On Writing and web content

A discussion with Shayne the other night about how to improve my web site resulted in several points of thought. One was "web content". I shall have to figure out how to improve my "web content". I'll try to see if "blogger bits" on my web pages will be useful, or whether they will just be a too much a pain to keep current.

I was on Ms. Scott-Lee's web site which details her difficulties in reining in her natural creativity in order to conform to a Creative Writing Class. One thing her class instructor wants her to do is to write a synopsys of her story. I am not sure what a synopsys of a story which has not been written might look like...I thought they were a sort of summary of a story written afterwards, but the importance of an outline before developing the story was kind of critical...and seemed to be what the instructor was getting at. I made a comment on her blog which was complete enough to be a whole post..so I thought I would publish it here... If any of my regular readers wish to add to this, please feel free. Its not often I get up on my soap box to discuss building things, especially novels, since I never got a novel printed in my life! But, I looked into it once, and for a while thought that maybe writing would be a career. Then I found out how much work it is

In David Gerrold's book "The Trouble With Tribbles", he details the trouble he had when he went to write a screen play for the first time. The rules were tighter than a sonnet! Two minor climaxes,(leading up to commercial breaks) one major climax, all within 20 minutes. Dialogue to be adjusted according to the space allotted to the actors, and the correct amount of "screen time" each actor needs in accorance with their contract. Plus variations for directors cuts and European distribution. He said in his book that he now understood why so few really good authors went on to write screen plays...that the discipline to write a screen play was completely different from writing a novel, but WAS similar to writing a poem. Because he teethed on screen writing (he wrote the most popular Star Trek episode of all time at the age of 19!) he found his regular writing skills to be blunted by the lack of both deadlines and tight discipline. So, he made his own. He wrote all his subsequent novels by creating the synopsis or outline first, and then working within that framework. Creativity of course was still there, but it meant changing the "framework" before allowing the novel to "run away on its own". Heinlein only wrote one book that he did not plan out in advance. As he says in "Grumbles from the Grave", his publishers advanced him money for a book of xxxxx words, and he would give them xxxxx words, not a word more and not a word less. The book he wrote in one 24 hour marathon...was Starship Troopers...a book not really very well received, but the emotion comes through loud and clear. The movie does not do justice to the emotional writing. (The only screen play the greatest Science Fiction writer of all time ever wrote by the way was "Red Planet". A totally forgettable B movie.)