Screenwriter Robert Gosnell ~ The Hero In The Well

 Multi-produced screenwriter Robert Gosnell brings us his wisdom 

from the trenches (err...office) of a working screenwriter.  

This bit of advice is priceless, and I laughed after I read it.

The Hero In The Well

In the 1950's and 1960's, Western-themed movies and television shows ruled. During that time, let's say there existed a hypothetical Western TV series.

Now, on this hypothetical Western TV series was a head writer, who was busy writing an episode for the upcoming week. In the midst of writing the script, the head writer got a phone call from home; a family emergency.

The head writer informed the producers that he would have to leave, and the writing staff would have to finish the script. The writers set to work, but were immediately faced with a problem.

At the point where the head writer stopped writing, the show's hero was stuck in the bottom of a well. The writers thought and thought, discussed and argued, but could not find a way to get the hero out of the well.

Days went by, the deadline for production was near, and the script was only halfway finished. All because no one could find a way to get the hero out of the well.

Finally, their backs to the wall, the producers called the head writer and told him he had to come back to work, post haste.

The head writer returned. Everyone gathered anxiously around him, as he sat down at the typewriter and wrote....

"After getting out of the well..."

The lesson here is simple: don't block yourself.

Write past it. Finish the story, then come back. In the rewrite process, you'll find a resolution. Maybe, you'll explain it away in a line.

"It's a good thing that old miner came by, and heard my calls for help."

Maybe you won't explain it, at all. He's a hero. Any old hero can get out of a well. I see this option all the time.

Or maybe, when you go back, you'll realize that the hero didn't have to be stuck in that well, in the first place.

But, don't block yourself. Finish your script. In the end, rather than having an unfinished script, you'll have a finished script with a single issue that needs addressing.

That's a lot easier to deal with.

~ Robert

"The Blue Collar Screenwriter and The Elements of Screenplay" is currently available at:
Amazon digital and paperback

CreateSpace 
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords

Find Robert at:
Website (with information on classes)
Email

BIO: 

A  professional screenwriter for more than thirty years,  Robert Gosnell has produced credits in feature films, network television, syndicated television, basic cable and pay cable, and is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of Canada.

Robert began his career writing situation comedy as a staff writer for the ABC series Baby Makes Five.  As a freelance writer, he wrote episodes for Too Close for Comfort and the TBS comedies Safe at Home andRocky Road.  In cable, he has scripted numerous projects for the Disney Channel, including Just Perfect, a Disney Channel movie featuring  Jennie Garth. In 1998, he wrote the  Showtime original movie, Escape from Wildcat Canyon, which starred Dennis Weaver and won the national "Parents Choice Award." Robert's feature credits include the Chuck Norris/Louis Gosset Jr. film Firewalker, an uncredited rewrite on the motion picture Number One With A Bullet starring Robert Carradine and Billy Dee Williams, and the sale of his original screenplay Kick And Kick Back to Cannon Films. Robert was also selected as a judge for the 1990 Cable Ace Awards, in the Comedy Special category.

In 1990, Robert left Hollywood for Denver, where he became active in the local independent film community. His screenplay Tiger Street was produced by the Pagoda Group of Denver and premiered on Showtime Extreme in August of 2003. In 1999, Denver’s Inferno Films produced the action film Dragon and the Hawk from his script. In 2001, Robert co-wrote the screenplay for the independent feature Siren for Las Vegas company Stage Left Productions. His feature script Juncture was produced by Front Range Films in March of 2006. 

Robert  is a principal member of the Denver production company "Conspiracy Films." He is frequently an invited speaker for local writers organizations,  served on the faculty of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference in 2002, and in 2007 was chosen to participate as a panelist for the Aspen Film Festival Short Screenplay Contest. Robert regularly presents his screenwriting class "The Elements of Screenplay," along with advanced classes and workshops, in the Denver area.

Additionally, he is a frequent contributor to this blog. 

