Script Tip: How Does Your Character Feel About Martin Luther King?

Today we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, a great man, a hero, a martyr, and most of all, a human being. As a New Yorker, I grew up with Civil Rights as a critically important topic, and so this day means a lot to me. As a Jew, I have also experienced prejudice, and while there are plenty of heroes in my own heritage, Martin Luther King has always inspired me to try to affect change in the world.

The reason I am sharing this thought is so that perhaps you will take a moment to see what Martin Luther King meant to you, if anything, and how that feeling ties back in with your own ethnic and religious background. The next step is to ask the same question of your hero or heroine.

Step 1. Set a timer for 10 minutes.

Step 2. Write a mini-essay on “What Martin Luther King means to me.”

Step 3. Reset the timer for 10 more minutes.

Step 4. In the first person voice of your hero or heroine, write a second mini-essay on “What Martin Luther King means to me.”

If you have time, repeat Steps 3 and 4 for your villain, obstacle, or love interest. It’s always fascinating to find out what are characters are thinking about.

If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

Be here now. Be someplace Else later. Is that so complicated?

Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a Danish.

Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems;   what would you talk about?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single OY!

There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited; and whose fault was that?

Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have?  Bupkis.

The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has   no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as a wooded glen; and sit up straight, you’ll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.

Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each  blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.

Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical  sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

The Torah says, “Love your neighbor as yourself”. The Buddha says, ”There is no self”.   So, maybe we ‘re off the hook??

 

1. Read screenplays
2. Watch more movies
3. Carry around a pad and pen to capture ideas for use in writing
4. Give your problems, pain and drama to your characters
5. Write down your dreams
6. Nurture and encourage yourself as a writer
7. Set goals, dream and brainstorm about what you want to achieve
8. Write
9. Write
10. Write some more!

Congratulations to Shuaib Mitchell for completing his film Nocturnal Agony – that’s fantastic! We knew you could do it, and I’m proud to have worked with you!

This is a wonderful project and I hope everyone will ‘like’ it on Facebook and go see it for it’s soon to come NY Premiere!!

http://www.facebook.com/NocturnalAgony

Script Tip: What Does Your Main Character Want For Christmas or Hanukah?

Step 1. Define for yourself what you want for Christmas or Hanukah this year. Dig underneath and try to infer what form the love is taking in this particular gift. For example, if you are hoping your boyfriend will give you a ring, the symbolism is obvious.

Step 2. Set a timer for 15 minutes.

Step 3. Now ask your main character what he or she would like for Christmas or Hanukah. Write in the first person as your main character and describe what she/he wants and why. Be as detailed as possible.

When I did this exercise for my character I was surprised to learn that what she wanted was a purpose, and to know that she would have a place in history.

Step 4. Repeat this exercise for your villain or obstacle.

For example, when I did this exercise, much to my surprise, what my villain also wanted was a purpose, and to know that he would have a place in history. No one was more surprised than this author!

To summarize, once you do this exercise, you will discover an interesting relationship between what your main characters want. In my case I discovered that they both wanted a purpose, but I might have discovered the opposite or something entirely different. But no matter what the result, you may find that the dramatic unity of your story will simply arrange itself, which may be the greatest present a writer could get.

 

Burt Scheider was a great man, a visionary who changed the perception of film forever. He was also a good friend to my Dad. I remember seeing all of his movies as a child, and attending a couple of memorable premieres with my dad. He was unique and will be missed.

Films included ‘Easy Rider,’ ‘Five Easy Pieces’

Family Hangover

Family drama often increases and is heightened throughout the holidays and can contribute to emotional exhaustion. Deep breathing, journaling, light exercise, meditation, and scheduling time just for your writing, and quiet time just for you, are all strategies to help heal your family hangover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Booze Hangover

Take 2 pain relievers and drink 2 glasses of water.

