How To Sell Your Book To Hollywood

This interview of Walt Morton, conducted by JJ Marsh, originally appeared on Words With Jam on 3/31/14.

Walt Morton, Novelist & Screenwriter, shares tips with JJ Marsh

Tell us a bit about yourself, Walt. How did you get involved in the movie business?

In 1988, I had just moved across the country to Los Angeles. I knew nothing about Hollywood but I thought I could probably write and sell an original screenplay because many screenplays I paged through seemed dumb, wooden, or the work of a chimpanzee. How hard could it be? Over the next eight years I wrote seven screenplays. I even earned some money and had one script bought outright. I worked for a producer as a writer-for-hire like in the old Hollywood days.

Movies based on original screenplays have become rarer and rarer. To make this clear, an “original” screenplay is a screenplay that is not based on a novel or TV show or toy or comic book or anything else. It just starts as a writer’s idea for a movie.

Starting in the 1990s the average cost of making a Hollywood studio film skyrocketed with the associated costs of marketing and global distribution. Today, any big studio movie with star actors represents an investment by the studio of over $100 million dollars.

Scared studio executives almost never have the guts to make original material anymore, so seek ideas already vetted in the consumer marketplace. They’d rather bet on something already popular as a book, novel, TV show, comic, etc. This is not rocket science.

The realization almost nobody was buying original screenplays put me on the slow road to being a novelist. That, and a conversation I had with Michael Crichton, back in 1997. Crichton said:

 

Click here to read the full interview on Words With Jam.

 

Pamela Wray and WordWorks Publishing Consultants: The Amazing Case of the Serial Plagiarizer

This post by Victoria Strauss originally appeared on Writer Beware® on 3/31/14.

Every time I consider purging Writer Beware’s files to get rid of documentation on agents and others we haven’t heard anything about in years and years, I’m reminded of why I hold onto that old paper.

Last Friday, I received an email from successful independent editor Jodie Renner. Apparently, client testimonials from her website had been plagiarized by an outfit called WordWorks Publishing Consultants.

I hopped on over to WordWorks’ website, expecting to discover something on the order of faux publicist Mike Albee, who decorated his site with fake testimonials from known authors.

What I found was way more bizarre: plagiarism, plagiarism, and yet more plagiarism, plus a blast from Writer Beware’s past. (Bear with me; this is a long post with lots of images, but I wanted to capture them in case WordWorks attempts to hide the evidence.)

Based in Alabama, WordWorks is owned by Pamela Wray Biron, who provides “Expert and Innovative Content Solutions,” including editing, ghostwriting, graphic design, illustration, marketing, and web services. A veritable Renaissance woman. And, gosh, just look at Pamela’s clients! The US Justice Department! 20th Century Fox! The President of the United States! Check out the impressive names on Pamela’s Testimonials page! Steve Jobs! Bill Gates! Michael Eisner! Editorial and marketing staff from all the Big Five publishers!

There’s just one problem: most of the testimonials are plagiarized, and not just from Jodie Renner.

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes proof of the reported plagiarism in the form of many screenshots, on Writer Beware®.

 

Book Editors Really Do Edit Books. Really! They’ll Tell You So Themselves!

This post by Chris Meadows originally appeared on Teleread on 3/30/14.

What does it say about what people think of you if you have to write a lengthy editorial insisting that, no, really, you actually do do your job?

That’s how a piece by book editor Barry Harbaugh in The New Yorker comes off. Entitled, “Yes, Book Editors Edit,” it insists that, despite Amazon claiming otherwise, book editors at major publishers actually do edit books. The fact that this piece had to be written in the first place possibly says more than does the entire piece itself.

Especially since there are just a few problems with it.

First of all, it’s hard to imagine where Mr. Harbaugh got the impression Amazon was claiming that editors don’t edit. The people who’ve been complaining about editors not editing have by and large been the authors of the works that were supposed to be coming in for editing—but weren’t. For example, look at some of the discussion from when the head of Kensington Publishing responded to writers’ complaints about their experience with the press. Many of those complaints involved the failure to receive any actual editing.

 

Click here to read the full post on Teleread.

