Aladdin and the King of Thieves FIXED!!!

I think I've found a new obsession. I was happily enjoying my family's VHS copy of Aladdin and the King of Thieves. It was my favorite Aladdin movie as a kid. I especially loved Genie saying, "Brought to you by SAND. It's everywhere. Get used it." My favorite song is "Welcom to the Forty Thieves"--I always get Cassim's line 'larceny is in the genes' stuck in my head. He sounds so much like Sean Connery, I love it!

When the movie reached its climax and Cassim confessed to Aladdin that HE was the ultimate treasure, not the hand of Midas, it really bugged me that Cassim was still holding the hand of Midas and the dialogue just didn't drive the point home like it should have. It worked...but the scene could have been stronger. It should have been a LOT stronger. Cassim holding the golden hand while telling Aladdin that he's the most important thing in the world? Nah. Didn't buy it. So I decided to add a couple lines myself and rewrite the scene! I'm pretty pleased with the result, but I'd love to hear feedback from other people. I've posted a video of the original scene below and my rewritten dialogue below, with the new parts in bold. Let me know what you think! (please pardon the lines on the top of the TV screen. And the closed captions. I figured the captions were good to have in case the audio didn't come through)

Rewritten Scene:

Aladdin

                                        After all these years, you finally have you treasure.

Cassim

                                        This thing?

Cassim looks at the hand, then looks away, ashamed.

Cassim

                                        No. This wretched thing nearly cost me the ultimate treasure.                                                                 Because of this, I’ll never see my wife again.

Cassim drops the hand and hugs Aladdin fiercely.

Cassim

                                        And because of my greed, I almost lost you. 

Cassim pulls back to look Aladdin in the eye.

Cassim

                                        When Saluk was there, I knew that all the gold in the world could never                                         heal the pain of losing you again. You, my boy, you are my ultimate                                                   treasure. I’m sorry it took me this long to realize it.

Cassim picks up the hand of Midas and looks at it disdainfully.

Cassim

                                        The hand of Midas can take its curse to the bottom of the sea!

Cassim throws the hand into the ocean.

I really liked having Cassim mention his wife again. He only talks about her once, and I felt she should have been an important part of his 'admitting I was wrong all along' scene. By the way, recording video from a TV screen works okay, but the audio quality is LOUSY. Too echoey and spread out to get picked up by the camera's microphone. But, remembering that in film school we used sound blankets to soak up echoes and block out unwanted noise, I convinced my family to help me hold up blankets around the TV while my sister filmed the scene. The sound was 50x better! I love it when college degrees come in handy.

If you liked this scene, I'd love some suggestions on other scenes to fix in movies or current TV shows. Scenes that got under your skin because they didn't quite work and it messed up your enjoyment of the movie :)

But Nobody Likes my Character!!!!

Dear Readers,

I'd like to point out the difference between a character that's "Likable" and a character that's "Interesting."I met someone who has a serious-minded character in his story and I had a hard time relating to that character. The writer thought it was because I didn't like the character's serious personality rather than the lack of plot. I'd just like to say that I was one of those kids who grew up not even knowing how to recognize sarcasm or joke around with people outside of my family. I totally sympathize with everyone who has a down-to-earth, practical personality. But just because you have a character who is serious, doesn't mean that character can't be totally fascinating and compelling. Here's a list of some of my favorite books that have down-to-earth protagonists:

Zeck in Orson Scott Card's War of Gifts was fantastic! So much emotional depth!
Captain Lawrence in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series
Keladry in Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small quartet
Lord Cazaril in Lois Bujold's The Curse of Chalion
John Cleaver from Dan Well's I Am Not A Serial Killer books

Even characters that have annoying personalities can carry a novel. Anyone ever seen the TV series House? Dr. House is a horrible jerk to everyone he meets. But he's also cool because his insults are incredibly witty and clever, and he's a medical genius that saves lives every day. So, not exactly likable, but VERY interesting because he's always tackling impossible odds. Sherlock Holmes doesn't exactly have a good bedside manner, but he's so smart that he's still cool. I also love how Steven Moffat's modern Sherlock series capitalizes on his social awkwardness because it's so fun to watch how other people respond to Sherlock.

A friend of mine who works as a script doctor said, "In Breaking Bad, people typically can't stand Walter White and they like Jesse. But they are concerned for Walter's struggle. They are constantly rooting for him and completely invested in his story." When a character faces insurmountable odds, it's almost impossible not to feel for them. The reader wants to know if the character will succeed. If you don't have something interesting for your character to do, then I'm afraid your story is dead. ALWAYS have interesting events in your story. Next week, tune in for a discussion about the difference between emotional storylines and physical, real-world storylines. Both are essential, but beginning writers like to separate the two instead of putting them together.

