{"id":337,"date":"2009-04-04T02:23:25","date_gmt":"2009-04-04T10:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/?p=337"},"modified":"2009-04-04T02:23:25","modified_gmt":"2009-04-04T10:23:25","slug":"how-its-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/?p=337","title":{"rendered":"How It’s Done"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about for a while, something a bit special I reckon. It’s a link to a site where you can download a transcript of a discussion between three storytellers at the top of their game as they’re putting together the ideas that will become one of my favourite stories ever: the storytellers are Steven Spielberg<\/strong>, George Lucas<\/strong> and Lawrence Kasdan<\/strong>, and they’re kicking ideas around for Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n

The link will take you to a blog called Mystery Man on Film<\/strong>. Whoever the mystery man is, he’s done a terrific job of extracting ten major takeaway points from what’s a pretty long (125 pages) transcript. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, just those ten points are a masterclass in fast, thrilling storytelling.<\/p>\n

But for you, reading this now, I’m going to boil it down to one<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Books and stories are not written by wizards or aliens or geniuses: they’re written by people who sit in rooms and make stuff up – it’s as simple, and as difficult, as that. “Where do you get your ideas from?” is a question that writers are asked all the time, and the answer is you work for them<\/strong>. Look at this transcript. The ideas don’t arrive in a flash of inspiration. They’re not trumpeted in by choirs of angels, or beamed down from space. Spielberg, Lucas and Kasdan put in the hours – in this case, nine hours a day for five days straight – and they hammered the story out. And the ideas didn’t magically come out right first time, either – if they had (for example) the central character’s name would be Indiana Smith<\/strong>. ;p<\/p>\n

A big part of the reason why I visit as many schools as I can is that I remember authors visiting my school – and the effect that seeing that they were just PEOPLE had on me. Suddenly everything seemed possible. And it’s true: if you want it enough, and you’re prepared to put in the work and do what it takes to make it happen, IT IS.<\/p>\n

Best of luck to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about for a while, something a bit special I reckon. It’s a link to a site where you can download a transcript of a discussion between three storytellers at the top of their game as they’re putting together the ideas that will become one of my favourite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.timdefenderoftheearth.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}