The Breakdown - Week of 7/20/20
Back with another issue of “The Breakdown!”
First, thank you all for responding and liking last week’s post. It was great to see so many of you reading and enjoying the newsletter! And this is crazy, but we’re now closing in on 70% of you opening the Industry Deep Dive #1 email, and that’s an incredible response rate! I’m so happy to see that, and it also let’s me know you’re getting value from these posts. 😊
Just so you know, the next Writer’s Workshop will be coming out in August with an another Industry Deep Dive in September.
Just as a reminder - If you’re a premium subscriber, either comped or paid, you can submit your work for an upcoming Writer’s Workshop, where—drawing on over fifteen years of story development work—I go in depth on three key issues I see that could help improve your sample.
Now, many of you lovely readers won a six-month comp for the premium posts (the Industry Deep Dives and Writer’s Workshops), and given the promo windows, these will expire around November of this year. So, if you want a chance to get feedback on your work and you don’t plan to subscribe after your gift subscription ends, be sure to fill out the submission form here at least a month or so before then to be considered. I’m taking these submissions in a combination of “first-come-first-served” and suitability to the reviewing format (i.e.; would it make for a helpful story breakdown for readers?)
Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s dive in!
Let’s start with five new scene-specific writing prompts, drawn from my book “What Would Your Character Do? (up on Amazon and free in Kindle Unlimited!)
Prompts
These prompts from “What Would Your Character Do?" are designed to give you some momentum if you ever find yourself stuck in a scene. If these five prompts don’t work for you, hang tight! You’ll get another five new ones in a week, or you could just buy, or check out, the book to pick from over 500 more!
If you're stuck in a scene, try to have your character:
1. Provide someone else with an important clue
2. Call out to someone, inappropriately
3. Educate someone on a particular topic
4. Suddenly become aware of the time
5. Refuse to listen to someone in the midst of a discussion
Give those prompts some time to marinate, and if they’re not doing it for you, you’ll get five more next week!
News
So, I haven’t been reporting that much on the whole WGA (that’s Writers Guild of America) negotiations with the talent agencies because it can get quite technical and it’s covered better elsewhere. But what’s interesting about these contentious negotiations is that while this one didn’t end in a full-on strike like the one back in 2007, it did end up with guild members firing their agents. And just as the WGA actions of 2007 resulted in an opportunity for new writers—a huge surge of spec scripts, from new or unagented writers, hitting the market and being purchased—so too did this WGA event. This time around it took the form of the #PreWGA hashtag on Twitter as a form of advocacy. In a fit of activism, WGA members, TV Producers, and high-level (largely TV) writers created a host of Google docs to enable WGA writers to showcase their work for showrunners and producers looking to staff up. First, there was one for all WGA writers, then there was one for female writers, then Black writers, then LatinX writers, then LGBTQA+ writers, etc.. etc. It was pretty awesome to see. But the goodwill didn’t stop there. Actual literary agents and managers; and working film & TV writers, producers, creators started interacting, boosting, and helping unagented, non-WGA writers. (See below)
Now, I did see tweets from new writers who were actually contacted by producers for their scripts, so I know this more direct form of contact was working. How well? It’s unclear. But what was clear was that with a layer of gatekeepers out of the mix, Hollywood was opening up to new talent. Combine that with a genuine desire on the part of Hollywood folks to take some action to right the newly exposed, but glaring, disparity in access between marginalized and non-marginalized writers and there’s never been a better time to be a new writer with an awesome spec script or spec pilot waiting to get attention.
However, with the WGA action looking like it’s coming to a close (ICM, CAA and WME, the other three big agencies are still holding out, but seriously, for how long?), this rare window of opportunity and show of generosity will be coming to a close as well..at least to some degree. Let’s hope there’s been a real shift somewhere in here that will allow better access and exposure to new writers, but having worked in the trenches and knowing how fleeting activism can be in this day and age, I’m going to remain very cautiously optimistic.
P.S. - If there’s interest, I can post links to some of those staffing docs either for you to study or get you in contact with who’s hosting them. I don’t know how many of you are interested in pitching or writing for (largely) TV, so you’ll have to comment or reply to this email to let me know. If there’s enough interest, I’ll do the legwork.
