John August

Writing Process

End today’s writing with a plan for tomorrow’s

Writing Process

Chuck Wendig offers ten little writing tricks, including an old standby he calls The Tiniest Outline Of Them All:

The last 50-100 words you write at the end of your day should be a note to yourself detailing just what the fuck you should write tomorrow. (“HORACE MURDERS LORD THORNJIZZ AND THE LITHUANIAN DETECTIVE CIRCUS IS ASSIGNED TO THE CASE”). In other news, now I want to write a book about a “Lithuanian detective circus,” whatever that is. I call dibs. You can’t have it. I’ll get stabby.

And yes, OF COURSE you should use Google Street View to see the places you’re writing about. But I feel dumb for not doing it more often. Super helpful.

Another Time and Place

Episode - 85

Go to Archive

Scriptnotes, Three Page Challenge, Transcribed, Words on the page, Writing Process

John and Craig discuss the odd dislocation writers experience when writing movies in coffeeshops and windowless offices. We’re literally “someplace else” with our characters, but learning how to work in less-than-ideal circumstances is part of the screenwriter’s trade.

Then it’s another round of Three Page Challenges, wherein we wrestle with the question of why “two months earlier” keeps cropping up. Whatever the reason: stop it.

LINKS:

You can download the episode here: AAC.

UPDATE 4-21-13: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

A city born of fire

Broadway, Film Industry, Scriptnotes, Television, Transcribed, Writing Process

Writer Derek Haas (Wanted, 3:10 to Yuma) joins John and Craig to discuss gay slurs, refrigerator logic and his TV show, Chicago Fire.

In addition to writing for big and small screens, the extraordinarily prolific Haas writes books, including The Right Hand and The Silver Bear. He also created the short story site Popcorn Fiction.

LINKS:

You can download the episode here: AAC.

UPDATE 4-4-13: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

Rigorous, structured daydreaming

How-To, Scriptnotes, Story and Plot, Three Page Challenge, Transcribed, Writing Process

Craig and John take a look at an old post that found new life this week when it got picked up on Twitter and Reddit. We go beyond the bullet points to look at the process of writing a scene, from asking the basic questions to getting the words on the page.

  1. What needs to happen in this scene?
  2. What’s the worst that would happen if this scene were omitted?
  3. Who needs to be in the scene?
  4. Where could the scene take place?
  5. What’s the most surprising thing that could happen in the scene?
  6. Is this a long scene or a short scene?
  7. Brainstorm three different ways it could begin.
  8. Play it on the screen in your head.
  9. Write a scribble version.
  10. Write the full scene.
  11. Repeat 200 times.

Through this lens, we look at three new entries in the Three Page Challenge.

LINKS:

You can download the episode here: AAC.

UPDATE 3-8-13: The transcript of this episode can be found here.