Jean Kawahara is a documentary editor as well as a writer, and she had great insights into the process of shaping real life events into a story. How do you wrangle thousands of hours of footage into a compelling, small package--on deadline? How do you find, create or support drama? What do you look for when you're looking for story? We talked about forms for crafting story: contests, chronology, rhythm  and the need for omission. We discussed stakes and consequences and how to set them up, the importance of avoiding repeat beats, and the fact that directors and writers often miss perceive which are actually the strongest scenes. We got into the dangers of the desire to explain to your audience what’s going on in your story and the attention span of the modern audience. Jean gave advice about avoiding the fine work before you nail down the broad structure, so you don't get attached to one way of seeing the story unfold. And we looked at endings: how to find and craft an authentic ending out of the ongoing flow of life...

Links Discussed:

Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker

T-Rex, documentary film

Book in a Year

On Directing by David Mamet

Sergei M. Eisenstein

Claudia Rankings keynote speech at AWP

On James Patterson's publishing collaborative work

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

How Champions Think: In Sports and in Life by Bob Rotella; Bob Cullen

The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by W. Timothy Gallwey; Pete Carroll

Adrienne Rich’s Poetry Became Political, but It Remained Rooted in Material Fact by Wayne Koestenbaum

Hamilton, the musical

Mo' Meta Blues The World According to Questlove by Ahmir Thompson; Ben Greenman; Questlove

Stories We Tell, Directed by  Sarah Polley

The Literature of War: Who gets to tell the story?

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

Joyce has an amazing, important story to tell about an artist, Joyce’s twin sister Judy, who had so much against her--undiagnosed deafness, Down’s Syndrome in a time when differences were institutionalized, and years away from her family--only to find her artistic “voice” when in their middle age Joyce gained guardianship of Judy and brought her to California and to Creative Growth. Judy became a world-famous artist--and Joyce became a lyrical, honest writer who tells this tale in her new memoir, Entwined: Sisters and Secrets in the Silent World of Artist Judith Scott. We talk about editing and shaping a memoir: what gets cut and what gets kept. We dig into ways of accessing your material, including journaling, wine drinking, storytelling, research early morning writing habits, live writing as things are happening, and note taking or recording your voice while you're walking, or running, or doing anything repetitive. We discuss the importance of writing groups and how to start them, thinking in terms of fiction versus thinking in terms of nonfiction, creating composite characters and how to write dialog for nonfiction. We look at the impact Judy's increasing fame did and did not have on her and how that might be a model for all of us who create--and indeed of the need to create art under any circumstances. Other topics touched on: the crankiness caused by not writing, the entitlement of the artist and her self regard, the ways that people with a variety of abilities can live and create together, the importance of making mistakes, and the principles of simplicity.

Entwined

Links Discussed:

Donna Levin

The Story Makers Show - Meredith Maren episode

The Girls Who Went Away – on Amazon and Indiebound

Anne Lamott

Failed It on Amazon and Indiebound

The Larche Community in France

Facebook: Judith Scott artist and Joyce Scott

Web site: JudithandJoyce.com

Entwined by Joyce Scott on Amazon and Indiebound

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

Heather Haggerty and Nanou Matteson are a superteam of film producers who brought us the recent award-winning comedy starring Rita Moreno and previous Story Makers podcast guest Steve Goldbloom. Their film East Side Sushi has also had remarkable success. We dig into the creative side of marketing your art and its connection to your values, about when and how to consider your audience, about keeping your budget small and your quality high. We talked about creating a fictional world and about the importance of the look of a film in conveying story. They discussed the mistake of writing off an elderly character or assuming a character has to be the race, gender or sexual identity they start of being in a script. We got into subtext, and when being “on the nose” can be useful, the pleasures and practice of collaboration, the structure for an outline or story templates, and their uses and shortcomings, and the importance of transformation.

Links:

The Visual Story

Save The Cat

Film Specific, Stacey Parks

Steve Goldbloom

Anthony Lucero

Saudi Arabian film, Wadjda

The film, Brooklyn

The Lives of Others

Lindsay Doran's Three Rules

Mira Nair director of Monsoon Wedding Masala

Mike Mills film, Beginners

Cocktail, Jean Cocteau

Pixar Storytelling Template:

Once upon a time there was ___.

Every day, ___.

One day ___.

Because of that, ___.

Because of that, ___.

Until finally ___.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.

We had a lively and important conversation with author, publisher and literary curator Peg Alford Pursell, about the publishing landscape and how writers can successfully interact with it. Peg, who runs the popular reading series Why There Are Words, is launching an independent press with the same name. Starting with craft, we discussed forming a collection of stories as and after individual stories are produced, finding echoes, juxtapositions and correspondences between stories, and seeing new correspondences "that I had not imagined." We talked about the way that the objects in the story carry emotional weight, tone, and do a lot of characterization. We also dug into what readers bring to a book, the fine line between mystery or intuition and intention in shaping your story, and the way that embracing the possibility the impossibility of objectivity allows her to release the work out into the world. She also probed the troubled area of letting go of your work--when and how to release it to the world, with a detailed look at the process of revision. Then we get her to switch hats and talk about the same issues from the point of view of the editor as she prepares to watch her own imprint and in her long history of curating the acclaimed reading series Why There are Words. Peg pointed out that profit and loss sheets are driving corporate publishing, and Angie drew parallels to the Hollywood studio system and its shortcomings. We talk very concretely about the amount of work it takes to get a manuscript ready to go out into the world, and how to know when you're merely saturated, and when you're actually done. Given the current playing field, should new authors shift their strategies for getting published? We got advice as well on starting a reading series, the pleasures and pitfalls, about publicists, publicity and self-promotion for authors (what you need to know), and then, circling back to writing, we touched on the art of compression and sensing the ending, since Peg writes some very short flash fiction.  WTAW Press will be opening for book-length prose submissions June 15, 2016. "I want those voices that need to be heard. Please let people know that." -- Peg Alford Pursell

Links:

Ariel

Ariel: The Restored Edition, a Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement

Margaret the First

 Margaret the First published by Catapult Press

Dorothy A Publishing Project

Michael Ondaatje

Why There Are Words reading series

WTAW Press

Graywolf editor interview on Literary Hub

The Rumpus essay Elizabeth cited

The Sun essay Elizabeth cited

http://www.wtawpress.org/

https://www.facebook.com/wtawpress/?fref=ts

https://whytherearewords.com/

https://www.facebook.com/WhyThereAreWords/?fref=ts

http://www.pegalfordpursell.com/

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival--everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.