Hair of the Dog: Contrary to popular belief, more of the “hair of the dog that bit you” only delays the inevitable. One of the reasons hangovers are so unpleasant is the liver is still processing the toxins left over from alcohol metabolism. Drinking more alcohol can make the symptoms seem to lessen at first but will only make the situation worse once the liver breaks the alcohol down, because it will have even more toxins to deal with.

Burnt Toast: At first, the burnt toast remedy may seem that it’s actually based on scientific fact. The culprit behind this fictional cure is the carbon in the charred bread. Carbon can act like a filter in the body. While it’s true that activated charcoal (which is a treated form of carbon) is used to treat some types of poisonings, it’s not currently used to treat alcohol poisoning (something that is vastly different from a regular hangover). The carbon/charcoal found on burnt toast is not the same as activated charcoal.

Black Coffee: Coffee contains a high amount of caffeine, which is a stimulant and therefore helps fight fatigue. But when the caffeine wears off, a drinker may be even more tired than before. Coffee can help alleviate a pounding head because caffeine is a vasoconstrictor, meaning it reduces the size of blood vessels. This counteracts the effect of the alcohol, which makes them swell, making the head hurt in the first place. Unfortunately, caffeine is also a diuretic like alcohol and can make a drinker even more dehydrated than before, thereby increasing the severity of the hangover. Overall, coffee isn’t a good hangover cure.

Fried or Fatty Foods: Although eating fried or fatty foods the morning after will probably only irritate a drinker’s stomach further, eating them before drinking can actually be helpful. Putting anything in the stomach prior to indulging in alcohol helps prevent a hangover, but fatty foods in particular stick to the stomach lining longer and therefore slow down the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream. While that might make it take longer to feel the alcohol’s effects, it also gives the body more time to process the byproducts and will increase a drinker’s chances of feeling decent in the morning. So much so, in fact, that a Mediterranean folk tactic is to take a spoonful of olive oil before drinking alcohol. Eating lighter food such as a fruit smoothie will provide energy and alleviate some symptoms by replenishing the electrolytes the body lost from dehydration.

Eggs: Eating eggs the morning after provides energy like any other food, which is the primary benefit. But eggs do also contain large amounts of cysteine, the substance that breaks down the hangover-causing toxin acetaldehyde in the liver’s easily depleted glutathione. Therefore, eggs can potentially help mop up the left-over toxins.

Bananas: Eating bananas the morning after a night of heavy drinking provides lost electrolytes like any food would, but it also specifically replenishes the potassium lost to alcohol’s diuretic effect. Other potassium-rich foods such as kiwi fruit or sports drinks work just as well.

Water: Replenishing the body’s water supply after a night of drinking combats dehydration, and it also helps dilute the leftover byproducts in the stomach. Adding salt and sugar to water helps replace the sodium and glycogen lost the night before. Non-caffeinated, non-carbonated sports drinks can achieve the same effect. As a prevention method, drinking a glass of water for every alcoholic beverage slows down drinking, providing more time for the body to deal with the alcohol (the body can only process about three-quarters of an ounce of alcohol in an hour). Drinking a few glasses of water before going to bed helps fight dehydration after the body finishes breaking down the alcohol.

Fruit Juice: ¬The fructose — fruit sugar — in fruit juice helps to naturally increase the body’s energy. Studies have proven that it also increases the rate at which the body gets rid of toxins such as those left over from alcohol metabolism. Fruit juice is also a good idea the morning after because it’s high in vitamins and nutrients that were depleted the night before because of alcohol’s diuretic effect. Vitamin supplements high in vitamins C and B are also effective.

 

Food Hangover

Drink plenty of liquids. Water should help to flush out the body and relieve constipation a common symptom of a food hangover. Tea can be used to settle an upset stomach and aid in reliving acid indigestion. Ginger ale is an excellent remedy for stomach upset. Resist the temptation to starve yourself. Allowing yourself to go hungry can encourage overindulgence. Eat small light meals such as fresh fruits and yogurt. Wear loose clothing. Slip into something that relives pressure on the abdomen and fits comfortably.

