Hi Reader,

This month we’ve talked about a range of story templates:

· Fairy tales​

· Myths​

· Legends​

· Classic literature​

· Shakespeare’s plays​

· Classic movies​

Lots of juicy stories to inspire your projects!

How To Use Templates

So you’ve picked a template – what is your next step? As you can see from the examples we’ve discussed, you can use templates in a variety of ways:

Put a twist on a familiar story by telling it from a new perspective, such as making the villain the hero – Maleficent (2014).

A modern retelling – House of Cards (2013-16).

Borrow a character dynamic – Nashville (2012-16).

Switch-up the genre – the Sherlock Holmes movies (2009, 2011) made the cerebral Holmes into an action hero.

Set your story in high school a la Clueless (1995) – a reworking of Jane Austen’s Emma. In fact, YA books are brilliant at this. There are YA versions of The Great Gatsby, Pride & Prejudice, and even the movie The Women (1939).

Finally, templates can make your project much easier to pitch. If you can say that your animated movie is Ocean’s 11 with squirrels (The Nut Job (2014)) or that your TV show is Macbeth in the American political system (House of Cards (2013-18)), executives can immediately grasp your story’s throughline and want to hear more.

Referencing a template can give the executive whom you are pitching to something they can communicate to their bosses easily. Even better, you now have a shorthand that is both memorable and repeatable — two qualities that are highly valuable as your project moves up the executive ladder for consideration.

And to think, at one time you didn’t even have an idea.

Book Nook

A publishing aggregator is a service that lets you upload your manuscript in one place, and then distributes your work to multiple retailers like Amazon, library apps, subscription services, and more. The plus of using an aggregator is that you only have to upload your book one time and have one place to go to manage it.

You can also pick and choose the retailers that your aggregator publishes to. If you want to upload your books yourself to the major retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble so that you make more money, you may still want to use an aggregator to get into libraries and lesser known retailers.

There are two big publishing aggregators, Draft2Digital and PublishDrive.

PublishDrive 50% Off sale through November 4

They each offer different pricing plans. Draft2Digital is always free up front. They add 10% to every book sale on top of the individual retailers cut. PublishDrive has different priced plans. Although they do offer a free plan, to get exposure in the most retailers you have to pay a monthly fee. They are currently running a 50% off sale for a year.

For more information about places to publish your book, please read How to Turn Your Screenplay into a Novel.

Writing Craft

Some Notes Never Go Away on the Happier in Hollywood Podcast​

Hosts and show runners Liz Craft and Sarah Fain discuss how some notes never go away. From outline to script, there may be an issue that keeps bothering readers. It can take layers of work to fix it. I love this discussion. In my Hollywood career, on every project invariably there was a note that always came up with every draft.

In Case You Missed It

Templates: the Secret Writers Block Buster:

​Templates Part 1: Fairy Tales, Myths, & Legends​

​Templates Part 2: Classic Literature​

​Templates Part 3: Classic Movies​

​

Cheers,

Lindsey

Thanks for reading!

You can share this article here.

Was this week's newsletter useful? Help me to improve!

Click on a link to vote:

​👍Super! - 😐 Meh - 👎 Not my jam​