I am always looking for interesting articles to pass a long.  I found this one at Writer Beware.  Writer Beware is a publishing industry watchdog group sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America with additional support from the Mystery Writers of America.  It shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and writing pitfalls.

This article definitely echoes the fundamental principles taught in The One Hour Screenwriter eCourse.

… In study after study, researchers have found no evidence for innate talent as the prerequisite for success. Nor have they found that hard work alone makes certain people great. While successful people— those who achieve excellence in a domain— do work very hard, it’s how they work that distinguishes them from others. It turns out that just putting in hours and hours at your chosen work is not enough; the only way to get better is to make sure you’re devoting those hours to what the researchers call “deliberate practice.”

… When most people practice, they repeat things they already know how to do. But when those who become experts in their field engage in practice, they spend most of their time doing things they don’t already know how to do. They are constantly challenging themselves to improve, to do things better, to gain additional skills. Deliberate practice isn’t just hacking around; it’s hard work, which demands reaching for objectives that are always just out of reach. The only way to attain those objectives is through immense amounts of repetition. Ted Williams, the great Red Sox hitter, used to take swing after practice swing until his hands bled. Larry Bird, the legendary basketball player, got up at 6 a.m. every morning in high school, went to the gym, and shot 500 free throws.

… To get the most benefit from practice, keep these two principles in mind: repetition and reflection. Repetition— lots of it— is required to make skills automatic, so that when you sit down to write your novel (or screenplay), they are ready to work for you. Reflection—what did I learn today? What do I need to learn next?—keeps you on track in your pursuit of excellence.

If all this sounds like a lot of work— well, it is, just as becoming a professional athlete or musician is a lot of work. But if you love to write— love it as much as Ted Williams loved to hit or Larry Bird loves to play basketball— then practice is a kind of dedicated play, a source of pleasure and fulfillment. And if you are willing to shift your focus from getting published (or produced) to becoming an excellent writer, then there’s a very good chance that, eventually, your skills will take you to the “big leagues” of the writing world.

Recommended Reading:

Geoff Colvin, Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everyone Else

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code

Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

David Shenk, The Genius Myth

You can read the full article here– http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/09/guest-blog-post-how-deliberate-practice.html

Barbara Baig has taught writing for over twenty-five years and is the author of How To Be a Writer: Building Your Creative Skills Through Practice and Play (Writer’s Digest Books). She offers free practice-based lessons for beginning and struggling writers at www.wherewriterslearn.com.

….By the time you’re a social worker for 10 years, what you realize is that connection is why we’re here. It’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. This is what it’s all about. It doesn’t matter whether you talk to people who work in social justice and mental health and abuse and neglect, what we know is that connection, the ability to feel connected, is — neurobiologically that’s how we’re wired — it’s why we’re here. So I thought, you know what, (as a researcher) I’m going to start with connection. Well, you know that situation where you get an evaluation from your boss, and she tells you 37 things you do really awesome, and one thing — an “opportunity for growth?” And all you can think about is that opportunity for growth, right? Well, apparently this is the way my work went as well, because, when you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak. When you ask people about belonging, they’ll tell you their most excruciating experiences of being excluded. And when you ask people about connection, the stories they told me were about disconnection.

So very quickly — really about six weeks into this research — I ran into this unnamed thing that absolutely unraveled connection in a way that I didn’t understand or had never seen. And so I pulled back out of the research and thought, I need to figure out what this is. And it turned out to be shame. And shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection? The things I can tell you about it: it’s universal; we all have it. The only people who don’t experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it the more you have it. What underpinned this shame, this (fear) “I’m not good enough,” — which we all know that feeling: “I’m not blank enough. I’m not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough.” The thing that underpinned this was excruciating vulnerability, this idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.

…. If I roughly took the people I interviewed and divided them into people who really have a sense of worthiness — that’s what this comes down to, a sense of worthiness — they have a strong sense of love and belonging — and folks who struggle for it, and folks who are always wondering if they’re good enough. There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging. That’s it. They believe they’re worthy. And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we’re not worthy of connection, was something that, personally and professionally, I felt like I needed to understand better. So what I did is I took all of the interviews where I saw worthiness, where I saw people living that way, and just looked at those.

