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 is to not break the chain.
Related posts tagged 'Writing'
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Related posts tagged 'Writing'
Q: The greatest comedic novels (Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Pale Fire, Based on a True Story) all make heavy use of metafictional elements. I'm leaving out A Confederacy of Dunces because I hated that book. Anyway, were you consciously drawing upon that tradition in BoaTS? Or did the story you wanted to tell naturally take you in the direction of metafiction? I ask because you have claimed to hate meta.
A: I love all those books. I do hate meta but I was forced into by the scriptures of convention. I was hired to write a memoir, but secretly wrote a novel so I had to use the techniques of meta to mask it. I did it so well the New York Times called it a nonfiction.
I don't have any real alterations I'd make, like "oh, I put the threshold in the wrong place," but I do have a much simpler view of the circular story model, based on years of breaking well over a hundred stories with it...little tricks that make viewing a story even easier and I guess a little less out-and-out hero's journeyish in favor of something more fundamentally geometrical. I'm hoping to share these discoveries in some part of the book I'm writing for Doubleday, in the chapter between the shit from my childhood nobody cares about and the Chevy Chase stuff I forced everyone to care about.
Question: how do you organize and develop your material and various jokes? Do you have notebooks full of detailed notes and jokes, or do you just sketch them out and wing it on stage?
Answer: I believe in detailed notes and jokes, and also winging it onstage. But, not for your first open mic. For your first open mic, my advice to you would be to make sure you have what you're gonna do memorized, to the point that one of your friends can gently slap you across the face, and you'll still be able to get it out of your mouth.
i felt compelled to share my mental health challenges to help take the shame and stigma off it, but i couldn't do it on stage-was just too insecure and nervous. i wanted to write the book that i wish had been available to me when i was suffering--self help books are usually very boring and i wanted to write a cool, funny one! i also wrote about getting my ear getting bitten off and almost getting arrested in guatemala which i couldn't really do while making eye contact with humans
I am painfully conscious of the harm that occurs when participating in the media with unclear intentions. I do not want to be a salesman, I do not want to scream, ‘Buy me!’ or, ‘Watch me!’ And I don’t want to do that tonight. What I’m trying to express – what I’d like to express – is the notion that, by being honest, thoughtful and aware of the existence of other living beings, a change can begin to happen in how we think of ourselves and the world, and ourselves in the world. We are not the passive audience for this big, messed up power play.
We don’t have to be. We can say who we are, we can assert our right to existence, we can say to the bullies and conmen, the people who try to shame u...
Oh, zero. I wanted to write a novel, but they wouldn’t let me. But there are facts in the book that are true, [like] 'a river is made of water.'
I wish I could. i have a lot of journals with one page half written in.
I sometimes will write myself a quick email on my bb when I think of something.
It's been a priceless experience with the people I've met in the writer's room, and that I learned how to write a script. It's just great to finally have something where I can actually write the lines. As you work your way up, you think to yourself (or lie to yourself) that you could write it better. And now I get to do that. It's been great.
I still have the same freedom because i don't care, when I'm writing, that I"m famous. It doesn't help or hurt.
Writing a script is different because you have to write from different perspectives other than your own. I had to write lines for my fictional wife, Leif, Artie [characters in his HBO show Crashing]... you have to imagine more than just your own opinions. A very good excercise just in general!
The best thing you can do is write, write, write, and write. And read. A lot. And fail. The more you fail the better you'll get. At SNL you could have an amazing show and then just BOMB the following Wednesday at the table read. Stay tough. Don't compare yourself to other people. Just follow your path and have fun.
It was actually really similar in the big creative ways: thinking about how to find comedy and surprise and emotion in the unexpected and the everyday.
It comes to me. Part of my leaving the media on all day is a way of…my mind has trained itself to have a very sensitive system of radar about certain words, expressions, topics, and areas of discussion that come up. There are things that interest me more than others, and then there are things that jump out. There’s one thing I learned about the mind as a young man, when I quit school. I read a book - half of it, anyway - called Psycho-Cybernetics. The author said that the brain is a goal-seeking and problem-solving machine, and if you put into it the parameters of what it is you need or want or expect, and you feed it, it will do a lot of work without you even noticing. Because the brain doe...
It [writing a speech] is very much like when I have a job writing a screenplay. I think I wanted to do something true and I wanted to do something helpful. What complicates it, in addition to the fact that that’s a hard thing to figure out, is that I also struggle with wanting you to like me. In my fantasy I leave here and people are saying, ‘Great speech!’ you know, and, ‘Not only is he a great writer but boy, I really learned something tonight, he really brought it!’ So as much as I know that this neediness of mine exists, I also have a difficult time extricating myself from it, or even fully recognizing it when it’s happening.
i just started watching tons of pilots and reading pilot scripts. i also read a book called "save the cat" which is an excellent way to learn the math of writing tv and movies. i got note cards, a cork board, the whole thing! I'm a dork but i couldn't afford classes or anything on it. watch your favorite tv pilot, write out the math of it, and follow that template.
plotting can be tough because you're never quite sure you're doing it right - it's usually kind of like an exploration. You try something, and figure out what it needs. For instance, one episode we were plotting last night, I felt like it was all things happening, and no emotional connection from our charaters. So we figured out what my own personal connection to the plot would be, and that actually helped us figure out the things that would happen more easily. It's also helpful if your characters can have opposite points of view about what's occuring.
To motivate, I would try to outline as much as you can before you ever start writing a line of dialogue. If you're having trouble plotting, ...
I don’t go, “I’m gonna write a joke.” I just go through the world and see stuff. It’s like I exercised the part of my mind of noticing things, to the point where I’m now noticing things without even trying to notice them.
i would say do it. i would say be brave. you only lose by not trying, you dont lose if you dont achieve fame or glory.
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