Design Your Novel or Nonfiction Book as a Film

By Dr. Ken Atchity, the Story Merchant

Unless you’re making a documentary film of your instructional nonfiction book (in which case this article isn’t for you and you can contact me separately about what to do!), whether your book is fiction or nonfiction it needs to be shaped as a STORY if it’s going to make it to the big or little screen.

            Most of what follows is based on my work with novelists, but when a nonfiction author—of, say, an inspirational book based on his or her own life—wants a movie to be made, they need to follow more or less the same rules as a novelist would. Their film treatment, the map they make that turns their book into a dramatic story, must consist of scenes and acts, twists and turning points, a compelling beginning and a satisfying ending—or it has little chance of succeeding in the wide world of commercial storytelling. So if you’re a nonfiction author, read what follows with the necessary adjustments in your mind; but also know that if you structure your nonfiction book dramatically even before you write the book, it’ll no doubt be a better, reader-friendlier book too.

            Novelists seeking representation complain that none of their books have been made into films. At any given moment, we have literally stacks of novels on our desks in Los Angeles--from New York agents and publishers, and novelists around the world. 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:

·         “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.”

·         “The characters all sound the same.”

·         “The protagonist is unrelatable.”

·         “There’s not enough 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. 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 about.”

·         “The main character is 80, and speaks only Latvian.”

·         “It’s set in Papago…in the 1960s, and is filled with long passages in Uto-Aztecan.”

·         “There are no set pieces that make it a movie.”

“There’s no third act…it just trickles out.”

 

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). Acquisition editors for the traditional publishing houses aren’t as set on the three-act structure as they should be. A novel can be so engrossing, in the world it creates, that they figure readers won’t care so much about the traditional beginning, middle, and end. When it comes to films, though, the proven formula is just the opposite. Inconclusive third acts lead to box office and ratings disappointment. And if you follow that dramatic formula, which is as old as Aristotle’s Poetics, you’ll end up creating a better novel too.

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 useless observation when it comes to breaking into Hollywood. 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 from the outset to make it appealing to filmmakers. That means start your film planning at the drawing board, not after the fact.

 “There are way too many characters and it’s not clear till page 200 who the protagonist is.”

How many characters do you really need to tell your story effectively? Do the pruning yourself. Cut the characters that aren’t recurring and/or absolutely necessary to tell the story powerfully. Unless you’re writing War and Peace, you don’t need dozens and dozens of characters.

And make sure you introduce your protagonist at the beginning. When a star’s management or agency are reading for him or her, if they don’t see him introduced in the first few pages, they don’t have the patience to go searching for the character the producers want that star to play. Believe me, good producers make sure the screenplay introduces Brad or Angelina on page one! It’s common sense.                     

“I can’t relate to anyone in the book.”

            When studio execs say that, it usually means the lead isn’t a strong male character. To maximize your chances for success in Hollywood, give us a strong (preferably male) lead in your novel who, good or bad, is eminently relatable—and who’s in the “star age range” of 35-50 (where at any given moment 20 male stars reside; a star being a name that can set up the film by his attachment to it). The reason for the male lead is simple: women determine not only box office success but also television success. They are the primary force behind ticket sales and Nielsen ratings. They want, for the most part, to see strong male leads. That’s what provably draws them to the box office, and to a new series or film on television. Of course female leads make good films that attract women too. But for major success, go with a male lead because that’s what the market demands.

“At the end, the antagonist lays out the entire plot to the protagonist.”

Make sure you don’t neatly “wrap up” your plot with explanation instead of action. Telling us what happened that got us to this particular ending is essentially un-dramatic and is sure way to weaken your chances for the screen.

“There’s no dialogue, so we don’t know what the character sounds like.” AND: “The characters all sound the same.”

            Express your novel character’s personality in dialogue that distinguishes him, and makes him a role a star would die to play. One of the sure reasons for a “pass” is the observation, “The characters all sound the same.” If a character is well-constructed, he will express himself characteristically, meaning that no one else in the book will sound the same way. Actors decide which roles attract them primarily based on the dialogue given to the character. Of course you can trust your screenwriter to do the dialogue for you, but the shelves are filled with screenplays that never get made into films because the screenwriter wasn’t able to bring the dialogue alive—any more than the novelist did. Don’t leave that possibility. Write powerful, active dialogue that moves the story forward.

