Writing Notes

MOVIE RATINGS
= Poor= Fair= Good= Excellent

G = General audiencesPG = Parental GuidancePG-13 = Not recommended for preteensR = Restricted audience


An English professor wrote the words, "Woman without her man is nothing," on the blackboard and directed the students to punctuate it correctly.
The men wrote: "Woman, without her man, is nothing."
The women wrote: "Woman! Without her, man is nothing."


Ht test: write a 100-word essay never using the same word twice, that makes sense and sounds like a normal paragraph.

EXAMPLE
5 Assignment: extraordinary. Write one hundred
10 words, never using duplicates. Impossible?
15 Hardly. Nevertheless, it’s a feat
20 requiring ingenuity, resourcefulness, inventiveness, yes,
25 perhaps even more than average
30 intelligence. Sensible people would seldom
35 attempt such shenanigans, yet I
40 am intrigued, curious to discover
45 whether duplications of expressions can
50 be avoided. Halfway through, doubt
55 sets in as to successful
60 goal realization. Perplexed, befuddled thoughts
65 churn out, pen frequently pausing.
70
75
80
85
90
95
100


There are moments in everyone’s life when . . .
A door is opened
A challenge is issued
A door is closed
The path unexpectedly changes direction
You must step out of your comfort zone
You step out of the rut you’re in
Your destiny seems altered


Rules of call to action from Paul Revere’s ride:
Revere was known to be a credible communicator
his alarm was focused on a specific event
it was designed to spur citizens to act
it called for a concrete set of actions in response


Begin with the end in mind.


The path to success is to take massive, determined action.


Action is the real measure of intelligence.


Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.


Intelligence is the ability to make finer distinctions.


Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keep pulsating desire which transcends everything.


Do not wait; the time will never be “just right.” Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.


If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.


The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success.


Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.


Motivation alone is not enough. If you have an idiot and you motivate him, now you have a motivated idiot.


Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy. You might know how to read, but more importantly, what’s your plan to read?


You must constantly ask yourself these questions: Who am I around? What are they doing to me? What have they got me reading? What have they got me saying? Where do they have me going? What do they have me thinking? And most important, what do they have me becoming? Then ask yourself the big question: Is that okay?


Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.


Now is the only time there is. Make your now wow, your minutes miracles, and your days pay. Your life will have been magnificently lived and invested, and then you die you will have made a difference.


Every liability is just an asset in hiding.


The majority of people meet with failure because they lack the persistence to create new plans to take the place of failed plans.


You don’t become enormously successful without encountering some really interesting problems.


Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.


People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.


No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.


All successful people, men and women, are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.


Typical formula: mentor agent and new agent protecting a scientist with a secret formula. Bad guys want secret formula and try to steal it. New agent thwarts attack. Bad guys kidnap scientist and/or family. Hold for ransom. Agency tells agents not to meet the bad guy’s demands. Rogue agent disobeys and goes off alone to rescue them. Mentor agent joins at last minute. Rescue successful.


Wizard of Oz

Note the number of different anger styles portrayed at the beginning of the movie by each different person

1. Dorothy angry at Mrs. Gulch for threatening Toto and angry at aunt, because aunt was busy
2. Auntie Em angry at Dorothy for interrupting her when she was busy
3. Mrs. Gulch angry at Dorothy and Toto
4. Uncle Henry angry because Dorothy didn't listen
5. Hulk angry because he hurt his finger and blames it on co-worker
6. Coworker upset because being confused and blames him back
7. Zeke won't listen
8. Auntie Em angry because not working
9. Hired men angry because Auntie Em threatened them with their jobs
10. Dorothy is angry because the men made fun or her for being scared
11. Dorothy is angry because Auntie Em won't listen
12. Dorothy is angry and refuses to give Toto to Mrs. Gulch who is in turn angry because she won't hand over
the dog
13. Dorothy is angry because Mrs. Gulch got sheriff's order
14. Mrs. Gulch is angry because Dorothy calls her a wicked old witch. Auntie Em is angry because she is a
Christian and can't say what she's thought for the past 23 years of Elvira Gulch.
Responses to Anger - name-calling, running away, crying, blaming, shaming and making fun, deception, bargaining, stuffing, ignoring, violence, snitching, bragging, using power as a threat, punishment, locking up the dog, intimidation.


landmarks – street names, temperature, aromas, sights, noises, interesting facts


google your character names


research books to find:

What’s What by David Fisher & Reginald Bragonein Jr.

