The Writer's Advantage. Laurie Scheer
and more unrealistic behavior. And often they seemed to deliberately stomp on the true hearts of these genres, subverting them or belittling the very things that made them charming and magical in the first place. Fortunately, the author offers realistic remedies for this fanboy tendency, by urging writers to develop much deeper and broader understanding of the genres in which they hope to make a contribution.
In these pages I read with approval the author’s critique of what has been called “Chaos Cinema,” movies in which there is a high proportion of visually confusing destruction and violence, typically the entire last quarter or third of the experience. As the author says it, “Unintelligible sensory overload abides in this arena.” The signal-to-noise ratio is set so that there is a lot of noise and very little signal; i.e., very little emotional content or advancement of the grand design of the story. So often these days the actual story seems to stop, parked on a siding somewhere, while the filmmakers indulge themselves in an orgy of flying metal, in which what little dialogue there may be is impossible to understand, and I am not entirely sure if what just spun across the screen is the torn-off wheel of a machine or the hero’s severed head. To me the unintelligibility is a great crime against the economy and clarity of cinema. I stand here with Lord Raglan, the English aristocrat who wrote a definitive study of heroes in legend and folklore. One of his rules was: “Everything that is said and done upon the stage must be intelligible to the audience.”
While using rational tools of analysis, the author never loses sight of a quality she calls “wonderment,” an essential element in her view for creating unique new expressions in modern media. Too often in place of true wonderment we find an effort to overwhelm the viewer with digitally-rendered eye candy, with special effects that are no longer special. Simple magic is sometimes the best. Little illusions performed right on the stage, or the small enchantment of an actor creating a word picture or an emotional breakthrough, can still outweigh the impact of an 89-million-dollar post-production budget.
Among the many gems of wisdom found here, gleaned from a career of close observation and hard-won experience, is the author’s insistence that it’s a long game, writing for media and working with genres. Sometimes, when you get rejected because your idea seems untimely, it’s just because you’re ahead of your time. Projects don’t always find their ideal moment in history right away, and may need to be stored away somewhere, carefully, until the time-waves of the zeitgeist coincide to make that project feel fresh and new or simply perfect for that moment in the culture. I can attest that many times I’ve seen story concepts shouted down or laughed out of the room because they seemed hopelessly out-of-date, only to find them returning a decade or so later as if they had just been minted to answer a need of the moment. Of course, like old fashions hanging in your closet, they may have to be re-tailored a bit or reconceived to emphasize the qualities that have been missing from the media environment.
One of the author’s most useful contributions may be pinpointing the effect she calls “fragmentation” — the breaking up of audiences and means of delivering the story experience. Where not so long ago there were a few media outlets dispensing movies, TV shows, and books to a general audience at regular intervals, there is now a shattered landscape in which increasingly balkanized shards of audience consume fragments of entertainment almost randomly. She sees this as a challenge and an opportunity, rather than as a problem, and encourages genre writers to assume a position of mastery, knowing their chosen field of storytelling in great depth and breadth, understanding its history and evolution in view of chronology and context. Instead of getting lost in the web of random connections, she counsels genre writers to remember the tools that have always served storytellers well — linear thinking as well as awareness of cycles and webs, careful analysis as well as fanboy enthusiasm, and genuine understanding of the essential heart that beats in every genre. She points to a high road for genre-loving writers, in which they can not only participate in the forms they admire, but also make fresh contributions that no one has ever imagined, and even spin out completely new genres and styles that others will have the fun of exploring and expanding one day. Enter her world with a sense of wonderment, and you will be rewarded.
Christopher Vogler is author of The Writer’s Journey, co-author of Memo From the Story Department, and a former Fox development executive.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Following in the tradition of Syd Field’s Screenplay books and A Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Advantage: A Toolkit for Mastering Your Genre is the next step for every type of writer. From time to time, writers need a contemporaneous manual to assist them with developing and writing their material and — just as important — preparing that material for the marketplace. Just as Syd Field provided the bare bones information needed to write an effective script in the late ‘70s, and as Christopher Vogler outlined mythic structure as a way for writers to organize their storylines and characters in the mid-’90s, this book assists writers traverse the 21st century transmedia universe — a marketplace that includes all platforms: print, theatrical distribution, broadcast and cable networks, web channels and websites (including internet radio and podcasts). You’ll learn about the tools you’ll need to navigate through the waters of creating authentic and competitive ideas, avoiding plagiarism, and assuring that your ideas find an audience in this complicated and vast fluctuating marketplace — all giving you what I call “The Writer’s Advantage.”
THE BOOK’S REASON FOR BEING
We have arrived at a time when mass media is not so “mass” any longer. With so many ways to access and enjoy information and entertainment, the multitasking consumer only has time to comprehend a fraction of a text. It is rare that we consume a book or movie or television series in its entirety, and if we do we are usually marathon reading or binge watching texts. This leads to a great deal of miscommunication among consumers who may say “Yeah, sure, I know the show Mad Men” within a conversation, but they may have only watched it once or twice. Or, “I saw the latest Iron Man movie,” however, during the movie, they texted with their about-to-be-ex-girlfriend throughout the second half of the film, meanwhile losing elements of the storyline overall. We now exist in a culture of missed opportunities due to distractions, multitasking, and the convenience of advancing technology. Awareness of this is important because consumers are confused and overloaded — they think they may know of a text from popular culture, but they probably know very little about that text, and writers dangerously set out to write within their genre having only a fraction of the knowledge of that genre before and while they are writing their work. Writers then go out into the world naively selling mediocre and non-authentic material. In addition, those who choose material to be published and produced (development department execs, editors, producers) are also following along these lines and the result is what we currently see on the best-selling lists, at the box office, and on TV, and that is a preponderance of sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots. Where are the original ideas?
What we have is a group of writers and publishing/entertainment execs who are mere followers. We need innovative writers who arm themselves with information, know complete texts within their genre, and eventually find their own voice and their own authentic texts. We need story innovators.
WHAT THIS BOOK CAN DO FOR YOU
Half of the information in this book assists you in mastering your genre and the other half is about what that mastering can do for you.
This book assists you —
1 as you begin a new writing project.
2 while you are writing a project.
3 when you feel your text just isn’t ready or perfect.
4 when you have been shopping your material and receiving consistent rejections.In this book, the term “texts” is used to describe material any given writer may be writing. When the term “texts” is used, I could be referring to any (or all) of the following types of writing:manuscripts for novels and novellasmanuscripts for short story and poetry anthologiesmanuscripts for flash and fan fictionmemoirsnonfiction manuscriptsscreenplays for feature-length and short theatrical moviesscreenplays for movies made for televisionscreenplays and bibles for television seriesscreenplays for web seriesIdeally, it is advantageous to read the book in its entirety before you begin writing for the transmedia marketplace