Eijo: I’m thumbing through my notebook packed with half-complete ideas, random dialogue, odd titles, character sketches, stuff like that. And then it catches my eye — the killer concept. This is it. We thought our last script was awesome? Well it’s a sun-baked turd next to this new idea!

I jump on the phone to the Schube and try to catch my breath as I blurt out the pitch: “Retired FBI agent… mysterious beheadings… a buck-toothed leprechaun who communicates through interpretive dance… it’s a sexy thriller with a twist ending where it turns out the FBI agent is the leprechaun! Dude, this is our next project without question, right?”

To which the Schube replies, “Meh.”

And sure, my initial reaction is to throw myself out the nearest window in a fit of blind rage, but the fact remains: not only is this the first of many agreements we’ve gotta come to as a team, but it may be the most important one. If we can’t see eye-to-eye on what our next project is gonna be, then we’re sunk.

I guess it all comes down to what we call the “nugget” — that bit o’ fried gold that captures the imagination and allows a writer to dive into a new project with passion and excitement. It could be a clever plot turn, or a stand-out character, or maybe something satisfying about the ending. Whatever it is, it’s the thing that makes a story idea worth pursuing, no matter how tough things may get down the road.

For a solo writer this can be a relatively easy decision to make, but when there’re two or more people involved things get complicated because what I find to be a nugget of pure awesomeness ain’t necessarily gonna impress the Schube, and vice-versa. In the end, we’ve each got to find our own way into the story, to discover that thing that’ll keep us excited and working when things go all pear-shaped (and in writing, that’s most of the danged time).

Despite the fact that this debate can lead to some outbursts of frustrated swearing (and in the most extreme of cases, uncontrollable flatulence), it’s actually a really helpful part of the process because it hones the story as it’s being written. If one of us starts to lose enthusiasm, it’s up to the other guy to do some scrambling — pitching and lobbying and adjusting the plot to better fit his partner’s sensibilities — which shoots the story off into cool new directions we’d have never come up with otherwise, and forces us to invent better scenes.

So, sure, the idea might not fly at first pitch, but with a little work… “Wait, forget the leprechaun. What about a mermaid with a hairlip?” …the story can become something both of us are excited to write.

Okie-doke, the song of the day is a live performance of “The Golden Age” by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour. I’ve been rockin’ out to their albums for the past month, and I still cannot get enough of Mette Lindberg’s spunky vocals!

The Schube:  He was insane, living up in the trees much higher than the average person ever raised their head to look. And he only came down to catch people and carry them up into the branches where he did…awful things to them.

That was “Looney Harold,” the first character I ever created who helped to make me a buck. My seventh-grade mind realized I could write a few pages about this guy on some looseleaf paper, end each chapter on an over-the-top gory cliffhanger, and sell the chapters for a quarter apiece to my classmates.

I ended one particularly grisly kill right in the middle of the action, then charged 35 cents for the conclusion. I don’t know if it was worth it, but a few of ‘em bought it.

The past few months, Eijo and I have had an absolute blast doing a rewrite on our script, “Asylum,” which doesn’t feature Looney Harold but is certainly chock full of other like-minded maniacs. We split the script into four acts that feel similar to comic book issues or TV show episodes, which we turned in one at a time to our producers and a few trusted friends for feedback. The whole process has made me feel a bit like a seventh grader all over again.

Screenwriting can be a lonely process, even with a co-writer, since it involves a lot of toiling away to finish a draft that may or may not be ready to stand on its own feet. It can take months, sometimes even years before you’re ready to send it out into the world for feedback.

So it’s pretty damned fantastic to think that a kid who grew up writing about lunatics who live in the trees – and who often had his own head in the clouds, perhaps much higher than a sane person might have thought to look – might still be hooking a few readers to check out the next chapter, or act.

See you on the next page.

The Schube:  Hello again, all you Maniacs! It’s been awhile since we’ve posted, but you can put down your crying towels now because we’re back in action.

Eijo and I have been busy making revisions to our script “Asylum.” We thought it might be helpful for our fellow screenwriters to pass along a few tips we’ve learned so far in the process of taking notes from a director and a production team.

But an important disclaimer: We’re still learning the ins and outs here, so please consider these tips more of a “work in progress” or a peek behind the curtain – rather than two blokes trying to sound like a coupl’a know-it-alls.

