I’ve been so absorbed with our short film project that all my free time has been taken up by production meetings, script revisions, scene breakdowns and fund raising. Fiction is squarely on hiatus for the moment, though I’m still sending out the odd novel query. Novels are like a marathon. Here’s my process: wake upContinue reading “Writing fiction vs writing for film”
Category Archives: Fiction and Books
Why he writes: a Q&A with novelist J. Adams Oaks
Don’t call me kiddo. I REALLY hate it. People been calling me that way too long. Fever and Ma and Uncle Spade all call me kiddo, and it makes me crazy. See how I ain’t smiling? People who know me, know that means trouble. So begins the new novel by J. Adams Oaks, Why IContinue reading “Why he writes: a Q&A with novelist J. Adams Oaks”
Where does it come from?
That’s a question about creativity raised by the film “Starting Out in the Evening.” It follows an aging and mostly forgotten literary novelist who is forced from his routine when a young graduate student enters his life, ostensibly to research her thesis. It is a wooden and stilted film with some (mostly) unintentional awkward moments,Continue reading “Where does it come from?”
Creating a sense of place in screenplays, fiction and comics
Any story needs a sense of place. This is what keeps a narrative from happening inside of a void. A sense of place is different from setting. Setting is merely a point on the globe. A backdrop. A sense of place has sights, sounds, smell, dirt that feels a certain way when crumbled in yourContinue reading “Creating a sense of place in screenplays, fiction and comics”
Story within a story
My daughter was watching a show on PBS about a dog who travels through time. It worked on multiple timelines with several threads weaving the overall narrative. A pretty complex structure for a kid’s show, or so I thought. I paused by the television on my way to the kitchen for an espresso and sheContinue reading “Story within a story”
Telling stories for free or profit
How do you make money telling stories? Thousands of MFA students ask themselves that question, usually starting a few weeks after graduation when reality sets in and you find out the world isn’t really that much different than it was when you were sitting in a circle reading from a fistful of laser paper. You’veContinue reading “Telling stories for free or profit”
Writing for the budget
When you first start writing scripts, one of the great liberating experiences is the ability to start a scene with something like this: [scrippet] EXT. PARIS STREET – AFTERNOON Smith steps to the curb and hails a cab… [/scrippet] And then, you can follow up with the next scene, with a quantum leap: [scrippet] EXT.Continue reading “Writing for the budget”
Hurricane Lili: Chapter One
SUN-SPARKLE ON whitecaps, stiff onshore breeze pushing the smell of rotting kelp and turtle grass off of the beach, massing clouds on the horizon dark and promising rain: this was the backdrop to the girl on the day that things changed. I watched her over the top of my book and over the rims ofContinue reading “Hurricane Lili: Chapter One”
Disappeared: Prologue
When death came to Angel Hervias on a rock outcropping seven miles north of the border, he barely recognized it. It wasn’t a jaguar’s cough. It wasn’t an owl perched on a limb alongside the path. Nor was it the vision of his sister dressing his own grave with pine boughs on the Day ofContinue reading “Disappeared: Prologue”
Back from Ciudad Juarez
Spent a few days on the border. The border patrol didn’t believe me when I said that I was, “just walking around.” I suppose there aren’t many gringos who just wander the back streets of Juarez unless they’re looking for drugs or sex or some sort of nastiness. But the residential districts close to theContinue reading “Back from Ciudad Juarez”
The Dilettante's Field Manual 