Katherine Patterson's Perfect Paragraph

I did it again. Walked into the library with a dollar in my pocket that I just had to spend on a book that I'm sure I already own. But it was in such a nice condition and had that professionally applied contact paper covering that I love.... So I gave in. That's the horrible thing about library book sales. They entice you with their $1, $2, and .50 prices. I'll never shop on Amazon or Ebay again and someday my book shelves will overflow with library castoffs.

I bought The Master Puppeteer by Katherine Patterson. Everyone knows about Bridge to Terabithia, but I haven't met very many people that have read The Master Puppeteer. It's a historical fiction set in Japan during a famine in the 18th century. I read it once as a kid, and I don't remember much. Actually, I only remember ONE paragraph. Yep. That's right. I paid a whopping fifty cents for a book because of a single paragraph. Even as a kid, I liked that paragraph so much that I memorized it instantly. In the book, 13-year-old Jiro becomes an apprentice to a Puppeteer company and at the same time, a masked man named Saburo starts stealing rice and giving it to the poor. Unfortunately, the thefts of rice inspire the nobles to strike back at the village and in the middle of all the political chaos and violence, Jiro finds out that the old, blind, Master Puppeteer is the thief Saburo. Jiro's world shatters. He locks the old man in a storage room and runs away, but not before someone from the puppet theater catches him and drags him back to the stage. Jiro's friend has disappeared and he's the only one who can do the part of the girl Akoya's feet for the "Torture of Koto" scene, a famously difficult scene to perform. Here's the paragraph. Actually, two. I'll put in the preceding paragraph to preserve the proper context:

"Jiro grasped [the hem of the Akoya's skirt] between his fingers and bent into position. Ow. Some god saved him from crying aloud as Yoshida's high clog banged into his ankle. The next second the three of them were gliding onto the stage behind the puppet. The performance of "Torture of Koto" had begun.


If he lived to be one hundred and became a master puppeteer with a theater of his own, he would never again rival the performance he gave that day. Had his concentration wavered for one instant from the performance, he would have gone to pieces, so he drove himself into the depths of it. He was like a pearl diver, leaving the world of light and air far behind, plunging toward the treasure at the bottom of the sea." pg 152

See? Wasn't that cool? I don't know if it works as well unless you read the whole book, but as a kid, I was stunned by the intensity of the description. Particularly the first line: "If he lived to be a hundred..." I still love it! If you have any favorite quotes from novels of short stories that you'd like to share, please comment below.

LDS Film Festival

Since I'm currently an intern at Cedar Fort Entertainment, for the first time ever, I got a VIP pass to an awesome event! Hopefully, I can get a VIP pass to SLC Comic Con next. This was my first time attending the LDS film festival and it was pretty fun. I met Orson Scott Card, his assistant, a bucketload of producers and novice filmmakers, and I even saw a short film about a modern day transcendentalist. That particular short film sticks in my head, not because of the talking duck (I hated the duck), but because it was so hilarious to see a young college student, bright eyed and full of promise, voluntarily starving himself and sleeping in a park so that he could learn from nature. It was ridiculous because you could see houses in the background. He wasn't far away from civilization at all. I also loved that irony of how he learns that isolating himself doesn't help anybody. He should be with his own kind and help them out. Maybe that movie was only funny for English majors who have studied Thoreau, but it was fun to watch (except for the talking duck. Maybe they just needed to change the voice of the duck. It grated on my nerves.)

Having a VIP pass means that you can hang out on the squishy couches in the VIP room and snack on the bowls of goodies. I was also happy to get a selfie with Matt Meese, my favorite actor from the TV show, Studio C. I'd still like to know how much they get paid for each episode, but he didn't say. The short film Nightblind had some AMAZING special FX, including one shot that was worked on by a guy who was involved with Guardians of the Galaxy! The director and his buddies have done seven short films in the past few years and their next goal is to make Nightblind into a feature. I spend so much time polishing my scripts that I'm jealous of the people who just go out and shoot films. I wish them the best of luck!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz4N3w5U3DY

The Secrets of Being a Bestselling Author

Ever wanted to know what it's like to be a bestselling author? This article explains how being a bestseller isn't always a picnic and as an author, you'll have to adjust to a whole new set of circumstances after you reach that landmark in your career. Since we're all going to be famous someday, be prepared and read this article!

http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/the-dark-side-of-being-a-bestseller?et_mid=724677&rid=239109624

