What's your brand?

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  • What's your brand?

    What genres do you focus on?
    Which have been more successful in generating work (options, sales, assignments)?
    Do you take life experience into play when you write inthose genres?
    If there are any questions, direct them to [email protected]

  • #2
    Re: What's your brand?

    Originally posted by Brad Hole Brad View Post
    What genres do you focus on?
    Which have been more successful in generating work (options, sales, assignments)?
    Do you take life experience into play when you write inthose genres?
    I am the brand, or to put it another way, the brand is "Ron Aberdeen-.

    I sell myself before I sell my work. People mostly buy from people they know or know about.

    As a marketing man who worked for Sony I understand the importance of promoting the brand.

    People watch movies because of who directed them or who stared in them and rarely because of who wrote them.

    But people buy books mostly because of who wrote them, the author is the brand.

    Now when you buy a brand of a product you do so for several reasons; you have been satisfied before with the product, you've been enticed by an advertising campaign, recommended to use the product or you have used the brand before but not the product.

    It is the "used the brand before but not the product- that applies to writers, when you have read a book by the author before and enjoyed it you are inclined to expect the next one to be as entertaining.

    My spec screenplays cover various genres from children's fantasy to horror, from political thrillers to westerns, and my commissions have been just as varied.

    I market myself as a screenwriter, who writes spec screenplays and screenplays to order, my commissioned screenplays have included horror, Sci-Fi, family drama, political thrillers and a children's adventure.

    To answer your questions; I focus on what the client wants and the genre that has created more work than any other, is Horror.

    As for taking life's experiences into play when I write, of course I do; but that is a necessary ingredient regardless of genre, it is part of the writer's voice.
    Ron Aberdeen
    http://www.ronaberdeen.com/
    http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3609083/

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    • #3
      Re: What's your brand?

      I don't like the marketing speech invading the world of writing.

      A writer is not a brand, he's a personality.

      A brand is defined by rules, a person by convictions, feelings, and interest.

      A brand is not a living thing. It's a collection of cliches to sell products.

      I would use the word "style" instead of "brand" when it comes to a writer's work.
      "Ecco il grande Zampano!"

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: What's your brand?

        I tend to write dark family comedies, genre hybrids (mostly comedy-other genre), youthful protagonists, with off-beat, dark humor. I have several ideas for sci-fi.
        Last night, Jesus appeared to me in a dream and told me that loving me is the part of His job He hates the most.

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        • #5
          Re: What's your brand?

          I write unproduced screenplays.
          Nobody's perfect.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: What's your brand?

            Originally posted by JRS3 View Post
            I write unproduced screenplays.
            Best. Answer. Ever.
            @TerranceMulloy

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            • #7
              Re: What's your brand?

              Originally posted by JRS3 View Post
              I write unproduced screenplays.
              I specialize in that, as well!
              sigpic http://blip.fm/Peasblossom

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              • #8
                Re: What's your brand?

                Horror, Supernatural, Thriller, Drama, Sci-fi - a mixture of these and their hybrids.

                I also ensure I have written at least one highly suspenseful scene in each screenplay.

                Absolutely love suspense......so add Suspense to the above.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: What's your brand?

                  Originally posted by Ulysses View Post
                  I don't like the marketing speech invading the world of writing.

                  A writer is not a brand, he's a personality.

                  A brand is defined by rules, a person by convictions, feelings, and interest.

                  A brand is not a living thing. It's a collection of cliches to sell products.

                  I would use the word "style" instead of 'brand' when it comes to a writer's work.
                  'Voice' is what I keep hearing. Stop experimenting with every genre and find your voice.
                  If there are any questions, direct them to [email protected]

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: What's your brand?

                    Originally posted by Brad Hole Brad View Post
                    'Voice' is what I keep hearing. Stop experimenting with every genre and find your voice.
                    I think a writer should never listen to anyone regarding her own writing, like that nonsense about "your voice".

                    Back home I was very briefly teaching what you guys in the U.S. call "creative writing" and as an experiment I gave the students ten (10) excerpts from the world's literature asking them to guess who's the writer / a book.

                    Only one guy guessed 3 out of 10. But that was a trick; all 10 excerpts were from the ULYSSES. So much about "voice."

                    All you have to write is your own personal story. It could be placed 10,000 years from now on some Nebulae, but it should still be your own story. Just MHO on the topic of "your own voice".
                    "The writer is the most important person in Hollywood, but we must never tell the sons of bitches." -- Irving G. Thalberg

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: What's your brand?

