CREATIVE MINDS: Psychotherapeutic Approaches and Insights by Dennis Palumbo
Creative individuals navigate the fine line between solitude and loneliness, discovering how isolation can fuel artistic expression or lead to despair.
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“Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”
-Louise NevelsonIn the early-1960s, a British film was released called “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.” It was a predictably dreary, angst-ridden story about a rebellious loner trying to find his place in an unforgiving society.
This column might just as well be called “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Artist,” because one of the issues creative patients often struggle with is the sheer loneliness that is required by most artistic endeavors. Whether the patients are just trying to realize some creative dream, or they are successful veterans in their respective fields, they are usually in it for the long haul. In other words, they plan to “go the distance.” Or as one of my creative patients put it, for a true artist, such loneliness, or what feels like self-imposed isolation, is “the cost of doing business.”
Even film and TV directors, orchestra conductors and the like, whose creative efforts involve working with others, spend many hours alone in preparation for those admittedly group-oriented endeavors. Regardless, my interest here is in those creative patients—writers, painters, composers, designers, etc—whose workday is characterized by being alone. Alone with their thoughts, alone with their creative concerns, alone with their doubts and fears and hopes—and, literally, alone in the sense that there is rarely anyone else in the room.
Now for many creative patients, this time alone is a wonderful luxury, a period of grace bestowed on artists that frees them to focus on their work. They are liberated from the noise of the outside world—the emotional demands of others, the burdens of everyday responsibilities, the endless cacophony of worrisome world events. What one person experiences as loneliness, another appreciates for its most profound aspects: it is quiet, usually unhurried, and blissfully unpopulated.
As novelist Saul Bellow once remarked about writing, it can possess “a stillness that characterizes prayer.” For many artists, regardless of their particular field, this is demonstrably true.
But not every artist experiences those long hours alone as either inspiring or profound. For them, there is only the aching emptiness and despair that loneliness can invite, particularly when the creative work is not going well. In such cases, as I have seen in my practice, loneliness can give birth to a set of painfully familiar (usually family of origin-based) meanings. An artist suffering from crippling loneliness is subject to doubts about their talent, questions about the validity of the project they are engaged upon, and vulnerable to the heightened suspicion that they were not cut out to be artists in the first place.
In such instances, the desire to pursue a creative career is, to paraphrase one of my patients, “either a blessing you’ve been cursed with or a curse you’ve been blessed with.” This ambivalence about endeavoring to be an artist lies at the heart of many a creative patient, regardless of level of outward success.
I know this from personal experience, having been a Hollywood screenwriter for many years before becoming a psychotherapist. Writing—for both veterans and those just starting—is time-consuming, frequently frustrating, often terror-inspiring, and bad for your posture. Its other prominent features include long hours of typing, frequent intervals of staring at a blank page or screen, and no guarantee whatsoever that anything you produce will be worth the effort. In addition to which, in the words of screenwriter Ben Hecht, “fun is the enemy.”
Which reminds me of a novelist patient of mine, the author of a successful series of thrillers, who once complained: “I can’t go in that room anymore. It’s so damned quiet.” Divorced, his children grown and flown, he worked alone in his office at home.
“I mean, writing these damn things is hard enough.” He shook his head. "Plus, it’s so lonely in there by myself.”
“It can be,” I said. “But let me suggest something. Maybe you’re not in there by yourself. You share that room with the memory of every person you’ve ever encountered—parents, teachers, friends and enemies…”
He frowned. “Listen, my office is eight-by-ten feet. If anybody else is skulking around in there, I sure as hell don’t see ‘em.”
“You know what I mean. Besides, in one sense loneliness can just mean being disconnected. Not just from others, but from your interior self. You carry a whole world of feelings, experiences and fantasies inside you. Maybe if you let them out, and explored them fully, the office wouldn’t feel so lonely.”
