I found this languishing around my desk today having been clipped long, long ago. The newsprint has yellowed and curled, as befits something read in times of need. So here it is for you.
Turns out the text is an excerpt of Michael Cunningham’s introduction to the Michael Henry Heim translation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. The full introduction is available at the PEN American Center site for your inspirational pleasure.
Click the image to enlarge it. Good writing.
A good question worth sharing was posted by writer/member Louise F. over at SheWrites: Screenwriters & Story Editors. Louise asks:
Since I caught the screenwriting bug about a year ago, I have been more sensitive to structure and tropes. Is the three-act frame out of date or overdone? I read in a screenwriting web site (from a supposed pro) that plenty of successful films buck the trend and are better for doing so. I read earlier that a 90-min. script should have this and that by this or that page – like 3 acts. My own script tries to get the rising action underway by page 80, but in the first 2 drafts, anyway, it didn’t quite work out that way. Comments?
– Louise F.
This is a multi-pronged topic that pops up regularly enough that we’re going to address it here in hopes of encouraging some well-thought-out rule-breaking.
All of us at The Story Spot wish you the very best of holidays, whichever you celebrate, and a prosperous and prolific new year. Let’s make 2010 the best year yet for all our writing projects.
Sarah Dodd
Sara St. Onge
Leonard Chang
Jeff Renfroe
and me, Diane J. Wright
Buy books, dvds, and movie tickets to support your art. Encourage your friends to do the same.
Happy 2010!
A recent piece in the Los Angeles Times by staff writer Susan Salter Reynolds offers writers and readers a reminder of the transcendence of the written word in the Age of Distraction.
A few choice quotes:
[L]iterature has a big head start when it comes to helping us live our lives. On the world map literature would be Europe and the Internet, America. Escaping is one thing — science fiction, romance novels and nonfiction make excellent magic carpets — but for turning and facing, there’s nothing like good old literary fiction.
In order to be truly useful, fiction has to have a certain psychological density and depth. And as much as authors like to deny it, much of that depth comes from the autobiographical component of all fiction.
[A]uthors have to be particularly conscious. And so do readers… If we become too depleted by, say, the pace of life, the bombarding of information or our disconnection from the natural world; too emptied out, too dependent on external stimuli, we run the risk of being lousy writers and lousy readers.
Discuss.
“Cutting through the din of the dotcom age: The real battle was waged with the Internet.” by Susan Salter Reynolds via the Los Angeles Times online edition, December 20, 2009.
So you wanna write movies. I hear you. You’re new to the game; you’ve seen every film there ever was, including this one; and you’ve vowed not to rest until your better mousetrap is up on the silver screen. Fantastic and congratulations — you’ve just pledged yourself to some good, long hours spent with pad and paper, breaking down your favorite films.
What’s this, you ask? You can recite dialogue from His Girl Friday, Airplane, AND Solaris and still that’s not enough? Don’t try to weasel out of this. As your momma always said (or the momma in one of those dripping Southern dramas always says), “you gotta finish what you started, honey.” You want to write movies, watching and reading isn’t enough. You have to break them down.
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