March 2009 Archives

On Sunday, I announced the Top 50 Aussie Writing Blogs with a detailed list. It has been greatly received and hopefully will result in more subscriptions and more traffic for the blogs contained in the list as well as the list of runners-up.

Due to popular demand, I have produced a badge for qualifying blogs to place on their sites to let their readers know of their success.

Welcome to the Top Fifty Writing blogs in Australia.

Now, let's be clear here - that's not fifty blogs people have written but fifty blogs by and for writers on the act of writing. Copywriting, screenwriting, novels, poetry, anything that involves putting words in the right order to build a coherent and creative message.

Discussions about structure in screenwriting (or any writing for that matter) always divide writers into two camps. In one corner are those that swear by the three act structure, midpoint reversals and scenes noted on index cards, while on the opposite stool are those screaming that structure and formulas stifle creativity, preferring to dive in and find where the story takes them.

Any scriptwriter will tell you the golden rule is "show - don't tell". A good script relies on strong visuals to tell the story, not dialogue. The characters shouldn't tell the audience what happened, they should be immersed in it.

Readers come to this blog for many reasons. Over the last eighteen months, CopyWrite has built a subscriber base of regular readers from a number of different backgrounds. But this can lead to confusion when the post that prompted someone to subscribe is followed by a seemingly complete change of topic. Is this blog about marketing, comics, films – what is it? The truth is that this place was always intended to cover my ideas and thoughts as a writer.

After all the stuff I wrote about the Watchmen film over the last few months, I guess it would only be sporting to report my eventual thoughts after seeing the nearly three hour bum-numb-er last week. But, as always, my thoughts can't simply be confined to a straight-forward review. The Watchmen movie, and recent comments from its writer, screams for a more detailed dissection of the cultural ideology of the superhero genre and can throw up some uncomfortable conclusions.

There are certain stories that just crop up over and over and over.

17 Again is a new film starring Zac Efron - he of the screaming girls, photoshopped smile and unlikely High School career. I'm sure I don't need to spell out the plot; I was able to guess the entire logline from the title and I'm sure you will too. After all, we've already seen the film when it was made as Freaky Friday or Peggy Sue Got Married or Like Father Like Son or even 18 Again.

Love him or loath him, Robert McKee is unavoidable in any discussion of screenwriting structure. His book Story is the oft-quoted bible of so many amateur and professional screenwriters as we all fight with our scene breakdowns and character arcs.

Therefore, I am as giddy as a teenage boy lost in Amsterdam because, this June, McKee brings his highly successful 3-day seminar series to Australia.

(Thanks to Benjamin Ray for this excellent guest post.)

I recently interviewed successful Screenwriter and Graphic Novelist -- Bob Heske. Getting to know Bob over the past year, I found him to be one the hardest working creative visionaries in Hollywood. A leader and inspiration to all writers who specialise in the horror genre.

It took twenty years, but this week finally sees Watchmen adapted for the big screen. To most of you reading this, it might not be a big deal – yet another big-budget superhero film cashing in on old properties instead of creating new stories. Well, yes and no.

Watchmen aficionados would hasten to point out that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s magnum opus is a lot more than merely another superhero story.