Save The Cat!
Since Kameron Hurley recommended it, I read Save The Cat! – a succinct little book on screenwriting. Which I’d recommend, for certain values of “recommend.”
The thing is, it’s written by Blake Snyder, who has all of two credits to his name in the “screenwriting” business. On the other hand, he sold an amazing twelve screenplays on spec, often getting studios into bidding wars – which, of course, being Hollywood, they promptly spent millions to purchase and did nothing with. His biggest credit is a little comedy you may recall entitled “Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot!”…
…a Sylvester Stallone movie that was notoriously bad. In fact, unlaughably so. It won awards as the worst movie of the year.
But hey! That’s so much better than the written talent of Syd Field, who didn’t have any major movies. And he’s the acknowledged master of the screenplay.
Thing is, Blake is mondo arrogant, discussing his rules as though they were the laws of fucking physics… but on one level, he’s right. He’s gotten way further than most screenwriters ever did. And are his screenplays masterpieces? Fuck no. But they’re more likely to sell than some eclectic film; if you’re looking to maximize your chances of success, well, most Hollywood guys aren’t going to want to rest a million bucks on some nobody’s experiment. No, they want formulas, and when Blake hammers home that you have your turn on page 25 and no further, he’s absolutely right.
For selling.
Quality’s a different matter.
That’s the eternal struggle in writing – you can probably make a nice living churning out very predictable stories that are satisfying on some level but never magnificent. Or you can shoot for magnificent and probably never succeed, but if you do then you’ll have figured out a rhythm that works for you. I mean, William Goldman is an enormously successful screenwriter who doubtlessly knows the rules, and utilizes them, but he doesn’t fetishize them in the way that Blake does. And his stuff is distinctly different.
But if you’re starting from scratch, what’s your best bet to make a living at this? Probably Blake. And what he touts is salable, commercial, and not at all very good… but it’s satisfying in a sort of hot dog way, where it ain’t fine cuisine but it’ll pass a Sunday afternoon if you’re not too picky.
I dunno. I’m looking at how my latest novel draft hits the notes, and I’m glad to find out that it actually is on-beat for a lot of them. Which makes the novel stronger, in a way. But if I wrote the novel to fit the formula, I’m pretty sure it’d be a crappy novel. That doesn’t make Blake’s advice any good, but you have to remember that his greatest creation was a B-movie that nobody much liked.
Is that his fault? The director, the actors, the producer all had a hand in it. But he sold to the type of director, producer, and actors who were yearning for his predictable ends.
He also made millions.
So was he a success or not?
My Space In The World
I got a very nice email from someone this morning telling me how my essay The Object of Dread helped her understand her relationships. And I’ve been blogging for long enough that I occasionally have people who’ve grown up on my advice, which is a little odd realizing some people have incorporated my thought patterns into their way of thinking. I hope it’s more helpful than harmful.
A long time ago, Cat Valente called me “The Garrison Keillor of LJ,” which is a title I’ve always been proud of, because I love Garrison’s voice – he tells stories, sometimes very harsh ones about loneliness and isolation, yet somehow makes them reassuring. But I realized what I think of myself as today:
The local newspaper’s columnist.
I’m not a big celebrity, not in the scheme of things, but in certain areas I’m very well-known. And I think that makes me a beloved columnist in a small-town newspaper, where it’s a part of the daily routine for folks to sit down, eat dinner, and open the paper to that Ferrett fellow’s page. Mostly they nod their head. Sometimes they’re outraged. Sometimes they’re even convinced.
And I’m not a big deal, not really. Go to New York, they haven’t heard of me, and Hollywood’s never come knocking. Every once in a while I get a piece reprinted in a national newspaper and it’s a little PR for a while, then it fades and I return to my sleepy burg.
It’s nice. It’s cozy. It’s not fame enough that I step outside and I’m barraged by paparrazzi, but I get fan mail about once a week (which is more than most people get in a lifetime), and people say nice things. I’m still mostly obscure, but the people who like me, like me, and that’s a lovely space to be.
