Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
Not counting my childhood Young Authors books (for a hilarious selection of those click here), I have written only one short story: a grim ghost tale featured in Pen & Muse’s Haunted House showcase. However, I’ve written many television episodes, which resemble short stories in length and substance. Writing a novel, by comparison, is like …
Continue reading “Is Your Idea a Short Story or Novel?”
This weekend we reviewed three books based on revisited fairy tales. You can read more about that here. In case you didn’t realize it, this is a huge trend in books, movies and TV shows. Some of the hottest projects around are adaptations from characters and stories combed from the pages of literary classics: Grimm, …
Continue reading “6 Tips for Re-imagining a Classic Story”
Last week I read the New York Times Bookends column “Are the New ‘Golden Age’ TV Shows the New Novels?” and got riled up about Adam Kirsch’s opinion, which basically boils down to “how dare TV shows think they are as great as novels!” Well, I feel the need to counter with “how dare you …
Continue reading “Is TV the New Novel?”
Nothing elevates the quintessential protagonist like the perfect sidekick. These secondary characters help showcase the protagonist’s positive and negative traits by contrasting them against the sidekick’s own traits. The bond between these two characters is often a vulnerable relationship. Our good friends always know our darkest history, the secrets we never share with outsiders. At …
Continue reading “Casting Call: 7 Sidekick Archetypes”
As I mentioned in my last post, The Dos and Don’t of Character Chemistry, I love to write stories with huge casts. As a historian, coming up with characters is easy for me, I always start the process with real historical figures, twisting and combining traits from different ones until my characters take shape. Unfortunately, …
Continue reading “Casting Call: 3 Fictional Character Archetypes”
Definition: Rogue [as modifier] – an elephant or other large wild animal driven away or living apart from the herd and having savage or destructive tendencies: a rogue elephant. Going rogue sounds so rebellious, like I’m a wild woman who refused to follow the rules of the herd. Look at me! Out here by my …
Continue reading “Screenwriter Gone Rogue”