He didn’t buy this approach. Nor any of the others I offered. We returned to this issue again and again in therapy. Some days his loneliness overwhelmed him, leaving him lethargic and unmotivated. Yet at other times a patch of solid writing made him so excited, so anxious to get back to “that room” that he actually felt lonely—in essence, disconnected—when he was not writing.
Over my years in practice, I have seen many creative patients wrestle with this issue. Especially when contrasted with its seemingly adjacent (though quite dissimilar) circumstance—the solitude necessary for most artistic efforts. And there is a difference. Loneliness is usually experienced as a loss of connectedness, either with oneself or others; an interior emptiness that can feel both soul-crushing and self-invalidating. As opposed to solitude, which can inspire a felt sense of coming into contact with yourself, taking ownership of your interior world. Which, paradoxically, seems expansive rather than inhibiting.
As a well-known conceptual artist once explained it to me in session, “I only live in the solitude of work, God help me. It’s everywhere else that I feel uneasy, like I’m faking it. Because I am.”
Obviously not a “people person” (her own words), our clinical work lay elsewhere. But there was no question in her mind (nor in mine) of the value of solitude when it came to her art. In fact, many artists have noted the value, if not the necessity, of solitude, both in their work and for personal growth.
For example, Leonardo da Vinci said, “If you are alone, you belong entirely to yourself.”
And according to May Sarton, the distinction was clear: “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”
Rilke was even more blunt. “What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude.”
When working with creative patients, particularly those for whom loneliness is a salient, presenting concern, our job as clinicians is to help them reframe the meaning of their experience in terms of solitude. For one thing, it can be empowering to choose solitude in pursuance of your artistic goals, as opposed to seeing loneliness as a condition imposed upon you merely because you are alone. In which case, loneliness thus feels like a punishment for the mistake of attempting to be an artist; in contrast, choosing solitude can support the experience of feeling proactive and self-affirming.
Moreover, as I have written about elsewhere, I believe it is crucial for any creative person to have a positive, engaged relationship with their process. If you can help patients see that the choice of solitude supports the requirements of that process, is in fact a necessary aspect of it, its benefits become self-evident.
As Henri Poincare said, “to invent is to choose.” So, I feel it is vital that the creative patient embrace the solitude of artistic endeavor as a choice. Conceptualized this way, solitude then is not mere isolation. It is a return to the self, a reacquaintance with the patient’s inner world, including both its turmoil and its riches. The darkness and light from which creativity is birthed. Admittedly, such a commitment to solitude can risk an occasional slide into loneliness, a disquieting sense of isolation. That “cost of doing business” that my patient above mentioned. A price every artist pays at some time or another.
Which brings to mind a somewhat snarky quote attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre: “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”
But that is a topic for another column.
Mr Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author in Los Angeles. His email address for correspondence is dpalumbo181@aol.com.
Obviously not a “people person” (her own words), our clinical work lay elsewhere. But there was no question in her mind (nor in mine) of the value of solitude when it came to her art. In fact, many artists have noted the value, if not the necessity, of solitude, both in their work and for personal growth.
For example, Leonardo da Vinci said, “If you are alone, you belong entirely to yourself.”
And according to May Sarton, the distinction was clear: “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”
Rilke was even more blunt. “What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude.”
When working with creative patients, particularly those for whom loneliness is a salient, presenting concern, our job as clinicians is to help them reframe the meaning of their experience in terms of solitude. For one thing, it can be empowering to choose solitude in pursuance of your artistic goals, as opposed to seeing loneliness as a condition imposed upon you merely because you are alone. In which case, loneliness thus feels like a punishment for the mistake of attempting to be an artist; in contrast, choosing solitude can support the experience of feeling proactive and self-affirming.
Moreover, as I have written about elsewhere, I believe it is crucial for any creative person to have a positive, engaged relationship with their process. If you can help patients see that the choice of solitude supports the requirements of that process, is in fact a necessary aspect of it, its benefits become self-evident.
