Yeah, I know: I'm not good with blogs but I'm reasonably good at fiction.
I've been writing since I was five years old. I was writing when other kids were learning to ride a bike or how to tell the time on analogue clocks. Yep, I couldn't ride a bike or read the hands on a watch until I hit my 20's. I can do the latter better than the former, though, and I got the scars to prove it.
It's interesting being a solitary writer and observing other writers in their natural habitat - Facebook and Blogs. They are boisterous boasting about their latest spark etc. Every single detail of their attempts at getting noticed are shouted out to the world at large. They even share quotes people said about their work like living movie posters. I know it's a way of promoting their name but if I have to turn into a walking billboard for myself in order to make a living out of being creative, I'll write under a goddamn pseudonym and let my skills do the talking for me.
I'd rather keep my work secret until its ready to be seen - like any intelligent inventor talking within earshot of Thomas Edison.
Only my friends know I have an audio drama online. Feel free to give it a listen.
Only my closest friends know I write Script-Fiction (a type of fan fiction written as scripts from the TV show/Film its based on).
Only my friends and family are aware I've won the odd award here and there for my writing, spread out from my very early Primary School days to my more sporadic adult endeavours.
Why yes, I am horrible at promoting myself!
I'm fairly prolific in my writing. At any one time if someone asks what I'm working on, my standard response would probably be 'Two audio dramas, a screenplay and a couple of one-act stage plays' thereabouts. Then my script-fiction but that's just a hobby to keep me from writer's block (never had it but it doesn't hurt to take preventative measures).
Talking to and observing other writers is incredibly interesting. They observe a film and write a script similar to it. They rave about the latest romance movie or abstract play and copy the formula. Maybe I'm uneducated about the approach to success. I see a film and write something unrelated to it. I look for gaps in people's experiences and do my best to fill them in. I see that there aren't many plays about this or that so I write them. I go see a really good action film (love me my action flicks btw) and go home and write a heart wrenching drama whose cast includes a fatherly ghost and a pet lizard. There are so many gaps in the range of human experiences and I feel too many people stick to formula and not enough take risks (see the current state of the gaming industry). I know risks rarely pay off big time but who's in the writing business to make millions and who's in this because they've been writing their whole life and it's their one creative outlet that allows them to release their heart and soul to an appreciative world?
I did a writing course once in which the objective was to study a film's structure and write our own script that follows it. So I chose 'The Dish' and wrote a First World War film following its methods. FYI, 'The Dish' is a film with no real antagonist, a happy marriage, a pleasant town, and a team of good mates working together. That's essentially what I used to model my war film on.
A war film without an antagonist? It ended up placing in the top 20 in two International screenwriting contests so shut up.
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| The greatest film ever (in my opinion). |
The Dish is a feel-good, enjoyable film (I hesitate to call it an all-out 'comedy') based on the people responsible for broadcasting the Moon Landing to the world in 1969. During the movie there's no breakdown of a marriage, no physical danger to overcome (except a very windy day that is soon forgotten in the moment), the odd disagreement that gets easily solved; but the reason we watch is the pay off. The film so perfectly captures the event that was man walking on the moon. The anticipation of it all throughout the film, the little problems they have to troubleshoot all leads to that moment.
And when it's over we all feel warm and fuzzy and the world is a much nicer place for it. The world - for a brief moment - became one.
Yeah, it's not a Hollywood Award-winning formula, but does it have to be?
I guess because I've been writing on my own for so long, when people tell me there is a formula, I can't agree with them. In music class the teacher told me there is a formula for music and I had to rebut him. Yes, there are sounds that we'd rather not hear, but there's nothing to stop composers from using them! And yes, maybe I don't write to a standard script format - but that doesn't mean the stories have any less reason to be enjoyed.
In fact it's the unpredictable stories, the ones with twists we don't see coming, the ones that have inner rather than external conflict, the ones that our curiosity guides, the ones that give us a hug at the end, the ones that build to a single glorious moment - they're the stories I enjoy the most.
Each one has a different formula of its own. Every script should be its own formula. The day we started labelling scripts and dissecting what made them good, we lost the plot. It's like giving rules to visual artists.
If visual art can be whatever it wants to be, why can't music or film?
If more writers raved as much as I do about 'The Dish', the world will be that much more beautiful.
