I subscribe to a wonderful financial newsletter on how to spend money wisely and gain financial independence.  I recommend it to everyone especially in these tough economic times.  It’s free and packed with ideas on how to make the most of your money.  Check out http://www.stretcher.com/index.cfm

The article below from a recent issue of that financial newsletter talks about how incremental change adds up to a whole new direction, and a brighter financial future.  It’s certainly true financially, but it is equally true in writing as well.

Writing just one hour day can produce a new script in just 22 weeks, using The One Hour Screenwriter eCourse.  That means you could complete two new scripts a year with weekends off and eight weeks of vacation time or time for rewrites.  And that’s while holding a full-time job, meeting social and family obligations and all the other duties in a busy life.  This self-study eCourse takes you through the writing process from idea to finished first draft in an easy step-by-step manner.  The Course explains exactly what you need to do day-by-day and hour-by-hour to complete your new draft.  You will never feel, blocked, stuck or stymied again.  You will never wonder what should I do next?

If you have terrific story ideas languishing in your file drawer or wonder when you will ever get the time to write all the great ideas in your head this eCourse will help you get them on the page and out the door! You can use the course material over and over again to write any number of scripts.  It’s a small investment of time that could change your life as a writer.

Here is the article on how increment change can transform your financial future (and the same principle applies to your writing future):

We determine the trajectory of our lives based on the decisions we make when times are tough. Let’s start by considering what a trajectory is. According to the Random House dictionary, it’s the “curve traced by a projectile object or body in its flight.” In other words, for this quote, it’s the path that we’re on. I picture the trajectory of a missile in flight. I don’t know it for a fact, but I’d bet that the course corrections are very, very small. Yet, they can make a big difference in where the missile flies and lands.

Why does such a small change make such a dramatic difference in the end? Because the direction has been changed. So the longer we go in that direction the greater the distance between where we are and where we would have been. Think of the missile example. Even a one-degree change in course will make a huge difference after the missile goes a thousand miles or more.

OK, so NASA can make a small change and affect the trajectory of a space shuttle, but is it true that we determine the trajectory of our life? We could debate it, but I’d argue that it’s true. Our choices make a difference. Perhaps not a noticeable difference at first, but one that will change where we end up in the future. It happens the exact same way as the missile. A minor course correction maintained over a long time can make a huge difference in where we end up.

Let’s consider a simple (and somewhat silly) example. Suppose that you’re a 20 year old coming out of class. Feeling thirsty you search out a vending machine. Sodas (and bottled water) are $1. You reach in your pocket and pull out a single. Into the machine it goes. And, your thirst is quenched. As you walk away from the vending machine, you notice a water fountain that you hadn’t seen before. Oh, well. It’s only a buck.

True, but did you know that if you put that single dollar to work earning interest, it would be worth $46 when you were 70 years old and looking for retirement income? Still not impressed? Suppose that you bought that $1 drink every day for 50 years. If you had used the water fountain instead and saved the money, you would have accumulated $209,000! Quite a difference in the trajectory.

Obviously, that’s a made up story. No one is going to go to a vending machine once a day, every day for 50 years. But, it does give you a feel for what happens when you routinely say, “It’s only a buck.” Say it too often and you’ll be adjusting your financial trajectory.

Now let’s take a look at the final part of the quote. It talks about the decisions that we make when times are tough. I don’t suppose that tough time decisions have any greater impact on our trajectory than any other decision. But they could be more important because we have a smaller margin for error. When you’re right on the edge, you don’t need anything that would push your trajectory to a point where it spirals out of control (I can see them intentionally destroying a missile that’s gone off course).

I guess that what I’m saying is that the stakes are higher when you’re facing tough times. And, you’re already under pressure, which might compromise your ability to make decisions. So it’s important to move cautiously. Don’t make decisions without thinking about how the choice might affect your future financial trajectory.  (“Small changes can make a huge difference over a sustained period of time.”  LH

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Force your character to risk everything in facing his or her fear. Unless your character faces the fear or secret shame, your character will never be free. Your character will constantly be forced to cling the mask and seek its “protection.” A character that hides a secret shame will never be able to live a truly authentic life. As long as that fear and shame is lurking in the background the character will always be its slave.

Love and fear are inextricably bound together. All your character’s worries and anxieties about love will cluster right at the root of his or her fear. Your character’s worries and concerns about love don’t just color his or her romantic relationships. They bled into every single relationship and interaction the character has with another human being in the story. These fears are especially intense in dealing with the antagonist. The smart antagonist deliberately plays on this fear to try to weaken or tempt your character to be his/her own worst enemy. In a story and in life any decision based on fear is the wrong decision.