As Henri Poincare said, “to invent is to choose.” So, I feel it is vital that the creative patient embrace the solitude of artistic endeavor as a choice. Conceptualized this way, solitude then is not mere isolation. It is a return to the self, a reacquaintance with the patient’s inner world, including both its turmoil and its riches. The darkness and light from which creativity is birthed. Admittedly, such a commitment to solitude can risk an occasional slide into loneliness, a disquieting sense of isolation. That “cost of doing business” that my patient above mentioned. A price every artist pays at some time or another.
Which brings to mind a somewhat snarky quote attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre: “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”
But that is a topic for another column.
Mr Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author in Los Angeles. His email address for correspondence is dpalumbo181@aol.com.
Jeffrey Gitomer's “Little Black Book of Connections” On Bob Litell's Netweaving Concept
Bob Littell, CEO of Littell Consulting Services, Chief Netweaver and author of The Heart and Art of Netweaving talks about the concept of Netweaving to help you build relationship capital with others. Netweaving is a unique form of networking that is ideal for women as it allows them to be a connector of others, for the benefit of others, knowing that eventually there will be payback in return for them.
As an impressionable youth, I watched my dad bring people together that
he thought could "do business together."
"What do you make, Pop?" I asked.
"Nothing and everything, son. They don't pay me, but I will often be
rewarded by them or others in many ways."
"I don't get it, Pop."
"If you give to others without measuring, you get repaid without ever
asking for it." He stated as though it were a law of the universe.
"Oh," I said without really understanding.
"You'll get it later, son." He promised.
My dad repeated his philosophy for years.
Helping others at every turn,
and bringing people together.
By osmosis, I have done the same thing. Never really thought about the
right or wrong of it. Never even questioned the validity of it.
Then I came to find that someone had named the process: NetWeaving.
Bob Littell from Atlanta has even written a book about it. Cool.
Bob invited me to be the guest of honor at two NetWeaving events. One
sort of public one held after one of my seminars. And a more private,
smaller event held the next evening at a more upscale location.
At the first event, about 150 people were putting a spin on the traditional
"networking"process. "What can I do for you," rather than,
"what can you
do for me." Great concept.
And it worked. After a brief lesson and introduction to the concept of Net
Weaving, people were engrossed so deeply that no one wanted to leave.
The second, smaller event was held at the fabulous SPA Sydell. An
incredible day spa in mid-town Atlanta that puts a new meaning to the
word pamper. It's scientific combined with SPA.
About 50 people of some influence and character (I guess that includes
me) came together to see what they could do for one another.
The results were fantastic.
Wanna NetWeave? Start with your BEST. Your best friends, your best
contacts, your best influencers, and even your best prospects. Throw a
party. Doesn't have to be big. More like a social gathering with a message
and a mission: help others first.
The good new is that people who think it's a crazi idea won't show. The
better news is that everyone who does show will be eager to participate.
The best news is that you will have business and opportunities being thrown
at you left and right.
Like anything else, you have to practice the process outside the event in
order to master it. Bob Littell is the current master. He's an insurance guy
who doesn't sell insurance. He creates opportunities for other people to
succeed, and then people buy from Bob.
Proof? I've seen it personally. And in two NetWeaving events, I've never
seen so much power in a room. Not necessarily powerful people, rather
people with the power to help others. It's a business sight to see. And
when someone offers their help, you can't help but want to help others.
My philosophy of business has always been "give value first." People
read my article and want more. Been doing that for eleven extremely
successful years. Plan to continue that process for the next twenty-five
years or so, and then I'll quit.
Jeffrey Gitomer's The Little Black Book of Connections is based on the power of give value first. It's about how you can climb the ladder without stepping on people's backs. It's about how to earn the respect of a powerful mentor without begging.
