March 3rd, 2009, 2 Comments »
One of the first pieces of writing advice you ever hear is “write what you know”. This is valuable, if imprecise wisdom. It means both “write about that with which you are familiar” and “do your research to learn about the rest”.
As a young writer, I always felt a little hamstrung by this advice, because what I knew seemed so ordinary. Douglas Coupland was an author who delivered me from the fear of writing about my utterly ordinary life. After all, what was more familiar and ordinary to a middle-class Vancouver kid than Generation X and Shampoo Planet?
I don’t write fiction or drama all that often–I find it very difficult, and I’m lazy–but I still take reassurance when I read great writers writing about the ordinary. This winter I read Joseph O’Neil’s extraordinary Netherland, the best novel I’ve read in years. I just heard an interview (meh, RealAudio on that page, but here’s a link to an MP3 version) with him, and was struck by how similar his own life is to that of his protagonist in Netherland. They both grew up in Holland, they both love cricket, they both lived in New York’s Chelsea Hotel and so forth. If O’Neil can write a masterpiece built on such familiar plots and premises, then there’s probably hope for the rest of us.
I should mention that I took my own advice back in 2006 when I wrote a play called Bolloxed (I gave up the domain a while back, and the squatting page there now is very odd). It was about a Canadian software developer living in Ireland.
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December 2nd, 2008, 2 Comments »
I enjoyed Paul Graham’s recent essay on corporate bureaucracy, and how there’s such a thing as too many checks and balances:
Checks on purchases will always be expensive, because the harder it is to sell something to you, the more it has to cost. And not merely linearly, either. If you’re hard enough to sell to, the people who are best at making things don’t want to bother. The only people who will sell to you are companies that specialize in selling to you. Then you’ve sunk to a whole new level of inefficiency. Market mechanisms no longer protect you, because the good suppliers are no longer in the market.
In thinking about my day job at Capulet, this article really resonated with me. We’ve been lucky to have no shortage of work over the past few years, and the luxury to be pickier about which clients we take on.
We’ve got sundry criteria for what makes an ideal client. One consideration is the formality of their processes.
When talking with a potential client, I start to worry if they ask for a lengthy, formal proposal. It’s rarely worth our time to write such proposals (and, you know, they’re no fun to do). More importantly, such a request tends to imply that the client may be running a formal and (at least in my experience) inflexible operation. That may work for them, but we like nimble, open minded clients.
Generally our proposed strategies can be summarized in a longish email message. If that, plus referrals to existing clients, isn’t satisfactory, we’ll often take a pass. This is why, for example, we’re not likely to get much work out of the Olympics.
Another sign of this issue is if they want us to talk to a half dozen people in an organization. If they’re not respectful of their own staff’s time, they’re unlikely to be mindful of ours.
UPDATE: On a related note, Jeffrey Zeldman writes about 20 signs you don’t want that web design project.
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April 16th, 2008, 10 Comments »
I spent much of yesterday afternoon and evening working in a hotel room. I got into Vancouver yesterday in good time, and had a ton to do. I ensconced myself at the Days Inn (oddly, they don’t use an apostrophe) and went to town.
I find that I’m very productive in hotel rooms. There are no distractions, and the essentials of life–bed, bathroom, food–are close at hand. Douglas Adams, a noted procrastinator, wrote most of So Long and Thanks For All the Fish in a hotel room, under the constant supervision of his editor.
Maybe it was because we ran a corporate writing workshop last week, but I’ve recently been paying more attention to how ordinary things are described and labelled. I noticed a trend in my room. See if you can spot it:
The writing isn’t awful–you can still get the message–but it ain’t good. They have “a variety of sundry items available”? It must be a real mess behind that front desk. And the other pieces are terribly overwritten.
I was otherwise quite happy with my room at the Day’s Inn. It was nothing to write home about, but it was comfortable and they had free wifi. In fact, they may be near that tipping point of hotels where the hotel gets too nice to offer free wifi. Maybe there’s a rule of thumb here: less than three stars, free wifi. More than three stars, they screw you on wifi access.
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November 15th, 2007, 7 Comments »
Norlinda recently wrote to ask my (inexpert) opinion on writing for the actor:
I’m writing my first feature screenplay. Some of the feedback I received from my first reading was that I should try to write more for the actor. I don’t really know what that means other than maybe inserting more subtext and not adding a lot of parenthetical or directions.
Here’s my reply:
This is the basic principle as I understand it:
- Write lines of dialogue so that (from your perspective at least) there’s only one way to say them. That is, that any directions are implicit in the dialogue itself.
Here’s an example of an average line:
BOB: Where did all the soup go?
Here it is with plenty of implicit subtext and direction, particularly if there’s only one other actor on-stage (or on-screen):
BOB: Ah, man, who the hell ate all the soup?
Stupid example, but maybe you see the difference? We get a clearer picture of the actor’s delivery from the second line. In doing so, you’re not overly restricting the actor–you’re given them queues as to how the line should be delivered. Actors, in my limited experience, crave that implicit direction.
There are still a bunch of ways to play that second soup line. In rewriting it as I did, though, I excised a vast number of (in theory) non-applicable readings. I’ve made the actor’s job easier.
The Writer Isn’t the Director
The other thing to understand is that you, the writer, aren’t the director. You’ve got to make the character’s intents as accurate and clear as you can, but then you’ve got to trust the actors and directors.
