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Youtub Podcasts...
Jan. 26th, 2019 07:13 pm1. ( Stephen King on writing, films, etc. )
Why do readers always ask writers where they get their ideas from?
I was asked this as well.
Answer? No clue, they just come to me. From the world around me, from what I've seen, heard, thought about...read.
Usually it's like a movie unfolding inside my head or that I'm channeling.
And I have to put it on paper to make sense of it. Or tell it aloud. I used to just tell it aloud.
Whether anyone else wants to read it or hear it, doesn't seem to matter. I remember being surprised that this doesn't happen with everyone. You don't have stories constantly unfolding every few months in your head? Weird.
What King states? "I'm working on a novel and I don't know if it will ever get done. I don't plot, it unfolds as I write it. I don't know it will be a novel until it gets done, until I finish it."
I'm the same way. Sometimes I finish, sometimes I don't.
Some writers know everything ahead of time, like John Irving writes the last line first -- I tried that once, it doesn't work for me. I lose interest. As King puts it, "It's like eating the icing on the cake first." Why eat the cake after that?
Another good bit..."when writing a character, you have to look, you have to see, you have to be curious about people." One of the problems he has with third rate fiction is the writer puts the character through the paces but they don't really grow or evolve, you don't get to see the character.
And his critique of 50 Shades - I agree with. "The problem with it is that Ana, the main character, really only has two default settings -- if things get good? Oh my!, and if they are bad, "Oh god". And it's every other line." He's right. That was my problem and I read all three of them. Also, he's right -- what works in them is the sex scenes (also the text messaging is hilarious) -- this is actually the critique that I'd make of James Patterson's novels as well, the action scenes are fine, but it reads like an outline with characters that are rather stock and have no depth.
2. ( How the Original Star Wars was saved in the editing room )
They show various bits that were in the unedited version and what happened when they were deftly removed and the film improved considerably. Also explain the number of edits and rewrites. The film that Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, etc made wasn't the one that aired -- a lot of scenes they did never made it to the screen. Small wonder that they were shocked by its success. It was a bad movie that a good editor made into a good one.
(Last Jedi suffered from bad editing, a lot of that film made no sense, and it didn't follow the arc set up in the first film. It's a mess because the director had too much control and JJ Abrahams and others ...didn't take a stronger hand in the editing room. I know a lot of folks liked it, but most of the people I've met either went to sleep during it, or were completely lost. I'm a long-time fan and I could barely follow it and felt it drug in places.)
Why do readers always ask writers where they get their ideas from?
I was asked this as well.
Answer? No clue, they just come to me. From the world around me, from what I've seen, heard, thought about...read.
Usually it's like a movie unfolding inside my head or that I'm channeling.
And I have to put it on paper to make sense of it. Or tell it aloud. I used to just tell it aloud.
Whether anyone else wants to read it or hear it, doesn't seem to matter. I remember being surprised that this doesn't happen with everyone. You don't have stories constantly unfolding every few months in your head? Weird.
What King states? "I'm working on a novel and I don't know if it will ever get done. I don't plot, it unfolds as I write it. I don't know it will be a novel until it gets done, until I finish it."
I'm the same way. Sometimes I finish, sometimes I don't.
Some writers know everything ahead of time, like John Irving writes the last line first -- I tried that once, it doesn't work for me. I lose interest. As King puts it, "It's like eating the icing on the cake first." Why eat the cake after that?
Another good bit..."when writing a character, you have to look, you have to see, you have to be curious about people." One of the problems he has with third rate fiction is the writer puts the character through the paces but they don't really grow or evolve, you don't get to see the character.
And his critique of 50 Shades - I agree with. "The problem with it is that Ana, the main character, really only has two default settings -- if things get good? Oh my!, and if they are bad, "Oh god". And it's every other line." He's right. That was my problem and I read all three of them. Also, he's right -- what works in them is the sex scenes (also the text messaging is hilarious) -- this is actually the critique that I'd make of James Patterson's novels as well, the action scenes are fine, but it reads like an outline with characters that are rather stock and have no depth.
2. ( How the Original Star Wars was saved in the editing room )
They show various bits that were in the unedited version and what happened when they were deftly removed and the film improved considerably. Also explain the number of edits and rewrites. The film that Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, etc made wasn't the one that aired -- a lot of scenes they did never made it to the screen. Small wonder that they were shocked by its success. It was a bad movie that a good editor made into a good one.
(Last Jedi suffered from bad editing, a lot of that film made no sense, and it didn't follow the arc set up in the first film. It's a mess because the director had too much control and JJ Abrahams and others ...didn't take a stronger hand in the editing room. I know a lot of folks liked it, but most of the people I've met either went to sleep during it, or were completely lost. I'm a long-time fan and I could barely follow it and felt it drug in places.)
