by William Torgerson

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

06.05.11

by William Torgerson

An Elevator Pitch for HORSESHOE

Love on the Big Screen Flannery O'Connor Milledgeville Georgia College and State University

The Theater Pictured on Cover is in Milledgeville, Georgia. Home to Georgia College and Flannery O'Connor

There’s a big difference between what I learned doing an MFA Degree in Creative Writing at a place like Georgia College and what I’ve learned being in New York, reading for a literary agency, and beginning to hang around literary business types here. Both experiences (my MFA and living here) have worked together to teach me a lot of what I want and need to know.

What I needed right away for life in NYC was an elevator pitch. In other words, I needed to be able to summarize in one sentence what my book was about. For Love on the Big Screen, it didn’t take me so long to come up with this: Love on the Big Screen tells the story of Zuke, a college freshman whose understanding of love has been shaped by late-eighties romantic comedies. People usually responded to this line with a laugh and publishing and film reps usually requested to read more after hearing that one sentence.

Love on the Big Screen Flannery O'Connor Milledgeville Georgia College and State University Winamac, Indiana, Horseshoe

Horseshoe will be set in a fictionalized Winamac, Indiana

So here I go again with a new book and a new need for 1 sentence summaries and a short synopsis. Here’s where I am at:

In the rural town of Horseshoe, where everyone knows everybody else’s business, the lives of its citizens intertwine for thirteen bizarre tales of faith, sin, guilt, and deliverance. Think: Flannery O’Connor’s “Misfit” Fiction Meets Pulp Fiction.

Any of that catch your attention?

And here’s the short synopsis:

The little town of Horseshoe becomes the protagonist in this unique novel-in-stories format that bucks against the boundaries of time and asks readers to make the connections to put the story together. The book initiates in the local grocery store where a churchwoman named Pam Scott delivers judgment on a philandering butcher. Pam returns home, a place where each night she faces what is either a figment of her imagination or an increasingly terrifying knocker. In this little town where everyone knows everybody else’s business, the lives of its citizens intertwine for thirteen bizarre tales of faith, sin, guilt, and deliverance.

I wrote both the one-sentence summary and the short synopsis in conversation with the team at Cherokee McGhee. As I say in class all the time, “Writing Floats on a Sea of Conversation.” Without conversation, I don’t have much to say. If you’ll look over there to the right of the page, you’ll find all the virtual places where we might chat up reading, writing, and teaching.

Cherokee McGhee, Love on the Big Screen, Horseshoe, William Torgerson, Tarantino, O'Connor, Pulp Fiction, 80s, Lloyd Dobler, Farmer Ted, John Hughes

Cherokee McGhee Press: publisher of Love on the Big Screen and Horseshoe

06.02.11

by William Torgerson

Why call a book HORSESHOE?

If you know my character “Zuke” from Love on the Big Screen, I wrote that he was from a small town called Horseshoe. In my mind, Zuke’s hometown is a fictionalized version of Winamac, Indiana. The word “horseshoe” as the title of my novel-in-stories comes from the way my small hometown of Winamac sits on a horseshoe bend of the Tippecanoe River in North-Central Indiana. This geographical feature is something you can see for yourself on Google Maps:

William Torgerson, Bill, Torg, Love on the Big Screen, Horseshoe, St. John's University

From Google Maps: See the Horseshoe Bend in the Tippecanoe River?

Winamac is the town where my parents are from and their parents are from before that, and even though I wasn’t born there, it’s the place where I graduated from high school and the place I say I’m from if anyone ever asks. When people in Winamac say the horseshoe,they mean the road that runs along the outer edge of the town park which is almost pinched into an island by a sharp-hook bend of the river. I lived in two different houses when I lived in Winamac: one right on the river where I could look across the water, see the road everyone called the horseshoe, and also the basketball courts. I was a bad cross-country runner in high school, and practice was often held in the park where we ran in packs and did repeats of the three-quarter mile loop. The second house I lived in is the house where I placed the character Matthew Walker’s family. Pam Scott, a woman haunted by the sound of a knocker, lives in the house my grandmother lives in today.