THE DUDE Unabridged

READ LIKE A MANIAC!

Just don't forget to WRITE!

Good old-fashioned hard copy on the paper reading (NOT ON YOUR PHONE) with your feet in the sand or up on the ottoman, is a no-brainer for us screenwriting wannabees. Your brain needs to eat, so feed it the thoughts and words of the best of the best brains out there. Not all. Don’t get carried away. But just giving yourself that simple but elusive gift, TIME, to just kick back and read for pleasure will increase your vocabulary and your ability to be critical of the craft. And that’s huge, because we all start off thinking we are part of an exclusive scribe-tribe of Albert Friggin' Einsteins until we actually start to type and then slowly drift off, gazing at the ceiling tiles and thinking about her or them or your annoying neighbors, any excuse our temporal lobes can conjure up to over power our more serious and goal-oriented frontal lobe.

So yes, read books for pleasure in moderation. And in conjunction with writing your screenplay. Just make sure to give your screenplay first dibs on the majority of your creative weekly allotment, aka TIME, and your forward perspiration will stay in balance..

Start with you.

You are an encyclopedia. For those of those you born this century, that massive multi-syllable weird insect sounding word means simply one of many volumes of inane information about everything on the planet that you can think of, in alphabetical order.

This was of course back before you had the little magnifying glass icon in the upper right to easily “search” the net for anything on the planet you can think of. Instead of Google on your homescreen, you had an entire living room wall reserved for this literary mind swell. And sometimes creepy guys in bad suits knocking on your door to try to sell you more, with a free blender thrown if if you order today.

I digress, in the name of Sainyour Ramble. But seriously, you are a living version of that living room wall, with enough experiences already to probably fill the basement as well, or another storage unit, if you are a renter. Your life has already had a gazillion cinematic moments, you’ve just forgotten most them because you have yet to be trained to write them down. Every time you get emotional, aka “human”, the event causing it is most likely cinematic.

Now that doesn’t mean you have to walk around with the mic on your phone turned on as you record every moment of your life, but it does mean that the starting line had been pushed back and begins NOW so from now on, if you get emotional, try to think about what caused the adrenalin rush and write it down. And that does not mean you are going to use it in your next movie, but you might. And if you don’t write it down, you won’t. Because you’ll forget it.

Which brings me to the last point, Dig deep into your personal hard drive, your brain, and think back on memorable moments in your life. Moments that are so memorable that you remember them a year later, are most definitely cinematic. And again, you don’t have to use them, but the advantage they give you over the masses is that you are the only one who knows them because you were there. Unless it was some sort of joint venture with friends, but I would bet most of them went into the financial services field or stocking the breakfast cereal aisle at Stop&Shop so they have no reason to remember anything, let alone make a movie about it.

The bottom line, aka IN CONCLUSION, you and the folks around you are a whirlpool of emotion-based cinematic stories, so at least consider diving and mining for gold

The "Real World". Hmmm.

Weeding through the waves and grabbing what's good

As long as we are not talking “alternative facts” - one of the more hilarious cross-eyed terms to enter the vernacular this century - the world out there beyond our mortal reach is billowing and bubbling with a constant stream of one of a kind antics. And they are fleeting, so your job as a writer is to grab them. And grab is A LOT different than use. “Grabbing” means saving for possible future use. That’s it. So if something in the events of today, or tomorrow, or a week from Tuesday, grabs you emotionally, grab back and plug that puppy into a spread sheet so it is not forgotten like the 97% of the other informational projectiles hurled your way from your multitude of personal screens and the occasional Paperboy beaning you with the Boston Globe as he pedals past.

But seriously, which is a term used to simulate slapping your face to wake you up, when you stumble upon something cool in the news, plop the logline or the link into your eager and waiting creative worksheet, with a few column headings for categories and soon you will have a whole garden of fun stuff to pick from when your screenplay is up and rolling.

Obviously large events that have been gawked at by a gazillion eyeballs probably shouldn’t make your list, but look for the stuff beyond the first 3 headlines. Better yet browse your little hometown newspaper or site weekly where the only eyeballs sucking that stuff in are from smarmy Mrs. Johnson, the local realtor and Bob Weatherbee, the even more-flabby-than-you-remember-him evil chemistry teacher from your otherwise charmed childhood. There you will find real people stuff that happens, often eyebrow raising, in an environment that you know both people and place-wise, so being prolific is more likely and enjoyable.

The most important pointer here is don’t let them pass you by. For security reasons, along with Mr. Muffy - your childhood stuffed animal, yeah, the long-eared lamb that you still secretly tote around - record them so you have the comfort of knowing you have them out in your garden waiting patiently to be watered. Or plucked.

We are indeed stranger than fiction.

Look no further than the multitude of strange but true news sites to guage what inventive creatures we are, and copy links to ones that really get you gobbling like a turkey, head going up and down. Those that stick out TO YOU are excellent menu items for your eventual trip skipping down the yellow brick road. You need material, and as odd, or unique as you may be, there is an entire world of folks competing with you out there, but only a few get their deeds put in print. You as a writer and creator would be well advised to hop on that train and stockpile the best stuff, because you can’t be everywhere at once.

Literally just punch in “Odd News” and you get the top ten most popular sites from established purveyors of the news: UPI, AP, NPR, SKY, YAHOO, even FOX has jumped on board. My goto of the top 10 gang is the INDEPENDENT because in my book, the Brits have the best sense of humor.

I would say pick a site that you like and set the old weekly reminder to spend a few minutes fishing and see if you get lucky. Often there’s a bunch of rhinestones, but the occasional diamond does pop up, so then just grab it and bank it.

And this does now mean you are going to write an entire feature film based on this story, but it might be a great subplot involving your hero’s neighbor or as a scene that helps separate your character from the rest. Odd is a variation of unique, and unique is good in this craft.

So yes, as noted earlier, ALWAYS jot down different and surprising moments from your own life, but also keep a look out for life being stranger than fiction by strangers out there on our relentlessly large planet.

A sampling of a few scenarios from today's odd news headlines:

Truck hauling load of curly fries catches fire on Maine highway

Japanese park covering just 2 1/2 square feet is officially world's smallest

Prosecutor says golden toilet was stolen from English palace in ‘audacious raid’

A Baltimore-area teacher is accused of using AI to make his boss appear racist

Couple 'forced' to sit next to dead body for hours on Qatar Airways flight

Oh man I'm locked in!': Man pleads for help on Twitter after falling asleep in shop massage chair

Frozen excrement' dropped from plane crashes through house roof

Sydney to Hobart race: Group of nudists rescues family stuck at sea.

Highly doubtful old R2 or his kin would find any of the above remotely humorous or ironic. Might get the wires in its neck sparking with the one about the teacher using A.I. to make his boss look racist, although what is racism to a robot, something to be calculated by verbage from 20 buck-an-hour human A.I. proof readers? And I guess that's my point. Don't get hoodwinked by a machine swaying your personal politics, your freedom of thought, or your creative journey. You're better than that.

So aside from being wayyyy tooo time consuming, that was interesting. Even kinda fun to stare down and stomp on that cyber-dull doughboy. In the immortal words of Timothy Treadwell, "I beat you! I beat you're f'ing ass!"

Hmmm, maybe I'll do this again sometime, preferably in a stadium setting, maybe at half time during one of those Counter-Strike egaming tournaments. Or not.