Editing Nonfiction

I’m a contract writer/editor/proofreader.  It’s the day job that pays the bills (I’m not a famous screenwriter … yet), and at the moment the day job is editing a nonfiction book targeted toward teachers.

The thing is, writing in the nonfiction/business realm is really not all that different from any form of creative writing.  The first two rules are basically the same:

1. Honor thy character
2. Honor thy story & structure

1. Honor thy character: Show me a movie with a weak, boring protagonist, and I’ll show you a movie that didn’t sell.  Similarly, show me a book that doesn’t know it’s target audience, and I’ll show you a book that doesn’t sell. In a movie, character is king.  Rossio, in his essay The One Hundred Million Dollar Mistake, identifies this as one of the most important battles when protecting your screenplay’s vision, and the same thing is true of nonfiction.  Know who your audience is.  Know what it is they’re relating to.  Know who they’re supposed to care about and why, and make sure the entire book is set up to drive them toward that interest.

The book I’m editing is clear who its target audience is – teachers.  And it’s clear who the beneficiaries of the information are – teachers and students alike.  As a result, this book, in its first edition has sold quite well for a self-published title, even though it has a number of problems in the next area of concern:

2. Honor thy story & structure: How many times have we heard this story: a film has a great premise, and it sounds good from the outset, but word of mouth spreads about how bad the film is, and the result is a financial disaster.  The reason, more often than not, is that the film doesn’t know where it’s going, why, or how. I’ve already talked about structure quite a bit in this blog, and how important I’m realizing it is to the overall success of screenplay.  And it goes without saying that the same thing is true of nonfiction.

The biggest problem book I’m editing is that it doesn’t really know where it’s going.  The premise is outstanding: it’s original, clear, and identifiable as an ironic problem in the education industry (forgive me for being so general – I’m trying to maintain some discretion with the client).  But after a fabulous set-up, the second act is a weak rehash of things we already know, and we’re left with the experience of a formulaic, unsatisfying lack of original information, where so much potential formerly was.

The solution is simple: identify where the book is headed, why, and how it’s going to get there.  What exactly are we trying to accomplish?  What’s the best way to communicate that?  After establishing that, the rest will fall into place, and with a little work we should have a powerful and effective asset to build the future of education in this country.

Loglines

I’ve been reading a lot about loglines recently. For those of you not in the biz, this is the one-sentence answer to the question “what is your story about?”

According to Terry Rossio on wordplayer.com, it’s the “strange attractor” – that unique and compelling aspect of your concept that will have the studio executive know immediately what your story is about and immediately makes them want to get it.

Blake Snyder, in Save the Cat! describes it in even better detail. There should be four elements: (1) it is ironic, (2) it offers a compelling mental picture, (3) it has a built-in sense of audience and cost, and (4) it works alongside an original, clear, effective, title.

As an example, from wordplayer.com: “A teenager is mistakenly sent into the past, where he must make sure his mother and father meet and fall in love; he then has to get back to the future.” Alongside the title, “Back to the Future,” we immediately see all four of those elements present.

I’m working on a screenplay right now. It’s a concept that I’d originally conceived as a comic book first, and then a movie, but as John Turman pointed out at AFF this weekend, the best comic book movies are the ones that aren’t based on comic books – Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Matrix – because they don’t have any source material holding them back.

The other factor is that I realized at Comic-Con earlier this summer that, as conceived, this piece is too ambitious for a first-time comic book project – the irony being that this one is ready now, but the other project I have in mind for comic book publication would require about a year’s worth of research before I could start writing it.

So I’m working on my high concept $5 million comic book movie. I won’t share the logline on the Internet, though I will start pitching it to random people on the street, in an attempt to see if I can keep the attention of people who are in a hurry to be somewhere else. Have a good night.