Mental Can Openers and Writer's Hash ~ I'm Not Clowning Around Here

Another great post from Brad. And as usual, he ties it all together in the most entertaining way. Why else call the blog what I call it :)

Writers share something with those traveling circuses and carnivals of yesteryear. Then you paid for a ticket and were promised a memorable experience. Whether it was a Tunnel of Love, the dizzy action of the Octopus ride, or the drama and tension of the high wire act, traveling circuses tried to provide something for everyone. Clowns, magicians, the bizarre, the impossible; all were part of the sawdust-and-popcorn entertainment a century ago.

Writers charge for a book and promise an experience.  We simply call the rides and acts, genres. Romance comes in books, not boats. Tension from a thriller’s high-stakes, not high wires; humor from characters, not clowns.  Like circus acts, genres must deliver.  If you read thrillers, you want to be thrilled. Mysteries should offer a perplexing puzzle. Romances should render that back-and-forth relationship tango.  Readers choose the genre for its specifics.

This expectation presents a challenge. Solomon pointed out that there was nothing new under the sun. Every genre has its clichés. It was a dark and stormy night; the butler did it; they all lived happily ever after.  How do we offer something new?

Details, my friends.  The devil may be in them, but so is our answer. We know in a romance the boy and girl will find each other after various trials. So what if they find each other via letters on a pen-pal site?  And what if, while “graphically” attracted to each other, they physically work in the same shop, constantly rubbing each other the wrong way? Voilá, a couple of changed details and you got, “The Shop Around the Corner.” 

Or take a murder mystery.  A victim is killed and the detective must solve the crime. But what if the victim is forced to become his own detective?  A slow poison given to an accountant that can’t be stopped gives him 24 hours to solve his own progressing murder?  Change this one detail regarding the detective and presto, the movie “D.O.A.”

With my own genre, fantasy, castles are an oft-used setting.  They are known to be winter cold. The kitchens could get hot when the ovens were going.  I have a castle.  I could use fireplaces in most rooms and the kitchen staff could carry hand fans. But why not have some fun with magic?  It’s a fantasy, people want the unusual.  I put my palace over caves and fault lines.  Why not stick a couple of cranky frost giants in a room under the castle and have them blow their frosty breath up various shafts to cool the castle?

Winter heat is provided by flame sprites who spit their little fireballs up the same shafts. The castle mages make their living producing magic candles. So let’s have one large candle, cut it in half, and when the upper portion is lit, the lower portion’s wick catches fire as well, no matter the halves’ distance.  Need heat? Cold?  Light your candle and down below the corresponding half ignites near the shaft. telling the occupants to send up fireballs or frost.

Of course, when our castle friends switch over from cooling to heating, there's always difficulty. Cold versus hot, giants versus sprites; more trouble than any HVAC man has ever had to deal with. But to find out about that you will have to read my upcoming book, “Riddley Bundleforth and the Banshee's Bell.”

As authors, we should find details to change, creating more experiences for our readers.  Boy meets girl? Why not girl accidentally purchases boy when she mixes an Uber ride for Uber date?  The butler did do it, but the butler is an interplanetary alien doing a sociological study on why murder disturbs humans.  Instead of a fantastic sword that can defeat all enemies, how about a bewitched sword that takes every shield as a personal insult, attacking it mercilessly, while the hero is dragged by the hilt?  As authors, let’s steal a page from P.T. Barnum and fill our pages with “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

~ Brad

Author Spotlight Featuring Candee Fick's New Release ~ Focus On Love

It's always a treat to have Candee here to introduce her latest book. 

Take it away, Ms. Fick :)

Thanks for hosting me L.A.

What if you had to choose between two career paths?

Elizabeth (Liz) Foster grew up loving photography and dance lessons. When circumstances at home fell apart, she set aside one dream to pursue musical theater. But now she’s met a handsome photographer and things are changing. Can she have both dreams again or will she need to choose?

