20 Scriptwriting Tricks from an Actor’s POV

Introduction

The first play I acted in was a high school production of Our Town. During one performance, “Mrs. Webb” recited the first of two moderately long lines. Both lines started with well. When she reached the second line, she said “Well,” slipped a mental gear, and

Repost: My Awful Christmas Poem

[NOTE: This poem will be a ‘sticky’ until after Christmas. New posts will appear below it.]

Over the years, I’ve received Christmas letters with an enclosed poem, most often parodies of “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” The meter is faulty, the rhymes wretched. One year, quite a while back, I was inspired by another famous poem which I doubt had ever up to that point been used as the basis for a Christmas poem. ©1984, 2012 J. Guenther; visit JGuentherAuthor.wordpress.com

A Visit From the Christmas Maven

Once upon a midnight jolly,
weary from the Yuletide folly,
–decking halls with plastic holly,
rushing ‘round from store to store,
attending parties overlapping,
present buying and present wrapping–
I sat down and started napping
‘midst the holiday decor.

As I nodded, slowly slumping,
suddenly there came a bumping,
as of someone gently thumping,
thumping at my condo door.
I stood at the peephole, peeking.
“‘Tis some drunk a party seeking,
with his breath of eggnog reeking,
this it is and nothing more.”

On my doorstep stood a geezer:
hollow cheeks and purple beezer,
looked like he’d been in the freezer–
a hippie, from the clothes he wore:
Faded lavender serape,
walking stick and sandals floppy,
purple hat, and whiskers, sloppy–
all Salvation Army store.

Laughing, I flung wide the portal,
prepared to have a little chortle
at this poor, unfortunate mortal
standing at my condo door.
“You’re a little early, Santa!
Come, I’ll get out the decanter…”
‘Fore I’d time for further banter,
“Santa” passed out on the floor

Moistened washcloth on his forehead
brought him to, his cheeks much more red.
He then, sitting on the floor, said:
“Nick’s my name. In days of yore,
Bishop Nick. Though now quite seedy,
I was rich, but never greedy,
gave my money to the needy,
presents to the very poor.

“Famous, once, from Bay of Fundy
to Cape Horn and back to Dundee…
oh, sic transit gloria mundi!
Saint Nicholas you now ignore.
Santa’s known to every Hotten-
tot and Chinese, Indian, Scot, an’
Filipino–I’m forgotten!
It’s “Santa Claus” you all adore!

“To the rich go Santa’s presents,
spending little on the peasants,
thus you’ve lost the Christmas essence,
chasing after more and more.
That fat guy in the red suit, he
pushes toys and other booty,
furs and gems and fashions snooty!
Gucci! Saks! Christian Dior!

“Beamers, boats and electronic
boxes blaring out moronic
network tripe in stereophonic!
Knick-knacks, junk, and stuff galore.
Once a year I have a mission,
‘fore the world goes to perdition,
to restore the old tradition,
make it like it was before!

“More religion and less business!
Put some Christ back into Christmas,
on each continent and isthmus,
that’s my self-appointed chore.
Now I think that I had best be
off. Thanks for the chance to rest me.”
Nicholas got up and blessed me,
strode right through my condo door.

I awoke to sunlight beaming
on the decorations gleaming.
Surely, I’d been only dreaming,
dreaming of St. Nick, I swore.
Glad that we’d not been hobnobbing,
to relieve my headache throbbing,
I began my forehead swabbing
with the washcloth from the floor.

J Guenther

Books From Long Ago

Jodie, over at Words Read and Written, posed the question today, “Which book has been on your shelves the longest? Which book has survived all your clean outs, trips to the second hand bookstore, book swaps, and garage sales?”

This could take hours, but I limited my search to a brief trek around the house, and found:

Twenty (20) Interesting Films

We saw some of these in class, some we viewed as homework or for special projects. You may find them amusing.

1. American Beauty*
2. Pay It Forward
3. Almost Famous*
4. The Abyss
5. Lantana
6. Bandits
7. The Man Who Would Be King
8. Ararat
9. Matchstick Men
10. The Village*
11. Bullets Over Broadway
12. Groundhog Day*
13. Garden State
14. City Island*
15. Sunshine Cleaning
16. Scaramouche*
17. Ordinary People
18. Cinema Paradiso
19. Cabaret*
20. The Book of Eli*

* my favorites

Book Look: A Serial Killer in Nazi Berlin

“The chilling true story of the S-Bahn Murderer.”

This book gets a strong rating of ☆☆☆☆ ☆☆☆☆,  and is recommended particularly for amateur criminologists and fans of WWII history.

Scott Andrew Selby’s account of the S-Bahn Murderer is a fast read, a fascinating study in how the Nazi regime’s absolute control of the press and love of appearing all-powerful interfered with the most important criminal investigation of wartime Berlin.

Screenplay, Part 8

I’ve completed the first step in adapting my screenplay, In the Mouth of the Lion, to novel format. I took the simplest approach: converting the script into a text file, then removing sluglines, and so forth. In essence, I’m using the screenplay as an outline.

But why am I doing this?

Can you write when you’re tired?

If I write when I’m tired, often the work isn’t my best. Still, there will be some useful sections at the end of the day, or at least a good start for the next, though I’ll have to do more rewriting than usual. [Pages have to be extremely bad before I’ll discard them. Sometimes, lurking in the thought processes that led to them, there’s