Tag: Sixteen Candles

Love on the Big Screen Podcast: My Novel is Now Available as a 2nd Edition

Love on the Big Screen is my first novel, and it tells the story of a college freshman whose understanding of love has been shaped by eighties romantic comedies. The protagonist Zuke is obsessed with movies such as Sixteen Candles, Say Anything, When Harry Met Sally, and The Breakfast Club. Love on the Big Screen is a novel of friendship, the dangers of romanticized love, the complexities of faith and real life, and what happens to one young man as he finds out that life is nothing like the movies he loves.

  • Click here to link to Amazon where you can purchase the eBook or paperback.
cover design by Izzy Torgerson

As someone who grew up in the decade of the eighties and graduated from high school in 1989, the novel was inspired by my own experiences attending college at Olivet Nazarene University and playing on the basketball team.

Click below to listen to the Torg Stories Podcast episode where my sister Anne took over hosting duties and led a discussion about the book:

Discussed on this episode:

  • What necessitated the 2nd edition?
  • What inspired the story?
  • How does real life inspire fiction?
  • What’s the process of self publishing a second edition?
  • What makes for an effective book cover? My daughter Izzy designed this one for the second edition!
  • Why is the price the price of an eBook or paperback?
  • Shonda Rimes and other requests by studios and production companies for the book.
  • Writing the screenplay and winning the Grand Prize of the Rhode Island International Film Festival Screenplay Competition.
  • Memories from college.

Facts of my life that made it into the novel:

  1. I really was a member of a group called The Brothers in Pursuit that met weekly on Sunday nights. We dressed in matching boxer shorts, wore helmets, and reported back to each other on the four pursuits.
  2. I did like a girl who told me that she was going to break up with her boyfriend but she came back from the meeting engaged. She did not date one of my teammates.
  3. People did wear t-shirts at our games that spelled my name T-O-R-G and sometimes there was a “!” at the end.
  4. A professor did take me and a small group of English students to a performance of MacBeth which began with naked witches.

Just a few examples of how details from life can become fiction:

  1. One of the Brothers in Pursuit was named Chad Zaucha and my buddies and I called him Zuke. I used his name for my main character even though that character is based more on myself than anyone else.
  2. In the book, Zuke likes Abby and her boyfriend is nicknamed Cheese, and he’s the star of the college team. Cheese is also a name I took from someone I know. Cheese was a teammate and when he set the record for assists at Olivet Nazarene where I played, the fans really did throw cheese slices on the floor. However, Cheese didn’t date someone I liked, and Cheese was a great teammate. The character in the book is sometimes a less than ideal teammate who has no connection to the guy I knew.
  3. Zuke’s high school girl friend is named Colleen. I got that name from when a 3rd grader passed me a note to ask if I wanted to be her boyfriend and I freaked out. So I didn’t go to high school with a girl named Colleen.

College Memory Section

Here are some of the memories I share with Anne on the podcast:

  1. What we did in forming the Brothers in Pursuit.
  2. Riding rented scooters in Hawaii when the team went the first time.
  3. Complaining Sessions With Teammates. We called them something else but we would gather in a room and complain for an hour and then when that was up there was no more complaining for the week.
  4. My friend Zuke threw a bunch of CDs out the window because he thought music was consuming his life. Zuke also did not roll down the windows on his new car.
  5. TECMO football leagues. Status pro basketball with Cowboy.

Just a few of the people that influenced me at Olivet Nazarene:

  1. Joe Bentz. The first person I ever met who was working on a book. I wrote an essay The Royal Castle and he told me that was what I should be writing.
  2. Ruth Cook: I took a Shakespeare Class from her. She made it really fun. She told me I was a good writer. She was the one who took us to MacBeth with the naked witches.
  3. Judy Whitis: head of the English Department. I asked her for a recommendation letter to get into a creative writing program, and she suggested I might want to teach at Olivet instead. She planted the seed that I could teach at a college.
  4. Shirley McGuire. I had her for a few classes, and she was the sponsor for the English Honor Society. The Prof Moore character is based on her mannerisms. I think it’s better for the narrative to take Prof Cook’s taking us to MacBeth and just giving that to Moore.

Thanks for checking out this episode and learning more about the novel Love on the Big Screen!

If you do purchase the novel, it would be a big boost to the project if you would share it with friends and write a review on Amazon. Thank you!

If you know Audible subscribers, would you share?

If you’re a subscriber to Audible, (or you just can’t get enough of my voice in your head) you might want to check out my 80s music and movies themed novel Love on the Big Screen as an audio book.  I’m the reader and my voice is just now recovering in time for the start of the semester.  By the way, I do some light singing in one scene.

It’s tough to get the word out about this audio book, and so if you think some of your friends subscribe to Audible, I hope you’ll consider sharing this post.

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William Torgerson audible good book, great book, 80s romantic comedy Cusack Ringwald

 

Click on the Audible icon or here to listen to me read the opening.

If you don’t know the novel, here’s a little about Love on the Big Screen:

You’ll meet Zuke. He’s a college freshman whose understanding of love has been shaped by late-eighties romantic comedies. The story is set at a fictionalized version of Olivet Nazarene University and while creating the story, I reflected on my own romantic life and special obsession for films such as Say Anything and Sixteen Candles. My adaptation of this novel won the Grand Prize of the Rhode Island International Film Festival Screenplay Competition.

