Adam Morgan's Blog, page 5

Charlotte Film Festival picks “Appalachian Gothic”

The University of North Carolina Charlotte Film Festival has chosen my screenplay, APPALACHIAN GOTHIC, as one of three finalists in its Gold Reel competition. Actors will perform the script on Tuesday, April 29th at 6pm in Charlotte’s McKnight Hall, before the awards ceremony.

No word yet on who’s playing the deer. I’m pushing for Gary Oldman but we’ll see what happens.

APPALACHIAN GOTHIC is actually an adaptation of one of my short stories, A CREATURE SO LOVELY, about a homesteader’s last encounter with nature in the mountains of North Carolina.

Adapting a short story for film is an interesting endeavor, and one I’d never attempted before. As a visual medium, film doesn’t allow for interiors the same way fiction does (barring voice-over narration, which always feels like cheating). In screenplays, character can only be revealed through action and dialogue. APPALACHIAN GOTHIC is very image-driven and contains very little dialogue, so it’ll be interesting to see how the festival performs it.

What Writers Can Learn from ‘How Best to Avoid Dying’ by Owen Egerton

Owen Egerton is a novelist and a screenwriter known for his dark, satirical humor. His work often touches on religion, as evidenced by his last two novels, The Book of Harold, a modern-day gospel narrative, and Everyone Says That at the End of the World, which riffs on the Judeo-Christian eschatology of the end times.

In this glossy reprint of his first short story collection, How Best to Avoid Dying, lost souls search for meaning in both life and death. In “The Martyrs of Mountain Peak,” counselors at an evangelical summer camp schedule their own deaths to look like gruesome accidents in order to increase the number of campers who will “come to Jesus” in their grief. And in “Lazarus Dying,” John the Apostle and Lazarus continue to live in the 21st Century, working in a copy shop, blessed (or cursed) with immortality by Christ.

The Chicago Tribune says ”Egerton is hardly the first to suggest that attention to the raw minutiae of beauty is the closest we get to grace. But he’s the funniest to do so in a long time.” I say there is much we as writers can learn from Dying about our craft.

Sometimes, Less is More

Writers are usually verbose by nature, but fiction isn’t really the best place to show off your vocabulary. Like Ron Rash or Cormac McCarthy, Egerton writes minimalist prose.  Take the opening lines from “The Martyrs of Mountain Peak”, for instance:

“Kent is dead. All the kids at camp are crying and singing and praying. They don’t know that it was my turn, not his.”

It isn’t showy or “writerly.” It’s simple. It sucks you right in and makes for effortless reading. It sounds like someone talking naturally.Take a nod from Egerton and simplify your prose. Resist the temptation to show off, to delicately construct each sentence into a linguistic mosaic. Make your sentences smooth and remove all obstacles to an effortless read.

Humor Opens Doors

Humor is a powerful tool in fiction, because it allows you to do things, and explore ideas, that might otherwise come across as ridiculous. Just ask George Saunders and Chuck Palahniuk. If Egerton took himself too seriously, if he wrote a straight-faced narrative about an artist who uses his bowel movements as a colorful medium (as in “The Fecalist”) or a children’s spelling bee where the punishment for a mistake is a gruesome and public death (as in “Spelling”).

Some writers omit all funniness from their work, for fear that they may not be taken seriously. Egerton proves that your unique sense of humor can be a defining aspect of your fiction, something that really sets you apart.

Characters Need Jobs Too

In MFA workshops, plenty of students will turn in drafts of stories where their characters’ jobs are never mentioned. And yet, real-life humans are often defined by their jobs. On average, we spend 54% of our waking hours on work or work-related activities. And when you meet a stranger at a party, what’s the first question you ask after getting their name? “What do you do?”

The scope and content of almost every story in Dying is defined by what the narrator does for a living: Waffle House inspector, religious cult member, camp counselor, student, etc. And Egerton has done his research, because he realistically portrays the daily life of his characters, depending on what they do for a living.

Do your characters have jobs? Do their jobs impact what kind of person they are or what kinds of challenges they face?

