tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974492.post2762053652940039562..comments2024-03-28T12:46:20.637-04:00Comments on alien romances: A Saving the Cat QueryRowena Cherryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11839386556697211986noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974492.post-85070063201970154862014-02-13T15:26:15.155-05:002014-02-13T15:26:15.155-05:00Margaret: Consider that today's "blockbus...Margaret: Consider that today's "blockbuster" film audience is more people than were alive in the whole world in Dickens day, and have access to a wider variety of choices, have to be lured away from those choices, etc -- it is just not that same thing at all.<br /><br />What is delightful -- Dickens' works (all of them) translate easily and beautifully into product today's audience is consuming hungrily! That's why writers should study Dickens. Jacqueline Lichtenberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01613040740264804278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974492.post-29502386122604930872014-02-13T15:12:02.880-05:002014-02-13T15:12:02.880-05:00Thanks, Jacqueline. The contrast between films and...Thanks, Jacqueline. The contrast between films and novels makes the thing that was puzzling me much more understandable. Still, I would claim Dickens did appeal to a wide audience -- throughout the rest of his career, audiences thronged to hear him read aloud from A CHRISTMAS CAROL. And while literacy may have been rare in the nineteenth century compared to now, it was becoming common enough that the "penny dreadful" serial novels (e.g., VARNEY THE VAMPYRE, which goes on for over 800 pages in book form) had a huge readership, and they were targeted to working-class people who didn't have much money to spend.Margaret Carterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08293021955480708191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974492.post-78350649729720931422014-02-13T13:45:26.363-05:002014-02-13T13:45:26.363-05:00Margaret: Yes, now you see. Blake Snyder was giv...Margaret: Yes, now you see. Blake Snyder was giving us a breakdown of MODERN BLOCKBUSTER FILMS.<br /><br />His advice was all about how to write a BLOCKBUSTER FILM SCRIPT -- not an Indie script, or a genre script or a B-picture script, but one that producers could get high budget backing for.<br /><br />He analyzed a multitude of these films, and found the certain elements that all of them had. Everything else is variable -- but SAVE THE CAT is absolutely necessary, and must be the intro.<br /><br />The novel CHRISTMAS CAROL was not written to attract tens of millions of people to pay $15 a head -- all within a few weeks time-span -- and didn't cost tens of millions of dollars to print and distribute, thus didn't have to appeal to a WIDE audience.<br /><br />Even in serialization, to newspaper readers -- the brutal truth is not everyone read newspapers even then. Literacy - especially literacy to the degree required to enjoy reading a story rather than just writing your name - was rare. And it's rare today.<br /><br />Most people don't read books, and of those who do, most of them read non-fiction. <br /><br />Novel writers are not playing to the broad audience a film must attract, so the "rules" are different.<br /><br />However, the closer to that broad-audience-rule the novelist can get, the more copies their books will sell. Jacqueline Lichtenberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01613040740264804278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26974492.post-79401390759280799932014-02-13T12:38:11.189-05:002014-02-13T12:38:11.189-05:00Okay, RE Scrooge, I have to confess I overlooked a...Okay, RE Scrooge, I have to confess I overlooked a "save the cat" moment at the beginning of the Patrick Stewart CHRISTMAS CAROL. It's not in the opening scene but in a prologue, seven years earlier, that does not appear in the bookâMarley's funeral. (Dickens mentions it but doesn't show it.) In the movie, left alone with Marley's coffin, Scrooge says an unsentimental but clearly affectionate farewell to his partner and only friend. His warm-ish feelings toward Marley don't show up in the book and other films until the visit of Marley's ghost.Margaret Carterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08293021955480708191noreply@blogger.com