I’m in my spot. Typing for you. And the deadlines come calling, and it’s hard work, but I couldn’t think of a lovelier neighborhood to live in. With a better bunch of people.
My Take On Movie Remakes and Sequels
You are not allowed to complain about Hollywood’s constantly making sequels and/or remakes unless, within the last twelve months, you have paid to see more original movies than sequels and/or remakes.
Until that case is true, you’re the fucking problem.
My Inside Is Not My Outside
When I posted about my anxiety over the upcoming block party, I got many helpful suggestions, most of which were redundant.
Now, I don’t mean to discourage you from posting comments, as I’ve gotten a lot of great advice from y’all over the years. And the people who told me how block parties usually go (I can attend for just fifteen minutes and leave?) were particularly awesome. Thank you.
Yet in general, despite my flailing, I do know how to make small talk: I read How To Win Friends and Influence People years ago, and that advice is timeless. Listen. Ask questions. Be interested in people. I even have a small stockpile of sports knowledge, utterly of disinterest to me otherwise, that I haul out for such occasions. And so when I go to a party, I’m usually quite normal, sometimes verging on “charming” if the crowd is right.
Yet inside, I still boil with terror.
That’s the thing one must remember when dispensing advice: it is one thing to know what you are supposed to do, and quite another thing to do it. I’m aware, sometimes excruciatingly so, of what I need to do – which sometimes makes its worse, as I have all the instructions and am still bollixing it. But in any new social situation, I’m battered by such terror that you’re doing it wrong and you look so stupid that even if I manage to function, the event is totally unenjoyable. On many – nay, most! – occasions I push past the discomfort and emerge into a nice, social experience; on others, I pretend for a sufficient period of time and then withdraw to have my panic attack in private.
(And to those who said, “What the fuck do you care what strangers think?” should recognize that you have come to know me upon the Internet because I do very much care what strangers think, and have written my blog in an accessible way so as to make it comfortable for strangers like you were, once, and should perhaps reflect upon the possibly poor idea that strangers are people to be ignored and rebuffed instead of people to be welcomed whenever possible.)
The anxiety I was trying to describe in my post was not “A guy who doesn’t know how to do this,” but rather “A guy who knows, and yet is still besieged by really stupid concerns.” Yes, I’m aware most folks don’t pay much attention to me, as I am background noise to their much more important “All-Me” channel. That awareness doesn’t negate the emotional reaction I have, nor the growing panic I’ve felt over the past week of “How do I do this properly?”
That’s why I always tell people with my advice: “I didn’t say it was easy. I said it needed to be done.” There’s a lot of people who tell me, “Well, you write every day, you get out and socialize, it’s easy for you to say” and my point is that it utterly isn’t. I’m still barraged by insecurities, hampered by swells of idiotic reactions I can’t fully control, pushed down by laziness.
I just recognize that those inside emotions aren’t as important as what I actually accomplish, and then do it anyway.
…Most days. Some days I break down. I used to break down a lot more. But once you get some practice recognizing that your emotions are not objective reality, and are confronted with evidence that you may have felt like an isolated clod but people enjoyed talking to you, it becomes easier to fight it. But you have to hunt for the good evidence, because otherwise you’ll do the social anxiety thing of overanalyzing every awkward pause as a condemnation of your entire being, and then you’ll never leave the house.
Will I go to the block party? Probably. Will I do okay if I go? Probably. Will any of that prevent me from shaking, quivering, and quailing?
Not a chance. That’s my reality. Yet all I can do is fight against that terror and keep shoving forward.
Keep fighting, my friends.
Bigger Is Not Better: On Videogame Maps.
I get lost going to the bathroom. So in general, I dislike huge games with terrible waypoints, as I just wind up unsure which way to go (I’m looking at you, Arkham City).