 

Make The Music You Make

This post by John Vorhaus originally appeared on Writer Unboxed on 3/27/14.

I’m addressing the kids today, and if you’re not one, but know someone who is, won’t you please pass this along? (If you find it worthy, I mean.) I’m hoping to help your young peers understand what to expect as they walk the writer’s road.

I was a pack rat of words long before computers came along. I filled journal after journal with tiny, tense, Bic-penned attempts to master the mere act of putting words on the page. What I wrote was so stupid! So self-absorbed and questiony. Why am I here? What is my purpose? What do I have to do to get laid? I hated almost everything I wrote almost as soon as I wrote it. I didn’t know the first thing about story, and that’s what galled me most of all. My writing went nowhere, and I knew it. But I didn’t stop for the same reason you don’t stop; for the same reason junkies don’t stop. We’ve chosen our art, or it’s chosen us, and now we have to deal.

So I kept filling the pages of the horrible journals (filling, primarily, unlined black hardbound books that, because I am a pack rat of words, rest in the eaves of my very garage even as we speak). I discovered my first rule of writing: Write what you can write, or, more broadly, make the art you can make. And don’t lament the art that lies presently beyond your grasp. Presently that will change.

I had to write the horrible journals to write myself out of the horrible journals.

I had to start somewhere.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer Unboxed.

 

Publishing: Why You Should Care About Ebook vs Print Formatting

This post by Dean Fetzer originally appeared as a guest post on Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn blog on 3/25/14.

Introductory note from Joanna Penn: One of the fantastic rewards of writing a book is being able to hold a physical copy in our hands. Regardless of other definitions of success, the thrill never goes away.

I’m a huge fan of print-on-demand, and one of the most popular posts on the blog is Top 10 tips on self-publishing print books on Createspace by Dean Fetzer. Today, Dean is back to share a common question about formatting ebooks vs print.

– – – –

I get asked this question a lot: “Can I use my CreateSpace PDF for the ebook version?”

The simple answer is ‘no’. Well, you could, but I doubt you’d be very happy with the finished results — and more importantly, neither would your readers. Frankly, a PDF is the last format you should use to create an ebook from as it does so many things that you just don’t want an ebook to do.

 

Flow vs rigid formatting

With a printed book, you want to control as much as you possibly can, from how the text aligns to the headers at the tops of the pages to where the page numbers sit on the page: that all needs to be exact to provide the best printed reading experience you can for your readers.

Ebooks, on the other hand, need to flow. You’ve no idea what the person reading your book is reading it on, much less whether they use really small text or enlarge it so they can read it easily. Even if all you format your book for is the Kindle platform, each model varies in the way it displays the written word.

If your book doesn’t adjust to that, they’re not going to enjoy reading it.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Creative Penn.

 

Go Midwest, Young Writer: Why the Middle of the Country (Not Brooklyn) Is the Future of American Literature

This post by Jason Diamond originally appeared on Flavorwire on 3/24/14.

For those who only look at the bigger picture, yes, New York is the publishing epicenter of the country, and a lot of people who write do live in Brooklyn. As someone who writes for a living and calls Brooklyn home, I can totally back up everything you’ve heard about thriving independent bookstores, nightly literary events, and writers crowding every coffee shop. Going out means routinely bumping into editors, agents, publicists, and other people who help get new books out into the world, and that gives you every reason to think that New York City is the only place to be if you’re a writer.

But it isn’t, and I don’t necessarily think there is one specific place that is responsible for creating literary culture, just as I don’t think there’s one where you should go to be a writer. Yet a closer look at the literary map of the 50 states reveals that even if the publishing industry writ large is situated in New York and Los Angeles, some of the most exciting things going on in American literature are taking place in the middle of the country.

“I have spent my whole life watching people leave,” writes David Giffels in his collection of essays, The Hard Way on Purpose. “This is a defining characteristic of the generation of postindustrial Midwesterners who have stayed in their hometowns.”

 

Click here to read the full post on Flavorwire.

 

How To Tell A Great Story, Visualized

This post by Kate Torgovnick May originally appeared on the TED blog on 11/8/13.