            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 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, and then peter off into the bogs of formless character development or action resolution.

            In today’s world, a traditional 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 $60 million; even in the independent world decent films can cost $2 to $5 million. There is, from a business point of view, no comparison between the book business and the film business in that regard. Risking $60 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 finest publishers. Hollywood studies what audiences want by logging, in box office dollars, cents, and surveys, what they respond best to.

       

     “There’s not enough action.”

            Have someone in the film industry read your synopsis before you commit to writing the novel. That way you already know it has film potential and your confidence will show through as you construct your chapters.

Most novels that don’t make it to the screen fail because they lack dramatic action. They’re overly filled with internal monologue, thinking, reflection, description, contemplation—whereas a film must have action from start to finish. Action consists of two elements: actual action (“He rang the doorbell. She greeted him a shotgun blast.”) and dialogue. Good dialogue moves the story forward, like these lines from “Chinatown”:

                                    EVELYN

            She’s my daughter.

Gittes slaps her.

GITTES

I said I want the truth.

                        EVELYN

She’s my sister.

He slaps her again.

                                   

EVELYN

                        She’s my daughter.

He slaps her again.

                                    EVELYN

                        My sister, my daughter.

He slaps her again.

                                    GITTES

                        I said I want the truth.

                                    EVELYN

                        She’s my sister and my daughter.

So make sure your novel is structured as much around action and forceful dialogue as it is around ambience and reflection.               

      

“There’s nothing new here. This concept has been used to death.”

OR: “There’s no high concept here. How do we pitch this?”

            What is this story about? Is the giant-killer question that usually stops consideration of a novel close in the acquisitions meeting if no one can answer it clearly and immediately. Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was made into a film because the question is easily answered: It’s about an inmate in an asylum who’s saner than his keepers. William Wharton’s Birdy is about a boy who believes he is a bird.

“We don’t know who to root for.”

What they mean when you hear them say that is they don’t think a star will play the lead role in this story. Whether the main character is sympathetic or not, he must be intriguing and relatable so much so that you can’t stop watching what happens to him. When Shakespeare’s Richard III comes out at the beginning of the movie or play and tells you what evil he plans to inflict upon the royal court, you can’t stop watching. You find yourself rooting for him because he’s just so unabashedly bad. It must be clear in your novel why we care what happens to the protagonist.

“The whole thing is overly contrived.”

Contrivance means that you simply don’t believe the action because it’s too far-fetched, not grounded in reality. The good storyteller’s job is to make even incredible actions credible. The moment they lose credibility with the audience, you’ve lost the audience. Make sure every event in your novel is constructed to avoid that accusation.

 “There’s no real pacing.”

The good candidate novel for movies is one that offers a rollercoaster ride of unpredictable and gripping twists and turns. You can help insure this by structuring each of your three acts into three acts, and each scene into three acts: compelling beginning, unpredictable middle, and conclusive, satisfying ending.

“The protagonist is reactive instead of proactive.”

Make sure your protagonist takes charge of the action that shapes his or her destiny in your story, instead of being the passive victim of events. Just as no one likes eternal victims in real life, no one has sympathy for them in fiction. They are simply boring. We want characters that actively get into and out of trouble. The old film formula is true: Act 1: Get your hero into a tree. Act 2: Shake the tree. Act 3: Get him out of the tree. This works for comedy OR tragedy. He either gets down safely, or falls on his head. But he doesn’t fall from the wind, but from how own misjudgment.

“The main character is 80, and speaks only Latvian.”

“It’s set in Papago…in the 1960s, and is filled with long passages in Uto-Aztecan.”