Story Merchant E-Book Deal - Sell Your Story to Hollywood $.99
Through the expanding influence of the Internet and the corporatization of both publishing and entertainment, the process of getting your book to the big screen has gotten more complicated, more eccentric, and more exciting.
New From Story Merchant Books Welcome Home Warzone by Gregory Asgaard
Fresh from the intense responsibilities of overseeing the mental health and fitness for duty of 5,000 sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, Lt. Gregory Asgaard thought he was finally stepping into a quieter life. He had a meaningful job with good hours, the love and support of family, and a new home. And then, in the fall of 2018, Greg plummeted overnight from respected psychologist to pariah after being falsely accused of a terroristic threat, a devastating experience that exacerbated his underlying PTSD and obliterated his ongoing efforts at readjustment from military service.
This is the true account of one veteran's fight to reclaim his life and mental health from the nightmare of wrongful incarceration, which resulted in a traumatic head injury and ultimately led to a landmark legal case, forcing a reckoning with the legal system's treatment of the vulnerable within its custody.
The Power of How Stories Change The World with Ken Atchity
The Write Mindset | Thomas J. Bellezza
With fifty years’ experience in the publishing world and thirty-five years in entertainment, Dr. Ken Atchity is a self-labeled “Story Merchant” author, professor, producer, career coach, teacher, and literary manager, responsible for launching dozens of books and films.
Performentor Shorts: Dr. Ken Atchity on Rejection as an Illusion
Well-known writers throughout history have shared their perspectives on the inevitable rejection that comes with the profession. Their insights often emphasize the importance of persistence, self-belief, and finding a valuable lesson in every "no."
Listen to Dr. Ken Atchity reframe rejection as an illusion we can see past, instead of an unmovable barrier. It matters. Find out why.
via @peopleenergyprinciples
Revisting: Myth to Movie: Pygmalion By Ken Atchity
The wish-fulfillment archetype —the dream become flesh—finds perennially poignant expression in stories based on the Pygmalion myth.
A Cyprian sculptor-priest-king who had no use for his island’s women, Pygmalion dedicated his energies to his art. From a flawless piece of ivory, he carved a maiden, and found her so beautiful that he robed her and adorned her with jewels, calling her Galatea (“sleeping love”). His became obsessed with the statue, praying to Aphrodite to bring him a wife as perfect as his image. Sparked by his earnestness, the goddess visited Pygmalion’s studio and was so pleasantly surprised to find Galatea almost a mirror of herself she brought the statue to life. When Pygmalion returned home, he prostrated himself at the living Galatea’s feet. The two were wed in Aphrodite’s temple, and lived happily ever after under her protection.
Though it was never absent from western literature, this transformation myth resoundingly entered modern consciousness with Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, which enlisted it to explore the complexity of human relationships in a stratified society. My Fair Lady, based on Shaw’s retelling, took the myth to another level of audience awareness.
The obligatory beats of the Pygmalion myth: the protagonist has a dream inspired by encounter with an unformed object (“Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter!”), uses his skills and/or prayers to shape it into a reality; falls in love with the embodiment of his dream, and lives happily ever after, or not.
Essential to the pattern is that the dreamer-protagonist is rewarded for doing something about his dream, for turning it from dream to reality with or without a dea ex machina. Thanks to the infinite creativity of producers, directors, and writers, Pygmalion has generated countless wonderful movie story variations: Inventor Gepetto, in Pinocchio (1940--with numerous remakes), wishes that the wooden puppet he’s created could become the son he never had; a department store window dresser (Robert Walker), in One Touch of Venus (1948, based on the Ogden Nash/S. J. Perelman musical), kisses a statue of Venus (Ava Gardner) into life— trouble begins when she falls in love with him. In 1983’s thenEducating Rita (from Willy Russell’s play), a young hairdresser (Julie Walters), wishing to improve herself by continuing her education, finds a tutor in jaded professor (Michael Caine), who’s reinvigorated by her. In a reverse of the pattern, as quickly as she changes under his tutelage he resents the “educated” Rita and wants her, selfishly, to stay as she was.
