Friday night was a dream come true!
Ever since my first year at uni I have missed the film and television subjects. Unlike literature writing teachers (it should be called Literature Writing and not Creative Writing), script writers don't whinge about your style of writing. They don't care if your content is genre-based (as in horror, SF, romance) rather than some elaborate weaving of words (Jane Austin style - I'll never forget her two pages on someone taking off their hat.) All script writing teachers care about is 1) how it will look on screen and 2) if they'd want to watch it or not. Everything else is up to YOU! Including the story you want to tell! THAT is CREATIVITY!
On Friday night I had my first class in Creative Scriptwriting at NTV GAKUEN in Tokyo. It was two hours of talking from a person who had been in the industry for over 20 years and who had been teaching the class since it first started 14 years ago. He was so great, I didn't feel the time pass at all!
He went through the things I've been through many times before but in such detail and with such great, simple explanations. He said what not to do, but he also said WHY you'll fail if you do that.
I was once told by a uni teacher, "I love the world you've created, but why don't you write something in real life?" (You have no idea how much that comment hurt me.)
The NTV teacher, Mr. K, said things like, "Don't write Crime/Mystery. Why? Firstly, you have to be someone in the field to get your facts right. Secondly, ever believed any of the motives you see on TV? No, because it's damn hard to find a REAL reason to kill someone."
He also said to write about real experiences you've had. Or if you go the other way, add a real experience or a love story to the story you're working on.
He explained exactly why things don't work in stories, why even if you're writing about a baseball team you can't have nine protagonists, why a "Three BFF" story always needs to end up with one main.
He did tell us not to write SF and Fantasy (well if you look at the industry, only anime do that sort of thing,) but when I asked him if I could write horror/ghost stories, he told me he was very much looking forward to my project! :)
Our project is due for submission in January but it's only 60 pages long. Think I'll be done long before then. I'm more worried about filling out my Japanese resume correctly. I've never done it before. (They gave us resume sheets in case real producers like the work they see and want to turn it into a real drama. If no one bites, they'll shred our resumes about six months after we've finished the course.)
Okay, I'd better get in there and finish my homework! Need to get my resume done and write up my outline for my final project!
Whee, I'm so excited!!!
PS "Oh Yeah" would make a great opening song for a series! <3