Suffice it to say that successful American movies are almost always set in America. That’s even why the rest of the world buys them—they like to see what happens here, whether it’s the weirdly non-mainstream world of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” or the mainstream zaniness of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Stories set in other countries may be made in other countries, but they’re all too rarely made in America. By the same token, though not as religiously, period movies (set before the 1990s) are much more challenging to get made than contemporary ones. So when you’re planning your novel in Regency England, unless it’s a Regency Romance, ask yourself, Can I set this story TODAY? That will give you a better shot at the screen.

    “There are no big set pieces that make it a movie.”

  

Producers call it “opening the story up.” Stories that are mostly interior are more challenging than stories, like Avatar, The Perfect Storm or Captain Phillips, that take the audience to a setting that screams to be a movie—moving pictures in a world we want to experience with our eyes. If you must have a conversation occupying the larger part of a chapter, take it outside to someplace interesting. Create an atmosphere that directors itch to capture on camera.

Finally, if you aim 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. All of this free advice is one thing, but there’s no substitute for success. If you aspire to entertainment success, look at successful models and govern yourself accordingly. I’ll never forget a comment made by one of my students years ago. 

She whispered to me during a break, because she thought her comment was embarrassingly naïve, “I don’t know anything about the rules, so I just took my favorite novel, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and outlined it. Then I based my book’s outline on that. Is that crazy?” 

            “Crazy?” I said. “Just the opposite. It’s the perfectly craftsmanlike thing to do. If you want to build an engine that works, take an engine apart to see how it works, how the parts fit together. You’ve got the exact right approach.”

 

Reposted From My Addiction Books by Nadine Maritz

Guest Post: Terry Southern: Mentoris Maximus

by Nancy Nigrosh

 Some people debate the value of film school. I’m not one of them.

Terry Southern’s NYU master screenwriting class was held on Tuesday nights at Remington’s Bar, a basement dive on Waverly Place. Trudging through the ice-hardened sidewalk, I noticed his beat up Ford Mustang with the broken canvas top barely covering up the snow from the storm night before. I always wondered how he’d made it back to Connecticut in that thing.

Terry was one of a kind, a truly badass screenwriter. Even in the revolutionary times of the 1960’s and ‘70’s, the author of the geared to shock novel, Candy, also wrote screenplays for Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider, Barbarella, and many other films that scored bull’s-eyes at shaking up the status quo.
I nodded to my classmates, who each nursed a coke or a beer at the counter. In turns, we sauntered over to Terry’s table, where he presided in kingly fashion, and gave insights into the magic of professional filmmaking. There were six of us, so we got roughly half an hour each. By ten o’clock, Terry was in a world of his own, yet still adept at letting us in on Stanley Kubrick insider stories and cool anecdotes about the scenes behind the scenes of Easy Rider.

His advice was punctuated by references to classical drama that he connected to anecdotes about the films he’d written. Referring to The Magic Christian, one of his own novels he’d adapted for the screen, he became incensed that Ringo Starr, Peter Sellers and “all these other limey pricks” didn’t see that “Hamlet and his problems” were an expression of emotional excess that couldn’t be exposed simply by indulging in excess on screen. It seemed what he was really teaching us was something else other than writing, something about the reality of being a writer. He actually adored these “pricks,” who were his comrades-in-arms. But only they could get away with behaving outrageously. As a writer, Terry found out there was a double standard when it came to being creative. He had to bear the architectural burden of responsibility without the advantage of being in control.

Each of us pitched a story to Terry. He seemed to be listening and weighing words on some invisible scale only he knew the value of, followed by oblique commentary until he finally dug out a golden nugget and tossed it with a knowing raised eyebrow reminiscent of Durand Durand from Barbarella.
I’d just seen Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart, so I pitched a forbidden love story between an immature actress in her twenties and a teenage boy actor, and framed it as a film-within-a-film. Fueled by pretentious schoolgirl logic I said, “I just worked on a feature and can see that filmmaking creates a heightened state where the rules just don’t apply…” He interrupted by exclaiming, ”I want to write this with you! I know all about what goes on on movie sets, so it’ll be authentic!” I was flattered and didn’t quite know how to respond. “You’ve never even been to California!” he concluded, shaking his head. It was odd that he was the one pitching me. I couldn’t quite believe it.
“How would it work?” I shrugged. He explained, “You write pages, send them to me in Connecticut and then I make comments and add to them, then mail them back, ‘Special Delivery’, wherever you are.” The plan was to collaborate through the post office, and of course, we’d write cutting edge, wild and subversive projections about how a girl in her 20’s – if left to her own dark devices, might behave. Little did I know this process would take nearly two years. Fat manila envelopes from Terry covered with red ink stamped “S.W.A.K.” and “Good Grief!” would ebb and flow. He also sent copies of his books, Red-Dirt Marijuana and Blue Movie, complete with scrawled notes I wasn’t sure were for me personally or well-thumbed copies he had lying around.

