Rather than write another how-to book, Mittelmark and Newman have produced a book in a format which will be familiar to TV Tropes readers, naming, describing and creating their own hand-crafted, hysterical examples of many of the mistakes that unpublished authors make in spec manuscripts (though I have certainly seen many of these in published books, too!)

Ask yourself, are you guilty of:

“The Overture: Wherein the prologue is a brief guide to the meaning of life”

“The Puffer Fish: Wherein the author flaunts his vocabulary”

“The Joan Rivers Pre-Novel Special: In which clothing is given too much prominence?”

“The Vacation Slideshow: In which the author substitutes location for story?”

“Gibberish for Art’s Sake: Wherein indecipherable lyricism baffles the reader”

““But, Captain…!”: Where characters tell each other things they both already know”

“Hamlet at the Deli: Wherein the character’s thoughts are transcribed to no purpose”

“Goodbye cruel reader! In which an inconvenient character is conveniently disposed of?”

“The Underpants Gnomes Where crucial steps are omitted?”

and does your novel end with

“Now with 20% More Homily! Where the author tells us what he’s just spent 300 pages telling us”

If you find yourself haunted by some of the examples (and if you are even slightly honest with yourself, you will) and if you find yourself trying to justify your particular use of them, then they are probably the things you most need to fix!

Laugh out loud, shriek out loud, funny, this book will teach you more than many similar books which take you away from your writing for far longer. Definitely a book every would-be novelist should read.

The first email in the article took my breath away with its description of the story development process. Obviously, Davies had been asked by Cook for notes which might be an insight to his process and Davies' response is an insight into my own and I'm sure so many others' process too... I've never seen the mud of story gestation and development expressed so clearly.  When I say to you "Sorry, I'm terrible when I'm writing" because I haven't called in a while or because I've been sitting right there but not quite present and it's been going on for months and yet I don't have anything I'm ready to show you or even seem to be able to tell you the story very clearly... well, it's not an excuse but this is why.

From: Russell T.Davies To: Benjamin Cook Sunday February 18, 2007 12:41:59 GMT

There's little physical evidence of the script process to show you. No notes. Nothing. I think, and think, and think...and by the time I come to write, a lot has been decided. Also, a lot hasn't been decided, but I trust myself, and scare myself, that it'll happen in the actual writing. It all exists in my head, but in this soup. It's like the ideas are fluctuating in this great big quantum state of Maybe. The choices look easy when recounted later, but that's hindsight. When nothing is real and nothing is fixed, it can go anywhere. The Maybe is a hell of a place to live. As well as being the best place in the world.

I filter through all those thoughts, but that's rarely sitting at my desk, if ever. It's all done walking about, going to town, having tea and watching telly. The rest of your life becomes just the surface, chattering away on top of the Maybe...and the doubts. That's where this job is knackering and debilitating. Everything - and I mean every story ever written anywhere - is underscored by the constant murmur of: this is rubbish, I am rubbish, and this is due in on Tuesday! The hardest part of writing is the writing.

 

Technorati Tags: Russell T. Davies,Doctor Who,Writing,Story Development

The Sequence approach is apparently the approach taught at UCLA (where Gulino is a lecturer) and represents a refreshing change and, to my mind, a more natural approach than the 3 Act Structure though it is by no means exclusive of it. The theory is clearly and succinctly outlined in the first 19 pages then demonstrated by the breakdown into sequences of eleven films: Toy Story, the simple fact is that the script for Toy Story is one of the better ones written during the last century; The Shop Around the Corner; Double Indemnity; Nights of Cabria; North by Northwest; Lawrence of Arabia; The Graduate; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Air Force One; Being John Malkovich and; The Fellowship of the Ring.

Believe it or not, that's all I have to say about this book except to recommend it highly to anyone suffering Act 2 malaise - the sequence approach is likely to give you the lateral jump needed to see your way out of that rutt. Of course, this book is also a great excuse to revisit some old favourites, after all we are screenwriters - watching movies is work.

Click here to see James Bonnet's article "What's Wrong With The Three Act Structure" (Beginners: only read this if you have grasped 3 Act Structure and - this article is not an excuse for not knowing it!)

*FOME Fellowship of the Middle Earth - The Monash U. Tolkien appreciation society (the most welcoming bunch of people ever to inhabit the Southwest corner of the caf.) of which I was a happy member - it was the only club I joined other than the Choir. Yes, I was/am a bit of a geek!