Book Deals: Week of July 20, 2020
What I want to highlight in this week’s book deals is a couple of unusual ones. I do this to help get you thinking outside-the-box in terms of future projects.
The first is Washington Post columnist and former NPR host Michele Norris, who closed a two-book, world English rights deal with Simon & Schuster for an adult title and a children’s title based on her Race Card Project. Norris launched the project in 2010, asking people to submit postcards with six words summarizing their thoughts on the word race. Now, what I find so fascinating about this deal is that:
1) It started out as a non-book project. One could imagine this as a blog, for instance, or a dedicated website, or even an Instagram account. If you’re familiar with Humans of New York, you know how projects like this can evolve. If I remember correctly, that one started out as a blog.
2) The fact that Norris’ project is getting an adult book deal and a children’s book deal. I’m not sure how common this is, but I thought it was a genius way to extend and expand upon the same content.
Honestly, I don’t know what the legal and logistically ins-and-outs are of creating a book from user-generated content, and that’s really not the point here. The Norris deal is a great example of technology, and the way the industry has developed, changing the way that books are coming into being.
The other example of “outside-the-box” thinking is this deal:
After what Vintage described as a “competitive auction,” Anna Kaufman won two books in a new mystery series by Claudia Gray, the first of which is titled The Murder of Mr. Wickham, for six figures. The publisher described the novel as “a Jane Austen sequel and crossover with an Agatha Christie twist, in which the Darcys, Knightleys, and all of Austen’s other beloved couples unite for a house party that takes a dark turn when the notorious Mr. Wickham makes an unwelcome, and soon fatal, appearance.”
I love this use of a work out of the public domain. A Regency house party murder mystery…with characters we know and love? Brilliant! I mean taken to an extreme, you end up with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but that work spawned several follow on books, a graphic novel, and a movie, so, you know…don’t knock the tactic!
Cartoon Network and Star Trek Panels at San Diego Comic-Con Were Blocked by Youtube’s ContentID
So, a SNAFU like that was bound to happen with such an enormous event going online. As I mentioned in my previous newsletter, Comic-Con went free and virtual this year. Aside from the fact that there’s no chat component to the streams so you can connect with other “attendees,” the panels have been great so far. There’s so much to choose from and so much to learn. There’s simply no way to catch all of them, but not to fear! Comic-Con is streaming most, if not all, the panels on their Comic-Con YouTube channel, after they’re done.
Amazon Developing ‘Paper Girls’ Series Adaptation Based on Graphic Novels
Speaking of comics, or graphic novels, or web comics, or mobile comics…the trend of adapting these properties for the screen continues. I’m fascinated by this latest path from “published-to-screen” whereby a non-book property is optioned for film or TV. It’s as if the graphic version of a story serves as a kind a storyboard for producers to be able to see the potential of that story, beyond the page. I don’t watch much network television, but aside from the Portland, Oregon connection, the only show I do watch is Stumptown, which was first birthed as a comic book by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth. It has such a great energy to it and a wonderfully sardonic attitude, you can see how its origins feel, and are, very different from other shows designed for network TV. Honestly, if I had the talent or money, I’d be illustrating my WIP (A YA Urban Fantasy) right now, even though it’s not yet finished.
Final Thoughts
So, with Comic-Con on the brain and the growing interest in comics, graphic novels, and even adult animation (we’ll talk about that more at a later date) expanding throughout the industry, this issue became a bit of a “How to use comics as a way into Hollywood” issue.
But it wasn’t…well, not really. It turned out to be more of a “There are more and more non-traditional ways to get your book published or see your work up on the screen” issue. And that’s really what this newsletter is about—keeping tabs on the emerging trends and latest ways that other creators are getting their work out there and knocking down walls that were built, for the most part, to keep us out.
And so with that, we’ll keep exploring, keep investigating, keep testing the waters, keep fighting the good fight until we find a way in. Are you with me?! 😁
Until next time!
~ Paula