On our script’s pages, Terry vented all too real frustrations he’d had on the films he’d worked on with mind blowing insights into a screenwriter’s travails.

He created wonderfully bizarre characters, including the producer’s assistant cum girlfriend, Comancha, an Apache dominatrix who rids the set of the studio’s evil spirits with a down and dirty, pow-wowing striptease.

My contributions were more romantic and melodramatic, befitting my naïveté. Nevertheless, Terry gallantly told me how talented I was. He suggested I apply to UCLA’s MFA screenwriting program, move to L.A. and take my shot. He said he’d write a recommendation. He did. Within months I was on the road, traveling cross country.

Westwood seemed benign, even sleepy, but just as Terry hinted out loud, L.A.’s ‘70’s casual suburban façade was an intimidating mental construct even more self obsessed than the one he’d conjured in our script. His potent warnings about Hollywood made me fearful, and, at 22, I was still just a kid with a lot more living to do. It became clear I wasn’t destined to become a screenwriter after all.
Little did I realize at the time how well Terry had prepared me for the career I did end up having in Tinseltown years later as a literary agent. In spite of the supportive yet subversive film folks he’d worked for, Terry was well aware that he’d been lucky. With a killer smile he advised, “Court luck, keep your thumb out, and like D.H. Lawrence said, ‘when you’ve got something to say, say it hot.’ Somebody’s gonna want whatcha got.”


Reposted from Hollywood Journal

About Nancy Nigrosh

Nancy Nigrosh is a former talent and literary agent at Innovative Artists and The Gersh Agency, who has represented many award winning writers and directors for film and television including Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and Stuart Beattie (Collateral, Pirates Of The Caribbean). She teaches at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and is a frequent contributor to Indiewire. Through her company, Literary Business, Nancy offers freelance developmental and consulting editing for authors and screenwriters. Follow Nancy on Twitter @nancynigrosh

Noire's G-Spot 2: The Seven Deadly Sins Holiday Box Sets Are Now Available for Nook and Kindle

G-Spot 2: The Seven Deadly Sins Holiday Box Set (Pride, Betrayal, and Greed) Seasons Greetings Urban Erotic Readers! Get your holiday season started right with G-Spot 2: The Seven Deadly Sins, now available in three special Holiday Box Sets! The Deadly Sins usually sell for $4.99 each, but for a limited time you can get each of the three sets for $9.99, which means one book is FREE! The 3rd Box Set includes an Original Noire Twist Alternate Ending with exciting twists and turns delivered in classic Noire fashion that is sure to leave you gripping the edge of your seat! G-Spot 2: The Seven Deadly Sins Holiday Box Set (Envy, Lust, and Trickery) As a special bonus, the 3rd Box Set ALSO contains an excerpt called "Chronicles Of Crooklyn" taken from A NEW YORK STATE OF MINE! the upcoming five-part urban serial banga that's sure to cause havoc on the literary scene. Penned by Noire and up-and-coming writer and lyricist Reem Raw, "Chronicles of Crooklyn" is a perfect holiday treat for Noire's readers and fans. So download your Holiday Box Set today and show some love by giving this sure-fire stocking stuffer for the holidays. Available now on Kindle, and soon on Nook! G-Spot 2: The Seven Deadly Sins Holiday Box Set (Revenge, Alternate End, & Chronicles of Crooklyn) WARNING! This here ain't no romance It's an urban erotic tale, Slimy double-crossers Settin' rivals up to fail! If PRIDE is the mother, Then BETRAYAL is her son. GREED is steady feenin' hard, And ENVY packs a gun! LUST will have you drippin' TRICKERY will make you cringe, But out of all the Deadly Sins, The sweetest is REVENGE! G-Spot 2 is a sexy street novel told in seven parts. Each installment of the series is woven through an urban principle of the Seven Deadly Sins. Keep riding the train, Black If you no longer wish to receive e-mails from Urban Erotic Noire Publications, simply unsubscribe yourself by clicking the button below. Urban Erotic Noire Publications