What do these people have in common? … What they had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute. Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language — it’s from the Latin word cor, meaning heart — and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and — this was the hard part — as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection.

The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating — as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, “I love you” first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They’re willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.

… And I think there’s evidence — and it’s not the only reason this evidence exists, but I think it’s a huge cause — we are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. The problem is — and I learned this from the research — that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can’t say, here’s the bad stuff. Here’s vulnerability, here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s fear, here’s disappointment. I don’t want to feel these. I’m going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. I don’t want to feel these…. You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, your emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.

… This is what I have found: to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee — and that’s really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that’s excruciatingly difficult — to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we’re wondering, “Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?” just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, “I’m just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive.” And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we’re enough. Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, “I’m enough,” then we stop screaming and start listening, we’re kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we’re kinder and gentler to ourselves.

The BlueCat Screenplay Competition:  Deadline: November 15th ($65)

Discovering and Developing Writers Since 1998

Founded by a writer, the BlueCat Screenplay Competition’s passionate commitment to develop and discover the unknown screenwriter continues to define our work today.

Our Winners and Finalists have been signed by major talent agencies like UTA, CAA and WME, sold their work to studios like Warner Bros., Paramount and Universal, and won major awards at the Sundance, Berlin and Tribeca Film Festivals, all after being discovered by and winning BlueCat.

We provide each writer who enters BlueCat two written analyses, ensuring each entry is reviewed by two readers, while supporting screenwriters of all levels and stages of development with the constructive feedback all writers require.

SUBMIT YOUR SCREENPLAY: http://www.bluecatscreenplay.com

AWARDS

Grand prize $10,000, with four Finalists winning $2000 each.

The Cordelia Award will be given to the best screenplay from the UK and will win $1000.

The Joplin Award will be given to the best screenplay from outside the USA, Canada and UK and will win $1000.

One writer will be awarded a live, staged reading with professional local actors at Screenplay Live in Rochester, New York, as part of the 360|365 George Eastman House Film Festival. The prize includes travel, hotel and a $250 stipend.

“How great to get these analyses — and from astute and careful readers. Their comments both encourage and challenge me to really examine how to make this script as good as it can be. Thanks again! – Cornelia R., 2012 Entrant

Visit our website to learn more about the BlueCat community, watch videos on screenwriting, read interviews and articles on the craft, meet our readers and more!

SUBMIT YOUR SCREENPLAY:  http://www.bluecatscreenplay.com

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“Always make your work be personal. And, you never have to lie.

If you lie, you will only trip yourself up. You will always get caught in a lie.

It is very important for an artist not to lie, and most important is not to lie to yourself.

There are some questions that are inappropriate to ask, and rather than lie, I will not answer them because it’s not a question I accept.

So many times we are asked things in our work or in life that you want to lie, and all you have to do is say, ‘No, that is an improper question.’

So when you get into a habit of not lying when you are writing, directing, or making a film, that will carry your personal conviction into your work.

And, in a society where you say you are very free but you’re not entirely free, you have to try.

There is something we know that’s connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient.

We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.” ~ Francis Ford Coppola

Some idioms might be cute, and some might be serious, but any way you approach them, they are incredibly illuminating of a culture and characters who belong to it. I personally feel that idioms are so closely linked to the culture of which they are a part that, if they are used outside their original cultural context, they stick out of a story when I’m reading it. If you’re creating a world, you should be giving serious attention to idiomatic expressions.

One type of idiomatic expression is the aphorism – a phrase intended to give people behavioral guidance. “The early bird gets the worm” is used constantly in English, but this set of words, in this order, is so recognizable as belonging to our culture that I would hope I’d never run across it in a story world not directly linked to our own. If there are no birds, or there are no worms, you’re in serious trouble. And even if there are, and your people place value on rising early or acting early, don’t use it just as is. Change it. What are the primary motivators for your people to be getting up early, or acting fast? Create something that makes reference to that. Off the top of my head I’ll give you this: “First arrow names the kill.” This would be a society in which people hunt with arrows and whoever has their arrow hit first gets to receive some kind of honor. I’d work out the details with naming as I went. Story cultures can also have their own special values that will be honored with aphorisms. In Varin, the servant caste is guided by the expression, “Imbati, love where you serve.” This is a big deal for members of the caste who have to struggle with their own identity and with cruel masters, etc.

