Signings and publicity...

As many of you know, I'll be premiering Operation: Montauk at the Origins Game Fair. I'm a guest in The Library and will be on all sorts of panels about writing. But I have yet to book an event here at home in Salt Lake City. That changed yesterday, actually, and I am pleased to announce that my very first reading and signing in my hometown will be at The King's English.

The event is June 8, 2012 and starts at 7:00 pm. There will be a reading, light refreshments will be served, and I will then be signing copies of the new book.

The King's English is located at 1511 South 1500 East in Salt Lake City.

I look forward to seeing you all there. You can check their website for more information about the event.

It has also come to my attention that I've made no formal announcement in this space that I have acquired a publicist for this project. Consetta Parker from Parker Publicity will be representing me as a publicist during the launch of this book. Consetta is a great person and well known in the geek community. She handles publicity duties for such prestigious people and places as Rancho Obi-Wan, James Arnold Taylor, and the ever adorable Cat Taber, among others.

You can check out her website here. If you have need of publicity services, I can't recommend her enough.

I also got word on another review of Operation: Montauk coming soon... Things are looking good.

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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 …

Anatomy of a Scene: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid might be one of the most meticulously well-written movies ever made. William Goldman scripts are almost always something special. He's a master of creating something that's interesting, every scene has a kinetic energy to it that keeps you moving. He's a talented prose novelist as well. His novel of The Princess Bride might be even better than the screenplay and the film.

But today I want to talk about a scene in particular for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:

This scene comes early in the movie and we're still working to understand the relationship between Butch and Sundance, as well as Butch and his gang.

Goldman does something amazing as he's able to mix humor, character building, excitement, suspense, and an advancement of the story into the scene. There are so many building blocks at play here, and because the scene is so entertaining we hardly notice.

And the dialogue is so sharp I can't even stand it.

One of the mos…

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…

The stories of Bryan Young

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