Applying Screenplay Logic to Writing Novels

Let’s just apply, for a moment (and for the hell of it) some screenplay wisdom, to novels.

A scene in a screenplay exists for one of two reasons: a) to propel the narrative, and b) to reveal character. With the great scenes doing both. Let’s go further by defining a ‘scene’ as a moment in time and space. In other words, if the scene is two guys catching up for the first time for 20 years since college, and they’re sitting in a diner back in the town where they grew up (for example). That’s a single SCENE. If they leave the diner and drive off to a local watering hole, it’s a new scene because the LOCATION has changed. If they ‘flashback’ mid-scene so we (the audience) are transported to them sitting in the same seats in the same diner, back when they were 17, it’s a new scene because the TIME has changed.

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Full Dark No Stars, by Stephen King

New York Times article on the new Stephen King book, Full Dark No Stars, by Terrence Rafferty.

“From the start — even before a young man I can now hardly comprehend started writing ‘The Long Walk’ in his college dormitory room — I felt that the best fiction was both propulsive and assaultive,” Stephen King writes in a chatty afterword to “Full Dark, No Stars,” his new collection of longish stories. “It gets in your face.” As if we didn’t know.

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Illustration by Otto Dettmer

FULL DARK, NO STARS

By Stephen King

368 pp. Scribner. $27.99

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Excerpt: ‘Full Dark, No Stars’

“Full Dark, No Stars” contains, as King’s earlier “Different Seasons” and “Four Past Midnight” did, a quartet of previously unpublished tales that more than satisfy their prolific author’s stated criteria for good fiction. Propulsive? Check. Assaultive? Don’t ask. The stories in “Full Dark, No Stars,” whose lengths range from 30-some pages to well over 100, are for the most part only lightly supernatural and deal, instead, with the unlovelier aspects of merely human behavior. Serial rape and murder figure prominently in two of these stories; in another, a man kills his wife and forces his teenage son to help him; and in the only fully fantastic tale here, a man purchases — from the Devil, of course — health and happiness at the too-affordable price of the ruin of his best friend’s family. It’s grim stuff, but that’s what readers expect of Stephen King. After all, he’s been in our faces for 40 years.

To read the rest of the article click HERE.

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Brian M

www.ThatAction.Guy.com

 

Does Digital Piracy of Books and Music Lead to a Massive Spike in Sales?

Interesting article from geek.com on piracy (both of books and music):

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Talk to anyone fairly high up in the publishing world and chances are they will tell you piracy is killing the business and driving down revenue. But you have to ask what evidence they have for such statements? Downloads do not directly correlate to lost sales and may actually increase them if this example gets repeated.

Artist Steve Lieber probably agreed with the publishing industry a few days ago, but now he sings a different tune. The Underground graphic novel he illustrated for Image Comics was scanned and uploaded to 4chan in its entirety a few days ago. Rather than getting upset Steve joined in the conversation about his comic and offered to answer questions about it. Here’s the important part of the post he made on the 4chan thread:

As for putting all the pages up here. What can I say? I get that this is how things go, and I’m trying to live in the same decade as everyone else. If nothing else, I’m flattered someone thought enough of the book to take the time to scan and post it.

Anyway, that’s that. If anyone has any questions about the book, post them here or ask me on twitter @steve_lieber

Steve describes the discussion that followed as “genuinely fascinating” but what he didn’t expect was the bump it gave to the sales of the novel. Here’s the image he posted showing exactly how engaging with the 4chan community can have a positive impact on your sales and therefore your income.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE:

Cheers!

Brian M

ThatActionGuy.com