I had a lot of fun getting to know Liz during the brainstorming process for Focus On Love. At first, I thought she was a free-spirit who felt stifled by the rules and expectations of her family and left them behind. So, I paired her with a freelancer who cut back on his travel in order to fit into his family’s routine, hoping that together they would learn to find balance. What I found instead was a greater metaphor about life and the multiple facets of love.

Excerpt:

About a hundred feet from the front doors, she spotted the tall cowboy exiting a large truck parked nearby, and her stomach whirred like her fast-action shutter.

Of course, it had to be nerves about showing her pictures to the Sheridans in front of the professional photographer—nothing to do with how handsome he was.

Ryan grinned as his long stride brought him quickly to her side. “Fancy meeting you here this morning. Liz, right?”

Liz tipped her head in a semi-curtsy. “I’m looking forward to seeing your pictures.”

His eyebrows rose. “Pictures? Does that mean you’re the other photographer?”

Uh-oh. “I thought you knew that.” Liz slapped a hand against her forehead. “Of course not. Mr. Sheridan didn’t mention my name.”

“Well, if you’re as talented with a camera as you are on the stage, then this might be a wasted trip.” The laugh lines around his eyes deepened along with his smile, stirring her heart in unexpectedly delicious ways until heat rose in her face.

Perfect. Now her complexion might match her hair color.

“Don’t make me wonder whether you need your eyes examined. I’m not star material.” Liz shook her head. “Not to mention, I’ve seen your website.”

“Really? Checking me out?” He reached the front door and held it open for her.

“Curiosity.” She cleared her throat and gestured toward the area where they were to meet. “But I’m still not sure why you would give up professional gigs for this.”

Mr. Sheridan appeared in the doorway of his office. “You’re right on time.” He stepped forward to shake Ryan’s hand. “I can’t wait to see what the two of you have come up with.”

Liz preceded Ryan into the office and felt the warmth of his large hand on her back as he guided her to the closest chair. Such a gentleman. His mother must be so proud of him.

“So who’s going to go first?” Mr. Sheridan swiveled his office chair as he looked from one to the other.

Her stomach clenched with a sudden wave of nerves. “The professional.”

“No, ladies first.” Ryan settled back in his chair with folded arms.

“Okay.” She took a deep breath for courage before handing over her flash drive. As Mr. Sheridan plugged it into his computer, she whispered a prayer of sorts that God would help her boss to like the pictures ... or at least not hate them. That would be humiliating.

Mr. Sheridan turned the monitor so all three could see the screen, and once the program loaded, he began to scroll. A few moments later, he whistled. “Dani was right.”

“Dani?” Ryan leaned forward and propped his chin on a hand as he studied the screen.

“My roommate is the one who told him I—”

“These are amazing pictures.” Mr. Sheridan clicked the mouse to enlarge one shot of several laughing actors gathered around the onstage piano.

Mrs. Sheridan entered and stopped just inside the door. “Wow. Mr. Callahan, you really are a professional.”

Ryan chuckled. “Thank you, ma’am, but Liz took these.” He winked in her direction. “She certainly has talent.”

To Buy: 

Amazon (Print) | Kindle

The Blurb:

Free-spirited Elizabeth Foster turned her back on her father’s photography business to pursue musical theater, but with a one-show contract, she’s a few weeks from unemployment forcing her home. Meanwhile sought-after photographer Ryan Callahan has put his career on hold to help his sister’s family while her husband is deployed, but the promise of a bigger assignment could lure him away from building a family of his own. If given the choice, what dreams would develop? Or will they learn to focus on love instead?

Bio:

Candee Fick is a multi-published author in both fiction and non-fiction. She is also the wife of a high school football coach and the mother of three children, including a daughter with a rare genetic syndrome. When not busy with her day job, writing, or coaching other authors, she can be found cheering on the home team at sporting events, exploring the great Colorado outdoors, indulging in dark chocolate, and savoring happily-ever-after endings through a good book.

