“If little labour, little are our gains:
Man’s fortunes are according to his pains.”

- Robert Herrick, Hesperides, 1650

“Gain with pain is good.
Gain without pain is better.”

- me, just now

Above is a picture of my right arm, showing my battle scars from my first class of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The bruises look much worse in real life, and I’ve got them on both arms, one side of my chest, one ankle, and one toe. But do pains imply gains?

Over the last couple of days, I took trial classes at two different BJJ schools, both of which looked great on paper. Both were fun and educational, but one of them barely made me break a sweat, while the other left me bruised, sore, and out of breath.

Which one do you think I signed up with? Which one would you have signed up with? I went with the second one (the pains), but I don’t think the most painful choice is always the best one.

Yes, some things require a struggle, and always quitting at the first sign of difficulty won’t serve you well. But it’s entirely possible to push to the point where additional pain becomes pointless or even counterproductive.

A common example is what weightlifters call overtraining. Some people think they need to do tons of sets every day and fight through the soreness, when in reality backing off and doing much less would give them more gains as well as less pains.

There’s a happy middle ground between cowardice and masochism. First, pick your battles (no sense in fighting for something that’s not important). Then, decide on a strategy (try to work smarter, not necessarily harder). Next, take what pain you must, but don’t mistake it for the goal. Finally, enjoy your gains, hopefully with as few pains as possible.

I just wrote a movie script in 21 days. (Well, technically it took me from April 1st to April 22nd, but I took one day off.) It was actually my second time (I wrote a script for a Mork & Mindy movie when I was 10), but this was the first time I did it the right way.

If you’ve seen Howard the Duck, you might think anyone can write a movie script, and you’d be right. But how exactly do you do it, and how does it compare to, say, writing a novel?

This work was my Script Frenzy debut, and I’ll put it online after I do some basic editing. (Update 5/10/2010: I’ve just posted Mesothelioma Lawyers, New York: The Movie.)

What NaNoWriMo is for novels, Script Frenzy is for movies, plays, TV shows, and comic books. It occurs every April, with the goal being to write 100 pages of scripted material in 30 days. The idea is that if you give yourself a tight deadline, you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish. Your draft might need a lot of polishing, but that’s far better than never finishing anything.

Script Frenzy sets the finish line at 100 pages. The reason for this is because it’s a nice round number, and also towards the lower end for a finished script. Each page of a screenplay translates into roughly one minute of action, so my 103 page script would give about an hour and 43 minutes of screen time.

As far as actually getting it done, most of my productivity tips about novel writing apply here, so check out How To Write A Novel In 21 Days. I’d say Script Frenzy is a bit easier than NaNoWriMo. It takes less than half as many words (for me, 21,000 vs. 55,000), though it’s twice as hard to get the words to flow. Now, what does a movie script actually involve?

A movie script, known as a screenplay in industry terms, is not a movie itself, but the blueprint for one. It gives directions as to what the characters say and do. It tells the director what roles need to be filled, what stages need to be built, what effects need to be created, and what lines the actors need to read.

As the screenwriter, your job is to spell out exactly what happens in the movie. You also need to make it easy for people to scan it to locate specific things, such as which scenes can be shot at night, or which actors need to be flown to Niagara Falls for a particular scene.

To do this, a very specific format and set of conventions are used. Fortunately, the good people at Script Frenzy are nice enough to provide a Word template to handle the formatting and a quick guide to illustrate the process. I’ll just give an overview here.

Using the template, it’s pretty easy to get the hang of things. You select SLUGLINE from the Styles list, which sets the left indent to 0.75″ and switches to all caps. Then you type something like:

EXT. FRANK’S STREET – NIGHT

A slugline tells you where we are – interior or exterior, location, and approximate time. This tells the crew whether they’re filming at a set or on location, and when. It helps them shoot all the scenes for one set together, instead of needlessly jumping between locations.

When you select Action from the Styles list, we exit all caps mode, and you describe the scene:

Snow has recently begun to fall, and it is starting to stick to the street. FRANK and JANICE are walking back from the movie theater, neither having broken the uncomfortable silence since seeing themselves onscreen for the first time.