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Nik Halik's Thrillionaire Revolution

“Birdbath”: Particles of Speech

Actor/Director Lila French speaking at the Prytania during the New Orleans Film Festival

Film Festivals should offer Lila French’s lovely adaption of “Birdbath” as a primer to filmmaking tyros.   “Birdbath” reminds me of a fine pen sketch by Sidney Paget or Edward Gorey.  You see the finished work and surprise yourself by realizing how few strokes went into such a deft creation.  It’s a short movie containing nothing but conversation enlivened with acting.  When the actors, director, DP, and rest of the crew are excellent, the result is better than most anything around. 

Ah, no, “Skook” had no business winning anything at NOFF.  “Birdbath” was, like, way better, Dude.  Fer sure! 


  At the time I caught the second screening of “Birdbath” at the New Orleans Film Festival, slacker films had swamped me.  Hours of flat characters with nothing to say to each other just drains the creative impulse.  I couldn’t think to review.  After seeing “Birdbath”, it occurred to me how crucial good dialogue is in any film.  Unfortunately, independent films shall remain saturated with too-cool losers who smoke, smoke weed, slouch, and detach themselves from everything, including those foolish enough to sit and watch all this.  

My next essay, “Speech Impediments”, will break that detachment with an overdue violent assault.  Now let’s focus on how Lila French uses dialogue to craft an excellent short film.

Craft shall be our operative word.  All dialogue is crafted conversation.  Remember that poetry and drama come from the same source: men (sorry ladies – but it’s true) standing alone reciting stories and histories in verse.  The dialogue in drama only became prose after the Restoration, after a period when Cromwell had banned plays and broken traditions.  While they work very differently, movies remain tied to plays in this regard.  You need poise and purpose in the fabric of every character’s speech, Bill and Ted included.   



In “Birdbath” we have the simplest of set-ups: two employees of a diner walk towards home after closing.  Unlike a play written by the horrid Neil Simon, we have conversation rather than one-liners.  Our characters are more realistic, but there’s a certain style in their speaking.  Some of this is time-sensitive.  Leonard Melfi wrote “Birdbath” in 1965, near the beginning of his career.  Some of this is conventional playwriting.  For those of us who have spent hundreds of hours watching drama, there’s an “Oh, Thank God!” sensation when we realize that there will be no “up-talk” cadence (say, “Dude, Totally!” to understand what I mean), and in fact we’ll spend time with serious people.  We hear the dialect of the footlights.

That dialect insists on backstory and scene setting in the early conversation.  Slacker films eschew this.  Those scripts need little mysteries to keep us from falling asleep.  The traditional pattern does require skill to keep the characters moving.  Here Melfi may have erred: Ms. French told me in an interview that she found things she could remove from the dialogue and incorporate into her acting.  A one-act should be all lean and no fat to cut.  Unlike Shakespeare, Melfi doesn’t trust his actors quite enough not to overegg his aural pudding.  Ms. French was quite right removing whatever passages she did.  “Birdbath” never lags . . . or, shall we say, slackens.

Velma Sparrow and her coworker Frankie, a better drinker than poet (a Melfi staple), are young people from the bottom of the social world.  In a play by a European or someone like Clifford Odets, we’d hear more about the societal injustices pushing these people downward.  Melfi worked more internally.  He deflected answers about his work using the term “encounter”, something of a marketing plug for two of his compilations.  The slant away from the external creates a more timeless intimacy, perhaps why this has been his most performed play.