Five New Books That Myst and Riven Fans Will Love

Cyan Worlds, creators of the beloved Myst series of adventure PC games, stormed back into the headlines last fall thanks to their successful Kickstarter campaign for a new IP titled Obduction.

The Myst franchise is centered around books, so fans of the series tend to be a literary bunch. With that in mind, here are five books published within the last 12 months…books that feature exploration, mystery, and narrative puzzle-solving…that will appeal to fans of Myst, Riven, and Uru.

S., by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst. S. is a book for people who love books. Aged and designed to look like a library book from the 1940s, S. is actually a novel titled Ship of Theseus by a controversial (fictional) author who died (or disappeared) under mysterious circumstances. But every page of the novel is covered with the handwritten notes of two present-day readers who have used the book as a “message board,” passing it back and forth in a university library as they try to solve a complex literary puzzle together. They’ve also tucked a variety of objects into the pages: a hand-drawn map on a napkin, postcards, telegrams, newspaper clippings, etc.

You might need to keep your own notes to fully appreciate the investigative joys of S. (got a blank Myst journal handy?), but it’s worth the effort.

The People in the Trees, by Hanya Yanagihara. If you love Myst and Riven, you probably love islands. In this debut novel, a biologist joins an expedition to the islands of Ivu’ivu in the South Pacific. On one of the islands, a mountainous tract of jungle thought to be uninhabited by natives, are the “Dreamers.” They live in complete isolation, guarding an ancient secret: they do not seem to die. The unreliable narrator (who turns out to be a deeply flawed human being…think Gehn) investigates a biological explanation for immortality, informed by the natives’ mythology. When he arrives on the islands, you’ll get that same sense of wonder you might remember from linking to a new age. Just be warned: the story gets dark. Very, very dark.

Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer. Annihilation is probably the best literary approximation to the Myst experience in existence (I blogged about it last week). An unnamed narrator explores Area X, an uninhabited stretch of forest, marsh, and dune that has been cordoned off by the Southern Reach corporation and a mysterious Event. After discovering a submerged tower tunneling into the earth, the narrator uncovers unsettling truths about the area’s wildlife and previous expeditions. It’s strange, brilliant, and addicting (and now there’s even an ARG). Best of all, it’s just the first book in a trilogy.

Strange Bodies, by Marcel Theroux. I could hardly tease this novel any better than its official synopsis does: “In a locked ward of a notorious psychiatric hospital sits a man who insists that he is Dr. Nicholas Slopen, failed husband and impoverished Samuel Johnson scholar. Slopen has been dead for months, yet nothing can make this man change his story. What begins as a tale of apparent forgery involving unknown letters by the great Dr. Johnson grows to encompass a conspiracy between a Silicon Valley mogul and his Russian allies to exploit the darkest secret of Soviet technology: the Malevin Procedure.” You won’t find any Myst-like environments, but the mystery and the author’s affinity for the written word will appeal to literary Cyantists.

The Resurrectionist, by E.B. Hudspeth. The Resurrectionist is like a journal you might find left behind in one of Sirrus’s bedrooms. The book is broken into two halves: the biography of Dr. Spencer Black, an experimental surgeon in Philadelphia who disappeared in the 1870s, and his anatomical illustrations of mythological creatures, which he believes were the precursors of Man. The book is haunting and exceedingly beautiful.

What Writers Can Learn from ‘Annihilation’ by Jeff VanderMeer

Cover art via Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Every once in a while, a novel comes along and absolutely floors me. Annihilation is one such novel. It transcends the usual experience of reading a book and transports us somewhere beautiful and horrifying. It slowly bores its way into your skull and settles at the base of your brain, where dreams and nightmares fester.

If you’re a writer, or an aspiring writer, Annihilation is a master class in your craft.

The first book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (to be followed by Authority and Acceptance later this year) tells the story of a scientific expedition to Area X. Thirty years ago, something happened to a heavily forested coastal region of marsh, tidal creeks, and dunes, cutting it off from the rest of the world and provoking bizarre changes in its ecosystems.