When you select CHARACTER, we go back to all caps, with a left indent of 2.75″. Then you simply type:

FRANK

Character names are always capitalized before their dialog (and often, throughout the script). This lets people quickly see who is in what scene, as well as locate all the lines for a particular character. The name is followed by (O.S.) if they are offscreen (such as on the other end of a phone call), or (V.O.) if they are giving a voiceover (such as narration, or when another character is recalling something they said).

While actors don’t like being told how to say their lines, we can include a Parenthentical if we need to give direction to make our intent clear. For example:

(sarcastically)

Then we select Dialogue from Styles, which sets the left indent to 1.75″. Now we say what the character says:

Wow, that was a great movie. It’s a shoo-in for Best Picture.

OK, that’s most of what you need to know about formatting. But how do you come up with something to write?

Screenplays can be categorized as original or adapted. Original screenplays are not based on any existing work. Adapted screenplays are derived from previously published material (often a novel, but possibly a play, short story, poem, song, comic book, etc).

The advantage of writing an adapted screenplay is that a lot has already been worked out for you. Someone else has put a lot of effort into developing the characters and making the storyline come together, so you can just focus on translating it to the big screen. The disadvantage is that some novels aren’t easily translated. Look at Jurassic Park – great book by Michael Crichton, great movie by Steven Spielberg – but beneath the surface they have very little in common.

When writing an original screenplay, you’re free to do whatever you want, and you’re not burdened with anything from the book that won’t work so well in the movie. The downside is that you have to come up with everything from scratch.

Mine would be considered an adapted screenplay, since it’s based on my novel. However, it’s not a direct translation. It’s actually a prequel, covering events that happened a few days prior to the novel. Also, the main characters in the movie are minor characters in the novel.

I’d say that the main difference between a novel and a screenplay is that the audience can’t hear your thoughts in the latter. In a novel, a character can look at a fingerprint and then launch into a five-thousand word explanation of how the murder happened. If this were translated directly into a movie scene, the audience would just see the character looking at a fingerprint, then staring into space forever.

The fact that the audience can’t hear your thoughts makes some things much more difficult. For example, how do you reveal a character’s last name in a natural way? I’m not sure. I did it with a combination of seeing names on office doors, one character being addressed formally by a superior, some characters just not having last names, etc.

This is a very simple problem for a novel, but a non-trivial one for a movie. But having gone through this, I’m sure I’ll be noticing this kind of thing when I see movies from now on. I encountered a similar issue with my novel, when I wasn’t sure how to say that a character said something, and now I always notice that when I read books. But you take a stab at it, you learn, you get better, and you enjoy the process.

Another thing is that you have to think about pacing, and whether the audience would constantly have something to be excited about. You may feel torn between using a bunch of dialog to explain something that’s really deep, as opposed to just shooting a whole bunch of guns to keep the action up. This is probably the biggest reason why the book is usually better than the movie.

After you’ve gotten your screenplay written, congratulations, you are now a screenwriter! You can either enjoy your script for what it is, or you can actually have it produced and turned into a movie. Speaking of which, if your name is Mel Brooks, Jim Carrey, or Adam Sandler, please send me an email.

Forty years ago, Richard Bolles asked job seekers “What color is your parachute?” It turns out that he may not have been speaking metaphorically.

The Dewey Color System offers a free career test based entirely on color preferences – just spend a minute clicking on the colors you like most or least. They claim it is now the world’s most accurate career test.

Compared to the general public, CEOs are three times more likely to choose magenta, three times less likely to choose red, and three and a half times less likely to choose yellow.

What does this mean? According to the Color Career Counselor test, CEOs are more sensitive and private than average, less likely to be dominant or a perfectionist, and more likely to be emotionally unstable.

The makers of this test say it measures 16 personality factors, including independence, anxiety, self-control, extraversion, and tough-mindedness. They also say it may identify things such as overeating tendencies or emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

Its supporters say that this simple test is as valid as the much lengthier Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (not a career test, BTW) and Gallup StrengthsFinder, and much harder to influence. Some people have called it eerily accurate, others have likened it to horoscopes.

