Alan Moore's BBC Maestro guide to being an author

[Mister Six]

I found David Mamet's (quite short) book on directing film - titled On Directing Film, thanks Dave - to be a really useful guide. "What exactly do you want to say and what is the best possible way of saying it as simply and directly as possible" is the kind of thing that it's always handy to keep in mind.

I can see Mamet's help being more practical when he's sitting down, writing and revising it and passing it through an editor. When he can basically just get up and semi-improv his way through it, though...

[checkoutgirl]

Did Alan Moore really refuse all the millions from his various Hollywood adaptations? And if so, why did he deign to appear (to little amusement) as himself in The Simpsons a few years ago?

Taking the few million off the execs would be less embarrassing, surely?

[QDRPHNC]

Yeah, he's brilliant at short stories. I do think Jerusalem would have made two very good separate books if Moore could bear to lose some of the chaff, but it's obvious that the project got away from him, and I'm sure that by the end of the 10-year writing process, he just wanted the fucking thing out the door as fast as possible.

Just out of curiosity, how would you have split Jerusalem up?

[Pink Gregory]

I really don't think you needed to lose any of Jerusalem, I think the unhinged maximalism was so tied up in the intent that it would be a shame to lose any.

Maybe the Finnegan's Wake chapter is an experiment too far, but overcoming it felt good

[Mister Six]

Just out of curiosity, how would you have split Jerusalem up?

If I'd read it more recently I'd be able to say this with more confidence/detail, but I'd separate the "nature of time/the afterlife/modern society" stuff (ie. the bits involving the Warrens/Vernalls and the ghost children, and anyone they directly intersect with, like the sex worker, the drug dealer etc) from the "hey, I bet you didn't know this about Northampton!" historical guide book stuff (ie. Charlie Chaplin, Lucia Joyce, the Cromwell segment of the ghost kids' adventures that went absolutely nowhere incredibly slowly). It'd require some rewriting and (probably merciful) cutting, but you'd end up with two good-to-great complementery books rather than one overstuffed monstrosity that keeps tripping over its own feet.

[QDRPHNC]

from the "hey, I bet you didn't know this about Northampton!" historical guide book stuff

Interesting you say that, when I was thinking back to my one and only full read (although I've dipped in and out of it since then), I remember being a bit let down at how clunky a lot of the historical exposition sounded coming out of the children's mouths, almost like they were turning to the reader to give a history lesson.

[Mister Six]

Interesting you say that, when I was thinking back to my one and only full read (although I've dipped in and out of it since then), I remember being a bit let down at how clunky a lot of the historical exposition sounded coming out of the children's mouths, almost like they were turning to the reader to give a history lesson.

Well, most of the "children" are actually adults who've chosen to spend their afterlives as kids, so I suppose there's a get-out there. But yeah, it is clunky, especially the Cromwell bit that goes nowhere and says nothing of note except "people are always fucking over Northampton" (and even that's delivered by the older ghost kid, tangential to the conversation with Cromwell that we sit through). Most of the stories about historical figures (and some of the ones about contemporary folk, like Moore's actor mate) felt like they were just there because he'd set himself the remit of justifying Northampton's existence, rather than because he'd found a story there that needed to be told. Things like one of the characters identifying Chaplin as the narrator of an earlier chapter, or writing the actor's story as a mock hardboiled noir felt like gimmicks to justify sections that Moore knew in his heart weren't intrinsically interesting.

Voice of the Fire is a near-perfect collection of interconnected short prose stories, and the fact that he basically mastered that model on his first try, then made a bloated shaggy dog story of a sequel suggests to me that Jerusalem was a result of being overambitious rather than maximalist intent (as I think Moore acknowledges via Alma and Mick towards the end of the book).

I liked the guest appearance by the bird man from VotF, though. Give me an Alan Moore Literary Universe please.

[QDRPHNC]

Yeah, the whole children-as-adults thing had occurred to me, but if it reads clunky, then it's clunky in my opinion.

I really need to go back and read both of them, although Voice of the Fire is definitely the masterpiece of the two. I found a blog online a while ago that had translated Hobb's Hog into modern English, and even in that state it was gripping and affecting.

[bgmnts]

Sounds mad but I swear I heard an interview where Moore references Hereward the Wake - a sort of Saxon proto-Robin Hood guerrilla figure - and I would love him to write a comic book or even a regular novel about him. Or maybe about something occult like John Dee. Mostly just because he obviously works VERY hard on whatever he writes about and the research done is evident.