But gamers seem to love huge maps. If it’s huge, it must be awesome! Look at this Grand Theft Auto 5 map, it’s bigger than anything they’ve ever done! GTA is gonna be soooooo good!
Hold your horsepower there, chief.
Big maps are not automatically awesome. What’s important is what you can do with them. I found Grand Theft Auto IV to be a snooze because so much of the big, big map was actually just vaguely different scenery for a new swathe of no gameplay. Yes, I could drive past slightly browner buildings, but there still wasn’t anything to do. (Aside from the available-anywhere “murder civilians, get into a fight with the cops.”)
Whereas one of the reasons I liked Saints Row so much is that it had a big map, but I kept tripping over mini-missions. Wander for a while? Here’s a power-up hidden beneath a house! Here’s a race! Here’s an audio clip! The exploring meant something, providing plentiful rewards.
I think of Half-Life, which had teeny, constricted maps where exploring was nonexistent, but it was still a hell of a game because each cramped corner funnelled you into another semi-interactive experience. People remembered Half-Life because there was always something happening, and “something happening” is the core of a game experience. Give me a big map filled with emptiness, like a lot of sandbox games have these days, and all you’ve managed to do is shamelessly pad the game. Oh, now it’s three minutes to drive to the next mission instead of one! How. Awesome.
“A big map” is like “a big dick” – potentially exciting, sure, a technological breakthrough, but you still have to know how to use it.
The Agony of the Introvert
A month ago, they announced that Dale Avenue would be holding a block party. Everyone would get together to meet, eat, and greet.
I have been in anguish ever since.
Dale, it must be said, is a cordial but not particularly cohesive neighborhood. I know the names of the neighbors on one side of me. When there are parties at other houses, they too seem to consist entirely of non-neighbor people. We nod as folks go by, but that’s about the end of it.
So with this block party, all I can think is: Shit. Strangers.
Gini will be out of town that weekend, so I’ll be on my own. I’m patently, blatantly, awful at introducing myself. The concept of being among people I don’t know fills me with guttural terror, a sort of mumbling awfulness where I know I’ll just stand there, smiling numbly at people, hoping someone says something to me, terrified to introduce myself. Attending places alone brings me the heightened paranoia of pot, where every action I might take seems utterly foolish, crazy, the kind of thing they’ll laugh at you for weeks afterwards.
Do I have to go? I could stay inside. Oh, but then they’ll think of me as rude, I don’t want to be rude. Plus, the dog, I walk the dog, they all see me, they’ll note my absence, they’ll mark me as one of Those People and hate me. What if I just stay inside and pretend it’s not happening? No, the damn dog! She’ll bark. She might as well broadcast that I’m home. She’ll want to go for a walk during this damn thing. I can’t just walk past them and not say anything, right?
What if I take the dog with me? Dogs are icebreakers. Except Shasta growls a lot and jumps on people. She’s good, but she scares people sometimes. If I bring the dog, then maybe she’ll nip someone in all the fury and they’ll think I’m a monster. What if she poops outside? They’ll think I’m some crazy dog person, the nails, oh God, they’re going to hate me.
Okay, I’ll go without the dog. Then I’ll just stand there. What would I say to them? What do normal people say to each other? They have kids, I don’t, I’ll probably be awkward. What’s safe to say? Do they know I have bees? How much do these people talk with each other? Would they have told each other about my bees? Oh, God, what if I’m wrong and this whole neighborhood is cohesive and chats with each other daily and Gini and I are the only ones who are left out, just this pocket of sad isolation in the middle of some cheerful neighborhood, and this block party is actually a secret test to see what it takes to get us out and socializing?
What’s safe? I’ve got these crazy nails, maybe this neighborhood’s more conservative, they might hate me, what politics could I utter, how does this work, I can’t eat the hamburgers maybe they’ll think I’m rude for that I should just stay inside.
But the dog.
The damn dog.