Writing for Real

I was thinking of something to write about but this week and weekend I found myself in a strange creative desert. Not necessarily a bad thing. Lots of reading and movies and TV are a good re-charge. At one point this weekend I found myself re-watching the first season of Friday Night Lights. I think I've extolled the virtues of this underwatched but superb show before. Doesn't mean I'm not going to do it again. Seriously The football is just a device on the show. The real show is about the characters.

Okay, anyway. I realized why I am so drawn to the stories in FNL. It's because they never, ever make the easy choices. Not easy in terms of story telling and not easy emotionally. They make choices that might make us unhappy, but the choices are always real.

I think too often that books, movies, and television inundate us with stories of the hard luck case that tries and tries and gets everything he wants. Inevitably, after a struggle, someone makes a heartfelt speech, and against all odds, wins. But that's not real life. People try…and they fail. Good people. People who deserve to get everything they want, bust their asses, and still end up working dead-end jobs with lives they don't want. That's just reality. It's cold. It's cruel. It's beautiful.

Rarely do miraculous events align to give a person everything they ever dreamed of. It's a terrible truth that people with money have more opportunity and that people without it rarely get the things they deserve. Even more rarely is this reality represented in our media. Maybe that's because people don't want real. They go to media to escape. However, I feel like a generation brought up on these ideals are now unable to separate the reality from the fiction. Life feels like a Pixar movie. All you have to do is want something bad enough and the stars will align in your favor.

That's not to say that we shouldn't have stories where people do win. Because that happens too. Not as often as the other, but it does happen. What I'm saying is that we should be writing stories that are balanced. Actions have consequences. Terrible consequences. For example. On FNL, one of the characters is an extraordinary player, destined for the very best things. And he's cocky, but he deserves it. He's already secured a scholarship to a prestigious school when he gets into a fight because a white kid from another school makes racial remarks about him and the girls he's with. Was he justified? Yes. The remarks were horrible. But the repercussion is that he loses his scholarship. This is real. Normally we would have expected him to show up at the school and give a big speech about race and how bad he wants the scholarship, followed by the school caving. That's not what happens though. And I applaud those writers for it. And just for the record, that character goes on and forges a new path…and it's amazing in its own right.

I'd like to see more stories do this. I would like to be one of these writers. Someone who doesn't take the easy way out. Who takes a story where it needs to go instead of where we hope it will go. Because what is literature but a reflection of our own society? Literature, and all media, are what future generations are going to look at to find out who we really were. It's not history that judges us, but the stories we tell. And not all those stories deserve a happy ending, but they do deserve an honest one.

At Loose Ends

My writing schedule is pretty strict.  Mostly because I have a small window of concentration wherein I can focus enough to bang out work.  I wake up and start writing.  After about 3-4 hours my brain can't focus any longer and I can't write.  My aimless mind-wandering is great when I'm plotting or outlining because my wanderings help me think of plot threads, but it's tough for writing.  With nothing to write, I find myself scattered and unsure what to do with myself.  

I'm working on my spec scripts for the ABC*Disney Fellowship (one for Dexter, one for Friday Night Lights) but putting together a spec isn't like writing a book.  With a book I can spend a couple days plotting and then dive right in to the writing.  My story informs the structure of the manuscript.  My characters create their own voices.  With a spec, I can't start writing until I learn the structure.  I have to learn how they set up scenes and how they structure the rising and falling actions.  To that end, I've been watching a lot of TV with the actual shooting scripts in front of me so that I can see how they handle things.  A show like Dexter is unique because they don't have act breaks or even acts.  The flow is more organic (like a novel) which is one of the reasons I chose it.  Still.  It's tough.  And it doesn't fit my schedule of waking up and writing.  Not yet anyway.  I'll get there though.  Once Chris reads my draft of Revenge Brigade, I'll begin revision for that.  That will help fill the void.  Until then, I just have to keep busy and not unravel.

First post of the year

This year is all about the exclamation points!!  

I've got two books on revision right now, so I'm using my writing time to write spec scripts.  Why would I write television spec scripts?  Because I'll be going after a spot in the Disney/ABC Writing Fellowship for 2010.  Yeah, feels early to be thinking about that, but the deadline is sometime in the summer and I have to learn how to write a spec script.  My chances are miniscule, but when you look at the chances of snagging an agent or getting published, this doesn't seem that far fetched.  

I've decided to read one book a week.  Last week I read two:

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Life As We Knew It.

Life As We Knew It was by far the superior of the two.  It was real and raw and it made me bawl like the cry baby I am.  Get it.  Get it now.

The Disreputable History... wasn't bad.  In fact, it was compelling and I read it in just a couple hours, but it ran off the rails about mid-way through.  I knew where I thought the author was going to go, and then she went WAY out in left field.  It was disappointing.

That's it for the first post.  Nothing new.  Nothing new to discuss.  

I started a writing community over at LJ if anyone wants in.  Super Happy Writing Time!