An original P.O.V.
Much more to come...
Even if you can draw and have all the writing skills below, that is not enough to make you a good writer. A real creative writer in any medium, should have a personal point of view. He has to see the world and his medium in a unique way. A way that is worth the audience's time and worth the effort of all the artists who have to make the ideas look good.
This can't be taught. You either are an extremely interesting person, or you're not. You also should be sincere. You shouldn't have to read a book on how to write stories for film so you can use a tired old plot structure, just because that's what they tell you in film school. If you really have something to say, you can learn to say it in a structure that suits your voice, not Jeffrey's.
The animated features today and most TV cartoons are written by comittees of people who try to figure out what entertains an audience. http://www.adultswim.com/shows/metal/
They should instead be written by entertaining people who already know because they entertain people everywhere they go in real life.
That's why we have so much insincere non-entertainment crap like "Character-arcs", bad puns, ripoffs of famous movies in the guise of "parody", contrived pathos, characters who try to find themselves, bland protagonists, one-shaded villains, broadway style tuneless songs that "move the plot forward", in every damn feature. Another amazing lie you see in many animated features is when they make fun of corporations or try to teach the audience ethics-even though the movie is being made by evil corporate executives who have no morals at all - people who stop the actual entertainers from entertaining you so they can pretend to be creative themselves.
Anyone in the world can learn how to "write" this kind of stuff. It's not "story" or writing. It's just stuff. You just have to be related to the right person. A real writer has a sincere and unique outlook (his voice) on the world and has a naturally entertaining way to communicate it so that regular folks can enjoy it.
This insincere style of film making can be traced at least as far back as Irving Thalberg and the earliest film executives at big motion picture companies. These people exercised their creativity, not by getting on stage and dancing or telling a funny story, but by "giving notes" to real live entertainers.
How many folks complain about the Marx Bros. movies that have all that bullshit romance filler in the movies? Romance and story filler about characters THAT NOBODY IN THE AUDIENCE CARES ABOUT. This is pure executive thinking.
Who goes to a Marx Bros. movie to watch Zeppo and his ilk? Every second of the "story" makes you twitch around in your seat.
Today we have huge budget animated features with nothing but Zeppos in them, and no Grouchos. It's all filler and zero pure entertainment or a sincere creator's voice.
IdeasThis can't be taught. You either are an extremely interesting person, or you're not. You also should be sincere. You shouldn't have to read a book on how to write stories for film so you can use a tired old plot structure, just because that's what they tell you in film school. If you really have something to say, you can learn to say it in a structure that suits your voice, not Jeffrey's.
The animated features today and most TV cartoons are written by comittees of people who try to figure out what entertains an audience. http://www.adultswim.com/shows/metal/
They should instead be written by entertaining people who already know because they entertain people everywhere they go in real life.
That's why we have so much insincere non-entertainment crap like "Character-arcs", bad puns, ripoffs of famous movies in the guise of "parody", contrived pathos, characters who try to find themselves, bland protagonists, one-shaded villains, broadway style tuneless songs that "move the plot forward", in every damn feature. Another amazing lie you see in many animated features is when they make fun of corporations or try to teach the audience ethics-even though the movie is being made by evil corporate executives who have no morals at all - people who stop the actual entertainers from entertaining you so they can pretend to be creative themselves.
Anyone in the world can learn how to "write" this kind of stuff. It's not "story" or writing. It's just stuff. You just have to be related to the right person. A real writer has a sincere and unique outlook (his voice) on the world and has a naturally entertaining way to communicate it so that regular folks can enjoy it.
This insincere style of film making can be traced at least as far back as Irving Thalberg and the earliest film executives at big motion picture companies. These people exercised their creativity, not by getting on stage and dancing or telling a funny story, but by "giving notes" to real live entertainers.
How many folks complain about the Marx Bros. movies that have all that bullshit romance filler in the movies? Romance and story filler about characters THAT NOBODY IN THE AUDIENCE CARES ABOUT. This is pure executive thinking.
Who goes to a Marx Bros. movie to watch Zeppo and his ilk? Every second of the "story" makes you twitch around in your seat.
Today we have huge budget animated features with nothing but Zeppos in them, and no Grouchos. It's all filler and zero pure entertainment or a sincere creator's voice.
Most animation writers don't really have any ideas, but they should.
Instead they recycle the same 7 (or is it 12?) tired old "plots" and just change the catch phrases to match whatever characters they are plugging into the same script they have "written" 50 times already.
I actually used to hang out with some animation writers and they all had these formulas they firmly believed in. They were all convinced that every plot had already been written. Then I pitched them a bunch of stories that didn't fit any of those plots, they shook their heads knowingly in disdain until Mighty Mouse and Ren and Stimpy came out. Now these same writers and hordes of new opportunistic charlatans have added those plots to their scripts and recycled them for the last 15 years.
They copy the Simpsons plots now too and proudly admit it to each other!
Well you can certainly get away with calling yourself a writer by recycling ideas that have already been done and memorizing a character's catch phrases, and you can even make a lot of money doing it, but you won't ever be remembered in the same way that novelists, entertainers and cartoon directors are. Everyone knows Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jerry Lewis, Matt Groening, Moe Howard, Mike Judge, Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. Who the hell knows who Jeffrey Scott is?
I can't tell you how to have ideas. I will tell you how I got certain specific ones, but you should find your own. If you have them, your other artist friends probably know it. Don't trust your own opinion.
Instead they recycle the same 7 (or is it 12?) tired old "plots" and just change the catch phrases to match whatever characters they are plugging into the same script they have "written" 50 times already.
I actually used to hang out with some animation writers and they all had these formulas they firmly believed in. They were all convinced that every plot had already been written. Then I pitched them a bunch of stories that didn't fit any of those plots, they shook their heads knowingly in disdain until Mighty Mouse and Ren and Stimpy came out. Now these same writers and hordes of new opportunistic charlatans have added those plots to their scripts and recycled them for the last 15 years.
They copy the Simpsons plots now too and proudly admit it to each other!
Well you can certainly get away with calling yourself a writer by recycling ideas that have already been done and memorizing a character's catch phrases, and you can even make a lot of money doing it, but you won't ever be remembered in the same way that novelists, entertainers and cartoon directors are. Everyone knows Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jerry Lewis, Matt Groening, Moe Howard, Mike Judge, Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. Who the hell knows who Jeffrey Scott is?
I can't tell you how to have ideas. I will tell you how I got certain specific ones, but you should find your own. If you have them, your other artist friends probably know it. Don't trust your own opinion.
Much more to come...
