Posts tagged as “Books”

One of the major points of this blog, or at least supposedly, was to give interesting links, tips and thoughts around writing, both in general and especially regarding TV.
Hopefully, you appreciated and continue to appreciate the various thoughts gathered on the issue.

You’ll be Swimming with Sharks in no time.

Greatest reference ever?

As we saw again this week, I like to talk about the future of entertainment.
Nonetheless, in November I wrote a piece on “Why TV is where you must be“.
Although the article could be seen as an argument on why TV is a good place to be as a viewer, it is mostly in regards to why I (still) believe television is the best place to be, as a screenwriter.

Very early on I rounded up writing books dedicated to writing, especially television-wise, as well as the TV or Entertainment industry in general.
A lot of my earlier posts on writing were somehow linked to myths and heroes.

I had just seen The Dark Knight and was deep in my reading of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and was very into this whole “Hero/Myth” thing so I wrote two articles on “mythic structures and hero psychology”.
One more centered on TDK and heroes themselves:

It especially got me thinking about a post I read a while back about (super)heroes and their flaws.
I believe TDK correlates directly to that idea, especially for both Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent.
To make a hero believable, we need him/her to be flawed. We need him/her to have limits. We need him/her to be vincible.
Bruce Wayne is a human that becomes a vigilante at night. But he is still a human behind his (too-much-technologically-advanced) suit. This is reminded to us early on in the movie when he is bit by a rottweiler (physical failing).

Another a more general one about structure and myths:

Structure has been analysed for centuries, even millenniums, way back when Homer wrote (or rather told) his Iliad.
In the last decades, this analysis has been transposed to scripts and screenplays. Scripts and movies were broken down and compared to other literary pieces to try to found out the common links, not the least of which being Robert McKee’s Story.
Besides script acts, and structures, “heroes arcs” and “heroes journeys” have been analysed and also broken down. These mythical archetypes lead obviously to mythic structures.
This is one of the specialties of mythologists, including Joseph Campbell.
Campbell wrote a fascinating book around his theories of the journey of archetypal heroes in various mythologies from around the globe. This book led to a memo written by Christopher Vogler (a development exec) to Disney studios about how to use Campbell’s book for screenwriting. This memo led to various critically-acclaimed movies Disney movies such as The Beauty and the Beast, Aladin and The Lion King. Vogler also worked on a small movie called Fight Club.
Soon after, Christopher Vogler expanded his memo and published a book around it where he explored not only Campbell’s work (and Jung’s) but expanded it to correlate directly to screenwriting.

Continuing on straight tips and links, there were some about the basics of script registration, an interest technique to land a job on television, as well as interesting online links (when I’m too lazy).

One of the most vital writing step in breaking in TV is making a spec script.
Back in March, I gathered some info to make a guide on “What is hot and what is not” to spec.
I also made a guide to Spec Flashpoint.

Education-wise, I unearthed a secret Showrunner program at UCLA’s TFT.
And last but not least there were a few TED talks on creative writing and technology.

Hope you got some good advice out of those articles and you’ll be able to get some writing done.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
A page a day keeps your procrastination at bay.
Speaking of scripts, see you tomorrow.