What we see are actually two conversations: surface communication, often involving small talk or minor self-revelation, and the deeper conversation as a man and woman size each other up for a potential sexual liaison.  If you count the internal dialogue each actor skillfully displays, then we technically have four conversations going.  Instead of slacker detachment, we see the effort to sincerely bond and connect through the static.  Melfi’s later failures may have something to do with his continuing interest in sincerity and emotional exposure.  The post-70s world didn’t take kindly to such interest, a world following Nixon into covering-up.

Here Melfi gives his two actors a dynamic movement to build their performances around.  As gifted a director as she is an actor, Ms. French actually trusts us to watch carefully to see it all.    As Velma, she hesitates, obfuscates, and surrenders, only to reconsider.  Frankie stays interested, and goes from anticipation to frustration to resignation to acceptance.  Real traps exist for both actors: this could have easily been bad Tennessee Williams-lite (see: Jasmine, Blue). Ms. French and Chad McKnight create an illusion of genuinely repressed pain slowly revealed.  There are real chasms separating being on screen, acting, acting with finesse, and Al Pacino-scenery-gobbling.  Our two actors here work with finesse and in harmony with the rest of the production.  For a small, quiet movie, we have a lot going on if we know where to look.

The direction and shot selection really help point this out.  As opposed to European circles, where societal emphasis requires wider shots (Socialism poo-poos beauty shots), “Birdbath” focuses on the person.  We get a lot of close-ups. The historical setting is shown in small personal objects, like Frankie’s typewriter.  As the two characters become better acquainted, the shots change from lots of clean singles to “dirty singles” where the other character is in frame, but out of focus.  As “Birdbath” moves to denouement, you begin to really see the true beauty in each person.  Ms. French, the director, gives Ms. French, the actor, along with Mr. McKnight nowhere to hide.

As social apes, we respond to emotional intensity in others.  Again, the finesse comes into the play: we see emotion but not anger, which pushes the audience away.  As Velma dithers, the camera closes in.  We see her very blue eyes dart around trying to figure out what to do.  It’s a series of beautiful frames showing a character who is beautiful but clearly can’t relate to that concept.  She wants to be wanted, but finding herself wanted, finds herself frightened.  It’s a sequence someone should show to Olivia Wilde or Kate Beckinsale.  I’ve seen both sitting at tables in films talking and looking beautiful (Ms. Wilde shot just so in the awful “Rush”) but not having the scope to do this.  It’s the type of moment Cate Blanchett strived for just recently, but Woody got in her way (or whatever happened).  Mr. McKnight is a worthy counterbalance, matching Ms. French quite harmoniously.  It’s rare enough to really appreciate (see Jasmine, Blue. supra).

Proper dialogue gives actors a chance to build their characters.  Recall Shakespeare, an actor, offers his brethren almost solely dialogue. Actors need to trust that they can just flow out and the strength of the words will keep them from falling.  You can’t act if the dialogue makes you look ridiculous, no matter how great an actor you are (see the recent filmography of Hopkins, Sir Anthony).  But when the words on the page ring and sing, actors can find their personas in the smallest speech patterns or idiosyncrasies.  They sense little particles of movement (here hidden in  Melfi’s words) to add their voices to, which along with Lila French’s direction and the help of a talented crew have made 47 minutes of work worth seeing.


Reposted from Raymon on Film and Photography

Join Ken Atchity at the SoCal Writers Association, February 15 2014

“Pros & Cons of Direct vs, Legacy Publishing”
With more than forty years experience in the publishing world, and twenty years in entertainment, Dr. Ken Atchity is a self-defined “story merchant” – writer, producer, career coach, teacher, and literary manager, responsible for launching dozens of books and films. His life’s passion is finding great storytellers and turning them into bestselling authors and screenwriters.

Cost for the speaker and lunch:

• $25 for SCWA Members who’ve paid their $30 annual dues and rsvp by February 12th.
• $30 for SCWA Members who’ve paid their $30 annual dues and don’t rsvp by February 12th, or for non-members who rsvp by February 12th.
• $35 for non-members who don’t rsvp by February 12th.

