“I BELIEVE IN THE PRINCIPLE OF SUPERABUNDANCE”
James Dickie
Who else wants the words that reach readers' most heartfelt emotional core?
All of them hungry to discover what’ll happen next in your latest story. Sure, it’s a great thing. But little else compares to being eyeballs deep into a fresh ‘writing sprint’. There’s nothing like starting out from the slenderest notion to be buoyed and excited at what’s now breathing life, coming together over fresh pages. The further you go, the clearer the scent becomes with the new discoveries you’re making simply through the act of doing and seeing it through. But it gets better.
A lot better in fact.,
WHAT MAKES A PROLIFIC WRITER?
I’ve been coaching screenwriters, novelists, child prodigies and kids at Sydney Story Factory to write compelling written narrative for over a decade. Eerily, many of the challenges I see come down to the same re-occurring reasons:
I want perfection
The game’s won by those who make the most mistakes fastest.
I’m scared of failure
* See point one.
I can’t get started
Don’t underestimate the power of the aligned group.
I don’t have time
Work with us. You’ll be surprised.
The game’s mostly played over your rewrites supported by quality diagnostic
consultation. This, for writers is like the air we all breathe. Delivered on demand. The very same
approach you’ll become skilled in delivering and benefiting from throughout all Writers Mirror
programs.
"Writing Is The Most Fun You Can Have By Yourself."
TERRY PRATCHETT
I’ll give you a clue, the answer isn’t having one great idea, erudite language, or sitting in front of a computer screen until your forehead starts bleeding…
“We Don’t Know Where We Get Our Ideas From. What We Do Know Is We Do Not Get Them From Our Laptops.”
JOHN CLEESE
The number one thing determining your quality of work and page-turning scenes is mostly the same for rambunctious 10 year olds, to award winning author friends of mine.
It’s a fact, through virtue of our own desire and command of language,the task of writing is simply achievable. I have no doubt that we can all do it. There’s still, even with desire, at least one thing stopping us.
Of course, there’s a time to ‘plot’ and a time to ‘pantz’ it out. Sometimes you’ve got to explore numerous avenues and winding paths to get sufficiently intimate with your character(s). What would happen if you and your character had a chance encounter one night in a dark alley?
“It’s a matter of ‘what would you do in your wildest dreams?'”
DAVID MAMET
Unlike The Others
It’s the same reason I get frustrated when I think about the time, money and energy I spent participating in certain other ‘creative writing programs’. Don’t get me started on ‘state’ writers centres, or celebrity speakers that talk a lot but do nothing practical for writers keen on sharpening up their skills. Enter our technology!
I Wanted My Time Back!
There was one I recently attended run by a local Young Adult fiction author, who after a leading a group-based live writing event, spent the rest of the evening spouting off about her thoughts on political correctness and what not to do. This wasn’t the first time she did it either.
That, and all of its ilk are frankly poison. In my opinion, the time’s for those of us who’ve risked of ourselves by not only picking up the pen and writing, but also reading what we wrote aloud to the perhaps 30 plus in the room. It’s why I say that courage and democracy are both on the endangered species list. (*sorry!)
I really believe that each person doing so needs to be encouraged. Held a lantern towards where that effort could go. I also attest that we’re barely halfway there after any live-write effort. To be talking about anything else, or ‘setting up rules’ is all in my mind hugely counterproductive and indulgent
Who Am I?
Right now you might be asking, who in heck I am to be making these claims and why does any of it matter? You see, my amazing friends and I have the tools to make your writing dreams come true (and I can prove it).
Apart from the years I spent in television where I started out as a volunteer studio sweeper to breaks in daytime drama script-teams, I coached, collaborated and ghostwrote for fellow authors, screenwriters, child prodigies to problem children to mention a few.
A ‘Secret Code’ Hidden In The Raspberries & Classics.