Script tip: Using Current Events To Improve Your Screenplay

During the recent New York City marathon, there were many exciting events above and beyond the actual running of the race. At the end of the marathon, a man proposed to his girlfriend as they crossed the finish line. Luckily, or not, she said yes. As I t was returning home, from tango dancing, I was lucky enough to witness a severely handicapped man cross the finish line at about 11:45. Events like this can be a very useful setting for scene or sequence in your screenplay. One way to keep your scripts fresh is to keep abreast of current events and to use them as needed when you have a scene in your screenplay that feels flat.

A well-chosen event, can also work on a symbolic level. HE using the example of the man who proposed to his girlfriend, we can extend the metaphor; that is, he not only ran the Marathon, he also ran the race of the courtship of his girlfriend of his girlfriend. In the case of the handicapped man, he not only ran the marathon, he proved that he could win the quota quote race against the physical limitations of his body.

Here’s the exercise:

Step 1: Visualize your main character in running clothing, regardless, of how absurd that might seem.

Step 2: Select a reason for your character to have .run a marathon. For example,

in the film, Run, Fat Boy, Run,” Simon Pegg runs a race to get his girlfriend back.

Step 3:Set a timer for 15 min.

Step 4: Write in the 1st person as your main character, and describe how he or she experienced the race.

Since a race of any kind is very symbolic. For example, in the film The Silence Of The Lambs, Clarice, runs a race through an obstacle course, which clearly suggests the type of experience to be had in this this film. By doing this exercise, you will learn a lot about your character.

Good luck and happy writing!

 

I had to comment on this article:

By: Marilyn H. (New York, NY) “This is a great article. I am a teacher and writing coach who works with adults and it’s not much different, except that they pretend they can take criticism. The best way to mitigate this is to put the initial act of writing into perspective. I recommend teaching students to understand the rewrite process BEFORE they begin writing so that they do not over value their first efforts.”

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Teachers at Work – A column about teaching

The Trouble with Creative Writing  :: November 8, 2011 – By Michele Dunaway

The day after Halloween, my Facebook feed exploded with posts about numbers. “I’ve written 5,200 words!” one friend exclaimed. Another claimed to have written 2,300. Someone else only had 1,500. And so on.

Everyone posting was enthusiastically starting his or her NaNoWriMo challenge. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a complete novel during the month of November. To succeed in completing a 50,000-word book in a 30-day period means that a person would need to average around 1,667 words a day.

Now many of my Facebook friends are published authors who find it entertaining to pump out a book at the same time as everyone else. Others are serious contenders who still have never sold that first book. But for all, NaNoWriMo is rather like Christmas shopping — at the beginning of the season everyone is full of fun and good cheer. But the closer it gets to the end, what used to be a pleasurable excursion suddenly becomes a chore. It’s tiresome. Certainly, for those who make achieve the goal there’s great satisfaction.

The trouble is that writing the novel is only half the equation. Writing it makes you an author. Selling it makes you a published author.

In essence, writing a book is a lot like giving birth to a baby. You don’t want anyone to tell you that the product of your labors is ugly. You want everyone to rave and tell you how beautiful it is.

But the fact is that entire book you just wrote might be nothing but junk. It might forever remain unsold. While 50,000 words is great, many novels average between 60,000-80,000. So your work could be a manuscript that we writers refer to as “one that gets shoved under the bed.” In essence, that manuscript will probably never see the published light of day unless you do it yourself.

Where I teach, NaNoWriMo is a big deal, and celebrated in the creative writing class. I’m going to admit up front, each May I’m asked what classes I want to teach and which classes I don’t. At the top of that “don’t list” is the creative writing class.

Now this seems illogical, considering that I’ve published 23 novels with Harlequin Enterprises, the world’s largest publisher of romance fiction. But unfortunately I’ve found that teachers get caught in the middle whenever we’re asked to evaluate a creative project. On one hand, we want to celebrate successful completion of our students’ writing projects. One the flip side, we also don’t want to feed our students’ unrealistic expectations. We could have the next Stephen King or Nora Roberts in our classes, making us the bad guys if we long ago tried to sap our students’ creativity.