I'd love to write and I have been told I have an engaging writing style and have lots of ideas and that pull to write them is strong, but I think what separates the average writer from a genius titan like Moore is the combination of pure talent but also that graft and obsessive passion to get everything accurate. Unsure if you can teach that can you?

[Jack Shaftoe]

The Aaron Sorkin Masterclass is pretty good - at least the little bits on basic storytelling (Objective and Obstacle and all that) are well-explained. I'm never sure what to make of this kind of thing though. There's definitely some technical stuff that's good to know when you're going into story structure, certainly with scriptwriting, but it always seems like the people who are highly successful writers are the worst at getting the technical stuff across, presumably because it's ingrained with them and hard to imagine what it's like not to know it. There are some great videos on story structure on YouTube by non-writers (or at least I don't think they've written professionally creatively) which are far more useful than anything by any of the big names that I've seen.

If you're watching these waiting for the single magic aha moment that will turn you into a successful writer, it'll never happen. You become a writer by writing a lot and reading a lot, not much more to it than that. On the other hand, Uncle Alan holding forth on the topic of creativity sounds great to me.

[QDRPHNC]

I'd love to write and I have been told I have an engaging writing style and have lots of ideas and that pull to write them is strong, but I think what separates the average writer from a genius titan like Moore is the combination of pure talent but also that graft and obsessive passion to get everything accurate. Unsure if you can teach that can you?

You can teach someone that tons of research is good, but you can't make them do it.

I'm like yourself I suppose, I used to write when I was a teenager, then got desperately insecure about it as an adult and couldn't bring myself to write again until last year, when I forced myself to start working on the script for a little short film. What I've learned in the last 12 months is that it is possible to make something better than you think you're capable of making, but it's a lot of grind and frustration.

If my job (designer) hadn't drilled it into my head over the years that this is just the process, I'm sure I would've thrown in the towel by now. I think in many ways, most creative processes are the same (as Jack says above, more than anything else, you just need to keep doing it and doing it).

[Mister Six]

Yeah, the whole children-as-adults thing had occurred to me, but if it reads clunky, then it's clunky in my opinion.

I really need to go back and read both of them, although Voice of the Fire is definitely the masterpiece of the two. I found a blog online a while ago that had translated Hobb's Hog into modern English, and even in that state it was gripping and affecting.

Hob's Hog isn't that hard to read, is it? I had no problem and thoroughly enjoyed it, whereas I just gave up on the Lucia Joyce chapter in Jerusalem because it was a chore to plod through (and, it seemed to me, albeit with a couple of decades' remove, a bit more willfully difficult than James Joyce's own prose).

[QDRPHNC]

No, just thought it was interesting.

[Ferris]

Would like to reread Voices in the Fire but lent it to a friend's partner a month or two ago and don't know him well enough to ask for it back.

[Joe Qunt]

You should check out this book called "Save The Cat!® The Only Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need!"

Every copy of that book should be burned and the corpse of Blake Snyder exhumed and tried like that pope.

[Joe Qunt]

On the topic of Aaron Sorkin's Masterclass:

It's very good, not quite as brilliant as David Mamet's (the right wing nutter) but it's very useful and informative. You also get to see Sorkin interacting with young, aspiring writers. It's hilarious. There's clearly a young woman he fancies and he's very complimentary to. Contrast with a young man who he fucking despises and rips the shit out of.

[Mister Six]

Haha, okay that sounds brilliant.

No, just thought it was interesting.

Oh, it wasn't a criticism of you posting it here, I was just questioning the purpose behind the blog. But it is interesting.

[Mister Six]

Every copy of that book should be burned and the corpse of Blake Snyder exhumed and tried like that pope.

Why? I only heard about it the other day, when a friend recommended it to me.

Like QDRPHNC, I'm reawakening old creative urges and reading a few books on writing. The 21st Century Screenplay by Linda Aronson is (in my admittedly imperfect and limited opinion) great; Story by Robert McKee has some useful insights buried under a lot of waffle and jargon. Save the Cat, on the other hand, I know nothing about.

[QDRPHNC]

Oh, it wasn't a criticism of you posting it here, I was just questioning the purpose behind the blog. But it is interesting.

I intended my reply to sound breezy rather than petulant :)

It's an obvious one, but Stephen King's On Writing is very good. Other ones worth looking at: The Writer's Journey (Vogler), Into the Woods (Yorke), and Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing, which seems to be considered something of a bible for screenwriters.

[Joe Qunt]

Why? I only heard about it the other day, when a friend recommended it to me.