The Ultimate Visual Dictionary by DK Publishing

The Crime Writer’s Reference Guide by Martin Roth

What Happened When by Gorton Carruth

Writer’s Digest Howdunit Series

Amateur detectives, armed and dangerous, body trauma, cause of death, deadly doses, making crime pay, missing person, murder one, private eyes, scene of the crime

Scene of the Crime by Anne Wingate

The Criminal Mind by Katherine Ramsland


Scene of the crime

Crime scene – as protag. Finds it

Crime – as it happens (by antag.)

Motive – antag’s driving force. Why did s/he commit the crime?

Actions – that lead up to it

Mistakes – made that enable protag. To solve it.

Villain’s background – who is/was s/he?

Family, profession, hobbies, interests, social status

Character’s normal life prior to the crime

Phobias, weaknesses

Protag (hero) will develop a psychological profile and begin to think like antag.

Why’d s/he commit crime? What’s to gain?

Draw from antag. Background or an event affecting his/her life e.g. pattern of abuse or psychological disability – violent crimes

e.g. homeless or poor man steals for survival or to live life more comfortably.

e.g.woman catches husband in an affair (unfaithful) and is hurt enough to plan his and/or his lover’s
demise


MO – modus operandi (check when term was lst used)

Modus operandi (often used in the abbreviated form MO) is a Latin phrase, approximately translated as "mode of operation." The plural is modi operandi ("modes of operation"). It is used in police work to describe a criminal's characteristic patterns and style of work.

The term is also commonly used in English in a non-criminal sense to describe someone's habits or manner of working, the method of operating or functioning.

A criminal's MO may also be used in offender profiling, where it can also be used to find clues to the perpetrator's psychology.

The method of operation or MO is sometimes confused with a criminal's "signature". While a criminal's MO may change over time, his or her signature will usually stay the same.


In the 19th century, forensic pathologists began using pictures and words to show how various conditions appear in the cadaver, and to teach students and colleagues new methods of analysis. Line drawings, half-tone photography, and chromolithography, which could render coloration, texture, and subtle shading, became increasingly common as improvements in print technology made detailed illustrations cheaper to produce.


The method the antag. Uses to murder etc./commit the crime.

Commit crimes regularly = a repetitive pattern, esp. in violent crimes. (Perhaps even unbeknownst to the antag.) e.g. always leaves something at the scene (a rose, a note). Crime Scene organized a certain way. Place similar or same. Targets only women, or men, etc. Ethnic background. A thief who only steals a certain thing or a certain business type.

MO makes the crimes unique to your antag. And conveys something about him/her.

Envision the crime as it happens and already know how your hero solves it. Start story eith with crime or after when detectives investigate. Know what clues will be found and what supporting characters witnessed the crime.

Investigator(s) develop initial list of potential suspects: people with a motive, e.g. a grudge against victim or suspects previously convicted of a similar crime (MO).

This list is important – add twists and cast doubts to increase suspense.


It helps to know what the ending is before you start. As a matter of fact, in mysteries or crime scene investigations, it is helpful to work at your story backwards. Write your solution first, then pepper the clues throughout the story.


You must get the reader to willingly suspend his disbelief.


A cold room or too hot?


A large part of what passes for writing in business, school, and government is writing to impress rather than to communicate. Bureaucratic vagueness and making things pompous serve to hide what you don’t know. Deliberate obscurity and using big words impress the boss or teacher with how much you know.


The Noble Failure is the artiste who struggles endlessly and produces a work so dense, sophisticated and brilliant that no one can understand it. Critics and public alike shun it. The artiste knows it is brilliant. They are all fools. In actuality, the artiste has cranked out a mass of technically inadequate, self indulgent incoherent drivel, and then hides behind the Noble Failure myth rather than accepting the failure of his or her own work. Writing crap makes you look stupid. Being a misunderstood artiste makes you look cool.


In passive voice, nothing is ever anyone’s fault. People do not do things. Things happen to people. (Passive) The food was eaten. (active) Tom ate the food.
Banalities were exchanged = passive voice
Active voice – they exchanged banalities.


Allow your character to act or react AFTER everyone reading the book (or seeing the movie) already would have. Develop a rage in the audience. Get them to the point where they say, “You’ve got to do something about this.” If you show violence, show also the consequences of your actions. You must believe the audience would have acted or reacted sooner than your lead character. Get them frustrated and angry because your lead just sits there and takes it. Then he acts or reacts, and when he does, it is lethal and justified!