Alvin Johnson (Nick Cannon), in 2003’s Love Don’t Cost a Thing, a remake of Can’t Buy Me Love (1987), comes to the rescue of Paris (Christina Milian) when she wrecks her mother’s Cadillac and can’t pay the $1,500 for the repair. Alvin fronts the cash with his savings and, in return, Paris has to pretend to be his girlfriend for two weeks; Alvin becomes “cool” for the first time in his life, but learns that the price of popularity is higher than he bargained for. In She’s All That (1999), the pattern is reversed as Freddie Prinze, Jr., is a high school hotttie who bets a classmate he can turn nerdy Rachel Leigh Cook into a prom queen but, of course, runs into trouble when he falls in love with his creation. In The Princess Diaries (2001), Mia (Anne Hathaway), a gawky Bay Area teen, learns her father was the prince of Genovia; the queen (Julie Andrews) hopes her granddaughter will take her father’s rightful place as heir, and transforms her from a social misfit into a regal lady but discover their growing love for each other is more important than the throne.
Pretty Woman (1990) is my second favorite example of the tirelessness of the Pygmalion myth. Taking the flower-girl motif of My Fair Lady to the extreme, Vivian (Julia Roberts) is a prostitute (albeit idealized) and Edward (Richard Gere) a ruthless businessman with no time for real love. As he opens his credit cards on a Rodeo Drive shopping spree, we experience a telescoped transformation-by-money accompanied with the upbeat music that reminds us that we love this highly escapist part of the Pygmalion story, the actual process of turning ugly duckling into princess swan.
My favorite example is La Femme Nikita (remade as Point of No Return, 1993, with Bridget Fonda), because it shows the versatility of mythic structure, taking Pygmalion to the darkest place imaginable as it fashions of street druggie Nikita (Anne Parillaud), under Bob’s merciless tutelage (Tcheky Karyo), a chameleon-like lethal sophisticate whose heart of gold allows her to escape both her unformed past and her darkly re-formed present.
So popular is the Pygmalion myth with audiences that it crops up in the most unlikely places. In Pao zhi nu peng you (My Dream Girl, 2003), Shanghai slum-dweller Cheung Ling (Vicki Zhao) is thrust into high society when she encounters her long-lost father, who hires Joe Lam to makeover his daughter to fit her new status. In Million-Dollar Baby (2004), the unformed matter (Hilary Swank) reports for duty and demands to be transformed. Instead of falling in love, the boxing instructor (Clint Eastwood) is reborn, reinvigorated, re-inspired, learns to feel again—thereby revealing the underlying emotion that drives the Pygmalion myth for both protagonist and the character he reshapes: rebirth into a more ideal state of being.
First published in Produced By, the official magazine of the Producers Guild of America
Most Important Lesson Every Screenwriter Should Learn: Don't Wait
Every project has its own clock!
~ Ken Atchity
A Screenwriter's Life in the Waiting Room
How long can I wait?
Screenwriters ask me that all the time, becoming impatient and anxious that their script is taking so long to make it to the screen.
My answer surprises them:
Don’t wait at all.
Waiting is a massive waste of time and can lead to depression and/or existential despair, and who knows what else. Write something while you wait. Plant another seed, cultivate it, and train it to grow straight. And while it’s taking its sweet time to bud and then bloom, do something else. Start a new spec script!
Back in my own “waiting room” in the sixties, I reviewed a great book by Barry Stevens: Don’t Push the River, It Flows by Itself. I translated Stevens’ Zen advice to Hollywood where every project has its own clock and will happen when and only when that clock reaches the appointed hour. Other than keeping that project on track the best you can by responding when asked to or when appropriate, there’s nothing much you can do—other than financing it yourself (a serious option, by the way) to speed up that project’s clock. By the nature of things, the project clock is invisible, which means extra frustration for the creator—unless you refuse to wait.
