Daniel O'Brien's Blog, page 79

Yo Daniel! I just found How To Fight Presidents in a book store in Dubai (and, of course, purchased it). So there you are, your manual to defeat the rulers of the perfidious West is now for sale in the Middle East. For real though, I wasn't expecting to fi

You can (du)buy this book in Dubai!? That’s crazy, I had no idea! Hahahahaha that’s so silly. Thanks for purchasing!

As a nerdy, overweight, 17 year old aspiring writer with an unhealthy obsession with Spiderman- thank you. You are the kind of person I want to grow up to be.

I want to grow up to be you!

cracked:If the drunken hooligans from Welcome Back Potter...

cracked:

If the drunken hooligans from Welcome Back Potter can’t figure out life, nobody can.

See them in behind-the-scenes exclusives on our YouTube channel all weekend, and subscribe to make sure you don’t miss them.

Episode two of that improv thing we did.

Bonus Welcome Back Potter Content!We had some time to kill...

Bonus Welcome Back Potter Content!

We had some time to kill when we wrapped our last show, Welcome Back, Potter, so Michael and I decided to shoot an entirely improvised four-episode miniseries in our WBP characters. Nothing pre-planned, no do-overs, just us bullshitting and playing. The first one is out now and the rest will be out in… some amount of time.

in cracked after hours u all have this big wealth of knowledge and at the start it says blah blah as soren's brain blah blah as dan's brain and so on. do u guys work off a written script or is it "heres the info, go argue". also do u play these characters

Every episode of After Hours is meticulously scripted (I’d say each episode features maybe 14 total seconds of improvisation). When someone is credited as “[X person]’s Brain,” we’re referring to the illustrator that created the specific images for every character (my brain is Anthony “Nedroid” Clark, Michael’s is Winston Rowntree, Soren’s is Matt Barrs and Wilbert’s is Starline Hodge).

While there is some level of actual back-and-forth, real-time bickering in the brainstorm phase of After Hours, the scripts are all written out by (so far) either me, Jack, Soren, Michael, Cody, Robert Brockway or Kristi Harrison. Once upon a time we tried to shoot an After Hours that was a legitimate off-the-cuff conversation among friends and we ended up talking on top of each other and just coming off like a bunch of what I think Michael described as “yammering nutbags.”

in cracked after hours u all have this big wealth of knowledge and at the start it says blah blah as soren's brain blah blah as dan's brain and so on. do u guys work off a written script or is it "heres the info, go argue". also do u play these characters

Every episode of After Hours is meticulously scripted (I’d say each episode features maybe 14 total seconds of improvisation). When someone is credited as “[X person]’s Brain,” we’re referring to the illustrator that created the specific images for every character (my brain is Anthony “Nedroid” Clark, Michael’s is Winston Rowntree, Soren’s is Matt Barrs and Wilbert’s is Starline Hodge).

While there is some level of actual back-and-forth, real-time bickering in the brainstorm phase of After Hours, the scripts are all written out by (so far) either me, Jack, Soren, Michael, Cody, Robert Brockway or Kristi Harrison. Once upon a time we tried to shoot an After Hours that was a legitimate off-the-cuff conversation among friends and we ended up talking on top of each other and just coming off like a bunch of what I think Michael described as “yammering nutbags.”

in cracked after hours u all have this big wealth of knowledge and at the start it says blah blah as soren's brain blah blah as dan's brain and so on. do u guys work off a written script or is it "heres the info, go argue". also do u play these characters

Every episode of After Hours is meticulously scripted (I’d say each episode features maybe 14 total seconds of improvisation). When someone is credited as “[X person]’s Brain,” we’re referring to the illustrator that created the specific images for every character (my brain is Anthony “Nedroid” Clark, Michael’s is Winston Rowntree, Soren’s is Matt Barrs and Wilbert’s is Starline Hodge).