But I’d be remiss if I left out my years as a script reader for Fox Studios Australia and connected production companies, mainly on spec scripts. That meant nights and weekends of reading, re-reading, and writing up ‘coverage’ (action of the text). Giving, as well as I could, worthwhile assessment on scores of new movie and mini-series scripts. Most of these, the writers of which were hopeful to ‘speculatively’ sell to Fox’s aligned producers. And while I wanted to give those above me as much value as I could, I realised after only a few weeks of doing this that I’d never again underestimate the worth of doing so, to positively impact my own efforts in writing. The reading, then pondering on how stories and their scenes could be improved, revised, restructured, or reworked, if at all. The experience turned me from a lacklustre student into an okay writer, as does picture editing, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
“Everything dies, except love.”
One Crazy Night
Then there were the Parnassus Den events, one dark and stormy evening we performed a live read-off from sections of a well-known TV drama series in front of the audience. After a short break, we came back to re-read these with 50% or more of each section’s dialogue redacted. The difference these cuts made to each piece’s clarity, pace, and sense of conflict, not to mention the audience response. All of it took a 180-degree turn for the better.
I love an a-ha moment
Opening And Closing Images Explored
There’s an experiment I ran at one of the first Writers Circle: Story Intensive programs. Blake Snyder talked about opening and closing images in his famous BS2 beat sheet. structure. A couple of us had edited together several of these movie bookend images, The top and tail of each movie against each other and projected on a loop. These were shots from a few well-known movies. Star Wars, Rosemary’s Baby, and Casablanca showed us how each filmmaker delivered their final thesis on transformation.
But nothing prepared any of us present there for the impact of the first and last shots from the original Rocky movie. Structure changes everything, or as James Scott Bell attests ‘is translation software for the mind’.:
The Power Of Fan Fiction
In the words of director Gore Verbinski, “If you can’t be a genius, imitate the daring”, indeed that’s how many have done it through the centuries:
Gustave Flaubert came up with the premise and much of the plot to his classic novel Madame Bovary after becoming fascinated by a local newspapers obituaries column and subsequent articles concerning a real-life family tragedy that makes Hamlet look pale. The cheating wife, who cleaned out her clueless husband’s fortune before topping herself, directly inspired many of the novel’s lynchpin turning points and minor events. The artistry of Flaubert and his cultural contribution is beyond reproach, but eat your heart out, E.L. James.
Smart appropriation from many sources is also a key to getting on ‘the writing horse’ and putting enough quality scenes down so that readers and publishers can all fall in love with what you craft out of it anew.
It’s Simple But Not Necessarily Easy
The foundational unit in any narrative form is the scene. It’s fundamentally a unit of action. Multiple characters can enter and leave it by any means imaginable, within the bounds of your desired genre conventions. The action setting can shift from one place to another, the environment of which may transform wildly, All of these elements and more serve to paint the interactive experience of your words, and when that action shifts into a new scene, this typically comes with a character’s emotional shift or change. Art and life will imitate each other.
We then move into a new action and we’re into a new scene. The anatomy of many powerful scenes could be said to mirror a tale’s ‘beginning, middle, and end’. A series of them could make up an arbitrary division of chapters, or whatever else the creator(s) want to call them. Acts become clearer as deeper shifts. This all becomes clearer as work progresses.
When I think about certain opening and closing shots to certain movies, it reminds me of what Liz Newman, veteran producer of Scrubs, instilled in our post-grad group in a cold Coventry University classroom all those years ago.
Tell them what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em and tell 'em what you just told 'em. Same, same - but different.
Become A Writer, Even If You Don’t Enjoy Reading
“ Be orderly and disciplined in daily life like a good bourgeois so that I may be wild and violent in my art.”