80s romantic comedy, Cusack, Ringwald, Dobler, Nick Hornby, Olivet Nazarene

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Podcast: How Did I Learn to Write (a film script)?

http://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/2030253/height/325/width/325/autoplay/no/autonext/no/direction/forward/thumbnail/yes

Working from notes I’m going to use for a panel at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, during this podcast I talk about how I learned to write, how I try to teach writing, and how a person might be able to get something going when it comes to the business of writing, screenplays, and film.

In the podcast, I expand on the following notes.

First, how did I learn to write?

  • I learned to read like a writer in an MFA program focusing on fiction.  Texts can be your best teachers.
  • I read and write a lot.
  • I finish stuff and I send it out.
  • The lessons in the stack. For example, I’ve read a lot of literary journal submissions,  lit agency submissions, and stacks of student writing.  The stacks show me what’s being done and what I might do that’s interesting with those stacks of ideas.  The opening films of the festival are another kind of stack.

 How do I try to help students write?

  • by creating writing territories
  • through experiencing an audience of each other
  • by providing examples of many writers have a different process for how they finish their work

Some Favorite scripts:

  • Diablo Cody’s Juno: her transitions
  • Tarantino’s InGlorious Basterds:  there is the fact that he is writing for himself, but I could see that you can just do it like you want.  I can envision something on the screen and just write it so that it makes sense to the reader. Doesn’t matter if it’s unconventional. That, in fact, might be a strength.
What was the result of winning the festival prize?
  • a bit of credibility at the festival, lots of little bits can add up to something substantial
  • the lesson of the films I wouldn’t have seen (back to the lessons of the stack)
  • the impulse to make my own short film which then accidentally became a feature documentary that will screen at the Phenom Film Festival in Louisiana
  • Good talks with Elfar Adalsteins who did the short film Sailcloth
  • That I won the film festival and was trying to make a film meant that I met more “like” minded people who may eventually be a part of future projects that we do together.
  • Last week I met William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg from Moonbot. Their Lessmore won an Academy Award. Their company is in Shreveport.  I first became acquainted with their film because I was in Rhode Island connected to the prize.  So my script Love on the Big Screen isn’t a film, but a lot else has happened that’s been fun and intellectually stimulating.

Some Books that helped me write or think about filmmaking:

  • Lew Hunter’s Screenwriting 434 (practical how to that got me started)
  • How Not to Make a Short Film: Secrets of a Sundance Programmer by Roberta Munroe
  • The Hollywood Economist by Edward Epstein
  • The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide: A Down & Dirty DV Production, by Anthony Artis
  • Stephen King’s On Writing
  • Donald Murray’s Write to Learn

Two Podcasts I like:

  • KCRW, The Business. Filmmakers are common guests and they explain how they get their work done.
  • “Here’s the Thing” with Alec Baldwin. Guests include Lorne Michaels, Michael Douglass, and Jon Luvitz
  • The Creative Penn: just got turned on to this one. Some interesting stories from writers and how they’ve marketed their books.
Torgerson film festival cusack hornby say anything john hughes sixteen candles

 

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http://thetorg.com/

William Torgerson Winamac, Indiana Olivet Nazarene University Cusack Say Anything John Hughes Sixteen Candles Faith God fag writing teaching St. John's University
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Murray’s Daybook and the Intellectual Seed for Love on the Big Screen

William Torgerson Donald Murray Write to Learn Love on the Big Screen
An Important Book to Me: Donald Murray's Write to Learn

Let me start by giving the writer and teacher Donald Murray props for introducing me to the Daybook in his fantastic research for writing and teaching, Write to Learn.  Along with Stephen King’s On Writing, Murray’s book was a text that caused me to think being a writer was something I could actually accomplish.   For me, the daybook (think black and white Mead composition notebook) is something I use day-to-day in my life and entice (force?) my students to use during the length of the time we work together.  What I love about the daybook is that it enables me to capture many of the intellectual seeds that would otherwise drift into my thinking and then go scattering off into oblivion.

I’m sure a lot of ideas still come and go, but with the daybook, I’m able snag at least a couple and jot them down for later use.  Many of my ideas (especially for teaching, writing, and reading) come while I’m working on something else:  I’m reading student work and I’ve got an idea for next semester or something I need to share with the class.  I’m reading a story and I have an idea for a story of my own or a lesson for class or something I want to tell my wife.   Pre-daybook, the idea would come and go and be forgotten.  With the daybook, it’s down on paper fastened to a place where I can come back to it and take action.

William Torgerson Love on the Big Screen Dead Poets Society
Remember Knox Overstreet's poem to Chris?

As for Love on the Big Screen and Murray’s daybook, one day while writing with my students, I wrote the following sentence:  “Everything Zuke knew about love he got from the movies.”  That was the seed that led to Love on the Big Screen.  Of course there is a lot of me in this book, but it became an act of the imagination as soon as I accepted the mental premise that Zuke did things because of movies he’d seen.  That became a hook that might sell a book and something that would be a great pleasure for me to write.  I’m thinking of two immediate reasons:  (A) I could revisit all those movies I loved as a teenager and (B) once I made the decision to set it at a fictionalized Olivet Nazarene, I got to use my college experiences as an imaginative catalyst for a plot and characters that caused me to recall many moments I’d long forgotten.  The moments go through a sort of truth to fiction converter once I give them to Zuke’s story and the controlling premise that he does things because of the movies he’s seen.  For myself, back when I was making lots of love mistakes, I certainly had an overly romanticized view of love (who doesn’t?) and I was unconscious of all the influences (media and others) that had helped shaped my romantic paradigm.  In fact, it wasn’t until I wrote the book that I realized what a number films such as Say Anything, Dead Poets Society, Sixteen Candles, and When Harry Met Sally did to my expectations for romance.