Hey everyone. I’ve been too busy playing games on Facebook to actually get any work done. But, I figured that while I’m waiting for my energy to regenerate, I could at least work on my agent query. Here’s what I have so far…
Dear Agent,
Sorry, I’d address you personally but I don’t actually know your name. But that’s ok, because once you hear my idea for a book, I’m sure you’ll forget about absolutely everything else!
I’m currently researching a book about SkyDiving Elephants and the Pineapples Who Love Them. The working title is “You Forgot To Pack My Trunk!”. My 10 year old is a really good drawer, and I thought she could do the illustrations. I think that would be really good for promotion too, because then kids will want to buy the book as much as adults, because someone their own age did the drawings!
I know that platform is everything, and so I’ve started a hugely successful blog. I have a lot of people coming to visit it, sometimes as many as 50 in a day. I know that 5 of them are foaming at the mouth just waiting for me to get published. I know this, because one is my mother, two of them are my best friends, one’s my brother’s girlfriend (we get along really, really well), and the other one is a stalker. I think if I tell him I’ll give him my phone number if he buys 5000 copies, we’ll have a really good start on sales.
And don’t worry, I’m totally not a noob. I’ve already found a publisher that wants me, and it’ll only cost $5000 for the first run of 250 books.
So, email me right back and we’ll get started!
Sincerely,
XOXO
P.S. Don’t try to steal my idea because I’ve copyrighted it.
(To anyone who isn’t familiar with me or my blog, please don’t flame me. This is a joke. Everyone knows that pineapples don’t love elephants, and if they did, they wouldn’t go on record about it.)
I have been a Clueless geek since I made a bargain with my not-boyfriend that I’d watch his horror flick if he watched Clueless with me. How was I to know that I was actually displaying culture and taste instead of insipid stupidity every time I watched Cher make a fool of herself in front of the hot gay guy?
You see, Sunday afternoon I watched the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma, based on the Jane Austen novel, and BOOM, it hit me. Clueless is a remake of Emma of the same awesome caliber as 10 Things I Hate About you being a remake of Taming of the Shrew.
OK, I’ll grant you that a simple movie can never be as good as a classic novel such as any of Jane Austen’s. And I know that A&E and the BBC have their own versions which are probably much better. However, Gwyneth was available on the free movies on On Demand, so there. Free trumps good any old day.
And I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never been a fan of Gwyneth Paltrow, often choosing to skip movies entirely just because she headlined in them. But the woman held her own! Usually American actors and actresses show up as the gaudy, incapable things that they really are when held up against the acting of the British. Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing, anyone? The man nearly ruined the whole flick despite the awesome acting by the others. But Gwyneth Paltrow? I may have to rethink my opinion of her. She really performed well. Plus, I think she should always wear her hair up from now on. It looks good on her.
The thing is, I’ve always known that 10 Things I Hate About You. I mean, they kept the same names and attended Padua High. The cheesiness is part of what I loved! But in Clueless, yes, SOME of the names were the same, but Cher vs Emma? Not obvious (I’ll have to watch it again to see if Emma is her middle name or a silent first name or something). But still, as I watched Emma (obviously I haven’t read the book yet, though it is in my TBR pile), I kept noting the similarities and at times was able to predict what would happen next based on my knowledge of Clueless.
But while I loved the cheesy obviousness of 10 Things, Clueless shows me something different. How you can take a classic story, boil it down, and turn it into something different. While the best parts of Emma were modernized, I saw where the cast was narrowed down to make individual characters stronger. While Emma’s governess became Cher’s best friend, certain personality traits were greatly exaggerated or removed. Where Mr. Knightly was like a brother to Emma, he actually became a brother to Cher through several remarriages.
It all began sliding into place how these people had done it. Me? If I were to try to remake something, I would have immediately gotten stuck trying to find the modern equivalent. But that’s now how it was done. It was taking the basic parts of the original, and re-spinning it.
For example: Harriet got sick before the party and couldn’t go. So Mr. Elton felt free to press his affections on Emma on the drive home. Later, Emma gets stuck while crossing a stream and is rescued by Frank Churchill.
Ty gets hit on the head at the party. Later, Elton drives Cher home and tries to press his affections on her. He drops her off in the middle of nowhere, and is rescued by her “brother”.
In fact, there was even a mugging in both, but totally different circumstances and results.
But I see now how it’s done. It’s like making an outline of a story, and then writing a story based on THAT outline. And if you get stuck, you can always go back for more details! I’ve always wanted to write my own 10 Things, and now I think I know how.
Disney.com has started airing full length movies on their website. 1 movie each week. This week it was Monsters Inc (commercial free, and nice, crisp picture).
Now, I love Monsters Inc, but I think my favorite Pixar movie of all time (thus far) is The Incredibles. And so I watched it.
And then I watched some of the extras. Somewhere around the time the head honcho of The Incredibles started talking about how painful it was to cut out good scenes, lose pitch points to make the story stronger, and how the story evolves from pitch to finish, I realized that I can actually learn something from this. These extras were not just entertainment to my easily entertained mind- they were a learning tool.
Pixar creates (or, at least, had created) some of the best stories to come out of the movie industry in years. Whether you like a particular movie or not doesn’t matter- the story is guaranteed to be high quality. Pixar pre Disney acquisition had the same high standards that Disney had pre Walt’s death. We’ll see what happens after the acquisition with Wall-E, which seems to me to be more of a Pixar short, merely extended to fill feature length time requirements.
Anyway. I dug out all of my Pixar movies, and plan to watch the extras and commentaries on all of them to see what I can glean. I watch TV anyway when I’m doing needlework, so I might as well make it productive in more than a few finished cross stitch patterns.
One thing that I highly recommend to any writers, is to watch Vowellet- An Essay By Sarah Vowell. She’s the voice of Violet, and is also a writer. Since I know most of you will not go out and buy The Incredibles 2-disc Collectors Edition just to see a few minutes of a funny, slightly wacked writer/voice actor, I dug up a copy on YouTube. It’s a little on the quiet side, but just wait till you see her open up the action figure box. This is what totally won my heart.
Entries (RSS)