1.      Check your ego at the door. When you meet with producers to discuss rewrites, remember they’re interested enough in your script to take the time to talk. But don’t expect the call to focus on how great you are – they’re gonna tell you everything that doesn’t work, so you can fix it and make a better flick.

Even if you’re wearing your big boy pants, this constructive criticism might be a kick to your ego’s nads. But their honest feedback will make you — and your story – much stronger if you’re willing to listen and find ways to implement their suggestions.

2.     Ask questions. Don’t be afraid to play reporter in order to ensure you understand exactly what the producers are telling you. For example, if they say, “Those zombie clowns need more characterization,” try to delve deeper by asking questions like: Which did you care about the least — the crawling dead babies with the size 15 shoes that washed ashore in act 2, or the two dozen sad hobos that all popped out of that shopping cart near the end? Which did you care about the most? Did you wonder about their past, or just wish they’d go away?

It’s not the producer’s job to tell you exactly where to make the changes that will help your story; it’s your job to ask the questions that will help you to know where to make those changes in order to turn in the best draft that meets the producer’s needs.

3.      Don’t give up on your story. We listened to all the things that weren’t working and came to the decision that it would be easier to just scrap our current draft and rewrite from page 1. Essentially, we came up with a whole new story. In the process, we unknowingly removed many elements that sparked excitement from producers to work on the film in the first place. We regrouped, came up with a new plan that primarily involved writing a new first act (and reworking subsequent scenes to meet those needs), and voila – problem solved.

So be careful: Don’t throw out the dead-baby clown with the bathwater.

Eijo:

I just finished reading Michio Kaku’s Physics of the Impossible. In the words of the subtitle the book is “a scientific exploration into the world of phasers, force fields, teleportation, and time travel.” So yeah, this book was awesome.

Physics is my favorite science; astrophysics is my favorite physics; and cosmology (or the study of the universe) is my favorite area of astrophysics. How did the universe begin? How big is it? What shape is it? How is it going to end, or will it end at all? These are the questions that I love thinking about, and the theories seem to get wilder when smart folks who are good at math start thinking about them too.

Kaku’s a compelling writer who, in Physics of the Impossible, uses the sci-fi tropes we all know and love (laser guns, time travel, seeing into the future…) as a doorway to teaching real science, but more than that he’s part of a generation of what I’ll uncouthly call “celebrity physicists” who use their natural charm and entertainment savvy to lay some mad knowledge on all us laypeople.

You got Stephen Hawking of course, who along with Carl Sagan could be considered the avant garde of this new camera-ready generation of physicists. Then there’s Neil deGrasse Tyson, who hosts his own tv show NOVA scienceNOW as well as the awesome podcast StarTalk; he’s a regular guest on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report; and he’s currently working with Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane on an update of Sagan’s classic documentary series Cosmos. And there’s Brian Greene, who’s produced two great NOVA series, The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, based on his books of the same names. Tyson and Greene also guest starred as themselves on The Big Bang Theory. Which brings us right back to Michio Kaku, who’s hosted several shows of his own including Sci-Fi Science and Visions of the Future.

Maybe it’s the math, maybe it’s the big questions, maybe it’s the weird answers (still can’t get my head around the whole “speed of light is constant no matter how fast you’re moving” thing) but physics is considered one of the less merciful sciences out there — but now we have these accomplished scientists taking time out to explain it all to us in plain English and I really appreciate that. Because I suck at math.

Song of the day is from the album I just picked up by Wild Flag — I was a huge fan of Sleater-Kinney and it was a freakin’ bummer when they broke up, but now Carrie Brownstein (love to Portlandia) and Janet Weiss are back in this new band, and it’s got all the classic rock flair that I love.

Eijo: Just finished reading Stephen King’s latest novel, 11/22/63, and whooooo-doggies, it’s a good’n! It strikes me that King has entered a new phase in his writing, a period of lean mean storytelling that hits the ground running and doesn’t stop until the last page.

This is a distinct break from the pacing you’ll find in King’s earlier work. Let me put it this way — I learned how to skim like an son-of-a-gun by reading his books when I was a kid. I’ve always loved his stuff, but I ain’t gonna lie — I’ve got a shaky attention span. Anything that isn’t moving the story forward annoys me. Always has. To this day if a novel hits the alleys of flashback or deep characterization, it had better come with the prose thunder, like mind-blowing Salman Rushdie level work, if I’m gonna be expected to read each n’ every word. Otherwise, I’m skimming until something relevant to the larger story happens.

