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By Charles Deemer |
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Over the past year, I've been teaching an online class called The Internet for Writers. In this class, I acted as a tour guide to introduce writers to the various parts of the Internet in which they, as writers, could find resources that might be useful to them.
For a variety of reasons, I now am discontinuing the class but I've expanded the online syllabus I used into a self-help guide, a six-part (or six week) self-guided tour that should help any screenwriter new to cyberspace get one's bearings in what can be a confusing and chaotic environment of information over-kill. This column will serve as a kind of introduction to that self-guided tour.
The Internet for Writers: A Self-Guided Tour has six parts:
Let's look at each area more closely.
Fortunately, there are good free tools for doing both. Search engines are magnificent online software programs that search the entire Internet for words and phrases. There are many of them now, the major ones of which can be found at Search.com, but I prefer beginning searches with one of the oldest's methods, Yahoo!, the most thorough directory on the net. This search doesn't go as deeply into sites as other search engines but it's a good beginning. Usually I find what I want this way.
If I don't, then I use one of the other engines available at Search.com, such as Alta Vista or Excite. Which search engine should you use? Try several - and also look at this site about Understanding and Comparing Web Search Tools.
I usually do searching as part of a research task, and when I find an item I usually want to deal with it later, after I've completed the rest of my research. So I need a way to store it, to find it later.
One way is to save it as a bookmark, using the appropriate menu item on my web browser. In Windows 95 with Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example, this is an easy task: I create a special folder into which to put the results of this research, so all items will be together, and a click on the right mouse button saves it.
I also use a software program called ClipMate. This program lets you select/copy a series of items, saving them all for later use (the edit/select/copy function in windows only permits one item to be saved at a time; that is, if you save one time and then another, the first one is written over and lost). I generally use ClipMate in research rather than saving sites as bookmarks because it is more versatile, allowing me to select which areas of a site - URL, text, graphic - I actually want to save for later use.
The right tools are important in any job and getting around in cyberspace is no exception. Begin here, and you'll never be lost in cyberspace again.
At the self-guided tour page, you'll find lots of links with which to explore each of these areas.
I am especially impressed with the marketing capabilities of email. Sending query letters is much easier to do electronically, and personally I receive a significantly higher percentage of requests for scripts when querying by email than "the old-fashioned way" via mail. On the down side, few agents or large production companies have embraced electronic marketing with the enthusiasm of the indies.
I also teach online and, interestingly enough, find I learn more about my cyberspace students than I do about my "live" students at the local college where I also teach an occasional writing class. Online teaching is more demanding, so I now restrict enrollments to 10 for my beginning screenwriting class, called Screenwright, and five for my Ongoing Screenplay Projects class. Although few were teaching online when I started, now there are many online scriptwriting classes.
The alternative is to get the information yourself by going to an appropriate newsgroup. Like a mailing list, a newsgroup operates like a forum with people adding running commentary to the various subjects under discussion. But with a newsgroup, you have to be proactive to get the information, and your emailbox isn't filled with daily postings.
Most new versions of web browsers will read newsgroups. You also can use various newsreaders (special software, usually free) to read them. There also are special websites that handle news, conveniently categorizing the various groups by subject.
If you become active on a newsgroup, you'll also find many networking opportunities. Producers occasionally announce their needs on newsgroups as well.
If you can't find a newsgroup that focuses on your special interest, there is a process by which you can begin your own net-supported newsgroup. See the links in the self-guided tour.
These different sites all have something to offer the beginning screenwriter, some more, others less, and I recommend that you check them all out. When you find the sites that offer what you are looking for, return often because the best sites frequently update. My site, for example, is updated almost daily. Some sites, such as The Hollywood Network where you are now, are so huge that it will take you weeks if not months to explore all the resources available here.
Writers also can use the web for research. Here, once again, is where those "basic tools" (the search engines) come in handy.
And writers can have their own websites, giving them exposure.
Increasingly, the web is become multimedia. The major movie studios are online now with trailers of current movies and as the web continues to go multimedia, screenwriters may find more and more opportunities online. In fact, I have a dream:
Original digital movies will be produced and distributed via the web, where consumers will download them to large entertainment screens in their homes. The distribution system for movies, in other words, will have a radical alternative. Independent filmmakers now can shoot digitally and become their own distributors. For the first time, small specialized audiences - such as senior citizens - can be reached with products targeted to their special interests. The indie market will mushroom - with great demands for material.
Will it happen? I don't think the existing power structure wants it to happen in a way that lets the little guy get on the level playing field of cyberspace. In fact, corporations should be worried about the level playing field of cyberspace and be working on ways to duplicate their monopoly here.
It's going to be very exciting to watch how all this comes down.
I have a personal story to illustrate each point.
In October, 1997, my one-act hyperdrama, The Last Song of Violeta Parra, will open in Santiago, Chile, in the Spanish version translated by director Andres Espejo. Much of this play was developed conceptually in a chat room. In the summer of 1996, I was what amounted to as a "playwright-in-electronic-residence" at Prisma, Espejo's theater company in Santiago, where we developed the idea for the hyperdrama that he would direct. We met frequently online, using Powwow for Windows software. This had more advantage than just "chatting": I was able to meet some of the cast, I was able to look at a floor plan of the theater space (because Powwow lets one share a white board), I was able to send and receive files while chatting in real time.
I was in Portland, Oregon, and yet I was developing a play with a director and theater company in Santiago, Chile, with astounding little inconvenience caused by our distance from one another, which was "virtually eliminated" by our chat room sessions.
That's the good news. Here's the bad.
Last spring I decided to open my own chat room for screenwriters and playwrights, called The Green Room. I wanted it to be a place where writers could hang out and network and exchange war stories. It never occurred to me to make it exclusive in any way.
What a mistake! Within days of announcing the new chat room, I logged on one evening to find myself on another planet - or more correctly, in just another IRC channel filled with sexist babbling and juvenile posing, as guys apparently tried to impress gals in the room. Or something. A lot of posing and a lot of profanity were going on. Nothing about screenwriting or playwriting was taking place. And I was footing the bill, since I had rented the chat room.
So I slapped a password on the room and tried to control who came into the room. That worked fine until someone decided to post the password on a newsgroup! Why did this person think I had a password in the first place? Well, once again the public singles bar possibility became real, so I quickly changed the password and now I scrutinize participants more than ever. I really don't have the time or inclination to do this, but the alternative was closing down the room and already some serious writers had become addicted to the camaraderie there. As I have. We are somewhat an exclusive club, which is too bad, but this is a small price for keeping the place orderly and without the juvenile antics of typical chat rooms. Call us a bunch of boring writers who take our craft seriously. Put a smiley after that.
Chat rooms have so much potential! Pitch meetings online, deals made online, rewrite sessions held online - all this is possible with real time chat, which now has audio and video components as well.
But so little - so damn little! - is being done in this area. The Green Room, as modest as its goals are, is a radical departure from the usual chat room in cyberspace - and that is a sad commentary indeed.
But as you learn to use the various areas of cyberspace to professional advantage, you'll find that you can begin to put together an online routine that really isn't so much different from your routine at the office.
For example, I have four newsgroups that I check daily; 3 mailings lists to which I subscribe; 2 websites I visit daily; my chat room I visit more often than I should. I teach screenwriting online three seasons of the year, taking summers off. I market all my work online now before I begin marketing it more traditionally - and usually with more success.
You'll find your own routine as you get comfortable online. And one day you'll wonder how you ever managed to conduct your career without the Internet.