Monday, January 04, 2010

Pulp Writing: The Creative and The Business of Writing

Seems I lit a bit of a fuse with my post regarding the Asylum here. There were the usual blog comments and a couple of comments over at the Facebook page.

One of the themes running through the comments were that you could knock out a script in 30 days or less and walk away with a thousand bucks in your pocket. That it didn't take much effort, or craft or creativity.

For my part in that discussion I want to apologize, because that sentiment is wrong. It's wrong on a creative level and a business level. It dangles the carrot that you could knock one of these stories out and go on to do better things with your time. That because the pay is low it doesn't deserve your full attention.

Let me tell you now - and I'm telling myself this as well - the job you have in hand is the one you need to concentrate on no matter how little you're being paid, no matter how hard the work is to accomplish.

If you accept the terms of the job it's absolutely in your best interest to do the very best you can do. Every time. These are your clients (as is the audience) and they deserve your best no matter what you're getting paid upfront, on the back end, whatever.

If you're like me you're a fan of these movies. What do you want to see up there onscreen? What would make your jaw drop to the floor?

The job in hand deserves all of your creative attention. These are the hard nuts to crack - the jobs where you must create on deadline and with the idea there is no money. If you do get to the nut of it then you'll understand exactly how you can apply these techniques to future jobs.

It speaks well of you to do your best every time, because if you don't , you develop the reputation for "phoning it in."

That's a stink that doesn't wash off.

In a world where budgets are dropping, production co's are doing more with less, and new low-cost methods of distribution are the modus operandi, you don't want that sort of stink.

Below are two books by Paul Arden I think you'll enjoy that speak to the creative and the business. They are advertising-specific in terminology, but universal in truth.



1 comment:

Jon Molly said...

Do you want to be known as the guy thatwrote that forgettable Asylum script, or as the guy that wrote that awesome Asylum script? One of these days Asylum is going to make a movie along the lines of Terminator - low budget, but clever, original, and exteremely profitable. That's the script you (slash we) should be trying to write, becuase the guy that writes that script will be able to write his own check on his next few projects.