Right now, there’s a big sale going on at the Writer’s Store. I decided this would be a great time to buy EVERYTHING by Karl Iglesias.
Except, most of his stuff is sold out – and they may not be offering them again. (Karl, hey… I need the rest of your seminars!!!).
So, I got something from Dr. K also. Here’s my take away impressions from spending $10 and getting three seminars (!).
Writers Write
This was said again and again. Karl Iglesias ran everyone present through the scenario – “What would you do if you won the lottery?” He had a major point. After you buy the house, the cars, money in the bank, vacation, furniture, whatever you decide to collect… what would you do? Outdoor grilling? Go out in your sailboat all day?
I’d buy a house in Rhode Island, a boat, my Travato, new laptop, Mac, office furniture… and then I’d eat breakfast and go sit in my office, at my nice new laptop and my Mac… and I’d write.
It’s what I do.
I’ve always written. A ton of articles (most never published!), books, movies… I’ve been writing fiction since I was in 1st grade, sitting in my dining room table in Willingboro, NJ.
I don’t think my teachers at Midvale Elementary knew what I was doing instead of homework. Maybe I should have told them.
I wrote a play for my sister once.
Wrote stories. Started books. Went nowhere. I even – at the urging of my 7th grade English teacher – outlined a crossover story for “A Wizard of Earthsea” and “Lord of the Rings”.
Writers write.
If your answer was not, “I’d write”, then you’re not a writer. You want the end product of writing – the fame, the money, a nice living – but you’re not driven to write.
Bad news is… I’d buy a boat, it’d probably sit there in the harbor lonely while I sat at home and wrote.
But you know, that’s a Rhode Island thing too. I think 25% of Rhode Islanders own boats (it is the Ocean State!), and only 1% of them actually take them out!
Writing is hard work
This was emphasized by quite a few people at quite a few online seminars I’ve seen. Truby and Iglesias describe writing as the most difficult job on earth. I must be missing something, because I can sit down, work two hours, bang out 7 pages of movie script or 1667 words in a novel without breaking a sweat. I plan, plan, plan. I don’t worry about if it’s good – I can fix that. It’s not hard to me, maybe because I’ve always worked with words in some way or another. What I will say is that writing takes a LOT of work. If you become good at time management, then it’s not so hard. So, to me, the takeaway is that writing is a lot of work.
Writing costs you
Yup. It sure does. I’ve written scenes in my novels that have made me break down and weep, the kind of sobbing where you’re desperate to stop, your eyes are burning, you can’t breathe, your throat is sore and thick. I suppose everyone thinks a writer just puts his glasses on the end of his nose, opens Scrivener, drinks a cup of coffee while he types, as Mozart is playing in the background. Well, it’s not always true – I listen to Salieri and Paganini too.
But there are scenes that leave you exhausted. There are scenes that drain you, or enrage you. There are scenes you DON’T want to write, but you have to. There are scenes – like one in the project I’m working on right now – where I broke down and cried after I wrote it. It was so real to me – I could see it, feel it. I mourned the tragedy of what was happening, because it happened to my relatives in Europe during World War II, and all that feeling came back as if I was there, even though I wasn’t born for 20 more years.
The turns don’t have to be on page 25 and 90
This one annoyed me a little, but Iglesias and Dr. K both agreed on this one. The original script for Lethal Weapon was completely out of format, had every rule of Screenwriting broken – and it sold. For every Remember, there’s at least one rough movie that gets written with a late inciting Incident (or early – no kidding Star Wars has two, and the movie starts with one), or the turns in the wrong spot.
I’m here to learn, rather than say I know it all, so I’ll keep this in mind and adjust my thoughts on it. I tend to look at it that if I stick to the rules, it helps. I now know what to write! I know I need two turning points, an inciting incident…midpoint… etc. Save The Cat is not the be all and end all any more than Dramatica is for novels… but it’s my starting point. “If it works, it works” is the lesson to walk away with!
Conclusion
I learned a lot from these (Dr. K’s seminar surprised me – I wasn’t expecting it to be so jammed full of necessary information!). I just wish I had another $100 I could spend to get more of these! The sale continues until October 19th, I think it was.
What do you think about these take-aways? Agree? Disagree? What online seminars have you watched that impacted you? Discuss below!