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Tame The Conscious
Fundamentally, the conscious craves cliche, safety, and the known, because that’s what worked in the past. It’s all in the name of survival. You will survive. You must convince the reptilian brain and ancient part of you to also believe it. Your imagination can be guided to serve and feed your work. Of course, most of what you’ll be writing will be done on your own. We believe it’s the transformation of a solitary act done in a vacuum into more of a conversation between you and the aligned and select group designed for all to succeed. That’s a culture I can believe in. It’s all for one and one for all, Musketeers.
Words Of Warning
With the community, technology, and time-tested method, don’t be surprised when you’re privy to some confused or slender first efforts either posted or read aloud. And you’ve been asked for your honest thoughts. We’ve all been there from time to time. Good ‘reflection’ lets the reader know ‘what was heard’ by others, namely ‘you’. Significantly the ‘you’ in that position will learn and master this, and it’s probably the main element for turning what Anne Lamott calls ‘shitty first drafts’ into not-so-shabby second ones, quickly.
That’s typically why we ask live readers to give us a repeat reading. It’s a helpful encore for the reader and the listeners. What we’re going for sounds like ‘giving an opinion’ but it’s more akin to factual journalism.
Don’t be surprised when you hear or read that same god-awful 1st passage revised a short time later, to experience many of the words in the way that only great writing can deliver. As complex, feeling human beings, think about what feelings the following example passes onto you now. It’s closer and more real than you think.’
CHARLOTTE PERKINS-GILMAN
WRITERS SPEAK
Our new reflection-based circle systems will have you writing fast and well. You’ll be hitting your writing goals with a fresh sense of accomplishment. Even if you currently feel blocked, uninspired, or overwhelmed by other matters. So long as you have the desire that something inside you must come out, a working heart and head, do not underestimate the power of the method, programs, and fellow writers on the same journey you’re on. This is the concrete measurable working towards a worthwhile goal. As the MOJO agency told the processed-food lovers of Australia, “You ought to be congratulated” and that you ought to. Your preferential offer is waiting here:
Weighing It All Up
Our time is precious, there are only so many hours, days and years. We’re always ‘burning sunlight’, If this isn’t for you, I get it and thank you for your time today, If think you might be ready to take the first step with The New Writers Sprint Live event, let me ask you this:
How Much Is It Worth To Master The Blank Page?
In truth there are two ‘you’s’ and ‘me’s’. One ‘me’ loves to trawl YouTube, procrastinate, play small, sleep in, spend too much on credit, make excuses, and feel guilty about all of it at later. Thankfully there’s also a ‘bigger me’, and I know there’s a bigger version of ‘you’ also. I’d like to tell you about one of the first creative writing workshops I ever attended. I was petrified because I’d never spent so much money on anything before, especially 6 weeks to ‘learn to write a short story’.
Looking back on it, I’d written 5 flash fiction short stories as part of my Race Around The World application and that went pretty well. I was discovering how to free-write and then chop what I’d done all up like a collage to find ‘character-worthy situations’ there.
So why did I agree to commit to the course?
I’ll tell you this much, it was maybe 3 weeks into the workshop, and it looked like I was going to flunk it. Everyone there was slowly and steadily pulling together competent scenes word by word and scene by scene. Many of these they read aloud to me for my ‘generous feedback’ ugh!. The ‘blue-rinse set’ there was doing this and I couldn’t?
You see, all I had up until that point were doodles in the columns of the workbook and some notes about something I thought I’d like to write about. The ‘little me’ was on the court and knew I needed to bring on my ‘big me’. If I was going to do anything more than scribbling something had to give. Truth was, I didn’t feel inspired. So what? I knew inspiration was ‘for amateurs’. It’s corny but true. Any-who, one weekend I attended (and got royally blotto) at my cousin’s 21st birthday party. That was expected behavior for li’l old ‘little me’.
So I stumble home, now at my parent’s house. Somewhere in my stupor on the edge of hangover hell I pull myself out of bed like I was floating outside my body. Not exactly, but I was out of bed all the same, like something almost otherworldly made me do it. You see. the weeks of workshopping and pure dread of not being up to task, that everyone else there was (when they weren’t at their Probus meetings), was becoming too much.
