#writers network

[marineashnalikyan]

Chapters close, people leave—they make room for the new.

[eyerites]

writing prompt • no. 250

But she forgets to change the water, and soon they begin to wilt.

[wearytranscendence]

I want to rise and be.

Shed this skin, these chains-

in the most gracefully

iconoclastic way.

The paradox of surrender and strength

forms a sweet melancholy song.

I long to sing it..

but I can’t seem to remember the tune.

I fumble to steady my gait.

I seek to rebuild

renovate

excavate.

The words slowly come to me,

and a faint melody whispers in my ear.

Still the war wages inside my mind

inside my spirit.

Deafening distractions drowning out

the aria of hope.

[rhokisb]

“It truly doesn’t matter now. That’s the fun of it all. You all not being aware of what’s to come makes the game much more interesting.” The man reached for something in his cloak and Orlogg snapped his fingers, the sound distracting the others in the group.

“This guy was in my vision he’s the one with the-,” The man pulled an orb from beneath his robe and was already chanting as he raised it skyward. The group moved in unison, save for Dante, ready to hit the Elf with their full strength. Orlogg had already reached for his bow, and Shenzu was mid-air with Vestare and Armand behind him, as an unseen force grounded them all.

~Day 56 of Weyard snips~

[scriptwriters-network]

Social Virtual Networking Event on October 7th

SWN’s Social Virtual Networking Event is a networking event. You do not need to be a member of SWN or have a finished project to attend and/or participate. Please be prepared and ready to network with others.

For more information

[varunamatya]

“ Reminiscing Poetry and Friends who Proofread”

[theminisonproject]

[insanesonofabitch]

Liking destiel is basically having to go through feeling overjoyed by how much incredibly gay shit they managed to retain into the show and put on air but also mourn how much incredibly gay shit they deleted and/or cut off along the way.

- parallels Dean and Cas with Romeo and Juliet

- deletes the part where Dean holds Cas’s face

- whatever the hell Endverse destiel had going on

- not include the part where Endverse!Cas says the only thing they have left is each other

- had Dean break Cas away from a brainwashing spell by having him kneel and beg and say “I need you”

- but also replace the original script where he says he loves Cas, and that he forgives him for what he’s about to do (kill him)

- make Dean keep Cas’s dirty, moldy, bloody overcoat because he just missed him that much

- but cut off the part where Dean says “part of me always believed you’d come back”

- paralleled Dean and Cas to Cain and his wife Colette

- then deleted the scene where Dean dreams about how guilty he feels for beating up Cas, while in a bar with bi lighting and Cas gets referred to as his “admirer”

- and also the part where Cas and Crowley has a banter about which one of them is Dean’s boyfriend (yes this is real)

- had Dean go through a widower arc where he becomes hopeless and suicidal because Cas is dead back in s13

- made it seem like it didn’t affect him much when it happens in s15

[jellogram]

What program do you guys use for writing long stuff? I love Google docs but ever since I hit 40k it's been lagging and now at 60k it's barely usable. I'd prefer something web based, anyone have suggestions?

[marineashnalikyan]

Realizing this is a game changer

[eyerites]

writing prompt • no. 248

Far from where the aeroplanes fly, the whispers find a place to hide.

[femmefatalevibe]

Femme Fatale Guide: Top Career Tips To Set Yourself Up For Success

Figure out where your skills and passions align. Then determine the lifestyle/work culture you thrive in and what sacrifices you're willing to make in your chosen career path (for some, it's always traveling/talking to people 24/7, working late hours, unpredictable/unconventional hours, potentially lower pay/less predictable income, etc.). It truly depends on your top values, your personality, and your goals/priorities in life.

First focus on getting incredibly talented at your craft. Find a mentor(s) who will push you with their feedback/suggestions. Take classes/skills courses/read books & articles to gain more applicable knowledge/hard skills. Join clubs, apply to internships, volunteer, and request informational interviews in your desired field.

Make your skills marketable. Create a professional resume and/or neat portfolio/collection of work samples. Discover and articulate your USP (that should essentially serve as the backbone of your elevator pitch). Frame your skills through a customer/business-centric lens. How does your experience/skillset solve their problems and help a company/client achieve their goals?

Build a network for yourself. Don't be shy to reach out to companies/individuals who inspire you. Speak with your secondary school teachers and professors for connections. Create peer-to-peer networks, too, so you can grow together. Be a fearless networker and connector. Help others, do favors, and make the person glad they met/hired you. Make it your objective to be memorable through your work ethic/providing high-quality work products and showing up with a motivated & overall positive attitude allows people to like and trust you with their time, clients, money, etc.

Master the art of a killer email/cold pitch. Especially in today's world, learning how to sell yourself through intriguing emails/LinkedIn messages is the key to unlocking potential success. One client or opportunity can create momentum that will be useful years down the line, too.