So for teachers, creative writing assignments put us in a vicious cesspool of death. Once one of my colleagues sent an aspiring young author to me, and the girl let me read her first chapter. Frankly, it was terrible. But I could see she had potential. So I gently tried to give her some constructive criticism. I was kind, 100 percent nicer than I ever am when working as a writing coach to my journalism students. I pointed out some areas where she could tighten her prose and eliminate some redundancies. I made sure I smothered her with encouragement. After all, there were plenty of people who’d patted me on the head and gave me a “sure you will” smile when I said I wanted to be an author.

But this student reacted in typical fashion — you would have thought I would have killed her favorite pet. She didn’t want to hear anything was wrong — and I’d picked out the least sensitive things — she only wanted to hear me gush over it and tell her how perfect it was. She wanted me to tell her it was ready to send to agents. Really, with admittedly rare exceptions, most teenagers are not ready to be published. (I’ve discovered many adults are the same way. They want you to tell them it’s ready when it’s not and refuse to listen to anything else.)

This means we teachers are stuck. On one hand, we don’t know what New York is going to want. The Lovely Bones featured a dead girl talking. Now multiple points of view or switching from first person in one chapter to third in another is acceptable. James Patterson’s Beach Road had the narrator turn out to be the villain in a surprise twist — he’d been lying to the reader all along. In essence, many of the old rules no longer apply.

But what does still apply is the idea that the writing must be special. It must have voice. It must draw the reader in. It must be a page-turner. The middle can’t sag. Plots should work. Characters shouldn’t be acting in unrealistic manners. Heroines shouldn’t be too stupid to live. For example, I once read a contest entry manuscript where an undercover cop, who was dressed in drag, used his pistol to commandeer and car-jack a pizza delivery girl so he could chase down a suspect. He’s driving one handed and stripping out of his beaded top and she’s thinking he has sexy biceps. I don’t know about you, but if I were carjacked by a transvestite I wouldn’t be thinking about the guy’s biceps but how much pavement my body can withstand after I throw myself out of the car.

So teachers walk a tightrope. We’re not trying to kill the dream, especially when we hope that somewhere down the line that student will develop voice and an understanding of plot and characterization, so that he can write the next best seller.

But we have to be honest. Kids must learn that they are going to be edited. I always tell my students that my editor will always be harder on me than I am on them. My editor’s goal is the best book possible; she really doesn’t care that much about my feelings. I’ve learned to be tough skinned. I’ve learned that when she says “Cut chapter one and start with chapter two” that she’s probably right. I’ve learned to face the dreaded process of revisions — and I’ve gotten up to 11 pages of single spaced suggestions and notes. No one wants an ugly baby, but sometimes that’s what our manuscript is until we pretty it up.

We must teach students to be realistic about their work, but at the same time, we should stress the revision process. Students often think that earning the grade of an A means it’s perfect, and ready for the real world, when in reality it’s not. It’s a grade; the student met the criteria on a high school assignment.

The publishing world is hard. It’s full of rejection — just ask John Grisham and Stephen King about how they got started. Sometimes it takes years — I know of an author who sold her first romance novel when she was 70, after decades of trying. I know some want-to-be authors who are very good, but for some reason no editor has ever called and said “I want to buy that.”  Instead, the letter saying “no thanks” arrives. Even I don’t sell everything I send in.

We do kids a disservice when they hear stories of how O. Henry wrote “The Gift of the Magi” in one afternoon, while hung over, and how Stephenie Meyer and Nicholas Sparks each sold their first books for millions. But that’s not how it usually works, and students need to realize these authors are the exceptions. Student authors have to learn that the key to success is more often to keep coming back to the story and tweaking it until it’s ready. If not, you scrap that story and move onto the next.

If a student is serious about his craft, then he must listen to constructive suggestions, weigh them, accept or reject the suggestions, and then revise (and not wait until the lesser known National Novel Editing Month in March).