Nickelodeon Fellowship Woes

I've been stoked to apply for the Nickelodeon Writing Fellowship for the past three months. The first year, I tried writing a script, but I couldn't finish it in time. The second year, I revamped that same script and came up with an AWESOME story that made people laugh their socks off. I still love it and still feel a special kinship to all of the Ninja Turtles because of it. Unfortunately, I didn't get into the writing program. So this year, I tried again, this time with an Ultimate Spider-Man spec. I decided that the fastest way to write the script was to outline it to death before I even attempted to write script pages. This time, it only took me two months to produce a first draft, and another two weeks to produce the second draft. The outline process worked really well and I got some good feedback. Unfortunately, that feedback included comments pointing out the the story wasn't consistent.

I studied a Spider-Man episode inside out, thought VERY deeply, talked to my sister, and after I hung up, I realized, "Crap. I have to take out the blindness angle, don't I?" The whole reason my script exists is because I wanted to see Spider-Man go blind and have Daredevil train him. Awesome idea, right? And mix in Spidey learning to use his Spidey Sense more effectively while fighting a villain that uses illusions (Mysterio)? Awesome fun, right? But a friend of mine pointed out that Daredevil added one  subplots too many and distracted the story from the central theme. Actually, I didn't really have a theme, which was probably the problem in the first place. That was the first thing I set out to fix.  It wasn't clicking, wasn't working, STILL wasn't working, and then the solution hit me like a ton of bricks (I apologize for the cliche, I'll have to revise that simile later. It's late and my brain is tired). I realized that I had to take out the blindness stuff and put more focus on the villain. Crap. Crap, crap, crap. This means yet another major rewrite merely eight days away from the contest deadline. I am totally gonna die.

Corey Mandell Rocks My World

When I read Corey Mandell's blog posts about story structure, my world turned upside down. Of course, I'd already been exposed to books like Save the Cat where story is broken down into neat little pieces and each piece has a page number. Books like Save the Cat give writers a wonderful foundation in the basics of storytelling. They're fun to read and have a lot of good advice. But for people who restrict themselves to the Save the Cat formula eventually have to grow up and move on to bigger and better things. I met someone at the Great American Pitchfest who listened to Corey Mandell for one hour, and felt like his world had collapsed. Corey had just destroyed everything he learned about writing in film school by throwing Save the Cat out the window and focusing on the principles of compelling conflict. Basically, make sure that every scene has some kind of conflict. If the protagonist is calling her boyfriend so that the audience can learn about her plans for prom night, why not have her little brother trying to steal the phone away from her at the same time? Is her little brother part of the plot where zombies take over the high school during the dance? No. But he can still provide some wonderful conflict and make a boring exposition scene exciting and funny at the same time. Corey points out that each story is different and has different requirements for its structure. If you chain yourself to the Save the Cat formula, you might miss some of the possibilities. Many famous movies didn't follow traditional story structure at all, like The Dark Knight. Batman defeats the joker...only to have an entirely new villain show up and destroy every assumption the audience had. Here's a link to Corey's blog post "Why Story Structure Formulas Don't Work"

http://coreymandell.net/blog/screenwriting-advice/why-story-structure-formulas-don’t-work-part-one/

When I revised my sci-fi short film, it took me a while to find the key to making it work. I had a lot of information I needed to give the audience, but having a news reporter drone on for two pages was definitely the wrong way to go. I had to think outside the box. And guess what the answer was? A holographic simulation!!! Instead of having the protagonist listen to a news report about what he was going to do to save the world, I had him act out the scenario in a simulation chamber so that the audience learned that the world was in trouble, the protagonist was the genius scientist who was going to save it, and show how smart and capable he was at the same time. Excitement, danger, ticking clocks, and characterization smashed together in just a few pages. Not only was it informative, but it was fun to watch and it set up the essential thread that held the whole story together. Now, every time I write, I don't worry about trying to match up page numbers to a story formula, I make sure that each scene's momentum drives into the next scene, and the next, and the next so that each event is the natural consequence of the previous scene. I constantly search for the thread that holds everything together. For Guardians of the Galaxy, it was the cassette tape (the director confirmed this in a podcast with Jeff Goldman). For Big Hero 6, it was the relationship between Hiro and Tadashi and how Tadashi saved Hiro from a life of senseless gambling. That's what made everything else work because Tadashi died and Hiro is dealing with his grief for the rest of the movie. Find the key to the story, and everything else falls into place. Find the right kind of structure, and the story unfolds, right at your feet. That's what I strive for as a writer. And as an editor, that's what I help people find in their own stories.