Our narrator is an unnamed biologist, a member of the 12th expedition sent into Area X. All previous expeditions have ended in horror. When the biologist arrives, she finds something that isn’t supposed to be there: a tower submerged beneath the earth. Nothing is what it seems.

If you haven’t read Annihilation yet (read Chapter 1 here for free), surely that synopsis will compel you. If you have, here’s what the book can teach writers about their work.

Setting Matters

Too often in my grad school workshops, students would turn in stories and novel excerpts that featured characters talking…somewhere. In a nondescript apartment. On a street. In a cafe. As a reader, I had no idea whether they were talking on a winter’s night in Reyjavik or a balmy afternoon in Rio.

This kind of ambiguity is impossible in good fiction. I challenge you to think of a good novel without a clearly discernible setting in both space and time. On some level, all stories are stories about places, because human beings do not exist in a vacuum. We are defined and impacted irrevocably by setting.

In Annihilation, Area X is a character unto itself. It breathes and speaks through the author’s prose with a kind of authenticity that is only possible when a writer knows his setting intimately. In VanderMeer’s interview with Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, he reveals that Area X (although unnamed in the novel) is actually St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge, near Vandermeer’s home in Florida. Annihilation was written as result of his frequent hikes in the area, and it shows.

The natural detail captured by the author could only come from first-hand observations in the wild. VanderMeer doesn’t repeat clichéd descriptions of Nature with a capital N, he allows a hyperspecific place in space and time to bleed through reality and onto the page. As a result, the novel transports you away from whatever room you’re reading in, and out into Area X.

Characters Are Not “Characters”

Beginning writers often use a variety of shortcuts to “establish” and “develop” character, primarily via superficial traits. A protagonist is “tall, with broad shoulders and eyes like flakes of robin’s egg.” Or he is “a lifelong Texan named Rhett Cutler.” Or he “likes to eat fruit with a bowie knife.”

VanderMeer omits these surface details in Annihilation, and his characters do not suffer for it. We don’t need to know the color of the narrator’s hair, or how she dresses, or where she was born. In fact, VanderMeer goes a step further than most writers and omits even the names of the characters, fearing they would act as too strong a filter. And yet? I feel as though I know the narrator quite well, well enough to truly feel the impact that Area X makes on her.

Instead of superficial traits, VanderMeer organically encapsulates how his characters think, move, and speak. He doesn’t tell us about them, he lets them show us.

Knowledge Gaps Equal Suspense

Having developed an intricate, complex background story or mythology for their fictional universe, some writers will rush to dump all of that information on their readers as quickly as possible. But in addition to creating confusion and a steep learning curve, these early info dumps also remove the element of suspense.

Most readers, especially those of speculative fiction, enjoy thinking for themselves and solving puzzles. They want to be intellectually challenged by a novel. They want to follow a trail of bread crumbs, not have a fresh-baked loaf plopped down on their plates.

To create and sustain suspense, VanderMeer uses an “iris-out” technique, a term lifted from the world of film, where the camera is focused on a particular object and then moves outward to reveal the full scene. The TV series Lost used this technique quite well in its first two seasons (but eventually, the full scene it revealed wasn’t very satisfying).

In Annihilation, we begin with an unknown narrator in a strange environment who encounters a bizarre  tower. We know she’s part of an expedition into a place called Area X, but that’s all we know.

Instead of explaining what the novel is about, the author forces us to ask questions. Who is the narrator? Where is Area X? What is the objective of the expedition? What’s inside the tower? These questions create suspense. And slowly, over the course of the novel, VanderMeer pulls the camera back to show more of the full scene. He creates appetites, frustrates appetites, and then gradually satisfies them (but only a few, as this is the first of three novels).

So. If you’re a writer who struggles with setting, character, and creating suspense, read Annihilation. If you aren’t a writer, but you’re looking to get lost in a one-of-a-kind environment, read Annihilation.

