot on a shoestring - for expensive shoes. Almost immediately after we'd finished my attention became fixated on the full shoot of twelve days in a studio. How much is it going to cost? (A lot.) And where's the money going to come from? And I have a solution to that.

It comes down to this decision thing again. You have to make the decision first. "We are going to make this webseries to professional standards."

The second part is How? Anyone who starts with how and hasn't made the decision will almost certainly fail. If you make the decision then the how will come to you eventually.

It was the Director who put me on the right track for our solution: he said why don't we try to get actor A? I thought that was a good idea but also A might be difficult to get (I'd never dealt with agents before,  and this guy is currently quite ... significant).

So I thought on it: "But if we got actor B first, who's a really good friend of A but nowhere near as big that might give us some extra leverage to get A - and B would be a good attachment in the first place anyway".

See, when you decide to be a Producer you think like a Producer - in terms of packaging and attachments in order to get the finance needed to make the project. If you think you're a Producer and haven't had this change in thought processes, you haven't really made the decision.

Anyway we have been able to attach B. And now I'm working on A. What's it like dealing with agents? Fine, they're human beings too, just understand they want to get the best deal they can for their client.

So when I have A and everything's in writing we move ahead with financing.

There is one little lie you may come across: "things take time". I can tell you this: they don't have to.

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What's on the turntable? "Mobocaster" by Tangerine Dream

Compete this!

I know, that's very poor English.

I have been so busy doing the producer thing, and worrying about producer stuff, that between that and the day job I've had very little time to do anything useful in the writing department.

Which, for a writer, is not a good thing.

However I have come across four competitions recently which I thought "why not" so here they are for your information because you might want to do them too (if you haven't already heard about them and entered).

If you don't read the Go Into The Story blog by Scott Myers then ... you should. It's possibly the most abundant and useful screenwriting blog on the web (John August notwithstanding). Well Scott is running a free-to-enter thing called The Quest based on his screenwriting course which he's essentially giving away free to four winners, with some lovely development extras.

Now I would say "lucky" winners, but luck has nothing to do with it. You have to sell him your feature film concept with a killer logline. If "Scott The Producer" likes your logline you get the development deal. The development deal being that Scott will help you turn that killer logline into a killer script. But as I say, no luck involved, you better deliver a totally awesome logline that is awesomer than the other thousand-odd he's going to get.

Okay from the awesome but incredibly hard to win, to the competition-with-excellent-odds:

50 Kisses : write a 2 minute script, get chosen as one of the 50 winners, it gets made and packaged with the other winners into a "feature" that already has distribution. But that's the point: it's free to enter and there are fifty winners. Them's great odds. You'll find all the rules here.

About 18 months ago Little Brother ran a screenwriting opportunity. At that time they didn't even have a website but make no mistake, Little Brother isn't an insignificant player. This time around they do have a web site which is here. The prize is a little bit of cash (£1000) but far more importantly the opportunity to develop your TV idea through to treatment stage. You do need to have some professional credit for this - but not too much :-) I'm not even sure I qualify but it's another free-to-enter.

And finally: Screenwriting Goldmine, I know, sounds crassly commercial but it's run by Philip Gladwin and he's based in Hove in Sussex. Anyway Philip has set up a competition, it's not free to enter but £24 (early bird) is not too bad.

The one prize I really like is this one:

Individual, one-to-one coffee meeting with one of the following: Independent Producer Matt Bouch, OR Steve Matthews (Producer, Octagon Films), OR Fraser Robinson (Director of Scripted Development at NBC Universal), OR Ben Stoll (Head of Development, Channel 4 Drama). You choose the meeting that YOU think is best suited to your writing. 

And the judges are pretty awesome too.

Right, that's it from me for now. I'll try not to leave it so long until next time.

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What's on the turntable? "Levon" by Elton John from "Madman across the Water"

Technical knockout

Oh my, it's been over a month. Sorry to have neglected you but I've been busy.

I have completed ScriptFrenzy for the 6th year but only "technically". Which is to say that the Celtx generation of PDF reached 100 pages (WIN!), however in actual comic book pages I got to about 74 (not really a win). But I learned a lot, mostly that writing a graphic novel is really quite hard. Unfortunately the story began to deviate from my plan almost from the start and I wrote myself into a very dull corner. (I had called this post "Technical win" but that doesn't sound anywhere near as interesting as "Technical knockout".)

Of course, at the same time, I've been doing the Producer thing in order to shoot scene 8 of our steampunk webseries WINTER. More than that we've been going through a crowd-funding exercise and I have been sending out emails to everyone I have contact with (and that's several hundred).

And still doing the day job, of course.

But my mind is heavily focussed on ensuring that the shoot goes according to plan. There are so many things to think about from the producer side, I have been given able assistance from people who've already done it. Without them I imagine I would have been rather lost.

Anyway I'm not lost and it's going smoothly (everything crossed, touch wood).

So, give us a hand and contribute to our project at http://igg.me/p/93585?a=405734

Self, Director, and cast all available for interview :-)

(Oh, and I got a rejection from a very well-respected agency. "Clearly a very talented screenwriter..." they said. Which was nice. "...but no clear distinction from our other writers." Ha! I'm too busy to care - I don't even remember sending them a script.)

(Also went to see John Carter which was really quite good, and Battleship - it's not a deep film, but very enjoyable and does have real characters and real plot. It's also has very well integrated links to the game. I was quite impressed. It even managed to surprise me a couple of times.)

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What's on the turntable? "The Fall of the House of Usher: Arrival" by The Alan Parson's Project from "Tales of Mystery and Imagination".

The Ice Furnace

Hallo peeps.

I've been ultra busy with writing stuff, production stuff, work stuff, family stuff, so I've decided to do something else as well.

It's ScriptFrenzy time again!

This is that awesome time of year when you are provided, free, gratis and for nothing, with a built-in deadline to get your feature script written in just 30 days.

I've done it every year of its existence which means I have five feature scripts I might not otherwise have had.

This year I am writing The Ice Furnace which is a sequel to the film script I wrote last year (and thus part of the collaborative transmedia Voidships project) but I'm doing it as a graphic novel instead - and I even have an artist who will (hopefully) get the some of the first chapter on paper before the end of April. Pretty graphics, yay!

Anyway, thought I'd just keep you up-to-date on what's happening.

Do ScriptFrenzy - you know it makes sense - what are you going to write?

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What's on the turntable? [at work so nuffink]