By Steven Pressfield | Published: August 17, 2011
[The blog is on vacation this week. Here's an encore of one of our most popular posts.]
“Write for a star” is one of the primal axioms of screenwriting, but it has applications across many other fields as well.
Bette Davis in "All About Eve"
What does it mean to write for a star? Writing for a star means create a role that a star wants to play. Your story may be dynamite, your structure may be sound, your theme profound and involving. But the first question a producer is going to ask is, “Who can I cast in this thing?”
Moviemakers want scripts that attract stars. Because stars make movies happen. If we’ve got Matt Damon, the bank will write us a check. If Sandra Bullock says she’s in, the studio will give us a green light.
Stars put asses in the seats. If you and I go to a basketball game, we want to see Lebron. We came out for Kobe. I have zero interest in “the field.” I’m here for the headliner.
Products can be stars. The iPhone. The iPad. (Steve Jobs himself is a star.)
Style can be a star. Hemingway. Or look. Lady Gaga. Even absence can be a star: J.D. Salinger.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that we cast all artistic considerations to the wind and pander to some glam/slam concept of attention-grabbing. What I am suggesting is that, at at least one point during its evolution, we evaluate our material by asking ourselves, “Who’s the star here? Do we have one? Who (or what) supplies the bizazz that we need to make this material stand out?” (more…)
By Michael Edwardson | Published: August 15, 2011
George MacDonald Fraser, author of the famous Flashman novels, joined the Border Regiment straight out of school, and first saw active service in 1944, at the age of 19, in the ‘forgotten front’ of the Burma campaign. In his memoir, Quartered Safe out Here, Fraser remembers his experiences with his infantry section, employing all the considerable skills of his craft to roll back half a century and bring that terrible jungle campaign to life.
In this passage from the very start of the book, Fraser makes a point about the dehumanized way that military campaigns are often presented in histories and aims to give a contrasting impression of war as seen from the ‘ground-pounding infantryman’s’ level.
It is satisfying, and at the same time slightly eerie, to read in an official military history of an action in which you took part, even as a very minor and bewildered participant … For example, on page 287 of The War Against Japan: volume IV, it is briefly stated that “a second series of raids began…and X Regiment suffered 141 casualties and lost one of its supporting tanks…”
Now the participant’s point of view:
That tank burned for hours, and when night came it attracted Japanese in numbers. We lay off in the darkness with our safety catches on and grenades to hand, watching and keeping deliberately quiet. The Japs milled around in the firelight like small clockwork dolls, but our mixed group of British, Gurkhas, and Probyn’s Horse remained undetected, although how the enemy failed to overhear the fight that broke out between a Sikh and a man from Carlisle (someone alleged that a water chaggle had been stolen, and the night was briefly disturbed by oaths in Punjabi and a snarl “Give over, ye bearded booger!”) remains a mystery. It was a long night; perhaps memory makes it longer.
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By Callie Oettinger | Published: August 12, 2011
Last week I started thinking about recycling as a strategy.
Here’s what usually happens when something slaps me in the face:
There’s something I’ve been doing, or something someone I know has been doing, but I never consider it. I see it, I know it’s going on, but I don’t put a name on it. I don’t acknowledge it. (more…)