For more information and registration information, go to the SCWA website.

Story Merchant Book's Robin John Grant's Summer's Winter Breaks into a top 100 list on Amazon!

  

 Summer's Winter surrounded by James Patterson and Agatha Christie books!

JANUARY BESTSELLERS

AVAILABLE AT STORY MERCHANT BOOKS

Guest Post: Ten Ways to Use Breaking News to Buzz Your Book, Product or Business

by  Penny C. Sansevieri
Author Marketing Experts 

In an age of the 24-hour news cycle, there is always breaking news. Hot headlines right now include the upcoming Sochi Olympic Games and the nearby terrorism in Russia, the polar vortex wreaking havoc over a good part of the U.S., the Target security breach (which continues to have long-term ramifications), the sudden death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and of course the perennial favorite, pop-culture stuff like anything Kardashian.

But what can you do if you've got something to say about a breaking news story? You must take action. First, join the conversation if the issue is on your topic or within your area of expertise. You'll find discussion on social media, considerable television coverage and plenty of cable talk show debates. Here's how you can make sure you've got everything prepared when that big story breaks:

1. Publish a blog post: Your blog is the perfect place to offer your opinion on the subject or offer a solution. Think of your blog as your home base - make sure your opinion and expertise are front and center for anyone who visits your site, and this includes the media. Your blog post could be great background material if you're interviewed.
2. Get on Twitter: If there's breaking news, you're going to find it on Twitter. Search for the hashtag (or hashtags) used for the topic (check trending topics on Twitter before you search) and jump right in. You can even offer a link to your blog post as part of the conversation. It's a great way to showcase your expertise and drive people - including the media - to your site. Remember that the media is on Twitter and they just might find you!
3. Join the discussion on social media: Once you have identified the proper hashtag(s) for your topic, do a search on social media sites. Google Plus is a good one because the search function is pretty easy there. Search and comment/participate in the discussion. This will help you gain more visibility, too.
4. Add your comments to other blogs: Whether you have a blog or not, you can also join the discussion on other, high-traffic blogs. Share your viewpoint. You just never know, your blog post could get picked up, and you also may send more traffic to your site.
5. Make your blog post viral: After you blog about the topic be sure to share your blog post link on all of your social networks. To make sure it's seen, add the hashtag(s) associated with the issue to ensure that people following that topic can find your post.
6. Contact your local media: Local media loves having a local angle to a national story. For example, can you offer tips for travelers afraid to attend the Winter Olympics, or offer strategies for consumers to protect themselves from identity theft? That kind of expertise is in great demand when big stories break and the media scramble for sources to interview.
7. Pitch national media: Can you offer a unique spin on a national story? If so, don't hesitate to start pitching. Just understand that it's competitive out there so you'll need to offer a new angle along with a captivating subject line to make your pitch stand out.
8. Subscribe to HARO, http://www.helpareporter.com/: HARO is a free e-newsletter full of leads from media seeking sources. When there's an important story, there will be a media person on HARO searching for an expert to quote.
9. Think long-term: People love predictions so the more you can focus long-term on the issues, the better. How will this topic affect us or your target market a month or a year down the road? This could be another interesting spin on an existing story.
10. Sign up for media alerts: Add your keywords to Talkwalker.com or Mention.net so you know who's saying what about your topic. This is also a good way to see who covers your topic so you can get to know them. Then, when there's breaking news, you'll already know who to contact, and better yet, they'll know you.

Now you know how those "experts" show up in the media. It's about identifying your expertise, developing talking points, and being ready to get yourself out there when there's a big news story. The next time you see a hot news story, start pitching. You just might be the go-to source everyone quotes for that story!

Follow Penny C. Sansevieri on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bookgal


Reposted from Huffington Post 

Lila French's "Birdbath" NOFF in Review

Back in October, Lila French's "Birdbath" had its festival debut at the NEW ORLEANS FILM FESTIVAL. The film screened twice (at notable venues The CAC nd The Prytania), and each screening had a full, energetic audience who responded positively to the film. There was laughter during the screenings and great questions after.