Little Things To Inspire You This Week #25
Little Things To Inspire You This Week #25
And your last chance to join my new workshop!
Hi there and Happy Friday!
Before today’s great recommendations list, here’s a quick reminder that you can still hop into my workshop tomorrow May 11 at 11am PST — or, sign up just to get sent the recording if you can’t make the live class. Here’s the info:
Join me *tomorrow* May 11th for ADAPT YOUR WRITING FOR TV, a new workshop I’m teaching through & .
Dreaming of turning your novel, memoir, or short story into a TV show? Want a TV sample that shows a mastery of character, structure, story engines, and more? The ADAPT YOUR WRITING FOR TV workshop will give you the tools to take control of your work and write your own show. We’ll discuss questions like: Where in the story should your pilot start? What will make this a TV show and not a feature? How do you master TV structure? Will your character work for TV? How should you balance multiple timelines?
This is a great workshop to take whether you have an NYT Bestseller, a self-published book, or an unpublished personal essay. No matter where you are on your writing journey, you will leave feeling confident in adapting your idea into a compelling, ongoing TV series.
EVERYTHING I’M CONSUMING RIGHT NOW
My roundup Little Things To Inspire You This Week will be for paid subscribers going forward, with an occasional free edition because I love you all. You can check out previous posts here to see what you’re missing.
Before I recommend what TV & film to check out, here’s something you can watch right now: An excellent tiny desk concert from Willow.
Everybody is talking about Challengers and Baby Reindeer, so let’s start by digging into them both. I’d love to hear how your perspective differs from mine (or not), so leave your thoughts in the comments.
Challengers is an incredible cinematic experience that is ultimately about the vibes and doesn’t have much to say. Yes, it’s about friendship persevering over the need to win, but it failed in its final moment to give the declarative statement about its miserable main character that I so craved. It was still the most fun I’ve had in theaters in a very long time, the cast is incredible (those boys!), I will probably see it again, and I can’t stop listening to the soundtrack. It’s a rare delight: A small, intimate story made huge and exciting by its direction.
Baby Reindeer is astounding and deeply uncomfortable and frustrating to watch as its protagonist perpetuates his abuse, choosing to deepen a relationship with his stalker, and not going to the police when she assaults him on two separate occasions, or when she assaults his girlfriend. It also achieves something difficult and rare: It portrays a person putting themselves in situations that make them vulnerable to abuse without claiming they are responsible for it. What happened to him is not his fault, but it feels like his fault to him because he makes bad choices. We rarely see this portrayed so brutally and with such nuance and self-awareness through the survivor’s perspective. I have complicated feelings about the show. Donny Dunn is probably a narcissist. There’s a lot of drama around it right now. Parts of it are troubling. I found it moving and an exceptional work of art nonetheless.