In 2015 I, and my dear producing partner Norman Stephens, produced a sweet little Christmas movie called Angels in the Snow. I had only been trying to get that movie produced for twenty years! I sold it to TNT once and came close to a deal at Hallmark another time. My client Steve Alten’s Meg after twenty-two years, finally premiered in 2018. What was I doing for the last twenty years? Writing twelve scripts and producing other films for television and cinema, managing hundreds of books, writing and publishing ten of my own, playing tennis, traveling, having a wonderful life. Not waiting.
Waiting makes writers neurotic. If I allowed myself to express my neurosis, as many writers have not yet learned not to do, I would drive those involved in making my or my clients’ stories into films crazy—and risk losing their support or return calls. The question I personally hate hearing the most, “What’s going on?” is one I have to force myself to refrain from asking. Your job, when it’s your turn to move your story forward, is to “get the ball out of your court” as efficiently, as well, and as soon as possible. Then, on that particular project, you have to wait for it to be returned to your court. Very few actual events requiring your help occur along the way, leaving a huge gap of dead time in between them, like super novae separated by vast time years of space. But it’s not dead time if you use it for something else creative.
If the glacial pace of the Hollywood creative business fills you with dread, you’re in the wrong business or you’re dealing with it the wrong way. Don’t wait. Do. As the great photographer Ansel Adams put it: “Start doing more. It’ll get rid of all those moods you’re having.”
Writer/producer/literary manager and former professor Ken Atchity’s most recent book for writers is Sell Your Story to Hollywood: Writer’s Pocket Guide to the Business of Show Business (to accompany his online course realfasthollywooddeal.com. This article is adapted from that book.
Newtown screenwriter creates her own path to success, markets her own work
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Daina Ann Smith, of Newtown, is a screenwriter who got her start right from her kitchen table. Most recently, she had two of her original feature scripts brought into development. Smith also is working as a creative lead at an audio storytelling company. Photographed on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Newtown, Conn. H John Voorhees III/Hearst Connecticut Media |
NEWTOWN — When Daina Ann Smith first sat down at her kitchen table nearly a decade ago to work on screenplays, she said she was in “steep student loan debt.”
And now, the first screenplay she completed, called “Student Loans,” is in development to be made into a full-length feature film with the producers of “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Magic Mike.”
“Student Loans” will hit theaters sometimes in 2026. “It’s been an eight-year-long journey,” said Smith, who works from home as a creative lead at Pocket FM, an audio storytelling company.
In 2018, she began working with “The Meg” producer Kenneth Atchity, who took one of her scripts into development. In 2021, Smith signed a contract for another original feature screenplay.
To get noticed by Hollywood producers, Smith said she looks for those involved in similar types of projects as the one she’s pitching, and emails them her queries.
Over the years, Smith said she has sent out thousands of emails and built an “amazing network.”
Her advice to fellow writers? Don't become obsessed with getting someone to represent your work.
“It’s very hard to get an agent,” Smith said. “You have to have a proven track record of selling work.
“Instead of focusing so much on that, I will continue to write and continue to build relationships," she said. "Don’t think that it can’t be you.”
Georgia OKeeffe on Being an Artist
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant — there is no such thing, making your unknown known is the important thing — and keeping the unknown always beyond you.”
Georgia O’Keeffe counseled Sherwood Anderson in her 1923 letter of advice on being an artist.
Famous Author Mentorships: William Faulkner and Sherwood Anderson
Anderson, an established writer in New Orleans, encouraged Faulkner to focus on novels and write about his native Mississippi region, leading to works like The Sound and the Fury. 
Faulkner reflects on the most important thing Anderson taught him about being a writer:
"I learned that, to be a writer, one has first got to be what he is, what he was born; that to be an American and a writer, one does not necessarily have to pay lip-service to any conventional American image… You had only to remember what you were."