Read the whole much longer post here:  http://talktoyouniverse.blogspot.com/2011/06/foot-assignments-how-idioms-and.html

Some idioms might be cute, and some might be serious, but any way you approach them, they are incredibly illuminating of a culture and characters who belong to it. I personally feel that idioms are so closely linked to the culture of which they are a part that, if they are used outside their original cultural context, they stick out of a story when I’m reading it. If you’re creating a world, you should be giving serious attention to idiomatic expressions.

One type of idiomatic expression is the aphorism – a phrase intended to give people behavioral guidance. “The early bird gets the worm” is used constantly in English, but this set of words, in this order, is so recognizable as belonging to our culture that I would hope I’d never run across it in a story world not directly linked to our own. If there are no birds, or there are no worms, you’re in serious trouble. And even if there are, and your people place value on rising early or acting early, don’t use it just as is. Change it. What are the primary motivators for your people to be getting up early, or acting fast? Create something that makes reference to that. Off the top of my head I’ll give you this: “First arrow names the kill.” This would be a society in which people hunt with arrows and whoever has their arrow hit first gets to receive some kind of honor. I’d work out the details with naming as I went. Story cultures can also have their own special values that will be honored with aphorisms. In Varin, the servant caste is guided by the expression, “Imbati, love where you serve.” This is a big deal for members of the caste who have to struggle with their own identity and with cruel masters, e

His book The Power of Film is well worth reading.

In this article, Brad talks hanging around comedy clubs and meeting Jerry Seinfeld.  He had a moment for a private chat and asked Jerry what tips he had for a comedian just starting out.  His advice is gold for any writer.

It’s also the premise on which The One Hour Screenwriter eCourse is built.  Success in anything requires incremental steady progress.  Writing one hour a day or one joke a day is how genius is created.

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don’t feel like it.

He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.

Over the years I’ve used his technique in many different areas. I’ve used it for exercise, to learn programming, to learn network administration, to build successful websites and build successful businesses.

It works because it isn’t the one-shot pushes that get us where we want to go, it is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes. You may have heard “inch by inch anything’s a cinch.” Inch by inch does work if you can move an inch every day.

Daily action builds habits. It gives you practice and will make you an expert in a short time. If you don’t break the chain, you’ll start to spot opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t. Small improvements accumulate into large improvements rapidly because daily action provides “compounding interest.”

Skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next.

I’ve often said I’d rather have someone who will take action—even if small—every day as opposed to someone who swings hard once or twice a week. Seinfeld understands that daily action yields greater benefits than sitting down and trying to knock out 1000 jokes in one day.

Think for a moment about what action would make the most profound impact on your life if you worked it every day. That is the action I recommend you put on your Seinfeld calendar. Start today and earn your big red X. And from here on out…

Don’t break the chain!

Jerry Seinfeld said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don’t feel like it.

He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works.

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.

Over the years I’ve used his technique in many different areas. I’ve used it for exercise, to learn programming, to learn network administration, to build successful websites and build successful businesses. (Or it could be used for screenwriting)

It works because it isn’t the one-shot pushes that get us where we want to go, it is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes. You may have heard “inch by inch anything’s a cinch.” Inch by inch does work if you can move an inch every day.

Daily action builds habits. It gives you practice and will make you an expert in a short time. If you don’t break the chain, you’ll start to spot opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t. Small improvements accumulate into large improvements rapidly because daily action provides “compounding interest.”

Skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next.

I’ve often said I’d rather have someone who will take action—even if small—every day as opposed to someone who swings hard once or twice a week. Seinfeld understands that daily action yields greater benefits than sitting down and trying to knock out 1000 jokes in one day.

Think for a moment about what action would make the most profound impact on your life if you worked it every day. That is the action I recommend you put on your Seinfeld calendar. Start today and earn your big red X. And from here on out…

Don’t break the chain!

The One Hour Screenwriter eCourse gives you specific daily writing tasks you can knock off in an hour a day.  It guides you day-by-day and hour-by-hour from idea to finished first draft.  You’ll never be stuck or stymied again because you will have an action plan broken down in easy-to-follow steps.  Finally finish that screenplay in a motivated manageable way.

