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Software For Hardheads
Mar. 25th, 2011 02:31 pmSince I have written professionally (and I'm always looking to do that again), and my name and email are actually out there, it's only natural that companies that want to sell me software to help me craft some story or screenplay are sending me messages, hoping I'll buy their products.
I got one notice today and it reads as follows:
"Inept Writer's Software Program" (my way of preventing a free plug for these doofs) is a step-by-step writing system designed for the aspiring writer. As your creative writing partner, "Inept Writer's Software Program" takes you to a special place, a story development environment where together you’ll solve the plot and character problems that prevent many stories from becoming great enough to sell.
You’ll cast and build your characters, plot out your story, layer in themes with universal meaning, and put it all together into scenes to form a solid step outline. And as your mentor, the "Inept Writer's Software Program" will do something no other writing program can do - it predicts parts of your story based on creative decisions you make!
Knowledge is power and "Inept Writer's Software Program" inspires you with ideas to develop your story and make it even tighter - with no plot holes or character inconsistencies.
I think if there's truth in advertising, I just came up with a million dollar title for their CD-ROM.
But back to the point. I want to say I'm astounded and horrified at this, but sadly I am not. Now, not only don't you have to be a professional writer to be a writer... now you don't even need to be able to write! Just type in a few ideas you had, and let some software program spit your script back to you, in format, no less!
Of course, here's the problem with that... if a bunch of people do this, using that program, we can presume that bunch of people are going to get, if not identical scripts, certainly similar ones! So the race is to the Copyright Office, where the person with the earliest date on their form wins the chance to sue all other "writers" for "plagiarism."
Hollywood encourages laziness in writers. They don't want "different." They want "commercial." And here's the response: paint by numbers stories with two-dimensional characters. It's about the special effects anyway, isn't it? Every movie has to be in 3D, and who cares about "story?"
Seeing this, reading the stories of the projects that are getting made, it all serves to be extremely discouraging to me because none of it is anything I would be interested in seeing... well, not "none" of it, but the vast majority of it is just junk food for the mind. It doesn't look like there's any space available for the things I want to see.
But maybe that means there is? Maybe I am the hardhead.
I got one notice today and it reads as follows:
"Inept Writer's Software Program" (my way of preventing a free plug for these doofs) is a step-by-step writing system designed for the aspiring writer. As your creative writing partner, "Inept Writer's Software Program" takes you to a special place, a story development environment where together you’ll solve the plot and character problems that prevent many stories from becoming great enough to sell.
You’ll cast and build your characters, plot out your story, layer in themes with universal meaning, and put it all together into scenes to form a solid step outline. And as your mentor, the "Inept Writer's Software Program" will do something no other writing program can do - it predicts parts of your story based on creative decisions you make!
Knowledge is power and "Inept Writer's Software Program" inspires you with ideas to develop your story and make it even tighter - with no plot holes or character inconsistencies.
I think if there's truth in advertising, I just came up with a million dollar title for their CD-ROM.
But back to the point. I want to say I'm astounded and horrified at this, but sadly I am not. Now, not only don't you have to be a professional writer to be a writer... now you don't even need to be able to write! Just type in a few ideas you had, and let some software program spit your script back to you, in format, no less!
Of course, here's the problem with that... if a bunch of people do this, using that program, we can presume that bunch of people are going to get, if not identical scripts, certainly similar ones! So the race is to the Copyright Office, where the person with the earliest date on their form wins the chance to sue all other "writers" for "plagiarism."
Hollywood encourages laziness in writers. They don't want "different." They want "commercial." And here's the response: paint by numbers stories with two-dimensional characters. It's about the special effects anyway, isn't it? Every movie has to be in 3D, and who cares about "story?"
Seeing this, reading the stories of the projects that are getting made, it all serves to be extremely discouraging to me because none of it is anything I would be interested in seeing... well, not "none" of it, but the vast majority of it is just junk food for the mind. It doesn't look like there's any space available for the things I want to see.
But maybe that means there is? Maybe I am the hardhead.
