Advice
Writers blocked
A while back I mentioned the “So You Want To Be a Writer?” ads, whose claims were a tad misleading. Rob Spence took ‘em to the Advertising Standards Authority and won.
Biffovision: a review
Jonathan Deamer’s reviewed the pilot of Biffovision, a warped parody of kids’ TV from the mind of Mr Biffo.
I watched it in the wee small hours after one beer too many, which I suspect is the perfect viewing environment…
Gamekeeper turned poacher
I reckon that these days, about three-quarters of the work I do involves writing tutorials. It’s not the most glamorous kind of journalism, for sure, and writers who don’t do it often look down on those of us who do - but I really like doing it, and in the case of Windows Vista magazine, I get a kick out of seeing readers’ responses when they say “thanks” after a tutorial. That’s partly because it’s unusual - most hacks’ inboxes, mine included, can be pretty abusive - but more because for every person who knows this kind of stuff inside out, there’s a whole bunch of people tearing their hair out in frustration. I enjoy doing my weekly tech babble on Radio Scotland for exactly the same reason.
That said, you can become jaded and forget about the very real frustration that technology can cause - until you end up in a situation where the shoe’s on the other foot and you’re not the person writing the tutorials, but the person who really needs them.
Can I give an example? Of course I can. I’ve just upgraded my camera to a proper, grown-up SLR, and after the initial enthusiasm - “Yippee! Shiny tech toy that I probably shouldn’t have bought!” - waned, I realised something pretty quickly: I’m hopelessly out of my depth.
If you’re not a camera expert, moving from point and shoot to DSLR is a big, big step. All of the options that make DSLRs so clever can be really intimidating if, like me, it’s largely new to you. I wasn’t worried, though, because all technology can be tamed through a combination of fiddling and, when you’re really stuck, reading the manual. Not in this case, though. One simple thing - trying to suss out how to change the flash brightness, because even simple pictures were way, way too dark - has had me baffled for days, and the more I fiddled and the more I consulted the manual, the more confused and frustrated I got. That one issue became a bigger problem: I mean, if you can’t work the bloody flash, what chance have you got of unravelling the mysteries of depth of field, ISO speeds, multi-segment metering and the like?
In the space of a few days I went from being excited at the possibilities of my great new gadget to being angry and pissed off at my own inability to understand even the simple things. My camera’s myriad options - the things that made me buy it - had become a minefield, and I was seriously considering taking advantage of the shop’s 30-day no quibble returns policy. Good camera, yes, I’d say. Too thick to use it, though.
So I did two things. One, I called David, who knows a lot more about cameras than I do. And I bought a digital photography magazine (a Future one, of course. I’m a loyal chap). David very patiently answered my very dumb questions, and I finally sussed out what I needed to do to get the flash working the way I wanted it to.
Next up, the magazine. When you do what I do for a living, you tend to skim magazines about the subjects you cover. “Yeah, the Google thing”, “Oh aye, search engine optimisation”, “God no, that image is ’shopped, it’s not a leaked product photo” and so on. So it’s interesting to pick up a magazine from the same stable as the titles you write for but whose content is completely new to you. The gamekeeper becomes the poacher: when you’re reading a digital camera magazine because you’re increasingly convinced that you’ve bought something that’s too complicated for you then of course you’re coming from a completely different direction than when the content covers stuff that’s very familiar to you.
And you know what? The magazine was brilliant - bar one ad featuring a stunning photo taken at the top of the Chrysler tower, which made my vertigo kick in so badly that I had to go for a cigarette while thinking about things that aren’t tall in any way whatsoever. I didn’t feel patronised but neither did I feel hopelessly out of my depth, and even the featured photos - something which would normally make me want to chuck myself off a bridge in the realisation that I’ll never, ever be that talented - were inspiring thanks to one-para explanations of what the snappers did and what they used.
Inspiring is the best way to put it, I think. David’s advice started the ball rolling, of course, but reading the magazine did two things: it made me go “aaah, so that’s how you do it” or “right, I understand that”, and it made me want to grab the camera and go on a photo frenzy.
I’m not convinced I’m ready to don camouflage gear and spend days trying to get a really good shot of a badger, mind you.
Why not be a writaaaaaargh?
The “Why not be a writer?” ads are everywhere, and while most of the success stories are crap - “I’ve had three letters published in Bathwater Collector Monthly!” - others are more impressive: sign up for this course and you could get a £25K advance for your novel!
Many such claims, though, seem to be - fittingly enough - made up, as this superb post from The Triforce shows:
Or there’s Jon Eagle, whose testimony mentions that he was paid an advance of £25,000 for this. Except that’s published by Minerva Press, which is a vanity press that was closed down in 2002 according to Wikipedia (which is a website resource for journalists, in case you haven’t heard of it).