                      Originally posted by GreyGhost22 View Post
                      I think a writer should never listen to anyone regarding her own writing, like that nonsense about "your voice".

                      Back home I was very briefly teaching what you guys in the U.S. call "creative writing" and as an experiment I gave the students ten (10) excerpts from the world's literature asking them to guess who's the writer / a book.

                      Only one guy guessed 3 out of 10. But that was a trick; all 10 excerpts were from the ULYSSES. So much about "voice."

                      All you have to write is your own personal story. It could be placed 10,000 years from now on some Nebulae, but it should still be your own story. Just MHO on the topic of "your own voice".
                      Heard at every WGA panel of professional Hollywood screenwriters I've ever been to in five years. (I'm paraphrasing of course.)
                      The WGA's membership is filled with schmucks that came up with one high concept idea that sold and were never heard from again. The studios buy these ideas and give it to one of us to write for a boatload of money. Develop your voice because, in the end, that is what will make your career as a working writer.

                      I have no idea what country you are from Greyghost, but that's the word on the street. The Hollywood street.
                      Last night, Jesus appeared to me in a dream and told me that loving me is the part of His job He hates the most.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: What's your brand?

                        Originally posted by GreyGhost22 View Post
                        I think a writer should never listen to anyone regarding her own writing, like that nonsense about "your voice".

                        Back home I was very briefly teaching what you guys in the U.S. call "creative writing" and as an experiment I gave the students ten (10) excerpts from the world's literature asking them to guess who's the writer / a book.

                        Only one guy guessed 3 out of 10. But that was a trick; all 10 excerpts were from the ULYSSES. So much about "voice."

                        All you have to write is your own personal story. It could be placed 10,000 years from now on some Nebulae, but it should still be your own story. Just MHO on the topic of "your own voice".
                        To have a writer's voice you need to understand what a writer's voice is.

                        It isn't their tone, mannerisms, diction or political beliefs it is their style.

                        Ten of thousands of people brought Dan Brown's latest because of the style of his writing in the previous four novels.

                        It is the same for John Le Carré, Tolkien, Scott Fitzgerald, Rowling, Hemingway and dozens of others.

                        Their style is their brand.

                        It is what people come to expect from the writer's work that they are already familiar with; in other words, that particularly writer's voice.
                        Ron Aberdeen
                        http://www.ronaberdeen.com/
                        http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3609083/

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: What's your brand?

                          Originally posted by GreyGhost22 View Post
                          I think a writer should never listen to anyone regarding her own writing, like that nonsense about "your voice".

                          Back home I was very briefly teaching what you guys in the U.S. call "creative writing" and as an experiment I gave the students ten (10) excerpts from the world's literature asking them to guess who's the writer / a book.

                          Only one guy guessed 3 out of 10. But that was a trick; all 10 excerpts were from the ULYSSES. So much about "voice."

                          All you have to write is your own personal story. It could be placed 10,000 years from now on some Nebulae, but it should still be your own story. Just MHO on the topic of "your own voice".
                          Is this the same ULYSSES who posted on the first page of this thread?

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: What's your brand?

                            Originally posted by NatachaVonBraun View Post
                            Heard at every WGA panel of professional Hollywood screenwriters I've ever been to in five years. (I'm paraphrasing of course.)
                            The WGA's membership is filled with schmucks that came up with one high concept idea that sold and were never heard from again. The studios buy these ideas and give it to one of us to write for a boatload of money. Develop your voice because, in the end, that is what will make your career as a working writer.
                            I have no idea what country you are from Greyghost, but that's the word on the street. The Hollywood street.

                            I guess on that street James Joyce would not be welcomed. I wonder, what happened with the common sense, really?

                            What "develop your voice" means? Are you an opera singer? A writer must be able to write well and nothing else. All that stuff of developing your voice is like "you've lost your edge" in THE MUSE; it simple makes no sense at all. It does create phony mistique to a process that's mysterious enough.


                            Or you should just let your voice to find you
                            "The writer is the most important person in Hollywood, but we must never tell the sons of bitches." -- Irving G. Thalberg

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: What's your brand?

                              "Brand" is a tough thing for writers. I primarily write comedy but I write police dramas and horrors too. Brand is something that ought to be left to studios and networks, not artists. And even then it's still confining.

                              In a Hollywood that centers squarely on marketing schemes now, would somebody like a pre-
                              1950s Billy Wilder make it today? Probably not. And that would be a shame.
                              "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
                              -Maya Angelou

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