King’s always told sharply-plotted stories, but he often takes a leisurely almost stream-of-conscious approach to the telling. He doesn’t hesitate to step off the path and explore the past of a character or place sometimes peripheral to the story. One often gets the feeling while reading King of hearing a story at night around a campfire. There’s a casual confidence to his work that feels personal, almost intimate. It’s one of King’s charms. So I wanna make clear that I don’t find his wandering focus to be a weakness as a writer, but rather that my impatience for it is a weakness as a reader.

Nevertheless, something changed in recent years. My theory is J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter novels. I remember noticing at the time that Rowling had pulled off something in her later books that I’d rarely seen — she wrote 700 to 900 page doorstops that sped along without stopping for anything. They didn’t have an ounce of fat on them, despite their epic sizes, and built up such momentum that suddenly 700 pages felt too short. It was quite a feat and King, a vocal fan of Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, may have been inspired by it.

Aiming specifically for a new, higher pacing and tighter plotting, King released Under the Dome in 2009, a novel that comes in at a whopping 1,072 pages (even bigger than his arguable masterpiece The Stand) yet zooms along faster than anything else in his collection — excepting perhaps the breathless pacing of a couple of his early (and much shorter) Bachman books, Rage and The Long Walk.

Under the Dome‘s insanely entertaining pace was part of its design. King comments in his author’s note, “I tried to write a book that would keep the pedal consistently to the metal. Nan [Graham, King's editor] understood that, and whenever I weakened, she jammed her foot down on top of mine and yelled (in the margins, as editors are wont to do), “Faster, Steve! Faster!”

At the time, I considered Under the Dome to be a one-shot, a kind of creative experiment to see if he could keep up a break-neck pacing at over 1,000 pages. And then I read 11/22/63 (which weighs in at a substantial 849 pages itself) and damn if that book don’t run! If anything, it’s his fastest book yet, with suspense that reaches near unbearable heights. I feel like we’ve entered a fantastic new period in Stephen King’s work where he guns it for the horizon, and all us Constant Readers (lucky skunks that we are) just gotta hold on and enjoy the ride.

Oh, and speaking of a son-of-a-gun, here’s the single from Oh Land that I absolutely cannot stop listening to. Enjoy!

The Schube:  You know that annoying dude who ruined the ending of The Sixth Sense by telling you about it before you saw the movie?

I know it was years ago and that’s a bit too long to hold a grudge. You’ve forgiven him. You’ve moved on, and so has Mr. Spoiler. I’d like to say he’s grown, and in many ways he has…but not for the better.

He’s gotten sneakier. He’s multiplied himself like that dude from The Matrix, and now homeboy’s got his mitts into headlines on TV, in magazines (I’m talking to you, Entertainment Weekly), online.

He’s even dug his claws into Facebook status updates (“I’m so lucky to see this sneak peek of the new X-Men – Can’t believe Batman kills Hugh Jackman with a crack pipe!”).

Mr. Spoiler’s army of entertainment-haters has one frightening mission: To kill suspense. By keeping us over-informed of any upcoming surprises in movies and such, we won’t experience any true excitement and thrill when these moments actually happen.

He won’t stop until suspense has been butchered so extensively there’s no hope for its return in a sequel.

At this point, I fear Mr. Spoiler’s unstoppable because he’s rubbing off on many of us. I won’t go calling anybody out, but I know several folks who have no problem with reading spoilers in advance; in fact, they actually seek out spoilers for upcoming movies!

From an entertainment standpoint, I fear he’s turning us into a nation of sissies who can’t stand the thought of actually being surprised by something we’re paying good money to see.

Or perhaps he’s made the spoiler part of our everyday lives…just another annoyance to deal with, like clipping our toenails or trimming our nose hair, to the point where it feels like a social necessity.

I don’t know what may happen to entertainment if he gets any stronger, but – (SPOILER ALERT!) – the suspense is killing me.

Though we love the thought behind those writing journals we often get from our loved ones during the holidays, sometimes we need some inspiration to help us fill all those blank pages. Here are some fun ideas to kick-start the imagination!