What Writers Can Learn from ‘Annihilation’ by Jeff Vandermeer

Cover art via Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Every once in a while, a novel comes along and absolutely floors me. Annihilation is one such novel. It transcends the usual experience of reading a book and transports us somewhere beautiful and horrifying. It slowly bores its way into your skull and settles at the base of your brain, where dreams and nightmares fester.

If you’re a writer, or an aspiring writer, Annihilation is a master class in your craft.

The first book in Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy (to be followed by Authority and Acceptance later this year) tells the story of a scientific expedition to Area X. Thirty years ago, something happened to a heavily forested coastal region of marsh, tidal creeks, and dunes, cutting it off from the rest of the world and provoking bizarre changes in its ecosystems.

Our narrator is an unnamed biologist, a member of the 12th expedition sent into Area X. All previous expeditions have ended in horror. When the biologist arrives, she finds something that isn’t supposed to be there: a tower submerged beneath the earth. Nothing is what it seems.

If you haven’t read Annihilation yet (read Chapter 1 here for free), surely that synopsis will compel you. If you have, here’s what the book can teach writers about their work.

Setting Matters

Too often in my grad school workshops, students would turn in stories and novel excerpts that featured characters talking…somewhere. In a nondescript apartment. On a street. In a cafe. As a reader, I had no idea whether they were talking on a winter’s night in Reyjavik or a balmy afternoon in Rio.

This kind of ambiguity is impossible in good fiction. I challenge you to think of a good novel without a clearly discernible setting in both space and time. On some level, all stories are stories about places, because human beings do not exist in a vacuum. We are defined and impacted irrevocably by setting.

In Annihilation, Area X is a character unto itself. It breathes and speaks through the author’s prose with a kind of authenticity that is only possible when a writer knows his setting intimately. In Vandermeer’s interview with Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, he reveals that Area X (although unnamed in the novel) is actually St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge, near Vandermeer’s home in Florida. Annihilation was written as result of his frequent hikes in the area, and it shows.

The natural detail captured by the author could only come from first-hand observations in the wild. Vandermeer doesn’t repeat clichéd descriptions of Nature with a capital N, he allows a hyperspecific place in space and time to bleed through reality and onto the page. As a result, the novel transports you away from whatever room you’re reading in, and out into Area X.

Characters Are Not “Characters”

Beginning writers often use a variety of shortcuts to “establish” and “develop” character, primarily via superficial traits. A protagonist is “tall, with broad shoulders and eyes like flakes of robin’s egg.” Or he is “a lifelong Texan named Rhett Cutler.” Or he “likes to eat fruit with a bowie knife.”

Vandermeer omits these surface details in Annihilation, and his characters do not suffer for it. We don’t need to know the color of the narrator’s hair, or how she dresses, or where she was born. In fact, Vandermeer goes a step further than most writers and omits even the names of the characters, fearing they would act as too strong a filter. And yet? I feel as though I know the narrator quite well, well enough to truly feel the impact that Area X makes on her.

Instead of superficial traits, Vandermeer organically encapsulates how his characters think, move, and speak. He doesn’t tell us about them, he lets them show us.

Knowledge Gaps Equal Suspense

Having developed an intricate, complex background story or mythology for their fictional universe, some writers will rush to dump all of that information on their readers as quickly as possible. But in addition to creating confusion and a steep learning curve, these early info dumps also remove the element of suspense.

Most readers, especially those of speculative fiction, enjoy thinking for themselves and solving puzzles. They want to be intellectually challenged by a novel. They want to follow a trail of bread crumbs, not have a fresh-baked loaf plopped down on their plates.

To create and sustain suspense, Vandermeer uses an “iris-out” technique, a term lifted from the world of film, where the camera is focused on a particular object and then moves outward to reveal the full scene. The TV series Lost used this technique quite well in its first two seasons (but eventually, the full scene it revealed wasn’t very satisfying).

In Annihilation, we begin with an unknown narrator in a strange environment who encounters a bizarre  tower. We know she’s part of an expedition into a place called Area X, but that’s all we know.

