wilderworks

When you're writing a story, it's important to fulfill the promise of your premise. You need to fully explore your concept, you need to make every event spring from that central idea and enhance that concept. You can't get distracted or side-tracked. To maintain unity, you should always stick to your premise. Except of course when you shouldn't. The Ultralight Some of the best comedies succeed by using a very light-weight, very natural premise. With very little plot to follow, it makes comic digressions and set-pieces easy to integrate. Nothing feels like a side-track if there's no main path. This freedom lets the characters lead the way, lets the comedy spring from common human thoughts and experiences. A simple premise keeps the comedy grounded. Christmas Vacation Some successful examples might include The Hangover , Grown Ups ,  or Christmas Vacation . There's also  When Harry Met Sally .  It has almost no plot whatsoever, but rather, a qu...

Here's my story. I moved to Los Angeles in 2005. On January 6th, 2005, I was in Las Vegas, taking down Christmas decorations from Caesar's Palace hallways and cypress trees (business, not pleasure). I took the Santa hat off of the mini statue of David's head. Just as we were finishing up, I was offered a three-month internship at a small LA management company. (Let's give them the codename Dryad Management.) All I knew about the company was the address, and that's more than I knew about LA. Dump was in Rhode Island. She and I had been waiting for this news. I got back to New Jersey on the night of the 10th and packed. Dump arrived in New Jersey on the 12th. And we started cross-country bright and early on the 13th, a caravan composed of my car and one U-Haul, with my parents, my brother, Dump, and my dog Baker. After a few hundred miles, Baker crawled inside the lining of my convertible's top and only stuck his head out. This is how he opted to travel the bu...

Character Misleads. I want more. I heard a great story on This American Life . A small-time Lawyer is trying to free an Innocent Man from prison. The Lawyer invites a paroled, convicted Murderer into his office (actually, his meager apartment home), so he can interview the Murderer and maybe learn something that might help exonerate the Innocent Man. You see, the Innocent Man is in prison for the same killing that the Murderer committed. When the Murderer arrives, he's dressed like a hip-hop star or perhaps a successful drug dealer, wearing in an extravagant suit, hair perfect, fingering a firearm, driving a Mercedes. He comes shouting up the stairs an hour early, "Yo! Where's the lawyer!" When interviewed, he boldly tells his tale, acting-out how he shot the man in the back of the head, using his pointer-finger on the back of the Lawyer's neck to demonstrate the way it was done. But then -- when the Lawyer asks the Murderer why he let the Innocent Man do time ...

About six months ago, my pal (who will remain without-codename for this post) had an idea for a horror movie. He bounced ideas off me about how it might work as a short, and then he wrote a version. It was roughly 15 pages. I took it, gutted it, and made it 7 pages.  Shortly thereafter, my Misplaced Planet pals came along and they filmed it. They'll also remain without-codenames for the moment, except Dump and Beezie, who were tragically cut from the final version. This little short film faced some challenges, but in the end, it worked out pretty well. I can say, with a straight face and my head held high, all the good stuff is not mine . Anyway. Enough ado. Here it is. In other words -- Happy Halloween 2010 to you, month of March 2011.