Tag Archives: marketing

Book Reviews

Review: Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is and What You Can Do About It by Steven Pressfield

Leave a comment

There are about as many books on writing as there are writers, pro and amateur combined. You wanna know about structure? Theme? Character development? World-building? We’ve got you covered!

But where do you turn when you’re losing your mind, your will to create, and your drive to go on, because it feels like you’re in a boxing match with a brick wall; wrecking yourself and dumping your energy, with no end, and certainly no payoff in sight?  You’re doing everything “they” tell you to do, but it’s just not working. So, who’s coming to save you?

I hate to tell you, but… NOBODY!

But… what if someone came along with the premium blend of tough love and radical empathy to allow you to save yourself? Oh, that’s easy. That would be Steven Pressfield, with  Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is and What You Can Do About It.

Pressfield‘s best-known nonfiction work is the essential The War of Art, the beginning of an epic philosophical investigation and exposition of the creative process, as applied not only to writers, but to every variety of reckless spirit that dares to throw off the stable and sensible trappings of a “practical,” loveless career and pursue a higher calling. After identifying and indeed naming the force that bears down on all of us to stifle our creative impulses and spawn excuses and procrastination, Resistance (capitalization on purpose),  he went on to drill down into numerous aspects of the creator’s journey with an inspiring and joyous series of follow-ups: Turning Pro, Do the Work, and The Artist’s Journey, just to get you started.

But there’s something that especially resonated with me about Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t (NWTRYS), and perhaps the title alone tells you why.  This one really goes after a prominent scourge in the world of aspiring creatives (it’s more writer-focused than his others, but these ideas can’t resist universal applicability), and, after all our hard work, belts us in the gut with a harsh meathook reality that we’ve all tacitly signed on for; nobody cares. They don’t care to pay the least bit of attention, let alone money, to the stuff we create, until we get a few things straight about what we’re doing here.

What are some of those things?

  • You, the creator, are only half of the transaction. Your audience isn’t made up of functionaries for your creative satisfaction. You owe them quality and engagement in exchange for their time and attention.
  • It helps to conceptualize yourself as an advertiser who sells through stories, and your creation as product (and stop considering this mindset distasteful).
  • There are ugly elements of any business, from relationship/ personality management to political maneuvering.  Learning and navigating these is part of the game.
  • Starting a project, getting through it, and finishing it are all skills in and of themselves that must be learned.
  • Learn the ins and outs of your chosen field. Comport yourself like a pro.
  • Certain fundamental principles underlie every type of creative endeavor.  Fall back on these when things aren’t working.
  • In refining your craft, you’ll unavoidably be working on yourself. Don’t resist this. Lean into it.
  • Every life event, the good and especially the bad, is a learning experience you can incorporate into your aspirations.
  • Fiction is truth, and nonfiction is fiction (love these!)
  • And more!

As you may have guessed, these aren’t laid out textbook-style, but ripped from the headlines of Pressfield‘s own journey, slogging through the trenches of self-doubt, temptation, rejection, corruption, and a slew of compromises and “shadow careers” (which may be self-explanatory, but read The War of Art for clarification) to become one of the preeminent novelists working today, in fiction and nonfiction alike.

Much of his work, and especially NWTRYS, has talked me off a ledge at times when my writing felt Sisyphean at best, felonious at worst. Perhaps The War of Art is the ideal place to start, but I consider this volume no less an essential writer’s companion. If you’re struggling on the path to self-realization in any field, see Mr. Pressfield. His wisdom and insights won’t coddle you, but may just  help you navigate your way through the abyss by, among other methods, pushing you into the classic protagonist’s dilemma: what do you want versus what do you need?

 

 

 

 

My Story Theories

The Not-So-Silent Treatment

Leave a comment

As anyone who read my post on loglines might guess, I’m in a phase of reevaluation and rediscovery of prewriting tools due to a new project. The latest object of experimentation is the treatment, or stylized synopsis of the script. The producer I’m working with asked first for a four-page, and then a 16-20-page treatment as a means of tweaking and developing the concept.

Much like the loglines, I’d previously thought of treatments as an annoying step that came in the marketing phase, to pare my script down to a document short enough to accommodate the time constraints and attention spans of producers or executives. I always found the process whittling the story down into an effective summary excruciating.

After learning that it’s commonly done prior to writing the script, I wasn’t much happier about that prospect. I’m a scene cards (index cards) guy. They’ve become my favorite tool for mapping out the significant plot points, so I can then adjust the structure until I’m able to kinda sorta watch the film in my head, and then dive into the screenplay itself. I didn’t see what could be gained by distilling and summarizing a plot that was still in development.

But, of course, I was wrong again…

The misconception that was really holding me back was viewing the treatment as a rote synopsis (recall that “effective summary” language used earlier). The utter stupidity of seeing it as simultaneously a promotional device, and an essay devoid of creative flair, where the story concept was laid bare to speak for itself, is unfathomable now. After some perspective damage control, I’ve discovered a whole new dimension of prewriting benefits, both artistic and mechanical.

There’s much more literary flexibility in the treatment than the script itself, due to the need to get to the point and economically convey the mood and tone. It’s permissible to spend some time in the characters’ heads, as well as the readers’. Of course, we still have to stay primarily visual and not hit them over the head with how they should feel at every turn, but there’s much more room for suggestion on these matters.

Throwing in some stylistic and provocative turns of phrase here and there; such as “She’s devastated to find out that…,” “He doesn’t quite buy that explanation, but he agrees,” or “And then they exchange a knowing smile. These two are working together!;” also hatches a graphical “emotion map,” an invaluable guide for the writer to reference and adjust along the way, which brings me to the more pragmatic aspects…

If the scene cards represent a blueprint of the story, then the treatment operates more like a miniature 3D model. It reflects not only the order and structure of the beats but also how they flow and blend together. Thus it goes beyond the mere framework of the story and gives a preview of how it will be told. This allows numerous plotting mishaps to be pinpointed and rectified in the treatment-writing process, and uniquely so, since they aren’t so easily spotted in outlining, scene cards, any other form of “beating out the story” that I’ve employed.

Its nature as a piece of prose rather than an itemized list of occurrences lends greater immediate visibility to how any change you make affects, not only that plot point but other narrative factors as well. Here are some issues it can help detect…

  • The overall timing of scenes, setup/ payoff pairs, obstacles, tense moments, reveals, and twists are awkwardly and/ or predictably paced.
  • Two significant events are butted against each other, but the logical cause-and-effect principles that would carry one to the next just aren’t there.
  • A character’s mood, actions, or motives change on a dime or seem inconsistent somehow
  • The characters are acting according to knowledge or motivations that they don’t have yet.
  • Scenes and sequences need to be added or cut to get to certain waypoints more smoothly and effectively.

This isn’t a magic bullet. Haven’t found one of those yet. Maybe a treatment is as useless to you as I once thought it was for me, but many of the issues above were caught and dealt with much sooner in the process this time around than on previous projects that had no treatment in the pipeline. Adding one on this go-around opened a new world to me. If you’re getting stuck in the development of your plot, maybe it can give you the same refreshed perspective! Give it a try and let us know how it works for you!