A good story can make a campfire that much eerier. A good story can flip a conversation at a party from completely awkward to wonderful. A good story can glue your nose to a book. And, on screen, a good story can rivet generation after generation.

So, uh, how do you tell one?

Andrew Stanton, the Pixar writer and director behind both Toy Story and WALL-E, has many ideas, and he shared his expertise in his TED Talk, The clues to a great story. Below, see his golden rules of storytelling visualized by Karin Hueck and Rafael Quick of the Brazilian culture and science magazine Superinteressante. Each month, the magazine’s editors take a TED Talk and give it to their graphic wizards to interpret in any way they see fit. Here, a reimagining of Stanton’s talk on stories. Via the Ugly Duckling. Just click the image to see a larger version.

 

Click here to see the accompanying infographic on the TED blog.

 

Declarations and Forecasts of Great Change in the Book Business Need Specificity to be Useful and Often Do Not Provide It

This post by Mike Shatzkin originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on 3/4/14.

A recent post here that incited a long comment string and another on FutureBook that was quite unrelated from the estimable Brian O’Leary have helped me formulate some thinking which I hope can be helpful in evaluating any “Great Change” post that arises about publishing. And they do, indeed, arise often.

O’Leary’s post builds on a theme he is persistent about pursuing, which is that communication, which in his writing seems to conflate with publishing, is moving to a linked-and-continuous conversation rather than a set-content-package (like a book or a magazine). The post suggests that the “books”, such as they are, will emerge from the conversations.

This recalls for me a comment I heard a few years ago from the father of digital publishing, David Worlock. David told me, “surely, in time, the number of books created within the network must exceed the number of books created outside the network”. By “network”, David meant “Internet”.

I don’t know how long “in time” was intended to be in David’s mind, but I figured “decades”. And in that time frame, I agree.

The other long-ago wisdom I keep recalling as I read predictions about our digital reading future is what was always said by Mark Bide when we began our “Publishing in the 21st Century” conferences for VISTA (now Publishing Technology) in the 1990s. Mark always reminded the audience that “book publishing is many different businesses” so that everybody would keep in mind that what we said about trade might not apply to sci-tech and what we said about books for lawyers and accountants doesn’t apply to publishers of college textbooks. What brought everybody together was the form of the “book”, which was already then a weak unifying principle for what were really many very different businesses.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Shatzkin Files.

 

Conferences and Conventions – What's A Writer To Do?

This post by Gayle Carline originally appeared on her blog on 3/14/14.

I’m going to Left Coast Crime next week. Their website defines it as “an annual mystery convention sponsored by mystery fans for mystery fans. It is held during the first quarter of the calendar year in Western North America, as defined by the Mountain Time Zone and all time zones westward to Hawaii.”

Notice anything missing in the title or definition? Writers. Authors. This is not a convention for writers. And yet, it is. It is a place for authors and their readers to meet and mingle.

Writers conferences are for writers, period. They are for anyone who is even thinking they might want to write. You-The-Writer are there to learn something about writing, selling your writing, or marketing your writing. You will most likely meet people who talk and think a lot like you. They will be your tribe members and you will be able to discuss your writing with them because they get it. They get you.

At a convention, You-The-Writer are there to meet readers. There aren’t a lot of writing workshops. There are few, if any, panels discussing the business aspects of being an author. It’s all geared toward giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at your novels. You will meet mystery lovers who want to read more mysteries, like yours. With any luck, they will become your fans and you will be able to share your stories with them because they enjoy mysteries.

 

Click here to read the full post on Gayle Carline’s site.

 

On Mental Illness, Dishonesty, & Swearing

This post by Jamie DeBree originally appeared on her The Variety Pages site on 3/24/14.

Just another manic Monday, right? It’s snowing. Again. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

There’s a link floating around (I may have shared it, can’t remember) drawing similarities between successful writers and the mentally ill. A little while earlier, there was this article on how creativity and dishonesty often go hand in hand. And of course there’s the meme that occasionally goes around FB about how people who use cuss words tend to be perceived as being more trustworthy/honest.

