It struck me as so right, so true, and so applicable to my chosen branch of fiction that I had to copy it down here:
"Still, there’s nothing wrong with genre pictures, as long as both you and the audience get the ending you want, but not the ending you expect."
Beautifully put. I dunno, maybe everyone who's ever had Screenwriting 101 has heard this and you're all shrugging and saying "and?" But it impressed me as a worthy goal for the ending of any genre novel. This one will be going up there with Alan Dean Foster's "Write every day. Submit when you're done."
Oh, speaking of him, there's an interview with Foster at the SCIFI.com. I know he's not to everyone's taste, but I've always found him readable and entertaining. One of my favorite con memories is sitting next to him at a pizza dinner at Archon talking about travel. And I can't believe he hasn't been to Patagonia! That seems like such ADF type territory.
Profile
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
eeknight- E. E. Knight
- Vampjac Productions
Comments
It's funny you should mention the screenwriting thing. About 10-12 years ago I was writing scripts along with fiction. (As an aside, can I just say that I really liked Los Angeles? Great place, but I understand why it's not for everyone.)
Anyway, I was online looking for websites where people talked about craft and whatnot, and the script sites were full of people arguing about structure and endings and inciting incidents and character development and all sorts of interesting stuff.
The novel-writing sites I found were more "One inch margins all around and try to make it interesting."
That's changed quite a bit since, of course, but there's a long (in internet time) history of script writing advice out there.