I guarantee it will make your screenwriting worse. It's write-by-numbers, populist nonsense. A lot of it is outdated, cliched and only useful for making the kind of '80s crap that Snyder actually wrote. McKee's Story, Hero With A Thousand Faces, Yorke's Into The Woods, any Syd Field book, Truby's The Anatomy Of Story and – my personal favourite – Paul Gulino's The Sequence Approach.

I have all of these as PDFs by the way, drop me a line if you want them.

[Midas]

Haha, aye, Snyder is the epitome of a grifting snake oil merchant, and his "secret formula" for writing successful films - where ISTR he goes as far as to specifying the page-numbers where certain scenes beats "must happen" - is risible in its dogmatic narrowmindedness.

[Mister Six]

It's an obvious one, but Stephen King's On Writing is very good. Other ones worth looking at: The Writer's Journey (Vogler), Into the Woods (Yorke), and Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing, which seems to be considered something of a bible for screenwriters.

I guarantee it will make your screenwriting worse. It's write-by-numbers, populist nonsense. A lot of it is outdated, cliched and only useful for making the kind of '80s crap that Snyder actually wrote. McKee's Story, Hero With A Thousand Faces, Yorke's Into The Woods, any Syd Field book, Truby's The Anatomy Of Story and – my personal favourite – Paul Gulino's The Sequence Approach.

I have all of these as PDFs by the way, drop me a line if you want them.

Cheers for all of these suggestions. I've got the ones I haven't read noted down, but for now I reckon I should get on with finishing the first draft and then do a bit more reading if I can't figure out why it's a load of shite.

[Jack Shaftoe]

The one thing I found massively useful with my scriptwriting was Dan Harmon's Story Circle thing, easily found via google. I had no real grasp of story structure but this really cracked it for me, it's something he came up with to be able to manage creating umpteen stories per season of Community by breaking each storyline down into eight sections. You don't have to follow it beat by beat in that depressing Save The Cat way but if you're like me and don't really think it terms of structure, it's very helpful and keeps things moving. I used it to structure a novel as well, so it works on different scales.

[13 schoolyards]

Did Alan Moore really refuse all the millions from his various Hollywood adaptations? And if so, why did he deign to appear (to little amusement) as himself in The Simpsons a few years ago?

Taking the few million off the execs would be less embarrassing, surely?

It's hard to nail it down exactly but it seems that Moore asked that his share of the money from the Hollywood adaptations to be directed to his artistic collaborators. Supposedly the reason why he's not mates with David Lloyd (V for Vendetta) any more is that Lloyd never got around to saying thanks for the extra cash, but it seems likely there's more to it as Lloyd was (again, supposedly) slagging Moore off within earshot of one of Moore's daughters at a convention not so long ago.

Knowing a little about how Hollywood works, there probably wasn't really that much money involved anyway (by Hollywood standards), and it would have all been up front - there's bugger-all chance of seeing any share of the profits unless you're directly involved in making the film (and even then...)

As far as his actual books go, I *think* he's still pocketing the royalties there (even from Watchmen), though in some cases he's asked for his name to be taken off reprints of old stuff and he's said he won't keep copies of the DC stuff in his house.

[Magnum Valentino]

I know for Miracleman (which has been reprinted by Marvel in 2016 and will be once again later this year in a single-volume hardcover), he's credited as The Original Author. On the other hand, Swamp Thing has just been reprinted in oversized hardcovers by DC (as part of its Absolute line) and his name's on all three, so it may just be with Marvel that the 'no name' thing persists. His Captain Britain issues have also just been reprinted but I haven't laid eyes on the book to see if his name's on there.

[13 schoolyards]

I know he had his name taken off the recent Fantagraphics reprint of "In Pictopia", presumably because he thought reprinting a ten page story he did for a charity comic 35 years ago in a big fancy edition was a bit of a cash grab.

Taking his name off things seems a bit precious, but I guess he's sick of any old tat with his name on it being wheeled out decades later, especially when he's still doing new material that presumably he feels better reflects where he's currently at

[pigamus]

It's an obvious one, but Stephen King's On Writing is very good.

The interesting to me about that is he talks about overusing adverbs but not adjectives - overusing adjectives is my biggest bugbear really, it does my head in

[QDRPHNC]

Now I'm interested to find out what you're all working on...

[Joe Qunt]

Now I'm interested to find out what you're all working on...

400 page Spiderman spec

[QDRPHNC]

Sticking to that 1 minute a page rule, eh?