I gave it a try to see how accurate it was for me. (It asks for an email address at the end, but it’s optional, and you have to skip past one ad). The results were mixed at best.

For my best occupational category, it said:

You’re a CREATOR
Keywords: Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional

Check, kind of.

For my second best occupational category, it said:

You’re a SOCIAL MANAGER
Keywords: Tactful, Cooperative, Generous, Understanding, Insightful, Friendly, and Cheerful

Um, no.

And as with any career test I’ve ever seen, the list of suggested occupations is so ridiculously broad as to be useless.

While I wasn’t wowed by my results, I think color preference probably does say something about you. But for now, a good old fashioned verbal test seems more likely to show your true colors.

Photo by tibchris

As a follow-up to the gut thinking discussion, @MiscBytes passed on a link to a relevant study. It turns out that Armed With Information, People Make Poor Choices (and despite the date, I don’t think it was an April Fools’ joke).

How do you choose between a smaller reward now and a bigger reward later? You might expect that people who think with their gut would foolishly choose short term satisfaction, while people who think with their brain would wisely do what’s better in the long run. But the study found that people who were given complete information about their options were more likely to take the quick reward.

One of the researchers said “To fully appreciate a long-term option, you have to choose it repeatedly and begin to feel the benefits.” In other words, you have to train your gut, because your head isn’t making the decision, even when you give it all the information it needs.

The study involved racking up points in a computer program, with a cash incentive for good performance. Subjects were repeatedly given two options. One option gave more points now, while the other gave the possibility of more points later. The subjects who were given full and accurate information were twice as likely to take the quick payoff as those who were given incomplete or false information about what they were giving up.

(I had a couple of problems with the article. One, it was really vague about the long term option. What were the odds of it paying off (it appeared to not be guaranteed), and how much would it pay off (presumably more points than you gave up in the short term, but it doesn’t say)? But I’m assuming it was apparent to the subjects that the long term option was logically the better choice. Two, it leaves its title hanging – it doesn’t offer any explanation as to why having more information causes you to make the wrong choice.)

This reminded me of the marshmallow test. In this study, marshmallows were placed in front of hungry four year olds. They were told they could eat one marshmallow now, or they could have two if they waited a few minutes. 14 years later, the ones who were able to hold out for two marshmallows were more socially competent, optimistic, assertive, dependable, trustworthy, and scored 210 points higher on the SAT.

However, in the marshmallow test (and maybe the computer program test too), the long term choice is clearly better. Your second marshmallow is guaranteed, and coming in just a few minutes. But is the long term winner always the better choice?

Here’s an example from the “armed with information” article: “In a real-life scenario, a student who stayed home to study and then learned he had missed a fun party would be less likely to study next time in a similar situation – even if that option provides more long-term benefits.”

OK, but is that a bad thing? Are they supposed to skip all parties so they can spend all of their time studying? Once you’ve studied enough, how much benefit is there in studying a little more, compared to going to a party?

In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss says “This book is not about saving and will not recommend you abandon your daily glass of red wine for a million dollars 50 years from now. I’d rather have the wine.” That’s a reasonable choice. Not necessarily the one everyone should make, but a reasonable one.

It’s important to consider the cost of instant gratification. But it’s also important to consider the cost of waiting. How much is the wine worth to you?

Did you ever get some news that was really good, almost too good to be true? And you wanted to share it with everyone, but you just couldn’t until you knew for sure that you weren’t dreaming? Well, now I know that I’m not dreaming.

I just found out that my 2012 thriller novel, Mesothelioma Lawyers, New York, made the New York Times Best Seller list. And not only that, but it took the #1 spot. Not bad for a book that hasn’t officially been published yet.

My book hasn’t technically been released for general distribution, but pre-orders count towards the numbers they use in determining the rankings. Based on pre-orders received through today, it just barely beat out Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol for the lead in the fiction category, selling over 2 million copies in its first week.

I know I haven’t been posting much lately, but I’ve been really busy with book tours and signings and stuff. I want to thank everyone for their support in making this possible. If we survive 2012, I’ll know it was because of people like you.