Your questions about adapted screenplays

In addition to a few other tasks at the May 28, 2008, BEA/Writer’s Digest Books Writers Conference, I’m tentatively scheduled to moderate a panel discussion during one of the 1:30 p.m. breakout sessions. The panel’s topic will be “From Book to Film/TV: How Your Work Comes Alive.” Giving the audience the benefit of their combined expertise at negotiating the sale of dramatic rights to a book will be:

• Ken Atchity of AEI (Atchity Entertainment International, Inc.)
• Paul S. Levine of the Paul S. Levine Literary Agency
• Ken Sherman of Ken Sherman & Associates

It’ll be a great pleasure to meet these three men, as well as a temptation to ask them a few of my own questions about book-to-movie deals.

If you can’t be in L.A. for the event, why don’t you post your question here, before I unplug on May 18? I’ll be happy to ask a general question on your behalf, if time permits. I’ll post a discussion of the panelists’ answers here on my blog one week after the conference.

Remember to post your question before May 18, 2008, four days from now.

Writers attending the conference will undoubtedly want to know the three panelists’ opinions about the details of option agreements and the viability of spec scripts adapted from novels and short stories. The implicit question in almost every question seems to be “Isn’t there an easier way?” We’re all looking for the path of least resistance.

~~~

The BEA/Writer’s Digest Books Writers Conference is coming May 28, 2008, to the Los Angeles Convention Center. The one-day conference is widely noted for its conclusion—a two-hour Pitch Slam in which every attendee can participate. Scores of agents, editors, and managers will be taking three-minute pitches during a notoriously intense session.

BookExpo America (BEA) follows in Los Angeles on May 29-June 1, 2008. I hope to see you there.

A little group therapy always helps

Blake Snyder has been a screenwriter for more than 20 years, but when he took a notion to use his experience to help other writers improve and sell their work, he found himself having so much fun that he was propelled in an entirely new direction. The lecturer and author of two screenwriting how-to books, Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, says: “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be creative. You can be creative by putting a fresh spin on something you already know. That’s what the job is.”

Snyder’s books have been selling well as the result of viral publicity among scriptwriters and their agents and managers. And it hasn’t escaped novelists’ and speechwriters’ notice that screenwriters are onto something. Writers in diverse media have begun applying Snyder’s style and methods.

As he became acquainted with romance novelists in his workshops, Snyder was impressed by their supportive networking associations and by the sense of camaraderie enjoyed by members of Romance Writers of America. “Their model is one I’d really like to copy,” he said. “They have the right spirit, in my opinion.”

Building community has been professionally rewarding. Each time he holds a workshop, anywhere in the world, Snyder encourages the participants to join or establish a local Cat! group, so they can continue to critique each other’s writing, share industry news and marketing strategies, and avoid the isolation hard-working writers often experience. “Let’s see this for what it is,” insists Snyder, “which is a really fun pursuit.”

Blake Snyder will be the lunch speaker at the BookExpo America/Writer’s Digest Books Writers Conference on May 28, 2008, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. I’ll enjoy the chance to meet him—and you!—there. You’ll be able to read the results of my interview with Snyder at the end of this year, when Writer’s Digest Books releases a new title in the Writer’s Market guidebook series, the 2009 Screenwriter’s and Playwright’s Market edited by Chuck Sambuchino.

See you at the Ohioana Book Festival

Poetry is borderless

Breathlessly, but before National Poetry Month concludes, let me point out the Poetry International Web, one of the newest additions to my blogroll. (Yes, I know my blogroll is becoming tediously longer than the norm. I’ve allowed my enthusiasm to overtake user-friendliness. Like the stereotypical newly converted, I’m reluctant to apologize for my excesses.)

The Poetry International Web is devoted to poetry news, interviews, video, audio, and discussion. More than two dozen countries, each with its own national editor and board of directors, contribute poems in the original language and in English translation. Each country has a separate domain attached to the site.

In the Netherlands, the Poetry International Web Foundation and the Poetry International Foundation share a board of directors and a manager who are also responsible for the 39th Poetry International Festival, to be held June 7-13, 2008, in the Schouwburg in Rotterdam.

I learned of the Poetry International Web when I read the Leicester Review of Books’ recent post “A Different Window on Zimbabwe.”

Author interview videos

The acceptable caliber of online video and improved capabilities of the hardware used to view it are escalating the number of websites making author interview programs available. On the Web, the videos are at hand when the viewer chooses to watch, a considerable advantage over television’s programming schedules, which require audiences to sort through TV stations’ timetables.

Because author interview videos are proliferating online, only a few examples are listed here. Some are the Web counterparts of familiar television programs and some are the efforts of booksellers, publishers, and video production companies.

Interview collections and programs

AuthorViews

BOA Editions
(audio podcast and video formats)

Barnes & Noble Studio
(audio podcast and video formats)

Book TV on C-SPAN2 and its archive, Booknotes

BookShorts Profiles

BookVideos.tv

Bookwrap Podcast
(audio podcast and video formats)

FORA.tv
(If this link doesn’t work, enter “book” or “books” in the search box on the site.)

LiteraryVideoTV
[Updated on May 14, 2008]

RECtv Author Interviews

Strand TV

Titlepage.tv

Individual interviews

On Today: Lily Koppel and Florence Wolfson
(author and subject of The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life through the Pages of a Lost Journal)

Waterstone’s Books Quarterly: J.G. Ballard

Bernard Pivot’s Apostrophes: Vladimir Nabokov

Not an interview, per se, but a TED talk by one of my favorite authors, Amy Tan: “Where does creativity hide?”
[Updated on April 28, 2008]

Please feel free to leave a link to anything I’ve overlooked.