While there is some level of actual back-and-forth, real-time bickering in the brainstorm phase of After Hours, the scripts are all written out by (so far) either me, Jack, Soren, Michael, Cody, Robert Brockway or Kristi Harrison. Once upon a time we tried to shoot an After Hours that was a legitimate off-the-cuff conversation among friends and we ended up talking on top of each other and just coming off like a bunch of what I think Michael described as “yammering nutbags.”

in cracked after hours u all have this big wealth of knowledge and at the start it says blah blah as soren's brain blah blah as dan's brain and so on. do u guys work off a written script or is it "heres the info, go argue". also do u play these characters

Every episode of After Hours is meticulously scripted (I’d say each episode features maybe 14 total seconds of improvisation). When someone is credited as “[X person]’s Brain,” we’re referring to the illustrator that created the specific images for every character (my brain is Anthony “Nedroid” Clark, Michael’s is Winston Rowntree, Soren’s is Matt Barrs and Wilbert’s is Starline Hodge).

While there is some level of actual back-and-forth, real-time bickering in the brainstorm phase of After Hours, the scripts are all written out by (so far) either me, Jack, Soren, Michael, Cody, Robert Brockway or Kristi Harrison. Once upon a time we tried to shoot an After Hours that was a legitimate off-the-cuff conversation among friends and we ended up talking on top of each other and just coming off like a bunch of what I think Michael described as “yammering nutbags.”

I just finished your book and it was so perfect and I'm recommending it to all of my friends/people I know because I don't really have friends. I really want to tell stories, but I can never bring myself to write more than a few pages because I get really

I hate giving and reading writing advice because I never want to discourage anyone or post any “rules,” because rules are dumb and what works for me might not work for you, and that doesn’t make either one of us a stronger writer than the other. So as always, take what I say with a grain of bullshit.

In my worthless opinion, it looks like your writing goal right now is to write something great. You lose confidence because your ambition is to write something that kicks ass, and three pages in you stop because the ass your kicking isn’t as large and as firm as you’d initially intended. So you quit, having crumbled in the shadow of your massive goal.

So I’d say change your goal. Right now, your goal is to make something great; have you considered shifting your goal to “make something PERIOD?” Don’t try to write Gatsby, just focus on finishing something (knowing you can come back later to bring it a few more inches closer to perfect). If I had focused on making any one chapter of my book perfect in the first draft, the book never would have gotten written. The thought process was “Just get through this fucking chapter and then future Daniel will fix it later.”

If you want to get into running, you shouldn’t start out saying “I’m going to run a marathon and break world records TOMORROW.” That’s how you get hurt, burn yourself out and quit, because you’ve given yourself a goal you can’t achieve.

First drafts are never great, but they are complete, and that’s all you can ask of a first draft.

I just finished your book and it was so perfect and I'm recommending it to all of my friends/people I know because I don't really have friends. I really want to tell stories, but I can never bring myself to write more than a few pages because I get really

I hate giving and reading writing advice because I never want to discourage anyone or post any “rules,” because rules are dumb and what works for me might not work for you, and that doesn’t make either one of us a stronger writer than the other. So as always, take what I say with a grain of bullshit.

In my worthless opinion, it looks like your writing goal right now is to write something great. You lose confidence because your ambition is to write something that kicks ass, and three pages in you stop because the ass your kicking isn’t as large and as firm as you’d initially intended. So you quit, having crumbled in the shadow of your massive goal.

So I’d say change your goal. Right now, your goal is to make something great; have you considered shifting your goal to “make something PERIOD?” Don’t try to write Gatsby, just focus on finishing something (knowing you can come back later to bring it a few more inches closer to perfect). If I had focused on making any one chapter of my book perfect in the first draft, the book never would have gotten written. The thought process was “Just get through this fucking chapter and then future Daniel will fix it later.”

If you want to get into running, you shouldn’t start out saying “I’m going to run a marathon and break world records TOMORROW.” That’s how you get hurt, burn yourself out and quit, because you’ve given yourself a goal you can’t achieve.

First drafts are never great, but they are complete, and that’s all you can ask of a first draft.