Craft & Career - Sign up for this week's Launch

[Jim Mercurio]

A-List Screenwriting's free monthly e-newsletter, Craft & Career (http://www.a-listscreenwriting.com)launches on Tuesday or Wednesday.

There is exclusive content from me (and eventually others). The first issue has an extensive article on "Exploiting Concept," which analyzes Memento and Freaky Friday.

There is also an interview with Breakfast with Sharks author Michael Lent about his recent mid-six-figure book deal with Disney/Hyperion. I think there is a lot of relevance in that writers need to find ways to create and find work in the changing landscape of spec screenwriting.

This current issues even discusses story concepts as they apply to rock songs (and eventually shorts, viral videos, commercials).

ScriptShadow (Wilsonreads) has confirmed that he will do a piece for next month's issue. I am encouraging him to do a column.

The "Exploitation of Concept" article is coming in at around 3,500 words. I am hoping that this newsletter can be a substantial addition to the screenplay literature that's out there. If you're worried about junk email, sign up for the monthly newsletter only and you won't be on any other "lists".

Also, I am randomly giving away a seat to my weeklong class to one of the first 2000 people who sign up.

Sign up at a-listscreenwriting.com (http://www.a-listscreenwriting.com)or championscreenwriting.com (http://www.championscreenwriting.com).

Thanks,
Jim Mercurio
(jim@a-listscreenwriting.com)

[Jim Mercurio]

Here are some excerpts from the Craft article in the newsletter that goes out in a few minutes.

Exploitation of concept just isn't addressed by most screenwriting guides. It's one of the last skills that I see amateur writers develop. One reason might be that the writers aren't aware that this is a necessary craft. Ironically, it may be one of the most important principles to understand.

Exploitation in this sense means the clever usage of your resources to maximum effect. Exploitation of concept means that the story premise and situation you set up must be the basis for all that follows, and that you must take it "all the way" within those boundaries. One reason this skill does not develop quickly when beginning screenwriting is that a stylized approach to storytelling is not what interests people when they begin their love affair with writing. There is a romantic notion that, as an artist, the magic is in using your creativity to take the story anywhere you want. But the truth is, the magic in commercial concept-driven screenwriting is the methodical and calculated exploitation of the very narrow "what if" of the premise with which you begin.

Understanding this principle could have really helped the writers (can I even use that word?) of Land of the Lost. If the unique premise/concept of your story is that these characters are time travelers stuck in a land with dangerous dinosaurs and lizard men, then how in the hell do you justify a sequence where the characters get high by a motel pool? That scene could have (and has) been in a bunch of other movies. Even if it's the funniest thing ever, it's generic and doesn't belong in this movie. Concept-wise, it's a non sequitur.

I have read body-switching movies with a Ten-Little-Indians whodunit mystery where the person who solves the crime does it with deductive reasoning just like Columbo or Sherlock Holmes. The problem is that he or she also solves the mystery without any special insight from the body-switching complication. Here's a hint for that story: If the solution isn't tied to switching bodies, don't switch bodies.

Sign up TODAY! (http://www.a-listscreenwriting.com)

Everyone who signs up will get the first issue, no matter when he or she signs up.

[Grandmaster]

If it's free I'll happily read it, but I'm too tired to "do a link" right now (bed beckons, back aches).

[Joaneasley]

I'll share with everybody what I told Jim. Very good articles in the first issue, especially the one on exploiting your concept. I look forward to the net issue.

Joan