What are you working on? at the moment I'm filing my corporate tax returns and explaining why I was two years late. and I'm finishing up my market research paper in MI and work on my business management paper and go over some things again/re work it for a pass in BDM. Next month is next week and that's the end of my academic year.
I'm writing the next big super-bestseller. Something like Harry Potter, Fifty Shades, Hunger Games etc. Problem is I have no real idea of what it would be. Does anyone know how that kind of thing is researched? I read somewhere that Hunger Games was actually written that way. It was a Master's Thesis for a Creative Writing degree.
I heard somewhere that J K Rowling was on welfare and came up with Harry Potter on a long train journey. Now she's rich. I don't think anything is needed but a good imagination and the right publisher.
Potter is the strangest of all. My understanding is Rowling worked on it from her childhood, but she didn't see it as a unified story for several years, just sort of literary doodles that came to her and she kept for some reason. The character of Hagrid btw was inspired by a giant Hell's Angel from Wales she saw in a bar one time..
Hmmm... I never knew that. I guess writing's always fun. Fun being the key word; you get to write about what you want, who you want, and if need be, research it if you have to.
I tell a lie, when I was a teenager, I had this idea based on American humour set here. Too much slapstick, apparently too violent for British comedy writing for children. And it wasn't anything violent, just a group of children in a school like me, in the same town, who's life included the school where they knew each other, where the hijinks took place, or their houses/homes... I guess I learned from that... 'This was written intended for live action' Keep the cast and sets to the minimum for better chances of selling it. And with live action, I wanted to use editing with special effects to have little cartoon scenes, where it's live actors, and I wanted the audience to get that, so I parodied a Road Runner cartoon over a Tikka Chicken Sandwhich, the last Chicken Tikka Sandwhich and both the head master and one of the star characters wanted it, and then gave chase over it... yeah... I also learned that even if you had a writing job with whoever, getting permission for what you can and can't parody is another thing.
Right publisher is good too. Rowling tried it at like 30 different ones but nobody wanted it. The one that did finally take it was Scholastic, which was famous mainly for academic supplements, those little reading exercises which are given out in HS.... sometimes it pays to take a flier.
Well, you can ALWAYS find you an agent, and; they will unionise you if you're not already and sell your work.
I could give you the details of someone I know who formats stories for their connections in UK production from BBC to Tiger Aspect (and a bunch I've never heard of because I'm not a writer); but, productions always have different formats be it TV film radio or novel or comic book, this person knows the formats and the buyers and other writers. It's not free though, it is a business.
You ever heard of Life On Mars, he knows that guy and that guy sent him a laptop to write with for something once. He also knows a writer who got a job writing for The Simpsons. The person I know wrote for Eastenders (UK Soap Opera) and The Hudlines (BBC Radio Sketch Show). I remember his work with the BBC but there are others. This person's a writer. And he's my father. I was raised by a writer.
Look around you and the people around you. Almost all the great series of books are from the authors own life experiences. Ian Fleming created James Bond from his familiarity about the British secret service. Now if I was going to write a book it would be about all crazy characters I met during my drinking days.
I've read somewhere that Bond was based on this character the CIA fooled the Russians into thinking actually existed. As it turned out it was good fiction but bad spycraft. You want the other side to think you can't shoot straight not that you're superhuman, The Russians were pretty good at being incompetent spies, largely because they really were
