Now+with+extra+tips!


 * Gary Provost on writing:**

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.


 * Kurt Vonnegut on writing:**

1) Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. 2) Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. 3) Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. 4) Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action. 5) Start as close to the end as possible. 6) Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of. 7) Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. 8) Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.


 * Aaron Sorkin on Writing:** [|How to write an Aaron Sorkin script, by Aaron Sorkin].

A song in a musical works best when a character //has// to sing— when words won't do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern. In the pilot of //The Newsroom//, a new series for HBO, TV news anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) emotionally checked out years ago, and now he's sitting on a college panel, hearing the same shouting match between right and left he's been hearing forever, and the arguments have become noise. A student asks what makes America the world's greatest country, and Will dodges the question with glib answers. But the moderator keeps needling him until...snap.

**Will** It's not the greatest country in the world, professor, that's my answer.

**Moderator**  //[pause]// You're saying—

Yes.
 * Will**

Let's talk about—
 * Moderator**

//Start off easy. First get rid of the two noisemakers.//

Fine. //[to the liberal panelist]// Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paychecks, but he //[gesturing to the conservative panelist]// gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn't cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don't like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fuckin' smart, how come they lose so GODDAM ALWAYS!
 * Will**

//The use of inappropriate language has a purpose—the filter's off.// > And //[to the conservative panelist]// with a straight face, you're going to tell students that America's so starspangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom. //The fact-dump that's coming now serves several purposes. It backs up his argument, it reveals him to be exceptional (what normal person has these stats at their fingertips?), but mostly it's musical. This is the allegro.// > And you—sorority girl—yeah—just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. We're seventh in literacy, twenty-seventh in math, twenty-second in science, forty-ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, //I don't know what the fuck you're talking about?! Yosemite?!!!// > //[Cell-phone cameras are everywhere— people are tweeting and texting away.]// //Now we slow down and get a glimpse into his pain. The oratorical technique is called "floating opposites"— we did, we didn't, we did, we didn't... But rhythmically you don't want this to be too on the money. You're not just testing the human ear anymore; you want people to hear what he's saying.// > We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn't belittle it; it didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn't scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one—America is not the greatest country in the world anymore. //To resolve a melody, you have to end on either the tonic or the dominant. (Try humming "Mary Had a Little Lamb" right now, but leave off "snow." You'll feel like you need to sneeze.) So Will ends where he started. Then, just to acknowledge that he just sang an aria— which is unusual in the course of a normal conversation—he turns to the moderator who'd been needling him and casually asks...// > **Will** > //[to moderator]// Enough?
 * Final Tips from me:**

•Don’t let characters talk too long. •Characters should be doing stuff. •People don’t say what they mean. •The personalities of your characters can develop through their speech.