Faulkner reflects on the most important thing Anderson taught him about being a writer:
"I learned that, to be a writer, one has first got to be what he is, what he was born; that to be an American and a writer, one does not necessarily have to pay lip-service to any conventional American image… You had only to remember what you were."
Decades later, Faulkner would remember Anderson as his sole important mentor in a beautiful 1953 piece originally published in The Atlantic as “Sherwood Anderson: An Appreciation.”
Produced BY: Mentoring Matters by Kia Kiso
Mentoring Matters - Developing A Career: Learning To Identify The Story You Want And Go After It |
| By Kia Kiso, |
 When I applied to the 2016 PGA Mentoring Program, I had just walked away from the option on a book into which I had put a lot of time and resources. I was disappointed and wished I could have saved the project. The experience led me to realize that development was an aspect of producing I was less familiar with. I was looking for expert advice on how to assess opportunities, set up a project for success, handle relationships with authors, lawyers and talent, and run a production company. Thankfully the PGA Mentoring Program paired me with producer Ken Atchity. I was thrilled to be matched with Ken for a lot of reasons, among them his industry experience and teaching background. However I admit, I was especially attracted to his philosophy—“I believe in the power of stories to change the world.” Our first connection was an in-person, 90-minute meeting, in which he gave me feedback on a particular project of mine. Ken had some great advice about pitching—if a project tackles potentially controversial or delicate issues, Ken advised weaving some well-researched statistics or facts into the pitch to send the message that the material wouldn’t suggest a problem for the network and lead to a premature no. He wrapped up the meeting saying I could contact him about the project at any time, even after the mentorship ends. Very generous. Since that first meeting, we’ve had a pivotal phone conversation during which he suggested I was in a great position to go after an option I was very excited about, helping me to design a strategy on how to move forward quickly—starting with enhancing my relationship with the rights owner. He’s been ready to answer any questions by email. Even as recently as this morning, we were in touch to discuss a lunch I was preparing for with a writer who wanted to work with me. Ken has been wonderful. He celebrates my triumphs and brainstorms solutions to my challenges. I am very grateful for his willingness to participate in the Mentoring Program and to the Producers Guild for providing it |
Justin Price Wins The One Voice Award!
BIG Congratulations to the talented Justin Allen Price Voice Over WINNER of the One Voice Award for best performance of an audiobook/fiction for his narration of Story Merchant Book's Talmadge Farm by Leo Daughtry - Author - Talmadge Farm!
You can now LISTEN to Talmadge Farm on Audible!
NEW From Story Merchant Books: A Hospice Chaplain's Journey Through Grief
Death doesn't change love. The ability and the
way our loved ones express their love is what changes."
In Moxie, author Candi Wuhrman invites readers on an introspective
journey through the griefs of life, weaving together personal anecdotes,
spiritual insights, and profound reflections on the human experience.
With a blend of vulnerability and wisdom, Wuhrman
shares heartfelt stories of love, loss, and resilience, inviting readers to
embrace their inner strength and tap into the boundless energy of the spirit.
Through the lens of her experience as a hospice
chaplain, Moxie explores the power of grief processing, the beauty
of human connection, and the profound impact of embracing life's challenges
with courage and grace. From navigating the depths of sorrow to celebrating
moments of joy and revelation, Moxie offers a roadmap for finding
meaning and purpose in the face of adversity.
Ken Atchity – Embracing the Insecurity of Freedom
He talks about his thoughts on competition, creativity and what it hinges on, doing great work in isolation and how he turned around his accountant dad to seeing the freedom and beauty in insecurity.
He talk staring at fire and mountains, dying by committee, the perfection of Dante’s Divine Comedy, chopping wood – and the Rose Café.
Seeing the David before carving it.
