Screenwriting From Iowa

“The smallest, teeniest, weeniest, emotional discovery that’s real, beats the hell out of the biggest one that’s phoney.” Improv guru Del Close  (as found at http://delquotemarathon.tumblr.com) Related posts: 40 Days of Emotions  Scott W. Smith

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“Del Close was the improv comedy guru (both writing and acting) in Chicago when I went there. And he was the reason I went there. I was told about this guy doing groundbreaking work, where you are improvising plays, and he could teach you how to improvise scenes. He was a big influence on my […]

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“I get swept away by the sincerity. I do not get swept away by what people call pyrotechnics & prose. I do not get swept away by wit. I think wit is in a lot of ways damaging to fiction. I just feel like I’m listening to a writer and not the character. When I […]

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“I’ve lived in New York before. Everybody says it helps with publicity and awards and stuff like that. I’d rather have my nice life, for example, in Iowa.” Ethan Canin “With this extraordinary novel [A Doubter’s Almanac], Ethan Canin now takes his place on the high wire with the best writers of his time.” Pat […]

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“I had to fully engage with the process and just choose to be broke.” Writer/director  Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies ) 2016 SXSW Keynote Address This is a fitting follow-up to yesterday’s quote by filmmaker John Sayles about the difficulty of making money these days as an independent filmmaker. Joe Swanberg may be the most prolific filmmaker in the United […]

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“I had to fully engage with the process and just choose to be broke.” Writer/director  Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies ) 2016 SXSW Keynote Address This is fitting follow-up to yesterday’s quote by filmmaker John Sayles about the difficulty of making money these days as an independent filmmaker. Joe Swanberg may be the most prolific filmmaker in the United States. […]

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“I often say to people: ‘You absolutely can make movies. The idea of having a career in the movie business is a very, very different thing.’ That’s just dollar and cents. A garage band can release their music for free on the web make their money by gigging live. You can’t do that as a moviemaker. […]

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“I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn’t to to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety, but to watch what happens and then write it down. The […]

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“In my view, stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point B and finally to point Z; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings the characters to life through their speech.  “You may wonder where plot is in all this. […]

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Author Pat Conroy’s funeral was today after announcing just a month ago that he had pancreatic cancer. Here’s a quote I pulled for a post back in 2012 that’s one of my favorite illustrations of what writers do. “On my first night in Vienna, Jonathan [Carroll, author of Bones of the Moon] walked me down to the Danube, […]

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