While these basic tools may seem overly crude or simplistic, I found that a great lesson of screenwriting was to pay attention to these fundamentals of craft, even as I tackled more challenging or sophisticated writing projects.

Tell a story: It sounds simple, but writers often slip off the narrative track. I’m not saying you have to write a straight-ahead, traditional narrative, but always remember that the reader is always asking, if only unconsciously, “What happens next?” The key to screenwriting is that every scene (in the generally fifty or so “master scenes” of a movie) must push the story ahead. Ask yourself, “what is the ‘forward’ in this scene?” How does each chapter of your book push the story ahead? It doesn’t have to be a cliffhanger or a plot twist, it could be a simple character trait that you reveal (unexpectedly). But it has to move us forward.

Character is king: Whether you are writing a thriller or a domestic drama, your characters — and especially your central character — is the key to good writing. For genre fiction — and most commercial movies — the plots are often incidental or interchangeable. What makes the piece memorable is the characters. Lots of writers focus too much on plot and not enough on character. Audiences and readers — like all of us — want to spend time with engaging and real people. Characters make your story come alive.

Keep up the pace: While movies demand a vigorous, even relentless pace that isn’t as important in books, the idea of moving the story forward with a sense of rhythm is critical. Writing, like music, demands a kind of internal rhythm and pacing to make it work. If you’re not feeling the rhythm in your writing, it probably isn’t working.

Find (and maintain) the right tone: Tone is a subtle and often elusive quality in any piece of writing. Most writers explore the tone of their work as they go along, rather than fix it at the beginning, which is fine. But in screenwriting, the medium demands a steady, persistent tone for the piece. Audiences have to be reminded — often again and again — of the film’s tone, whether it is a comedy, drama or action piece. So each scene – or in the case of fiction, each chapter — has to be measured against a yardstick for tone. Too much? Too little? Over the top? Above all, is it consistent?

Think in pictures: Film is primarily about “moving” pictures, and so screenwriters are forced from the outset to think in pictures. But this is a great discipline for all wordsmiths, who must understand the power of the visual, even if the pictures are drawn in words rather than on video screens. The economy of visual images in conveying ideas and emotions is a powerful tool that screenwriters — and all writers — should have in their toolbox.

Whole post is here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hoyt-hilsman/what-i-learned-from-scree_b_823657.html

Openness to bad notes that generate good ideas is the key takeaway here.  I always tell writers– Don’t listen to the specific note.  The specific note is an attempt to be helpful.  Listen to what the note-giver thinks would be accomplished by doing what is suggested.  Listen for what is missing emotionally that generated the specific note.  If you address the underlying deficiency– how you do it, specifically, usually isn’t that important.  There is something problematic underlying the note– however inane or off-the-mark the specific suggestion might be.

THR: What’s your daily work routine?

JC: We have a daily work routine in the sense that we come into the office, but I would call it a daily routine as opposed to a daily work routine. We don’t necessarily do any work when we get here.

THR: How do you deal with notes?The King’s Speech writer David Seidler told me a producer’s dumb idea to have a character in prison have sex with a nurse made him come up with a different, good sex idea that fit the script’s characters.

JC: I don’t think that’s a dumb idea, by the way.

EC: In the silent films, they had a story conference where they actually brought in a guy called the “Wildie,” which was a lunatic, not a figurative lunatic but a guy –

JC: Someone from the insane asylum who’d sit at the story table.

EC: He’d interrupt with just insane eruptions that had nothing to do with anything, and the writers would go, “Oh, yes, right. We could, y’know…”

THR: Where was this?

EC: This was at the Max Roach Studio.

JC: No, Hal Roach. Max Roach didn’t need a Wildie.

EC: You can sometimes treat studio notes that way too. Although sometimes you get studio notes where you go, “OK.” Sometimes – well, a good idea is a good idea. You don’t want to be snobby about where you take them from.

JC: Even if it comes from the studio.

EC: Even if they’re bad ideas, that doesn’t mean they’re not useful. That’s very true.

Read the full article here:  http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/race/joel-ethan-coen-spill-screenwriting-96473