It all finally got to ‘little me’ and he thankfully quit
I found myself sitting in front of my childhood desk scrawling a speech done in the first person (recent past tense). About half an hour later I could see that there was something, thankfully anything dramatic was starting to take shape. I had: a character in deep trouble with a very particular ‘opponent’, it built up to what felt a lot like a turning point. I was excited. So, long story short, I brought three scenes, and a 20-page treatment to class. The ‘blue rinse set’ chewed me out. But you see, at the same time I was a co-series producing broadcast television for the National Geographic Channel. My career was buzzing and the guys there really got it when I read it to them. This all happened because I committed to that silly creative writing workshop, and the movie script that developed out of those scenes eventually became my directorial feature film debut, almost.
That’s not the point. The real value was and will always be the skill. I became skilled at drumming up, in a matter of hours 20 paged, single-spaced manuscript styled treatments. I could ghostwrite solid blocks of scenes faster at quality than anyone I knew. I could deliver turkey-level film scripts into actor-worthy works and have a selection of cast that you’d know of signed on (ask AI to do that!).
My company secretary and executive producer both saw me do all of this multiple times. A lot of it came back to that first 6-week experience as a 23 year old. It changed my life for the better forever. Sure, I still have good days and not-so-good days. But at least I find out ‘how bad’ by putting some black on white every day without fail.
So that’s why I ask ‘What would it mean to you to become creatively productive and potent?’, as David Olgivy so eloquently put. Dreaming up characters who hatch deviously clever plans under inhumane levels of pressure? All of it is in your control. Here’s what I know in my heart of hearts.: Actors are people that want to act. Only thing is, they particularly crave great roles and kicking cameo/guest spots. That’s opposed to dry done-before, unstructured non-cinematic (you get the picture).
And who could blame ‘em? Being able to supply such material at quality with some cinematic chops makes you a very valuable commodity.
“A Good Movie Is Three Good Scenes And No Bad Scenes.”
HOWARD HAWKS
You know AI is only a very flashy tool, and I say all gizmos have their time and place. Or so wrote L. Ron Hubbard – in 24pt font. It reminds me of another old chestnut from writing instructor/performer Robert McKee, “For the writer that can tell a quality story it’s a seller’s market.. Always has been, always will be.” I think of him mumbling this stuff into a bakelite dictaphone while being fanned down, sipping on a double whisky on the rocks. All for another ‘McKee underling’ to type up and present later. Back to the real authors:
“I Got To A Point In ‘the Stand’ Where I Just Put It Aside, And I Said, “I Don’t Think I Can Finish This.” It Killed Me Because I Had Like 450 Single-spaced Pages … A Busted Book. I Went On A Lot Of Long Walks, And I Remembered Something That
Raymond Chandler Said, “When You Don’t Know What To Do Next, Bring On The Man With The Gun.” I thought, “Well, What If Somebody Blows All These People Up, And I’m Left With A Bunch Of Characters That’s Manageable?” So That’s What I Did. I Got Through That One, But Yeah, It Gets Heavy.”
STEPHEN KING
He’s so rock-n-roll. I said it before and I’ll say it again. There’s a time for plotting and a time for pantzing it out (we’ll cover that in detail in the program). Of course, whatever works – works, and Stephen King is the consummate pantzer-method-writer with over 60 bestsellers which comes directly back to his output –
The New Writers Sprint Live? You know the magic starts the moment you or I commit to anything or anyone, anywhere. It’s so true
Here’s the dealio: you turn up to The Soul Centre on or slightly before time, if you’re running late we ask that you reschedule. No late entries, sorry. For those who do participate fully in the exercises. We say, if you’re not either
(a) pleasantly surprised (b) delighted (c) or a little bit inspired, or more, or all three after you’ve done it.
We won’t only refund you, we’ll pay you double. Right there, right then.