When in doubt, follow up – on an email, pitch, job opportunity, connection, etc.

Be ruthless and relentless with your research. For new contacts, connections, opportunities, and information to support your pitches/job interviews/networking conversations, new technologies, and trends within your field. Read everything credible you can get your hands on. Display working knowledge and practical applications of these concepts and how they can benefit the person in front of you/their business.

Create systems. For how you structure emails/pitches, conduct research, different types of workflows/ work template structures for different types of projects, time-blocking, client funnels, etc.

Get comfortable with rejection. Use it as a primer for self-reflection and refining your craft/processes or help you pivot your approach to help you achieve your goals. Never take business decisions on behalf of a company personally (and vice versa).

Give yourself breaks, but don't give up. Tapping out for good is the only surefire way to fail at an endeavor. Be flexible in your path, but zeroed in on your goal(s). Learn when to quit or pivot, and when it's time to coast or seek growth.

[fleshadept]

the love story being so central to our flag means death really is mindblowing. i haven’t stopped thinking about it for months. it is, to its core, a romance. that was the point. the queer romance wasn’t written in in the second or third season because the fandom picked up on the homoeroticism and made a ship popular. it wasn’t added in because the fans demanded it or because the actors pushed for it later on it wasn’t forced into slowburn by a network it was there the whole time.

when stede showed ed his secret closet that was on purpose an allegory, when they shared the marmalade bread that was romantic intentionally, when they rowed away from the burning party boat and ed was looking at stede that was him FALLING IN LOVE . that's how it was WRITTEN. ed really actually leaned in and almost kissed stede in the moonlight scene. and then. they actually kissed! like i know this is months old news now but i can’t get over how fucking different this feels to other queer romances i’ve seen. it is the core and central plot of the show and it’s beautiful. it’s funny it’s cute it’s heartwarming it’s GOOD. they did it.

[angelsdean]

I need people to understand how S&P (standards and practices) works in television and how much influence they have over what gets to stay IN an episode of a show and how the big time network execs are the ones holding the purse strings and making final decisions on a show's content, not the writers / showrunners / creatives involved.

So many creators have shared S&P notes over the years of the wild and nonsensical things networks wanted them to omit / change / forbid. Most famously on tumblr, I've seen it so many times, is the notes from Gravity Falls. But here's a post compiling a bunch of particularly bad ones from various networks too. Do you see the things they're asking to be changed / cut ?

Now imagine, anything you want to get into your show and actually air has to get through S&P and the network execs. A lot of creators have had to resort to underhanded methods. A lot of creators have had to relegate things to subtext and innuendo and scenes that are "open to interpretation" instead of explicit in meaning. Things have had to be coded and symbolized. And they're relying on their audience to be good readers, good at media literacy, to notice and get it. This stuff isn't the ramblings of conspiracy theorists, it's the true practices creatives have had to use to be able to tell diverse stories for ages. The Hays Code is pretty well known, it exists because of censorship. It was a way to symbolize certain things and get past censors.

Queercoding, in particular, has been used for ages in both visual media and literature do signal to queer audiences that yes, this character is one of us, but no, we can't be explicit about it because TPTB won't allow it. It's a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to those in the know. It's the deliberate use of certain queer imagery / clothing / mannerisms / phrases / references to other queer media / subtle glances and lingering touches. Things that offer plausible deniability and can be explained away or go unnoticed by straight audiences to get past those network censors. But that queer viewers WILL (hopefully) pick up on.

Because, unfortunately, still to this day, a lot of antiquated network execs don't think queer narratives are profitable. They don't think they'll appeal to general audiences, because that's what matters, whatever appeals to most of the audience demographic so they can keep watching and keep making the network more money. The networks don't care about telling good stories! Most of them are old white cishet business men, not creatives. They don't care about character arcs and what will make fans happy. They don't care about storytelling. What they care about is profit and they're basing their ideas of what's profitable on what they believe is the predominate target demographic, usually white cis heterosexual audiences.

So, imagine a show that started airing in the early 2000s. Imagine a show where the two main characters are based on two characters from a famous Beat Generation novel, where one of the characters is queer! based on a real like bisexual man! The creator is aware of this, most definitely. And sure, it's 2005, there's no way they were thinking of making that explicit about Dean in the text because it just wouldn't fly back then to have a main character be queer. But! it's made subtext. And there are nods to that queerness placed in the text. Things that are open to interpretation. Things that are drenched in metaphor (looking at you 1x06 Skin "I know I'm a freak" "maybe this thing was born human but was different...hated. Until he learned to become someone else.") Things that are blink-and-you-miss-it and left to plausible deniability (things like seemingly spending an hour in the men's bathroom, or always reacting a little vulnerable and awkward when you're clocked instead of laughing it off and making a homophobic joke abt it)