Instead of explaining what the novel is about, the author forces us to ask questions. Who is the narrator? Where is Area X? What is the objective of the expedition? What’s inside the tower? These questions create suspense. And slowly, over the course of the novel, Vandermeer pulls the camera back to show more of the full scene. He creates appetites, frustrates appetites, and then gradually satisfies them (but only a few, as this is the first of three novels).

So. If you’re a writer who struggles with setting, character, and creating suspense, read Annihilation. If you aren’t a writer, but you’re looking to get lost in a one-of-a-kind environment, read Annihilation.

Finding the “Right Place” to Write

The Night Cafe, by Vincent Van Gogh. Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903

Last week, The New York Times profiled five writers and the rooms they write in. Obviously, opinions differ on the “ideal” writing environment. Some prefer near-sensory deprivation, like Stephen King, who locks himself in a dark basement. Others require peripheral stimulation, be it a sidewalk cafe or an open window.

But can a writer’s environment really have a meaningful impact on the work they produce?

According to a study at the University of British Columbia, a “moderate” level of ambient noise does actually “increase creativity.” Too much noise (anything above 80 decibels or so, such as a garbage disposal) distracts us and prevents sustained focus. Too little noise, on the other hand (50 decibels, the level of a hushed library), also stifles our creative impulses, according to the study.

The ideal writing environment, says Dr. Ravi Mehta, falls within the Goldilocks zone of 70 decibels. And what does 70 decibels sound like?

A coffee shop.

“Instead of burying oneself in a quiet room trying to figure out a solution, walking out of one’s comfort zone and getting into a relatively noisy environment may trigger the brain to think abstractly, and thus generate creative ideas,” say the researchers. And one trip to a coffee shop in New York or Chicago, dotted with furrowed brows and clacking laptops, will certainly prove their point.

If you can’t make it to a coffee shop, the internet will even bring the coffee shop to you. Free services like Coffitivity, a web-based tool with a variety of mobile apps, offer a fairly lifelike semblance of coffee shop ambiance for your listening pleasure, no matter where you’re writing from.

I’ve written everywhere from my living room, university libraries, the back of an El train in Chicago, and on my phone while walking to work (I do not particularly recommend the latter, but sometimes you just need to get some words out). For me, the most important aspect of your  writing environment is that it’s somewhere you enjoy writing. If you ever enjoy writing, that is. If you don’t, at least go somewhere you enjoy being.

I will read your script and give you notes

Have you written a script (or treatment) for a feature film or TV pilot, but haven’t had any luck drawing interest from agents, networks, or production companies?

Do you have a great concept, but aren’t sure how to execute it yet?

Over the next three weeks, I’ll be acting as a script consultant for anyone willing to donate to Cyan Worlds’ Kickstarter campaign for Obduction.

That’s right, you don’t have to pay me a dime, you just have to donate. Cyan’s classic Myst franchise inspired me to become a writer as a child, so this is my way of paying it forward.

My Expertise

I’m an award-winning screenwriter with the following experience/accolades: a TV series in development at Fox, a grand prize-winning script at the New York Television Festival, one of The Guardian’s Top Ten TV Pitches of 2013, pitch meetings with Creative Arts Agency and major network executives, a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction and Screenwriting, and the mentorship of Owen Egerton, the novelist and screenwriter responsible for EVERYONE SAYS THAT AT THE END OF THE WORLD and Bill Hader’s upcoming film HENCHMEN.

So, here’s the deal:

$25 Donation: I will read your screenplay/script/treatment and give you five (5) pages of notes on plot, structure, character, dialogue, etc.

$45 Donation: In addition to the above, I will give you two (2) pages of personalized notes on how to pitch your screenplay/script and query agents with it for representation.

$5,000 Donation: I will write an entire screenplay for you and you can put your name on it. Seriously. (Disclaimer: I am not serious about this one).

Interested parties need only to email me (earthmorgan at gmail dot com) and donate one of the above-mentioned amounts (or more) to Cyan Worlds’ Kickstarter campaign for Obduction.

“FLIGHT” named one of The Guardian’s “10 Most Promising TV Pitches”

An artist’s rendition of my TV series, FLIGHT. (Chloe Cushman via The Guardian)

My pitch for Flight–a half-hour comedy series–has been named one of The Guardian‘s Top 10 Most Promising TV Pitches.

I wrote the script for Flight during my MFA at Roosevelt University under the mentorship of Owen Egerton, a novelist and screenwriter for Disney, Fox, and WB.

Like the award-winning script for Liberal Arts, Flight draws upon my own experiences, but exaggerates and extrapolates them into the airline industry, as a small-town girl leaves the Appalachians behind to become a flight attendant in Chicago.

In addition to traditional research, a lot of the inspiration for Flight came from real-life flight attendants I spoke to during trips between Chicago and North Carolina. In fact, the initial idea for the series came to me on the flight to New York in 2009 for the New York Television Festival, where my script for Liberal Arts took top prize.

Granted, the panel of judges for The Guardian–including Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of Gilmore Girls–had quite a few critiques for Flight‘s pitch. The contest required for the pitch to be condensed into 100 words or less, and in the end, I focused too much on the pilot script’s plot and not enough on the series and characters as a whole. See the article in The Guardian for more details on the potential series.

A Month by the Sea by Dervla Murphy

Dervla Murphy is one of Ireland’s greatest writers, and my review of her latest book, A Month by the Sea: Encounters in Gaza, was published in this week’s issue of Booklist Magazine.

Murphy’s powerful exposé of modern life in the Gaza Strip is a vital, eye-opening chapter in the history of the Middle-East. At the ripe age of 80, she travels alone throughout one of the world’s most devastated places. Her interviews and insights challenge the traditional Western narrative of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. In her eyes, and in those of the Gazans she meets, the problem isn’t primarily a religious one.

Writing Your First Novel: Books You Should Read First

A common misconception about writers is that they should be self-sufficient. Cut off from the rest of the world. Secluded in a dark basement.

But before writing your first novel, it’s important to learn as much as possible from other, more seasoned writers.

There are the classics, of course. Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, and Zissner’s On Writing Well. But those well-regarded standards are over 20 years old.

The following six books, all published within the last five years, were immensely helpful to me in various stages of the writing process, from plotting and character development to style and market positioning. I recommend reading as many of them as you can before tackling your novel’s first draft.

The Anatomy of Story by John Truby

If you only read one of the books listed here, make it this one. Truby’s master-class in storytelling can be applied to any narrative form, be it a novel, a screenplay, or a TV script. He describes the archetypal structures and devices that good stories use to create tension, suspense, and satisfaction. I consulted this book over and over again when writing my pilot script, “Liberal Arts,” and re-read it before starting the first draft of The Hidden City. If you have a great concept for a novel but need help plotting it out, this is the book for you.

Building Great Sentences by Brooks Landon

Already plotted out your novel but having trouble getting it to sound right? Odds are you need help on the micro-level. Landon’s short style manual is a great way to streamline and improve your way with words. He encourages clean, concise prose.

Is Like Like This?: A Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months by John Dufresne

I once watched Dufresne improvise a detailed novel synopsis in front of a crowded AWP conference room. The man is a genius. His second “How-To” guide to writing not only gets you motivated to finish your first draft within a specific timeframe, it also gives you insights into Dufresne’s own writing process.

The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner

You won’t find any specific writing guidelines here, and by the end of the book you might feel a bit discouraged about the state of the publishing industry, but Lerner’s sobering look at what it takes to be a successful writer in the 21st Century is invaluable.

Wild Ink: Success Secrets to Writing and Publishing for the Young Adult Market by Victoria Hanley

This book won’t apply to everyone, but if you’re working on a Young Adult novel like I am, Brooks does a wonderful job of describing the current YA market and how to position your story within it, along with some dos and don’ts specific to the age group you’re targeting.

Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman is known for his wildly popular novels, comics, and screenplays, but this text, taken from his 2012 commencement speech at the Philadelphia University of the Arts, is a rousing, inspiring call to action for writers and creative minds everywhere.