God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

It's hard to believe that we've been able to manage five years on this Earth without the wit, wisdom, and moral compass of Kurt Vonnegut.

The man influenced me more than most have. Reading his work is like visiting an old friend, his writing is warm and inviting, sharp, funny, and any of a hundred other positive adjectives.

When I learned of his death, five years ago today, I felt as though I lost a friend. The idea that I'd never read another biting essay by the man, or another new book, was not an easy one to come to terms to.

Over the years I've written a number of stories and essays that I felt were directly inspired by Vonnegut and I published them in a book called "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut." In it, I gave background material about my personal and one-sided artistic relationship with Vonnegut and how he influenced me over the years.

To commemorate Vonnegut on the fifth anniversary of his passing, I want to give some copies of the book away in a way that honors the man in some small, probably insignificant way.

In order to win one of the three copies I'm giving away (though that number might go up depending on how much response this gets) all you need to do is hit up your twitter account and tweet about what Vonnegut's influence was on you and tag it with #GodBlessYouMrVonnegut.

If you don't have a twitter, hit me up here on facebook and tell me how Vonnegut inspired or shaped you.

If you're not on facebook OR twitter, leave a comment below.

Comments

short story lover said…

Vonnegut is one great author. He inspired many

3:43 AM

Anatomy of a Scene: The Third Man

It's time again to break down a classic scene. One that's well-written and, in my view, a fine example of excellent craft.

I've done some of these articles from books (like The End of the Affairand Starship Troopers) and other movies (like Citizen Kane, City Lights, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), but now it's time to take a look at a scene from The Third Man. It blends the best of Orson Welles (as he's in the film and drives this scene) and Graham Greene, who wrote this particular screenplay.

Before we get to the scene, we need some context.

The Third Man is a tale of the black market in Vienna, just after World War II. It's about a cheap, dime-store Western novelist named Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotton) and his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles.) Lime offered Martins a job in Vienna, so Martins leaves America and arrives, only to find that Harry Lime is dead. Penniless, without a friend or reason to be in the country, h…

Anatomy of a Scene - City Lights

We're going to break down another scene this week, and it's one of my favorites in cinema history. It comes from the ending of City Lights by Charlie Chaplin, which I think is the greatest romantic comedy ever made.
It's a touching film from 1931 and I would make it mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to learn to tell a story.
The scene we're going to be breaking down comes from the very end of the film, so if you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it for you. Go watch the film. You can rent it for $3.99 in HD on Amazon or for free on Hulu with a free trial or plus subscription. You should just buy the Blu-ray, though. You're going to want to revisit it.
For those of you familiar with the movie, or for those of you who are going to ignore my pleas to watch it and go ahead with this post anyway, I'm going to set this clip up a bit before you watch it.
City Lights tells the story of Chaplin's Tramp and how he falls in love with a blind flower …

50+ Rules and Tips About Writing I've Collected Over the Years

I have twenty or thirty notebooks and journals filled up with snippets about writing, my plans for stories, bits of dialogue, interesting ideas, plotlines, scraps of short stories, and a dozen other things. I carry one with me at all times and it takes me a couple of months to fill one up.

One of the things I've kept in one of my notebooks was a collection of writing tips and rules that I've collected over the years in my travels. From teachers, from books, from wherever. Most of my career has been spent screenwriting, so a lot of these are most applicable to that, but I wanted to present them so they might be of use to you as well.

I've never stopped collecting these over the years and I never will.

To start the list are Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules of writing. They are the first in my notebook and, I think, the most useful. I'll add a star to those I think are applicable most to screenwriting. Some of these aren't applicable to everyone in every situation, but…

The stories of Bryan Young

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