Your character’s fear is your most important emotional tool as a writer. Anytime you get in trouble in a scene, a sequence or an act— go right to your character’s fear. How does this constant underlying static of anxiety or worry operate in the dramatic or comedic action of the story? Bring the character’s fear to the surface in every scene, every sequence and every act. Take every opportunity to make the character’s physical and emotional situation and entanglements play off the fear and magnify it.

Make fear wreak havoc with the character internally. Find a way to demonstrate this conflict externally through the character’s actions. Make the worst thing that could possibly happen to the character take place on successively deeper and more risky personal levels. Then show us what the character does in response. Remember: It is through action that a person’s true character is revealed.

Fear isn’t just a prime motivator of protagonists. When antagonists do evil deeds they are most often motivated by fear. Giving the audience an glimpse of the antagonist’s fear humanizes him or her and makes this character a more complex and fully realized individual.

The above is an excerpt from The One Hour Screenwriter eBook.

In The Taking of Pelham 123 Denzel Washington plays Walter Garber, an ordinary man caught in the extraordinary circumstance of a subway hijacking. The film moves briskly along until the ending. Washington has absolutely no motivation and no compelling personal reason to go after the hijackers once he escapes the train. The car with the hostages exits the tunnel and races toward Coney Island. He can do nothing further there. He immediately alerts the cops to the hijackers’ whereabouts as they escape. The cops are already swarming the area. He no longer has any personal stake in their apprehension. He has a wife and family who depend on him. Earlier in the film, we learn is willing to do anything (even commit a crime) to provide for them. Suddenly, that is of no concern to him? After he hijacks an SUV, he gets to the remaining hijacker just as the cops are closing in. He has no purpose in the scene.

It’s incredibly easy to commit “suicide by cop.” All Travolta has to do is wave his gun around or fire at the on-rushing cops. That in fact, is what the other hijackers do and they are blown to bits. There is no reason for Travolta to fear jail time– the cops will gladly shoot him if threatened. The final discussion between Washington and Travolta is false, contrived and doesn’t ring true on any level.

The original film, released in 1974, starred Walter Mathau in the Walter Garber role. Mathau is a transit cop, also an ordinary man caught in the extraordinary circumstances of a subway hijacking. He uses dogged police work to capture the remaining hijacker (the only one who isn’t killed in the heist). Mathau is motivated, methodical and clever. He gets his man with skilled investigative work and his knowledge of the subway system. The original had a ending that was clever, satisfying and well-earned.

In Duplicity the ending comes out of no-where. In the last few minutes of the film, a larger conspiracy is revealed that was hidden from the mutually double-crossing-duo of Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Neither one saw it coming and neither did the audience. All of the duo’s scheming, plotting, lying and effort is undone at last minute by invisible forces, leaving the audience wondering why we watched the two jump through meaningless hoops (to no apparent effect) during the film. A simple test applied by the insurance company quickly spotlights the ruse. None of the characters thought to ask this question over the course the movie’s 125 minute running time. This makes them look stupid and make the audience feel stupid for watching a plot that goes nowhere and sideswipes the us with a trick ending. It’s the same fury-inducing effect as the infamous shower “it was all a dream” season of the television series Dallas.

To learn how to write endings that feel authentic, earned and true check out The One Hour Screenwriter eBook.  Learn everything you need to bring your story to a deeply satisfying conclusion.

According to The New Yorker, June 14, 2004:  “Every day for years, Trollope reported in his “Autobiography,” he woke in darkness and wrote from 5:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., with his watch in front of him.

He required of himself two hundred and fifty words every quarter of an hour. If he finished one novel before eight-thirty, he took out a fresh piece of paper and started the next.

The writing session was followed, for a long stretch of time, by a day job with the postal service. Plus, he said, he always hunted at least twice a week.

Under this regimen, he produced forty-nine novels in thirty-five years.

Having prospered so well, he urged his method on all writers: “Let their work be to them as is his common work to the common laborer. No gigantic efforts will then be necessary. He need tie no wet towels round his brow, nor sit for thirty hours at his desk without moving,—as men have sat, or said that they have sat.”

The article goes on to discuss how the notion of and approach to writing has been romanticized since Trollope.

The One Hour Screenwriter helps take blocked or stymied writers back to a simpler, more sustainable method of working. It helps temper those idealistic approaches that are impossible to realize in every day life and only block genuine creative impulses.