One for You and One For Me

“Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”—Stephen King,”
 

 I’m a fellow traveler on this journey into writing. I don’t claim to be an expert, a guru, or a life coach. I’m learning to write, loving what I do, and investigating wise words from writers with silver tongues.
 

 Come, sit down, have a cup of coffee, and together we will investigate some of the life's greater questions regarding being a writer. In this, it will be about screenwritting.
 

 "I detest the word plot,"  wrote Stirling Silliphant, " I never, never think of plot. I think only and solely of character. Give me the characters; I’ll tell you a story–maybe a thousand stories. The interaction between and among human beings is the only story worth telling.”


“I can pick up a screenplay and flip through the pages. If all I see is dialog, dialog, dialog, I won’t even read it. I don’t care how good the dialog is — it’s a moving picture. It has to move all the time… It’s not the stage. A movie audience doesn’t have the patience to sit and learn a lesson. Their eyes need to be dazzled. The writer is the most important element in the entire film because if it ain’t on the page it ain’t going to be on the screen.” —Robert Evans
 

 “Although making a movie can be like trying to write ‘War and Peace’ in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.”—Stanley Kubrick

 

“We are the image that we project and in Hollywood” wrote My Blank Page,  Script Magazine's pick for "Website of the Week.  (May 2012).  “It’s extremely important to keep up an image of success: Being busy means you are working and successful. Even if a producer or agent is not busy and does have to time to read your script, they will make you believe they are busy and declare, “I’ve been swamped and I can’t promise when I’ll get to your script.” God forbid if they immediately read your script and get right back to you. That could appear as if they do have free time, and that could mean they are not busy and not successful. It’s a funny game, but appearance is extremely important in this business of illusion. Patience will serve you well in this scenario.”

“I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won’t contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.”—Orson Welles