Ironically, all of these are somewhat depressing for me, but not in the way you might think. You see, I’m not mentally ill. Sure, I have a rather rich fantasy life that translates into stories which I then feel the need to write down and share, but while I may occasionally feel “down”, I’m not clinically depressed, and while I may talk to myself occasionally and have a “thing” about cupboard doors/drawers being left open, I’m not crazy. I don’t neglect my husband, I keep my obsessive-compulsive tendencies in check for the most part, and I live a fairly balanced life.

Strike one.

 

Click here to read the full post on Jamie DeBree’s Variety Pages.

 

I Didn't Get The Job, So I Wrote A Book

This post by Caleb Pirtle III originally appeared on Venture Galleries on 3/16/14.

There was only one job I ever wanted.

I didn’t get it.

I tried more than once.

Everyone smiled and said thank you for applying and we’re glad you would like to work for us, but, no, we don’t need you.

The newspaper, it seemed, could do quite well without me.

I knew from the time I realized the difference between a subject and a predicate that I wanted to be a writer.

Growing up on an East Texas farm, I read everything I could get my hands on and I got my hands on everything I could find that had a front cover, back cover, and a bunch of words stuck in between.

I spent so much time crawling through the book shelves at the Kilgore Public Library that I became part of the furniture, and one day, I looked up from the printed page of another Hardy Boy Mystery and had two thoughts that would forever change my life.

Reading stories is good.

Writing stories is better.

 

Click here to read the full post on Venture Galleries.

 

Why Teens Love Dystopias

This article by Dana Stevens originally appeared on Slate on 3/21/14.

It’s not a mystery why so many young-adult best-sellers (and the lucrative movie franchises based on them) would take place in post-apocalyptic societies governed by remote authoritarian entities and rigidly divided into warring factions. The word dystopia comes from a Greek root that roughly translates as “bad place,” and what place could be worse than high school? Adolescence is not for the faint of heart. The to-do list for the decade between ages 10 and 20 includes separating from your parents, finding your place among your peers at school, beginning to make decisions about your own future, and—oh yes—figuring out how to relate to the world, and yourself, as a suddenly and mystifyingly sexual being.

The strong link between YA and dystopia is no trendy post–Hunger Games phenomenon. Grim allegorical tales about dysfunctional futuristic societies have been staples in popular books for young people at least since Lois Lowry’s The Giver series in the early ’90s (a film adaptation of the first volume is set to come out this summer), if not as far back as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, published in 1954. But since the massive success of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy about a bleak futuristic society that pits teenagers against one another in a televised gladiatorial fight to the death, young readers—along with the many not-so-young readers who are now consuming YA lit in mass quantities—can’t seem to get enough of projecting themselves into the future. And that’s despite the fact that the future, as presented both in the real-life media and in the entertainment we consume, looks to be fairly awful: a bare-knuckles struggle for survival in the ruins of a civilization laid waste by war and/or environmental disaster.

 

Click here to read the full article on Slate.

Related, also from Slate: Everyone Knows Where They Belong – The Choosing Ceremony, the Sorting Hat, the Reaping: YA and the quest to know who you are

 

10 Keys to Plot Structure by Kay Keppler

This post by Kay Keppler originally appeared as a guest post on Beth Barany‘s Writer’s Fun Zone blog on 3/20/14.

Note from Beth Barany: Let’s welcome back Kay Keppler for another month with Writer’s Fun Zone! In today’s article, Kay discusses 10 keys to plot structure. Enjoy!

***

When writers talk about plot and character, they often reference movies or TV shows. That’s because film provides a visual — an extra dimension that helps viewers understand the story.

Screenwriters have a lot less space than novelists to tell their stories (120 pages!), so they have to get right to it. Michael Hauge is a film doctor who crystalizes plot structure into key 10 elements that will help any writer, screen or otherwise. These are:

 

1. The first and best rule above all rules

What’s happening now must be more interesting than what just happened. The whole point of structure — of your entire story — is to elicit emotion in your reader. If your story is increasingly compelling as you move forward, you succeeded.

