The Writer's Advantage. Laurie Scheer

      GETTING YOUR WORK OUT INTO THE WORLD

      CHAPTER 12

      DEFENDING YOUR WORK

      Some Basic Questions to Ponder

      Become Your Own Private Development Department

      Some Deeper Questions to Ponder

      EXERCISE: Testing your idea until it is foolproof.

      CHAPTER 13

      WHAT MASTERING YOUR GENRE CAN DO FOR YOU

      Like-minded Awareness

      Altering

      Put It On Hold

      Tools You’ll Need To Sell Your Authentic Text(s)

      Logline

      Synopsis

      Going Out

      Pitch Fests and Conferences

      Mastering Your Genre

      EXERCISE: Write your logline and synopsis.

      CHAPTER 14

      WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT?

      Players vs. Pikers

      Don’t Be A Tease

      Authentic Writing

      What Now?

      No Fear of Success

      EXERCISE: Keep writing.

      A FEW LAST WORDS

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR146

      This book is dedicated to my holy trinity of mentors:

      Dr. James T. Tiedge, Norma Herron, and Delle Chatman.

      And also to Syd Field, everyone’s first screenplay mentor.

      ACKNOWLEDG­MENTS

      Kathie Fong Yoneda has believed in this book since its inception and I thank her for sharing the proposal with Ken Lee and Michael Wiese and for believing in me and my work. How refreshing it was that Ken understood the basic essence of my idea and soon he and Michael gave me a green light to move forward. I am honored to be a part of the family.

      So many amazing individuals have provided their support and I have been blessed with their grace and assistance during the writing of this book. I thank the great, wise sage Christopher Vogler — without you all writers aspiring to tell their stories would be lost, including myself. You have been a guiding light for me for more than two decades. Ellen Nordberg, a true friend, I thank you for showing up in my class at U-of-C in the mid-‘90s and never — not even for a second — failing to be one of my life’s spiritual advisors ever since. Judy Molland, you have always been there for me and most especially when we were in DC — gracias and merci! Josie Brown, you inspire me daily as you are truly the hardest working author I know, and Dale Kushner, thank you for your ultramarine sparks — how would I have ever lived without them?

      Christine DeSmet, thank you for the always beautiful goddess sunbeams, and thanks Laura Kahl, you know so well how to be a swan — I’m still learning how to master that one.

      To Brad Schrieber, thank you. I am honored to call you friend. Film pixie Killian Heilsberg, thank you, we only children rock! Gregory Johnson, my soulmate, I love you, thank you, and Wayne Christensen and Nikko for the use of The Fort and for your love — it is wonderful, it sure is, it sure is.

      I am appreciative of the folks who believe in me year after year and who have let me share this material with students and conference attendees. Most especially my thanks to Melissa Houghton and Jane Barbara of WIFV DC. Your support means so much. Additionally, thanks to Kristin Oakley and her In Print Writers’ Group, you gave me great feedback and incentive to continue onward. Also eternal thanks to the attendees of my Write By The Lake Retreat session, Summer 2013, I treasure your support and my precious copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

      To my mother and father, thank you for your love and for teaching me the practical factors of life and for letting me watch all the television I ever wanted to.

      And finally, hugs and smiles (in that order) to Eric Martinot for your integrity, timing, and continuous support the second time around. Thanks for making sure we achieved our New Years’ Intentions.

      And thank you to my students — past, present, and future — who continue to teach me so much more than I could have ever imagined.

      Laurie Scheer

      December, 2013

      FOREWORD

      by

      Christopher Vogler

      I like a book that agrees with me. I like it when the author says what I believe, only in better words and with more convincing evidence. I also like a book that tells me things I didn’t know, or that identifies patterns I hadn’t fully understood before. The Writer’s Advantage does both. In its pages I found confirmation of things I’ve observed and suspected about the way entertainment is made, and I also found lucid explanations of what is happening in the rapidly changing media universe. In fact, I really had little idea what that universe, currently called “transmedia,” might actually be. Now I think I do, thanks to the author’s clarity and depth of informed knowledge on the subject. Further, the author’s intention is to provide you with practical techniques for avoiding the current plague of repetitive, predictable, bombastic, and mindlessly overproduced sequels and remakes. She can even guide you beyond that, to create something totally new for a totally new storytelling environment.

      This book has changed my consciousness about the present moment in the history of story-based entertainment. I was aware something was different. Who could fail to notice that stories in conventional Hollywood movies and network television have become more derivative and unwilling to take risks, while entertainment made for cable and many new outlets seems fresher and more authentic? However, the author pinpoints the exact moment in time when that began to happen, using a technique of analysis very similar to my own, which is to look at culture trends with an awareness of chronology and context. In other words, examine the evolution of an idea, a literary property, a story technique or a genre year by year, tracing that development from its earliest beginnings, and closely observing how it altered because of audience reactions and everything else that was going on in the ever-changing jet stream of culture. Know the field you are studying in depth, taking into account all the other developments in the surrounding field of entertainment and society. She offers this approach, part of “The Writer’s Advantage,” as a practical tool for making your work an exciting and novel expansion of worn-out genres, or perhaps even for creating entirely new forms of entertainment.

      The author is a seasoned observer of the story development machinery, and correctly points out its flaws and weaknesses. One of these is what she calls a “fanboy” tendency in screenwriters, directors, and story executives. Too often, those controlling media these days were raised upon works of recent years that were already derivative of literature and movies of the past. Fanboys and fangirls create works that are purposely derivative, based on superficial knowledge and understanding of the genres in which they dare to tread. When I was a development executive, I used to call these lazy-minded professionals “skimmers” and “magpies.” They loved to dabble in genres, or loot and pillage from classic works of literature and cinema to create slapdash remakes, but like magpies they were attracted only to the shiniest and most superficial aspects of the genres and works, ignoring or completely missing the glowing radioactive essence of those beloved forms. All they could bring to the