This is the hard part. A writer has to be willing to put himself out there and take the feedback, whatever it may be. Teaching students this is often an exercise in patience on the teachers, but it must be done. Sometimes teachers must be the bad guys when we push for improvement.

Creative writing is hard. It’s emotional. I hate when my agent calls and says, “They didn’t like this. They want this instead.” But that’s life. I pick myself up and try again.

Our classrooms must be safe, encouraging (yet realistic) environments where our students can do this. We must provide the framework to learn revision and that not everything is going to sell. Just like not everyone is going to play football in the NFL, not everyone will be a best selling author.

Thus, I would suggest also providing resources like King’s “On Writing” and Al Zuckerman’s “Writing the Blockbuster Novel.” Even the Dummies and Idiot’s writing guides can be helpful as these books include chapters on everything from starting to write to how to go about selling. Kids need to realize writing is much more than putting words on paper. It’s always a process.

While finishing a book in a month is great, it’s only the first step. We need to celebrate that success, and then teach our students there’s more that comes next.

Article Topics: Michele Dunaway is an award-winning English and journalism teacher who, in addition to teaching English I, advises the student-produced newspaper, yearbook and news website at Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, MO. In November 2009, the Journalism Education Association awarded Michele with its Medal of Merit. She also practices what she teaches by authoring professional journal articles and writing novels. The Doctor’s Little Miracle, a September 2010 release, was her 23rd book for Harlequin Enterprises.

 

Join the conversation:

Comment by: Gordon W. (Jonesboro, GA) I’m not a novelist, but there’s good stuff here for anyone that must communicate with with groups, large or small. Michele, where I worked you never told anyone what you’d least like to do because that was sure to be your assignment in order to build character. If you got it wrong you had to do it until you got it right. Once you got it right you had to continue because “you’re so good at it.”

Comment by: PETER C. True, that’s what tough love is.

Comment by: keith M. (Kula, HI)  Tough love is good as no one is perfect – and thus I refer to the typo at the end of your third paragraph (“make” instead of “may”). Oh well. On second thought, perhaps the error wasn’t yours but someone copying your writing.  Otherwise, as a teacher with over thirty years of experience, I applaud your article.

From Visual Thesaurus  http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/teachersatwork/  (FYI – this is a great site for for just a few dollars a year)

 

Among her many accomplishments, she gave her time to The Metropolitan Center for Mental Health, founded to provide affordable psychological treatment for people with emotional problems.

She died recently and in her honor, MCMH dedicated a site to her, at 94th Street and Central Park West. I was honored to attend with family and friends, and it was a proud moment. She was very loved.

When I asked my mother, toward the end, what made her most proud, she responded that “it was her children and her work with the institute.” It’s a resource that people need to know about and can benefit from.

I hope to emulate her.

 

 

DEDICATION CEREMONY FOR  LOUISE S. HOROWITZ

October 30, 2011

ODE  TO  LOUISE

By Ruby R. Benjamin, Ed.D.

 

Today, we honor Louise, our past Illustrious Board President

Who guided us through the years that came and went,

It is fitting to dedicate this site to her,

On this, we did not need to confer,

The Clinic grew by leaps and bounds,

This was the first site that we found,

 

It was 25 years and counting

Her ideas for MCMH kept mounting,

We appreciated her many a productive meeting,

Always begun with a hospitable greeting,

She kept her eyes on our mission,

Working tirelessly to see,

that it came to fruition,

 

Louise always took a call,

Applying her knowledge and skill to one and all,

Her legal expertise kept us afloat,

We sometimes felt like a capsized boat,

 

We gathered quarterly to discuss the Clinic,

Exchanges were lively minute to minute,

We also had disagreements from time to time,

Helped along by glasses of wine,

 

She gave presentations which were always thoughtful,

Filled with substance and not bull,

She left behind a thriving clinic,

to the less fortunate in the community,

 

We try to follow the regs, but NOT with impunity,

Her MCMH accomplishments are too many to list

Suffice it to say she will be missed,

The Board will continue to carry on,

Louise’s spirit will prevail, although she is gone.