Maddogs, Englishmen, and Writers

Today on Gregory's mailing list (how come every other journaler's notify list turns into a free-wheeling forum?) Alexis Massie asked the simple question

What qualifies a person as a writer?

The type of question must be right up there with "What are you doing in my house?" and "This half of Korea belongs to me."

I decided that good writing comes down to caring. Caring about what you're writing about, or caring about whether you get your point across, or caring about whether your audience is entertained. I don't think you can write specifically for an audience, but you always have to keep them in mind.

I have concluded this is why most online journals suck. The authors don't care about what they're writing, and it shows. Sure, it's fun to keep a journal for a day or so, but it's a bitch to find something to write about day in and day out. (Keeping an online journal is not unlike being a daily columnist, and having kept one for a year gives me a lot of sympathy for writers who publish every day.) So people who aren't writers describe their day in rather boring tones, not finding anything to care about in their day, in how they look at their day, or in what their readers might find interesting in their day.

Needless to say, this provokes me to revise my Why Web Journals Suck essay a little. I haven't yet. But I will.

Today I picked up Darin's load of business cards, which I ordered yesterday. I got 500 of them on the boring usual white card stock, even though 1000 was about $5 (Am.) more. Darin estimated that at handing out one card a week he should work his way through this batch in 10 years, in which case he'll be on his third wife and a movie producer anyhow, so the business card thing is moot.

I picked up the business cards and then walked down Ventura Blvd. Ah, Ventura Blvd. in the noonday sun. It's hot and sunny. I walked a couple of blocks and got to The Nerve Lounge, which used to be Café Insomnia. I tried to order an iced café latté, but due to the summer heat and the inordinate popularity of cold drinks, they were out of ice.

The barback was a tall, thin, red-haired type who had a bit of an accent. I asked him where he was from. He said, "Ireland," and I said, "Yes, yes, which part?" He said Dublin, and I said, "Oh yes, that's where my family's from."

He smiled and said, "I thought you looked to be a colleen."

I laughed and said, "I'm a Yank, but my entire family is from Ireland. Mostly south Dublin, around Lower Kimmage Road."

I didn't ask him what he was doing here in the land of sin, but what the heck, Ireland's greatest export is its people.

I drank my coffee and read the newspaper before heading back. I probably walked a mile all told, and I felt wiped out by the heat. Everyone always says that the Valley is tons hotter than the Basin, but it hasn't been a terrible summer, until now (August).

When I got home, A Family Thing, starring Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones and co-written by Billy Bob Thornton, came on. It's quite enjoyable. Sometimes I forget that simple stories about people can be entertaining.

Part of the reason I went to USC is because I want to write mainstream Hollywood movies. The program emphasizes character, but it also points out that structure and plot are key to this form. There are plenty of other forms -- novels, short stories, plays -- for telling all types of stories. The screenplay form is for telling a plotted story.

You might find tons of exceptions to this maxim, but for the most part what the moviegoing public enjoys in movies is the story. When you tell someone to see a movie you've just enjoyed, what do you tell them about? The cinematography? The wonderful nuances in the secondary characters? I guess you might, but I bet you tell your friends the story.

Good stories involve three things:

1. a main character;
2. something that main character wants;
3. some opposing force who wants to stop the main character.

It's pretty simple, or it should be. You can make the telling of the story as complex as you like, but the main story itself comes down to those three things.

The motivations in even the biggest or oddest movies are usually pretty simple: in Fargo, greed is the motivation for the crime, and Frances McDormand wants to solve the murder. Pretty simple.

In A Family Thing, Robert Duvall finds out that his mother wasn't really his mother, and he sets off to find the half-brother he never knew. The half-brother isn't keen on making them one big happy family.

I don't think glossy Hollywood movies have to involve a lack of believable character or understandable motivation, the way they have recently. Clearly, I'm not the only one who believes this, as evidenced by the box office returns this summer. Several movies have made good money the first week, but most have suffered terrible drop-offs the second week. Sequels have done terribly (thank God).

I retain a firm belief that mainstream movies can be enjoyable and coherent.

We'll see how long this conviction lasts.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Pages: few.

Miles: one, walking. Maybe more, later.

Nails: perfect.