You’d probably benefit from reading an introductory actor’s text book. The one acting course I took used this slim little volume, but any popular book would do. Combine that with a couple of books on directing. I’d recommend On Directing Film by David Mamet and A Sense of Direction by William Ball.
Understanding how actors and directors analyze text improves any dramatic writer’s work, I think.
Maybe some actor, director or writer out there in ReaderLand can improve my slipshod advice?
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October 30th, 2007, No Comments »
I periodically contribute to Wikipedia. One of my favourite Wikipedia phenomenon is the seemingly organic growth and distillation of articles, from tiny saplings to towering firs. Here are a few examples:
- Two years ago (almost to the day), I wrote a blog post soliciting filming locations in and around Vancouver. Derek thought it would make a good Wikipedia entry, so he started one. Look at it today. It’s grown from 8 locations and 94 words to at least 100 locations and 4350 words. Length isn’t usually a good measure of a Wikipedia article’s quality, but given that this entry is mostly a hyperlinked list, it’s a useful metric.
- Two years ago (again, I wrote about Cougar Annie, and started a Wikipedia article for her. It hasn’t had zillions of revisions, but it’s really evolved nicely. It’s got photos now, and a contribution (which needs editing) from Annie’s grand-daughter. I also got the author of Annie’s biography to review the entry.
- I started an entry on cage dancing, because no encyclopedia is complete without it. I see that it’s acquired a photo by Kris.
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June 29th, 2007, 9 Comments »
Unless you’ve been living on the backside of one of Neptune’s moons for the past couple of years, you know that video is big on the web. There’s a major trend toward transforming text-only sites to text plus video and audio sites.
To change gears for a moment, back in 2005, I wrote this about podcasting:
you need the talent. Everyone learns writing in school, so the barrier to entry is pretty small. However, nobody (or very few) learns how to be a radio broadcaster. Like it or not, that takes ability, practice and, ideally, a great voice. I try not to read poorly-written blogs, and I don’t have the patience for dead air and mumbling…
Over the past week, I’ve had the opportunity to watch several short videos, hosted by big formerly-text-only sites and presented by writers. They are:
Take a couple of minutes and watch those. I’ll wait.
A. O. Scott is rigidly reading off cue cards through the bottom part of his bifocals. Emily Yoffe looks stiffer than her headboard (note the incredibly awkward nod to her dog). Walt Mossberg prefaces every sentence with ‘uh’.
These folks are all good writers who I admire. The operative word there is ‘writers’.
Presenting is a Craft All Its Own
Much as we like to take cheap shots at news anchors, being an effective presenter takes skill and practice. There’s an art, I suspect, to appearing natural on camera. People go to school for this, and usually spend years honing their craft before we ever see them on national television or radio.
Most writers aren’t presenters. They don’t know how to do it. They’re just victims of online content trends, and have been thrown to the video wolves by their managers, editors and publishers.
It’s odd that Slate would make this mistake. For the past two years, they had the wonderful Andy Bowers (who has a background in radio) reading articles written by other writers on their podcast. June Thomas usually does the Explainer podcasts (a podcast I skipped today because writer Michelle Tsai recorded the last two), but she never wrote them. Yet, when Slate went to video, they’ve thrown out the middleman and turned the camera on the poor writers themselves.
Back in 2005, I also wrote:
This issue is only going to be multiplied when video blogs, or vlogging becomes popular. Amanda Congdon is charming, smart, cute and has a great formula, but she’s not a professional newscaster. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you or me, but it matters to average humans who are accustomed to watching professionals.
I was wrong about that. Amanda Congdon is a great presenter. She’s natural, charming and charismatic on camera.
These media giants ought to hire people like Amanda to present their content. Let the writers write.
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April 10th, 2007, 9 Comments »
Via Metafilter, there’s an interesting travel piece in Slate. Tim Wu attempts to used WikiTravel to choose a rock-climbing location (and associated accommodation) in Thailand. He fails miserably:
My plan for this trip to Thailand was based on a somewhat corny vision: I wanted to climb a limestone cliff with my bare hands and look out at the ocean below, while pursuing a mind empty of stray thoughts. That meant I had three basic questions: Where can I find rock climbing in Thailand? What kind of people go there? And where can I stay? On all three questions, Wikitravel failed to deliver—in part because it’s still new but also because, ironically, Wikitravel fails to capitalize on the full potential of the Web.
Things go wrong because some of the central tenants of Wikipedia (and associated sites like WikiTravel) are neutrality and fairness. That’s exactly what I don’t want in my guide book or travel writer. I want to read an opinion on the best destinations, attractions and restaurants, not a consensus. WikiTravel apparently has nice things to say about all destinations, in the interest of fairness and neutrality.
This is why it’s such a joy to read travel writers like Bill Bryson of Bruce Chatwin, and why National Geographic Traveller magazine has pretty pictures, but is totally soulless.
In fact, Wu’s serious problems appear when he tries to choose a place to stay. Apparently, “it’s no fun visiting and ranking dozens of grimy hostels and boring hotels, especially when you’re on vacation.” I just checked the WikiTravel entry for Malta, and there are no accommodations listed at all. Clearly, WikiTravel needs more attention.
Thanks to Trey Ratcliff for the photo.
UPDATE: As per the comments, the accommodation listings aren’t associated with the main country page, but are linked off of each individual city page. For example, here’s where you would find lodgings in Malta’s main city of Valletta (listings are pretty slim there, anyway). That’s partially my bad, but seeing as both Tim Wu and I made the same mistake, there may be a usability issue there as well.
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