- Websites:
- https://storymerchant.com/
- https://www.atchityproductions.com/about-us
- IG: @storymerchant
How to Design Your Novel For Film Adaptation
Mid-career novelists seeking representation complain that none of their books have been made into films. At any given moment, we in Los Angeles have literally stacks of novels from New York publishers on our desks. Going through them to find the ones that might make motion pictures or television movies, we—and other producers, managers, and agents—are constantly running into the same problems.If you regard your writing career as a business, you should be planning your novel at the drawing board to make it appealing to filmmakers. Here's how.
Common Problems in Novel-To-Film Adaptation
- “There’s no third act…it just trickles out.”
- “There are way too many characters and it’s not clear till page 200 who the protagonist is.”
- “I can’t relate to anyone in the book.”
- “At the end, the antagonist lays out the entire plot to the protagonist.”
- “There’s not enough action.” Not just action but dramatic action.
- “There’s nothing new here. This concept has been used to death.”/“We don’t know who to root for.”
- “The whole thing is overly contrived.”
- “There’s no dialogue, so we don’t know what the character sounds like.”
- “There’s no high concept here or a new way into a familiar concept. How do we pitch this?”
- “There’s no real pacing.”
- “The protagonist is reactive instead of proactive.”
- “At the end of the day, I have no idea what this story is ”
- “The main character is 80, and speaks only Latvian.”
- “There are no set pieces.”
Of course anyone with the mind of a researcher can list a film or two that got made despite one of these objections. But for novelists who are frustrated at not getting their books made into films that should be small consolation and is, practically speaking, a futile observation. Yes, you might get lucky and find a famous Bulgarian director, who’s fascinated with the angst of octogenarians, studied pacing with John Sales or Jim Jarmusch, and loves ambiguous endings.
But if you regard your career as a business instead of a quixotic crusade, you should be planning your novel at the drawing board to make it appealing to filmmakers.
Characters
Characters are the most important element of the story and should generate the action, the setting, and the point of view. Your job as a writer is to give us insight into each and every character in your story, no matter how evil or virtuous his or her actions may be. Characters are the heart of the drama.
- Give us a strong protagonist whose motivation and mission shape the action and who, good or bad, is eminently relatable—and who’s in the “star age range” of 35-50 (where at any given moment twenty male stars reside, and maybe ten female stars; a star being a name that can set up the film by his attachment to it).
- Make sure a dramatist looking at your book will clearly see three well-defined acts: act one (the setup), act two (rhythmic development, rising and falling action), and act three (climax leading to conclusive ending).
- Express your character’s personality in dialogue that distinguishes him, and makes him a role a star would die to play.
- Make sure your story has a clear-cut dramatic premise, e.g., unbridled ambition leads to self-destruction or you can’t go home again.
Have someone in the film industry read your synopsis or treatment before you commit to writing the novel.
Revise accordingly.
Though I’ve observed the phenomena for several decades now, it still surprises me that even bestselling novelists, even the ones who complain that no one has made a film from their books yet, don’t write novels dramatic enough to lend themselves easily to mainstream film. It’s a well-known, but lamentable, phenomenon in publishing that, with very few exceptions, the more books a novelist sells the less critical his publisher’s editors are of his work. So time and again we read novels that start out well, roar along to the halfway point, then peter off into the bogs of continuous character development or action resolution.
A publisher invests between $25,000 and $100,000 or more in publishing your novel. A low-budget feature film from a major Hollywood studio today costs at least $50 million. There is, from a business point of view, no comparison. Risking $50 million means the critical factor is raised as high as can be imagined when your book hits the “story department”—much higher than the critical factor of even the biggest publishers. Hollywood studies what audiences want by keeping track, in box office dollars, cents, and surveys–what they respond best to.
If you want to add film to your profit centers as a novelist, it would behoove you to study what makes films work. Disdaining Hollywood may be a fashionable defense for writers who haven’t gotten either rich or famous from it, but it’s not productive in furthering your cinematic career or building your retirement fund.
via Writer's Digest
Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift bookOh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.
Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
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