Find Candee: 

Facebook |Twitter | Blog/Website | Email List to get free chapters

Author Spotlight Featuring David Russell's Pearlman

Hello, L.A., thank you for hosting me on your blog.

I came to writing romance quite late in life. My university education had conditioned me to despise and ignore the idiom, partly because of its purported lack of ‘literary substance’, and partly because of its ‘escapism’ and purported evasion of the painful realities of life. But my attitude gradually changed, because I realised that escapism is a great source of comfort, and reading it could help to defuse painful tensions, and help maintain equilibrium and control over life.

I felt I had to make a struggle to integrate literary style and substance into romance stories, to give these stories a fully-developed, in-depth background and setting. My previous writings had been highly abstract and speculative, and I felt there was a need for the concrete. I now feel that I have achieved some equilibrium between the romantic and the hard/speculative.

I am indeed one of that comparatively rare ilk – a male romance writer in a field heavily dominated by women writers. I would like to feel I bridge the gulf between old and new attitudes – old romance, with its celebration of the ‘eternal feminine’, together with the openness of contemporary swingers and the like. In spite of my sympathies with the latter, I do not care for the ultra explicit. I think the celebration of Eros is far more potent if it is expressed obliquely, metaphorically, and if it leaves adequate areas to the imagination. After all, a truly euphoric experience has some of the qualities of a voyage into the unknown.

Excerpt From Pearlman:

    Her skill in undoing my armour was worthy of any trained white man. “We are supremely adaptable; we learn avidly from those we observe and oppose”, she whispered, her teeth gleaming in her smile. As I saw the chain mail and the cuirass lying there, discarded, I saw that the rust had all disappeared.

     Deft hands tenderly peeled my sweat-ridden leather and cotton; it was lovely to be nursed without immediate wounds to distract from the exquisite sensations.

     “You must be proud of your exertions!” she said. The power in her words was akin to a duelling challenge. (The time warp flashed me into my happy collaboration with that beautiful fitness trainer, when I imagined that lithe, toned form excelling itself at the Olympic High Jump as her prelude to our delicious consummation.)

     I looked up towards her breasts, to see the matching metal, discs, chains, bangles – an array of gold, silver and jade; I sensed their resilience beneath their cover. She read my response with total ease; with a radiant smile, she whispered “do as you have been done by.”

     My hands trembled a little as I delicately negotiated the pins and clasps, but I succeeded in making a harmonious pattern of them, like a crown at the head of my discarded armour. It was good to have gained intimate knowledge of those metallic treasures in the museums.

     The face of a full moon, reciprocating its radiation on Tegualda’s face and eyes, beamed its glittering reflections, as if casting off a diaphanous robe, to reveal the perfect body of its illuminated rocks, bouncing back and forth around the elaborated grid of our variegated metalwork – steel, bronze, silver and gold – its luminosity almost suggesting that it would all come to life, radiant in the flames of their smelting, almost as two armies facing each other. In turn, the beams flooded our faces, giving an external flourish to our luminous vibrancy charged from within. 

    She took my hand, and made it caress her sealskin robe: “please do the honours”. I lifted it at the bottom. My hands reached up inside it until they could feel her firm but still slender waist. Repeating my earlier gesture, she raised her arms in surrender and conquest, the robe clouding into a transient veil over her noble features.

    Then Tegualda cast off her gleaming white cotton camisera for me with all the challenging flourish of a toreador. She tamed me and fired me simultaneously with her lovely self-revelation.

      The walls of my time-capsule were fractured. There glistened across the world, ricocheted back and forth across the centuries a composite of the world’s beauties, celebrated in poetry and song, painting and sculpture, melted, distilled and poured into one vibrant, impassioned, soul-suffused body. Egyptian and Grecian statues and mural figures melted into an array of Hollywood dream sublimities deeply embedded in my memory. This was a spiritual earthquake, embracing all history and culture, the distilled essence of all artistic striving poured into one giant goblet.

