
Joss Whedon's Top Writing Tips - curtis
http://dannystack.blogspot.com/2009/01/joss-whedons-top-10-writing-tips.html
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jerf
This is basically why I enjoy Joss' work so much. I read the criticisms of
Joss' work and to a certain extent I agree with all of them, but behind the
sometimes too-clever wordplay (though I'll admit I usually enjoy it anyhow)
and the girls-who-kick-ass fetish is one of the most solid stories you can
find. I wanted to call out my favorite point or two here, but the truth is you
walk into a theater and you're lucky to get competent execution of _any_ of
those points from what's up there on the screen. Even if you don't _like_ his
stories, he definitely knows storytelling like few others. (Brad Bird is one
of the few others that leaps to mind.)

I particularly miss comedy movies that were written with these principles in
mind, instead of being simply "‘This’ll lead to many fine set-pieces’"
consisting of parodies with no love for their subject, nor anything
interesting to say. Mike Myers was the last to do this (Austin Powers, at
least the first one), and lately he's sucked pretty hard too, so...

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froo
Agreed about Brad Bird.

The other Pixar director I really like (actually more than Brad Bird) is
Andrew Stanton. I think that Wall-E and Finding Nemo are Pixar's best works
yet :)

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tristmegistus
Good advice. The key step if you want to write is to actually do the writing
part. For in-depth, and practical screenwriting advice I really like Terry
Rossios's columns on Wordplayer:
<http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/welcome.html>.

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quantumhobbit
For working up the motivation to write I recommend "Bird by Bird" by Ann
Lamont.

[http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-
Life/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-
Life/dp/0385480016/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232631079&sr=8-1)

~~~
electromagnetic
Personally I'd say put the book down and just do it, but then I've been
writing since I was 15.

My best advice would be to read a really good novel while you're writing,
because there's something about seeing a novel unfold whilst you're writing
one that seems to help the process along. You'll likely get through 3-4 books
(if you read like me) when writing a novel and this can really help in the
beginning because you see something started in the beginning really unfold at
the end and it's like 'holy crap, thats the best thing in the entire book',
then you have a moment thinking 'well why the fuck aren't _I_ doing something
like that!', then you do.

The other advantage in reading while you write is that I think it reassures
you when you get blocked, because 99% of the time you'll think the story is
going too slowly, however that's because it takes like 10-100 times longer to
write something creative than it does to read it. I think it was Richard
Curtis (Notting Hill/Bridget Jones/Love Actually) who made this point; he was
asked why there's such a large gap between all his great award winning movies
and he said quite simply, 'because it takes a lot of time to write something
important to me'. This is quite well illustrated by his writing credits, he
switches between writing a blockbuster movie and TV comedy (Mr Bean) with his
friend from university.

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justindz
"You have one goal: to connect with your audience. Therefore, you must track
what your audience is feeling at all times. One of the biggest problems I face
when watching other people’s movies is I’ll say, ‘This part confuses me’, or
whatever, and they’ll say, ‘What I’m intending to say is this’, and they’ll go
on about their intentions. None of this has anything to do with my experience
as an audience member. "

I opine on this in poetry a lot. People have a tendency to write some super
vague poem that completely washes over the audience, and so rather than fix
it, they include a preamble that makes the subsequent poem pointless. Then you
call them on that and they say "Well, I just write for myself."

If that's so, why are you reading it to a live audience and asking for
feedback? If you're not writing it for the audience, save the audience the
trouble. I'm sure it's the same way for movies, presentations and pretty much
any performance.

In fact, I wrote a poem bashing this very practice recently. Allow me to
explain all the clever allusions up front in case they are too obtuse.

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cchooper
This is something that occurs again and again in the creative arts. People say
they want to write a poem or a novel, but they end up writing something that's
actually best expressed as an essay, or the poem itself becomes a veiled essay
(see also: screenplays filled with pointless exposition and explanatory
speeches).

It's probably a consequence of the fact that we're all taught in school to
write essays, but not to be creative. When we don't know what we're doing, we
fall back on that way of expressing ourselves. To beat it, you have to unlearn
what you've been taught.

~~~
electromagnetic
I agree with your last statement; I've loved stories since I was tiny and I
don't mean I found them entertaining, I mean I'd just be playing and I'd make
up a whole story, my friend and I spent the better part of our pre-teen years
playing games in a completely made up world and not 'cowboys and indians' or
'cops and robbers' like everyone else did.

Yet when I got into high school they really tried hammering in Essays to the
point where no one knew how to write a real story. You'd get people screwing
up, bunching 5 lines of different characters speech into 1 paragraph because
it was dealing with one point. People didn't seem to understand that in a
piece of creative writing you don't need to have a point to every line as long
as every line helps make a point.

I'm working on a novel right now, which coincidentally illustrates this point.
My chapters are actually titled as the point of the entire chapter at the
moment, here are a few: Casual Subterfuge, The Truth Unveiled and The Advent
of (important character). The chapter titles will possibly change, but right
now they're as useful as any writing plan I could make because if it isn't
setting up later plots and it isn't advancing the plot arc of the chapter,
then it gets ripped out.

The biggest thing I noticed in novels when in school was that some people
butchered it with a preface. Most SF/F/H writers it's sometimes just a page
saying thank you (normally to their spouse, agent and publisher - in that
order) however a significant amount do this in the afterword. Yet when I
picked up books I was assigned in school the preface took 5 pages describing
the purpose of the book and I just thought that was cheap and lazy.

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msg
Almost OT, but I hate literature with the criticism at the front. I find it
almost impossible to skip without reading a few words and there are always
spoilers (this happened to me on Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and The Pearl,
and some Stephen King stuff). But if they were an afterword instead, no one
would read them...

I hate soundtrack previews for the DVD I'm about to watch for exactly the same
reason.

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justindz
I hated the Crouching Tiger DVD. Since I didn't see the movie in theater,
getting the DVD to play involved going through a few menus showing very
critical development moments in the movie. Lame.

In case you want to read my mock Preamble and commiserate, I'll go ahead and
be vain: <http://poetry.herokugarden.com/poems/38>

~~~
msg
Crazy, the exact same thing happened to me recently.

At one point David Lynch wanted his DVDs not to have scene breaks, just a play
button. I get it, I totally do.

I'm at work so your preamble is firewalled, but I'll get to it this evening.

