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Friday, October 30, 2015

Two Books On Writing I Really Liked

I'm hardly an expert, but these two books really made sense to me.

First is Syd Field's book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screen Writing. Its strength is in how it goes over the structure of a story, explaining the different parts. There are other books that came later, like Save the Cat, but I still like Syd's book more. It's broader.

http://www.amazon.com/Screenplay-Foundations-Screenwriting-Syd-Field/dp/0385339038

The other book I really like is Writing Into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith. He goes into how to write a book without doing a bunch of outlining, how over planning can ruin the fun of writing. It's great.

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-into-Dark-without-Outline/dp/1561466336

Thursday, October 22, 2015

James Patterson Masterclass

Seems like every website I pull up I'm getting James Patterson advertising his masterclass to me. I am somewhat intrigued but I think I'll pass this time.

James Patterson might have a lot to say about story, maybe, but anymore he runs a brand for a multinational corporation. The James Patterson line of books. He doesn't write his own stuff, he outlines and hires a ghost writer. He produces and sells boatloads of books. Literally. Boatloads.

I'm not saying that's so much of a bad thing, but I do think his reality is way different than mine.

It's very possible, even likely, that he has something to teach a newb like myself about story. I'm not saying he can't teach me anything. What I am saying is that I'm not going to put down 90 bucks to find out.

Did anyone take the class? How much of it is about story telling and how much is about the legacy publishing industry?

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Deactivated Facebook

I just deactivated my Facebook account.

If you are trying to keep a positive outlook then social media is not a great place to hang out. So much negativity.

The web is a pretty dark place, but not here. Here we control the flow, we dictate from on high and tell anyone and everyone what to do. Master and commander of the USS Happy Pants.