Advice From The Twilight Zone

You might not write " Twilght Zone Stories " but good advice is good advice so check this out. Comments in italics are mine.

Rod Serling Teaches Writing
Jeanne Marshall's Seminar Notes, 1962-63
ADVICE TO WRITERS

DON'T LET SENTIMENTALITY REAR ITS UGLY HEAD!!!
I’m not sure if this is what was intended butI wrote a story where I killed off a great character and I can’t bring her back because it would be cheating…this is a hard piece of advice to follow!

MAKE PEOPLE THINK... STUN THEM... GRAB YOUR AUDIENCE IMMEDIATELY
I’ve learned with ‘blog stories’ this is really determines if a story lives or dies because people want to race through these things. To work on developing this skill I’ve listened to about 100 hours of old time radio plays and it’s really helped me.

DON'T OVERLOAD DIALOGUE
Blah, blah, blah… I agree with this and it’s not hard. All you have to do is go back pull out the quotation marks and you’re done. I think of quotation marks as little tiny crutches in a story. Cast them off and walk I say!

HAVE A POINT OF VIEW... DON'T ACCEPT SOMEONE ELSE'S CONCEPT
Sure, sure try to be the only person to write about toxic wells or the living dead sailing ships around the world and see how easy it is to follow this. But you have to because when you write you MUST to listen to the story you're hearing in your head. If you don’t it will find ways to fall on the pen and stab itself through the heart and just DIE. I promise you that’s what will happen every single time.

OVERALL THEME LEADS TO CHARACTERS THEN ON TO PLOT
You know, some stories are plot driven or character driven…I prefer sitting down and figuring out the theme… you know, what exactly is this story ABOUT. Then I don’t get lost in your own forest of words and end up burning the place to the ground. Stephen Kind did that in the “ Stand “. He had spent years on that book and got stuck. Yes Sir…stuck, stuck, stuck…so he nuked the characters in the first half of the book and went on with the story. Yes, you read that right he killed them all. Stephen King can afford to do that. I on the other hand write for free and can’t afford to invest years in a project just to let it die. So I prefer to know where I’m going. I literally can’t afford NOT to know.

RESEARCH BACKGROUND FOR ANY STORY
I like to do this because I’ll actually pick up ideas for other stories as I go along. Plus it doesn’t hurt to learn something new every once and awhile.

CONTINUITY... TIE SCENES OR PARAGRAPHS TOGETHER
Because when you do that you get a story!

WRITING BEGETS WRITING
It certainly does Rod, it certainly does.