The Exorcist Christmas Greeting Cards – “Just because you’re possessed by the devil doesn’t mean you can’t be festive.”

Just brilliant.

Check out this Etsy.com artist’s other work to find other great ones like Michael Myers peeking in on his holiday victim hiding in a closet.

Frankenstein’s Monster and Bride Flask Set – Perfect for bringing out the creative monster in you!  This artist also makes Vlad the Impaler flasks, and let’s face it – you can never have too many flasks. (Extra points for this absurdly creepy Burt Reynolds flask, by the way.)

Vintage horror movie posters printed on antique book pages – How awesome is this Horror of Dracula poster?  Oh, and this Nosferatu one? I need more wall space!

Zombie family decals – Are you sick of those happy little family stickers on the back of minivans everywhere?

Raise a little hell with these zombie decals, including undead pets and a risen-from-the-grave baby!

Fangoria Magazine subscription – You’ll be hard-pressed to find a successful horror writer today who doesn’t have at least a few dog-eared old copies of this mag laying around somewhere. The best part? It’s still just as relevant and inspiring today as it has been for decades, thanks to writers like Michael Gringold and Andrea Albin.

Alright, get busy shopping, maniacs. And if you’re shopping for me, be sure to get me something good – or you won’t get invited to the marathon showing of The Gingerdead Man and The Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust.

To rephrase, what happens when you send your story out into the world and it gets rejected? Of course the editor isn’t actually insinuating you’re a terrible writer, but let’s face it: after even two or three rejections in a row, it’s easy to start feeling like the pimply kid left alone at the dance for a reason.

We’ve drawn inspiration by the stories of Stephen King’s Carrie being turned down by publishers about 30 times; Gone With the Wind’s rejection nearly 40 times; and – seriously – the Diary of Anne Frank getting tossed back 16 times before it found a proper home (not dramatic enough, apparently). Louis L’Amour supposedly received 200 rejections before he sold his first book.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s love, Zelda, wouldn’t marry him until he published a story. Legend has it he papered his bedroom walls with rejection slips before he won her hand. Now that’s some motivation!

We could say, like the Brits do, “Keep calm and carry on” when your story’s rejected. But when you’ve invested sweat, tears and half a year’s worth of your free time into a story, platitudes can’t get you through it.

There’s no mantra that works. There’s no amount of comfort food or scotch that can fill that void between an acceptance letter and the dusty file where you toss the stories you’ve given up on. There’s only this question: How badly do you really want to see your work published so the world can see it?

Ultimately, rejections are nothing more or less than a test of commitment.

If you’re truly serious, then no amount of rejections will sway you.

That’s something for all of us to keep in mind as we face the blank page and start typing words to anything – short story, screenplay, love letter or grocery list.

I recently mentioned to Eijo that the first draft of our new script was coming along almost too easy. It’s rare that a first draft feels like a second draft, and when that happens it means one of two things: You’ve developed one hell of a solid outline to work from, or you’re actually writing a piece of literary dookie that entertains only you and bores the britches off everyone else.

Here’s to hoping, of course, that in our case it’s the first one. The point is that Hemingway’s quote rings quite true more often than not. And the unfortunate result is that countless amazing stories are never finished because their authors give up after the first draft.

As two dudes who have tossed our fair share of first drafts in the recycle bin, we know how easy it is to get discouraged when the words don’t work their David Blaine-like magic on the page in the first go-round.

But if you’re working from an idea that excited you, and – this is just as crucial – have an outline that you feel pretty good about, it’s okay for the first draft to be crap. Here’s something Eijo taught me a few years ago that I wish I’d learned way back in middle school:

Even if your first draft is completely dreadful, you’re still one major step closer to a powerful final draft — because now you know what not to do in your next draft.

Your idea to add a rabid leprechaun running around in the background of your story’s climax may or may not add to the level of tension you’re trying to create. You won’t know until you write him into the scene and see if he works. You can always leave him out of the second draft, or have him move to the foreground and bite somebody if it helps.

We rarely get a second chance in real life, but fiction gives us as many drafts as we need to get it right. So keep at it, maniacs!

Today’s song is guaranteed to make you feel as good as that final draft will feel when it turns out even better than you hope – however many drafts that takes.