A week or so ago I was reading a review of David Lindsay-Abaire’s new play where the critic basically blamed the crappy ending (in his opinion) on Lindsay-Abaire’s foray into Hollywood:

“…The actors perform skillfully, but Lindsay-Abaire, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his play “Rabbit Hole,” has been spending time in Hollywood, and the industry’s habitual glibness infects the ending of the play, which seems as fraudulent as it is bewildering.”

That “habitual glibness” (which, I think, means a consistent paint-by-numbers approach no matter the film’s subject matter, although it’s such a wide-open phrase that it’s hard to tell) is definitely a part of screenwriting, but what this critic and many critics across the board seem to miss is that unless you’re one of the few high ranking writers known by name, there really isn’t any other way to get a movie made in Hollywood.

So by saying Lindsay-Abaire’s new play was “ruined” by a Hollywood sheen, what the critic is really saying is, “you know that ‘habitual glibness’ [excuse my vague phrase] that’s basically essential to getting a film made and screenwriter paid? I don’t like it.  And it makes for terrible endings.  And I refuse to get to the root of the problem which is that it’s really, really difficult for a writer to simultaneously make a critic and producer happy [even in theater] – so I’ll just blame it all on the writer.  For refusing to be creative.”

Critics and producers are like divorced parents who are so obsessed with their own agenda, they can’t possibly see that they’re tearing their child into pieces with their vastly diverging opinions. Read more »

I clearly remember the time I read through my first literary sex scene.

I was probably around 10, or 11 years old, and I was probably reading some adult book I had pilfered from my mom’s bedside table or that someone else had pilfered from their own mom’s bedside table.  Where the book came from, or even it’s title, isn’t important, what is important is that Anne Rice was behind it — and spared no details.

Obviously, I wasn’t old enough to understand what was going on in the pages I skimmed through during one long summer afternoon, but even as a very young writer, one who had just barely begun to record life with big, loopy letters, I was concerned with how Rice actually got the courage to write such lurid details.  And they were lurid.  At least to a 10-year-old.

These days, I have that same concern.

Yes, I’m older.  Yes, I understand sex and see it as a natural part of life (I somehow missed the whole Shame and Guilt dance Roman Catholicism can often force its young followers to do…and left the church before they could tell me it was even worse to do It before marriage), but I’m still much preoccupied with putting it into my own writing.

I mean, we all like to watch sex scenes.  And we all like to read them, too.  They’re fun.  They break up the monotony.  They give us ideas. Etc. But.  How does one create a sex scene that doesn’t (ahem…) suck? Read more »