 

2. The goal is everything

Your story’s structure depends on its events and turning points, which spring from your hero’s goal — a clear, visible objective that she’s desperate to achieve. Ask yourself, “What does my hero want to achieve by the end of the story? Will readers root for her to reach that finish line?” Then apply scene questions: “What does my hero want in this scene? How do her actions in this scene move her closer to that overall desire?” If your honest answer is “I don’t know” or “They don’t,” then your story, not just your structure, is comatose, if not dead.

 

3. More, bigger, faster, badder

Structure is built on desire, but the emotion you elicit grows out of conflict. The more obstacles your hero must overcome, and the more impossible it seems that he’ll succeed, the more captivated your reader will be. The conflict must build: each successive problem, opponent, hurdle, weakness, fear, and setback must be greater than the one that preceded it.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer’s Fun Zone.

 

The Self-Publishing Debate: A Social Scientist Separates Fact from Fiction (Part 2 of 3)

This post by Dana Beth Weinberg originally appeared on Digital Book World on 12/4/13. Click here to begin with Part 1 in the same series, by the same author, also on Digital Book World (post will open in a new window or tab).

In the writers’ groups I attend, self-publishing is a touchy issue. I know a number of writers who served their time in the trenches, writing and submitting and rewriting and resubmitting their work over and over again to agents and publishers before that one magical “yes.” It’s not unusual to meet a writer who tried to get published for ten years or more before winning a publishing contract. These writers have overcome significant odds, and they are rightly proud of their achievements. In the same group, there are a number of writers who haven’t yet broken into traditional publishing or haven’t even tried but who have decided to self-publish. Some don’t have the war stories and battle scars from trying to break in, while others do. Despite not having the traditional publisher’s stamp of approval, all of them are also proud of their achievements and expect equal consideration as published authors. It might be easy for the traditionally published authors to maintain their sense of superiority over self-published authors (and, thus, their sense of comfort that they had done the right thing all those years that they waited and tried) were it not also for the token members of the group who have self-published and made a lot of money at it.

Is self-publishing an amateurish endeavor, a means of sharing stories, a strategic move in a writing career, or an entrepreneurial activity? In Part 1 of this blog, I examined the top priorities of the nearly 5,000 authors who responded to the 2013 Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Survey in relation to whether and how they have published their work. Now I turn my attention to the differences in writing productivity for the four different types of authors identified in the survey: aspiring authors, self-published authors, traditionally published authors, and hybrid authors with a combination of self-published and traditionally published works.

The necessary ingredient to success in a writing career is actually writing. So how do our various types of authors stack up in terms of manuscripts completed, whether published or unpublished?

 

Click here to read the full post on Digital Book World.

Click here to read part 3 in the same series, by the same author, also on Digital Book World. (post will open in a new window or tab).

 

Are You Publishable or Not? Reading the Tea Leaves.

This post by Dave King originally appeared on Writer Unboxed on 3/18/14. Since it’s addressed primarily to those seeking mainstream, traditional publication it may not seem like a fit for Publetariat, but now that many are making the wise decision to adopt a hybrid publication model, it will likely be of interest to many Publetariat readers.

Writing never feels more lonely than after you’ve sent your manuscript out to every agent and publisher you can think of and gotten nowhere. Of course, you can always take comfort in the long list of massively successful books that were initially rejected by nearly everyone who saw them. But for every brilliant book that gets rejected out of blindness or stupidity, there are thousands that get rejected because they’re just not very good. How can you tell which camp you fall into?

The quality of your rejections are a good sign. Granted, form rejections don’t tell you much, but if all of your rejections are form letters, it’s probably time to either start a major rewrite or put this manuscript in a drawer and start the next one. (If your manuscript is getting repeatedly turned down on the query alone, you might want to take a second look at your query letter.) If you’re getting glowing rejections (“I love the book, but it’s not right for our list.”) then you’re probably doing something right and should keep sending the manuscript out — though you might want to refine your agent search to make it more likely it will hit the right desk. And it’s still a good sign even if you’re getting, “I love the book, but . . . “ If a publishing professional has taken time to give you free advice, then your manuscript is probably worth the effort.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer Unboxed.