Buy: 

Amazon |Amazon UK

Blurb:

This was inspired by a passage in the Spanish epic poem La Araucana, which I have translated. In the original story, a Spanish soldier, after a battle, is accosted by an Indian woman who asks him to lead her to her husband's body, to pay her last respects. In the original story, she disappears. In Pearlman the hero is contemporary, but he does time and space travel to those legendary times, and the woman turns out to be Auchimalgen, the Araucanian Moon Goddess. She seduces and enlightens him. There is a backdrop of Chile, with its incredibly volatile ecosphere and long history of protracted conflict. This story combines romance with sci-fi and time travel.

Bio:

David Russell is a writer of poetry, literary criticism, speculative fiction and romance. He was born in 1940 in Wolverhampton, UK and has long been based in London. His Main paperback poetry collection Prickling Counterpoints was published by Deadline Books in 1998; several of his poems have appeared online in International Times.

A further paperback collection, An Ever River, is due for publication by Palewell Press in March 2018. His main speculative fiction works are High Wired On (2002) Rock Bottom (2005). David has translated the 16th Century Spanish epic La Araucana, Amazon 2013. He has written several Romances, now published by Bella Tulip Publishing, including Self’s Blossom (now in 5th edition; Explorations (3rd Edition); Further Explorations (2nd Edition); Dreamtime Sensuality (2nd Edition); he has also Self-published a collection of erotic poetry and artwork, Sensual Rhapsody, 2015. 

Another side of his activities is that of Singer-songwriter/guitarist: his vinyl album, Bricolage, was recorded in 1992 by Billy Childish for Hangman Records; his main CD albums are Bacteria Shrapnel and Kaleidoscope Concentrate. Many of his tracks are featured on You Tube, under ‘Dave Russell’.

Find David:  
Website

Class Flash ~ Upcoming Online Writing Classes Taught By Laurie Schnebly Campbell

Classes at Romance U, Writer University, and SINC taught by Laurie Schnebly Campbell, one of my all-time favorite instructors.

online: NEW YEAR, NEW YOU
(Jan. 2-26, 2018)
tucsonrwa.org/online-classes/
    Whether it's the first rejection, the 50th-book slump, or just not getting the story you want, frustration is part of every writer's life. For some, it's a nuisance; for others, it's the end of a career. For anyone determined to make 2018 a Better Writing Year, this class offers both practical and psychological techniques for dealing with rejection, writer's block, frustration, motivation, and other issues that keep writers from loving their craft.

blog: SERIOUSLY, SERIES?
(January 12)
 romanceuniversity.org
    If one book is already hard, how on earth can you keep a good story going?

online: WRITING A SERIES
For Sinc Guppies(Jan 30-Feb 10) 
sinc-guppies.org/
For everyone  (Feb. 12-23)
 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/WritingSeries/info
    It's one thing to write a stand-alone novel. It's another to write a sequel, a trilogy, a box set or an open-ended series that'll continue for as long as you want. While great storytelling is great storytelling no matter what the format, there are techniques to keep in mind when writing a series that will not only keep your readers on board through every story, but keep you from burning out while they're still waiting for more.

online: PLOTTING VIA MOTIVATION
(March 5-30)writeruniv.wordpress.com/classes
    Any of us could write a book in which characters get shipwrecked on an uncharted desert isle. We've seen what seven such characters would do…over and over and over again. But what would YOURS do? If you nail down any character's motivation, it doesn't matter whether the ship capsizes or lands safely three hours later. Your characters will create a plot from whatEVER happens, because you've got their motivation built in from the very beginning...and here's how to do it.

Guest Post by Peter Perrin & His Debut Book ~ Grace's Turmoil

Hello, L.A., Thank you for having me as a guest on your blog. 

A few years ago, my then fourteen-year-old granddaughter self-published two novels on Amazon. Inspired by this I thought I should have a go myself. After all they do say everyone has a book in them. I thought that at the very least it would be a good mental exercise for my then sixty-nine-year-old brain, and might help with my failing memory.

