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  • Linking to Mystery Man On Film

    I’m going to institute a new regular feature on this blog called: Linking to. Every week, I’ll find some blog of interest to fiction writers and talk a bit about it for your edification and entertainment.

    I’m starting with pretty much my all-time favorite writing blog, which isn’t even for prose writers. It’s for screenplay writers. But I am telling you, this guy knows his onions:

    Mystery Man On Film

    Unfortunately, a month or so ago he stopped adding to this blog and moved to a new blog, which is fancier and has some heavy-duty (pretty attractive, actually) graphic shenanigans. It also has some fascinating stuff, but not as much yet:

    Mystery Man

    But, fortunately, that means this first Linking to post gets to give you two links for the price of one!

    Go to Mystery Man On Film and check out his Best Of posts. Holy shit. When I first stumbled on him, I blew a whole Sunday alone (my only writing time) reading these. I had to write to him and say, “Thank you for making me blow my entire writing day reading your stuff.” He wrote back a couple of weeks later, and he was heck of polite! Now I follow him on Twitter.

    But why should novel and short story writers read up on how to write a movie? What does screenwriting have to do with fiction?

    Only everything.

    Read what he has to say about character development. He’s got one post on Mystery Man On Film about why character arc is a load of malarkey and another on Mystery Man about what he calls “reverse character arc.” Read what he has to say about “Sex in Screenwriting” on Mystery Man. I almost never agree to edit sex in my clients’ work, and he knows why.

    Read what he has to say about storytelling structure. He takes apart three different movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark on Mystery Man On Film and both the new Farenheit 451 and the non-made Moneyball on Mystery Man, explaining exactly why scenes should be designed one way and not another.

    Read what he has to say about exposition in context in his piece on Raiders on Mystery Man On Film. Read it again. Now read it AGAIN.

    You ever wonder where I learn the stuff I know?

    From people like Mystery Man.

    2 Comments

2 Responses to “Linking to Mystery Man On Film”

  1. christopher ryan said on September 25th, 2009 at 7:43 am

    great stuff. thanks for the heads up. i totally agree with his take on characters and contradiction. it’s something i strive for – without tipping over into pure hypocrisy (because then they become someone you can’t sympathize with, which is a whole other topic… that you’re covering next).

  2. Victoria said on September 25th, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    Hi Chris!

    Yes, the human psyche is made up of wildly contradictory parts, and the job of the storyteller is to highlight the ways in which those parts clash. You can tell how good a storyteller someone is by how real and therefore sympathetic their characters are.

    And yes, I went off on a grand tangent on this subject on Pulp Rag just yesterday.

    Victoria

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Preditors & Editors

Clients’ Successes

Scott Warrender
Short story author Scott Warrender is a Mentoring Program client. I have done full Copy, Line, & Developmental Editing on a number of short stories for him, the first of which was his poignant fictional memoir of Africa, ''The Boy With the Newsprint Kite,'' now published in the Foundling Review.

Clients’ Books


Bhaichand Patel is the author of two nonfiction books: Chasing the Good Life (Penguin Books India, October, 2006), and Happy Hours (Penguin Books India, October, 2009). I edited Patel's debut novel, When the Streets Were Cold and Dark.

I've edited a number of nonfiction essays for my friend Lucia Orth. (Many years ago, my contribution to Baby Jesus Pawn Shop was simply a peer critique and participation in a standing ovation.)

The poet Chris Ryan is the author of The Bible of Animal Feet (Farfalla Press, 2007). He has recent stories in Pank, Anemone Sidecar, and A Cappella Zoo. I edited Ryan's novel The Ishmael Blade and worked with him on his debut novel Heliophobia and WIP Pogue.