Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 209

The road is my retreat

You've won a month-long, all-expenses-paid writing retreat. Where would you go and why?

Oh mannnnn...
First off, what's the catch? Is there a per diem regardless of expenses, or do I have to submit receipts? Is there a cap? And if I don't get any writing done must I pay it all back?
Okay, no catch. The question is not where you would go for a vacation, but for a writing retreat. I've never had one, but I'm guessing it means a place you go to get respite from the stresses of everyday life, comm...

Aloha

Q: You’ve won a month-long, all-expenses-paid writing retreat. Where would you go and why?


- from Susan
A: Oh, this is so easy. A specific cottage on the north shore of Kauai, with bare, painted floors, an outdoor shower, and the sounds and sight of the Hanalei River at the edge of the lawn.  The sound of slack key guitar music from the CD, the local farmers market produce and fragrant flowers nourishing me, and the demands of a publisher’s deadline to keep me from simply melting in to the...

Chicago Should Resemble Chicago

Your assignment: You must novelize a popular TV show, past or present. The catch: you must change its genre. What show and what new genre? Give us a taste of the plotline and character arcs. 

By now, everyone knows that I love Chicago, and I intend to mine it's dramatic and comedic riches in perpetuity. So I have to pick a popular television show and novelize its plot and characters. Seems simple enough, except I generally avoid all things on television that depict my city, because I don'...

Mayberry Madness

by Alan

Your assignment: You must novelize a popular TV show, past or present. The catch: you must change its genre. What show and what new genre? Give us a taste of the plotline and character arcs. (Example: Turning I Love Lucy into a serialized thriller series similar to 24.)

 
(The following is not a novelization. More like a screenplayization.)

FADE IN:

INT MAYBERRY JAIL – LATE AFTERNOON

Deputy Sheriff BARNEY FIFE sits on the edge of Sheriff ANDY TAYLOR’S desk, one leg dangling.

BARNEY
So,...

Novelizing a popular TV show

Your assignment: You must novelize a popular TV show, past or present. The catch: you must change its genre. What show and what new genre? Give us a taste of the plotline and character arcs. (Example: Turning I Love Lucy into a serialized thriller series similar to 24.)by Dietrich KalteisI don’t watch much TV nowadays, so I’ll look at some shows I loved when I was a kid. Although writing a modern take on the exploits of Maxwell Smart while changing the genre might not work … well, definitely...

Shakespeare by any other name

By R.J. Harlick
Your assignment: You must novelize a popular TV show, past or present. The catch: you must change its genre. What show and what new genre? Give us a taste of the plotline and character arcs. (Example: Turning I Love Lucy into a serialized thriller series similar to 24.)
Do you remember the eighty’s TV show Moonlighting starring Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis before he headed off to the big screen? The two of them ran the Blue Moon Detective Agency and didn’t always get along. T...

Genre, Genre, Who's Got the Genre?

Switching genres
by Terry Shames

Our topic this week is to take a TV program and convert it to a novel in a different genre.

To say this subject is daunting is to speak in understatement.  I watch a fair amount of TV, but it's mostly basketball. I guess I could see basketball games as sci-fi. Games played on a planet where when a player went to dunk, gravity was so low that a leap into the air meant soaring hundreds of feet before gently wafting back, by which time the game was over. The pl...

Eenie Meenie Miney Moe To Which Convention Do I Go?

There’s only so much time, and there’s only so much money, while the opportunities are plentiful. How do you decide which writing conferences and conventions to attend? (ie, what are your criteria?)

by Paul D. Marks

Funny you should ask, since I spent this weekend at the California Crime Writers Conference in Culver City, CA (Los Angeles). In fact, I’m writing this the night I returned home from the conference – so that’s one I decided to attend. It’s put on by the Los Angeles chapters of both...

Practical business decisions R us.

Q: There’s only so much time, and there’s only so much money, while the opportunities are plentiful. How do you decide which writing conferences and conventions to attend? (ie, what are your criteria?)
By Catriona
Well, I don't go to conferences, so that's a time-saving and money-saving start right there. Except it's not true. I sometimes go to conferences - events where writers take classes to become better writers - if someone has asked me to teach a session and for some reason I've failed to...

On the road again....by Cathy Ace

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