How much mental exercise it would entail I could never have imagined. Sadly, I’m not sure it has helped the memory much, but it has given me a new skill to learn and I’m told there’s a certain joie de vivre about me nowadays, so that must be good.

I believed the younger generation thought most people over the age of sixty had one foot in the grave, and were just killing time until the grim reaper claimed them. But, I knew that wasn’t the case for many people, so I looked for a way to write something to show them in a positive light.

The way I came up with was to write a romance with the hero and heroine being over sixty. I certainly managed that as I ended up with the heroine being aged sixty-eight and the hero even older, at seventy-one.

And, I came up with the idea of my characters being residents at a retirement village that was pretty much a private 5* hotel. My only concern was that the environment might prove restrictive to me as a writer or put readers off. But I found there was a lot of scope for activities and relationships and the idea seemed to work.

Unfortunately, I had virtually no previous writing experience or training and no idea about planning, outlining, plotting etc. It seems I am a natural ‘pantser’ i.e. I just let the book develop, rather than planning it out. So, the book started off as a series of conversations, and developed slowly from there. Sadly, my inexperience meant that a lot of what I wrote wasn’t very good, and I had to throw away quite a bit of material as the book developed and the story just didn’t work properly. This meant the book took a lot longer than I had initially expected it to.

I submitted a sample chapter to a publisher to see if it fitted with the sort of work they published, and it did. But, they said the chapters—at an average of 4,000 words each—were way too long. So, I chopped them all in half and started to tidy them up. After a year of rewriting and polishing the manuscript I submitted it and ten months ago I won a publishing contract. Now, at the age of seventy-three, my debut novel, ‘Grace’s Turmoil’ has recently been published as Book One of a series called ‘Not Too Old for Love.’ Initially, the deal with my publisher was just for an eBook, with the possibility of a paperback version if sales were good enough, quick enough. But now I know that once it is on Amazon—any day now—it will also be available from them in paperback form.

It seems that over recent years more and more readers of romance have become frustrated that all the heroines they read about were aged about twenty, whilst they themselves were on average at least ten years older. Now it seems that there are a growing number of authors writing for this new market, which seems to be being referred to as Seasoned Romance, Second Chance Romance, and the like. I’m proud to be a part of that growing band of authors trying to respond to this demand.

Blurb:

Divorced and emotionally damaged, artist Grace Stollery wants nothing more than to spend her semi-retirement painting and let time heal her emotional scars.

But when dashing widower Alfred Nobel moves into her retirement village he turns her life upside down and her heart inside out by awakening feelings she wants to keep dormant.

Alfred quickly sets out to woo Grace and slowly she warms to him. But the village’s resident femme fatale wants him for herself. Will she succeed in driving a wedge between Alfred and Grace?

Buy: 

Amazon | Devine Destinies

Bio:

Peter Perrin writes sweet, seasoned romances involving larger-than-life mature characters who will make you rethink your views on older people in a positive way. His characters are mature in age but not necessarily in their behaviour. They may not be in the first flush of youth but that doesn’t stop some of them acting like hormonal teenagers.

Peter was born in Romford, in the county of Essex, near London, England. For nearly twenty years he has lived with his wife of almost forty years in a quiet suburb of Swindon, in the county of Wiltshire, in England. He is a father and grandfather.

He is a former member of The Royal Air Force who has served in the UK, and in Madagascar, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia. He was also stationed for two years in Aden—which nowadays is part of Yemen.

For almost fifteen-years’ service in The Royal Air Force, Peter worked in Engineering, Quality Control, and Procurement Management, not to mention myriad smaller jobs in between those careers.

Now retired Peter’s interests are Writing, Carp Fishing, and (despite being in his early seventies) PC and PlayStation games.

His favourite quote is “Youth passes, but with luck, immaturity can last a lifetime.”

Find Peter:

Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest