Rob Parnell's Writing Academy Blog

  I bought some software last night to help constructing stories. In the help file I found a useful note on the four questions we need to ask ourselves about a story before we start writing. These questions help clarify our idea and also let us know whether we have a story that is compelling enough to start work on. Many ideas falter at this stage - which can useful because doubt can alert you to the weaknesses in an idea and to stop you from pursuing a story that may lose impetus half way through. We all know there's nothing worse than starting a story, then running out of steam when it seems to go nowhere or end up in a hole. Getting stuck during the writing of a story is no fun at all! However, answering the following questions can also help you solidify an idea into a story worth telling. Question One: Who is your main character? Often we may be tempted to think that it's a combination of characters that make a story interesting. True - but usually not from the

In a few of my articles recently I have suggested that the path of the modern writer may not always lead down the traditional walkways of novel writing, journalism or indeed any of the more familiar routes a writer might want to take. There are new opportunities of all kinds. The Net, for one, with its need for constant content and marketing material. Offline too there are a myriad of writing jobs - many of which I explore in my Easy Cash Writing course. For the committed writer there are always new and varied avenues to pursue. In the spirit of which, we ventured into the world of TV yesterday, when we visited an executive from a certain funding body to pitch some ideas we'd had for TV shows. I won't mention our contact's name, not because it's a secret or because we're being coy, but because these people don't like it when you bandy their names around (especially not in a public forum like a blog). The last thing a TV exec wants is to be seen to be

Gustave Flaubert apparently took five years to write his exceptionally awesome novel Madame Bovary. Not a bad feat considering, over 175 years after it's completion, the book is still regarded as one of the most 'perfect' novels ever written.  Flaubert was famous for wanting to find just the right word - le mot juste   in French. Sometimes, he would apparently spend a whole week in solitude, agonizing  over one single page until he considered it as faultless as he could  manage. In contrast, Sylvester Stallone took a mere two weeks over writing the first Rocky movie - and said of Flaubert's precise writing style, "What was that all about?" What indeed, Sly. Of course the times have changed. In 1856, Madame Bovary was at first considered immoral. Its protagonist has the kind of romantic liaisons that are now, to modern Sex and the City   girls, considered totally normal. Even so, the story still has the power to  shock the middle class sensibilities it was

  Never try to second guess the market or try to be clever with your audience - or trick those who would help you achieve your aims. Be true to yourself and be honest with your readers - because that's the only way to create anything of value and to sustain an artistic career of any kind. It's easy to get fooled by the system into thinking that you work to get paid, therefore you can write anything for money - but it doesn't really work like that. Not with art anyway. Not with anything creative. Creativity requires more than just turning up and punching the clock. Writing, painting, sculpting, playing an instrument, making movies, anything that requires personal expression, needs a soul at work. Your soul - your time and passion and commitment. That's what creativity of any kind demands: YOU. It's intimidating, sure, when you

  New writers often talk about their quest to be published. They talk as though it's the end result to their work - as though, when they're published, everything will change and be wonderful.    This is not exactly how it works for most professional writers. Getting your stuff published is often only the beginning - the starting point for a career that may, after a while, feel very much like where you are now - as in, working for a living! You may improve as a writer. You may start to find it easier - though I doubt it. You may have success - whatever that means to you. But at the end of the day, wherever you may be in your writing career - a newbie or a seasoned pro - you're still in a constant burgeoning relationship with words. I use the word 'relationship' deliberately - because I think we should see writing as a kind of mistress, toy-boy or lover. Listen. Your starting point and your end point is to improve the way you communicate your ideas through writing. An

    The next big thing the world can look forward to is a massive million dollar franchise called Skibidi Toilet . You heard it here first. Let's face it, the evidence is all around us. If you pitch your writing at a fourteen-year-old, you'll be monstrously successful. And I don't necessarily mean that you need to write about fourteen-year-olds, I mean you should write for that intellectual level. Hollywood has known this since Jaws and Star Wars , when Spielberg and Lucas proved that nobody really wants adult movies. People want escapism. And they want to feel young again. Marvel, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, they all aim their stories at an intellectual age of fourteen.  Many adult writers finally come out of the closet to write YA novels - which, to me, read just like adult novels but without the blood and violence. The big market is pubescent. The late great Michael Chrichton also understood this principle. Look at the body of his work: Jurassic