Some good points about journalism
Kieren McCarthy’s written about the Net, Vista, journalism and remote controlled planes in a typically epic post - but almost in passing he nails something I think about a lot.
I know a fair amount about a comparatively tiny number of things. But thanks to being a journalist where I write about subjects publicly all the time, I have been forced to realise two things:
1) Most people reading your article know less than you do about it - which is why you are there, writing it in the first place
2) A certain number of people reading it will know far, far more than you do and will balance in their minds whether the educational aspect of the article, outweighs the countless errors contained within it
Deep down all writers know this, I suspect, but it’s all too easy to focus on just one of them. I tend to focus on 2), which is why when my stuff hits print or Web I don’t get excited: I’m just waiting for the people smarter than me to come a-criticising. I tend to forget about Kieren’s first point altogether.
I do think that, to survive as a writer with your sanity intact, you need to embrace both points. 1) without 2) makes you cocky and arrogant, but 2) without 1) makes you paranoid. Better to embrace both and let the first point fire your enthusiasm and the second point keep you from cockiness.
[Via Charles Arthur's blog]
So you want to write about fire engines video games?
Want to be a games writer? The various “So you want to be a games journalist” blog posts (all of which you’ll find linked from Richard Cobbett’s blog, where he offers his own advice) will tell you everything you need to know, assuming The Triforce don’t put you off the idea altogether.
I’d write a post about getting into tech writing in general, but the advice would be identical.
So you want to be a book cover artist?
One for the artistic types: a good look at the do’s and don’ts of creating artwork for SF and Fantasy books. It seems that spherical breasts and mullets are no-nos.
[Via MetaFilter]
So you want to be a voiceover artist?
You’ve got a great voice. Why not use it to earn at least £50 per hour for voiceover work? That’s the promise made by UKVoices, whose ads turn up in the back pages of magazines such as Now.
The fact that the ad appears in Now should ring alarm bells immediately. Voiceover work is a branch of acting, and the trade magazine for the acting profession - the place where people advertise their jobs - is The Stage. To the best of my knowledge, Now is not regarded as the bible of the acting profession.
Let’s assume that UKVoices is just trying to find new talent, though. What’s the deal?
It’s simple enough. Sign up - it’s £20 - and you can record a brief showreel, which will then be downloaded by agents who are just gagging to take you on. UKVoices doesn’t charge any commission, which makes them very attractive to would-be employers.
Here’s the thing. If UKVoices tries to get people voiceover work, its employees are idiots.
Let me explain. If UKVoices doesn’t charge commission, it makes no money from getting people work. Its only source of income is sign-up fees, so it’s in the firm’s best interests to sign up as many people as possible, irrespective of whether they’re any good or not (and if you listen to the sound clips on the site, it’s clear that quality isn’t a key criteria). If the firm does anything other than bank the sign-up fee, it’s spending time and therefore money on something that won’t generate any return. That’d be madness.
A quick aside: staff agencies aren’t allowed to charge registration fees for that same reason (the relevant legislation only covers Employment Agencies). Instead, temp agencies take a fee, usually an hourly one. The more work you get, the more money they get. If you don’t get any work, they don’t get any money.
The truth is that voiceover work is like writing novels, getting a record deal or becoming a full-time journalist. It’s much harder than most people think. As the excellent Excellent Voice Company’s site points out:
There is a huge difference between people who have a nice voice, read aloud well or whose friends tell them that they ought to do voice-overs - and a professional voice over. Professionals understand that the smallest alteration in inflection can make the difference between success and failure, they understand why the client or director needs a particular style of read or performance. They appreciate the need to save time and know how to fit a forty second script into thirty seconds without it sounding like a machine gun.
Good voices develop a sense of timing in their heads. They can see a written script and tell you exactly how long it will take at an average read. They can sight-read to time without looking at the studio clock. They know how a scriptwriter’s mind works, how to get inside a script, and what to bring out, without having to have it spelled out for them.
This doesn’t mean to say that new voices don’t turn up on the circuit - but it does explain why so few really make it - they’ve got to be very, very good.
The advice continues:
To survive, any industry needs to recruit new talent - and there’s nothing more pleasing from an agent’s perspective than hearing that extra special something on a showreel, and knowing that you’ve discovered a new voice - who then goes on to become a success. But there’s no point in being anything other than brutally honest about a really tough industry.
You might get a gig via UKVoices. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
So you want to be a novelist?
Fancy becoming an author? Then don’t give up the day job. BoingBoing links to this survey of novelists’ advances, and it’s clear that writing books is hardly a licence to print money:
The range was from $0-$40,000 for an advance on a first novel.
The average was $6363.
The median advance is $5000. The median figure is a better indicator of what most people consider ‘average.’
So you want to be a screenwriter?
Professional screenwriter John August’s weblog covers pretty much everything a would-be screenwriter needs to know.
[Via MetaFilter]