And then, years later there's a ship! It's popular and at first the writers aren't really seriously thinking about it but they'll throw the fans a bone here and there. Then, some writers do get on the destiel train and start actively writing scenes for them that are suggestive. And only a fraction of what they write actually makes it into the text. So many lines left on the cutting room floor: i love past you. i forgive you i love you. i lost cas and it damn near broke me. spread cas's ashes alone. of course i wanted you to stay. if cas were here. -- etc. Everything cut was not cut by the writers! Why would a writer write something to then sabotage their own story and cut it? No, these are things that didn't make it past the network. Somewhere a note was made maybe "too gay" or "don't feed the shippers" or simply "no destiel."

So, "no destiel." That's pretty clearly the message we got from the CW for years. "No destiel. Destiel will alienate our general audience. Two of our main characters being queer? And in a relationship? No way." So what can the pro-destiel creatives involved do, if the network is saying no? What can the writers do if most of their explicit destiel (or queer dean) lines / moments are getting cut? Relegate things to subtext. Make jokes that straight people can wave off but queer people can read into. Make costuming and set design choices that the hardcore fans who are already looking will notice while the general audience and the out-of-touch network execs won't blink and eye at (I'm looking at you Jerry and your lamps and disappearing second nightstands and your gay flamingo bar!)

And then, when the audience asks, "is destiel real? is this proof of destiel?" what can the creatives do but deny? Yes, it hurts, to be told "No no I don't know what you're talking about. There's no destiel in supernatural" a la "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" but! if the network said "no destiel!" and you and your creative team have been working to keep putting destiel in the subtext of the narrative in a way that will get past censors, you can't just go "Yes, actually, all that subtext and symbolism you're picking up, yea it's because destiel is actually in the narrative."

But, there's a BIG difference between actively putting queer themes and subtext into the narrative and then saying it's not there (but it is! and the audience sees it!) versus NOT putting any queer content into the text but SAYING it is there to entice queer fans to continue watching. The latter, is textbook queerbaiting. The former? Is not. The former is the tactics so many creatives have had to use for years, decades, centuries, to get past censorship and signal to those in the know that yea, characters like you are here, they exist in this story.

Were the spn writers perfect? No, absolutely not. And I don't think every instance of queer content was a secret signal. Some stuff, depending on the writer, might've been a period-typical gay joke. These writers are flawed. But it's no secret that there were pro-destiel writers in the writing room throughout the years, and that efforts were made to make it explicitly canon (the market research!)

So no, the writers weren't ever perfect or a homogeneous entity. But they definitely were fighting an uphill battle constantly for 15 yrs against S&P and network execs with antiquated ideas of what's profitable / appealing.

Spn even called out the networks before, on the show, using a silly example of complaints abt the lighting of the show and how dark the early seasons were. Brightening the later seasons wasn't a creative choice, but a network choice. And if the networks can complain abt and change something as trivial as the lighting of a show, they definitely are having a hand in influencing the content of the show, especially queer content.

Even in s15, (seasons fifteen!!!) Misha has said he worried Castiel's confession would not air. In 2020!!! And Jensen recorded that scene on his personal phone! Why? Sure, for the memories. But also, I do not doubt for a second that part of it was for insurance, should the scene mysteriously disappear completely. We've seen the finale script. We've seen the omitted omitted omitted scenes. We all saw how they hacked the confession scene to bits. The weird cuts and close-ups. That's not the writers doing. That's likely not even the editors (willingly). That's orders from on high. All of the fuckery we saw in s15 reeks of network interference. Writers are not trying to sabotage their own stories, believe me.

Anyways, TLDR: Networks have a lot more power than many think and they get final say in what makes it to air. And for years creative teams have had to find ways to get past network censorship if they want "banned" or "unapproved" "unprofitable" "unwanted" content to make it into the show. That means relying on techniques like symbolism, subtext, and queercoding, and then shutting up about it. Denying its there, saying it's all "open to interpretation" all while they continue to put that open to interpretation content into the show. And that's not queerbaiting, as frustrating as it might be for queer audiences to be told that what they're seeing isn't there, it's still not queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is a marketing technique to draw in queer fans by baiting them with the promise of queer content and then having no queer content in said media. But if you are picking up on queer themes / subtext / symbolism / coding that is in front of your face IN the text, that's not queerbaiting. It's there, covertly, for you, because someone higher up didn't want it to be there explicitly or at all.

[tryinghardtobeoptimistic]

Thank you for everything my Captain 🫡

So that's it... Rhys finally post something... it hurts so much, so fcking much.

Thank you so much Rhys, thank you for Stede Bonnet, I'm so happy I discovered this show and was introduced to you.

THANK YOU 🙇