Laura with Dave Chesson, author and founder of Kindlepreneur about using key words to market your book and even choose to write on a topic for which there is a market. There are generally two ways to make money as an author. One is to have a large platform and the other is to have a discoverable book for which there is a good market. Two ways you can help ensure success: write about something the customer is looking for and if the books out there are something you can beat. As John Lee Dumas said, "It's better to go a mile deep and an inch wide versus a mile wide and an inch deep." Look into Amazon Best Seller Rank or ABSR. Do some research on what is out there in terms of books on a topic and what their sales rank is. There are about 4.7 million books out there right now. Then look at the books out
there, are the covers good, are there poor ratings? Ask yourself if you could write a better book. If their ABSR is good and the quality of what is out there is poor, you have a good chance of selling well. You can also search the Google Key Word Planner and Google will tell you how many people a month are using those key words. It will also give you suggestions, synonyms, etc. You might find out there is a huge market or none.

Dave has written seven books via pen names and he has chosen to use pen names due to his work for the military. Each book makes between $700 and $2000 a month per book without building an author platform. Good for authors to know that while an author platform is good to build, there are alternatives to this approach. This approach is also good for those who write books that are not part of their public persona like, erotica, etc. This approach is also similar to what Tim Ferriss did with market testing his book title for 4 Hour Work Week. Basically doing market research for your book prior to releasing the book or even writing the book can really help you sell well and make more money. Dave is about to launch a service called KDP rocket - it is an Amazon book idea validator and it will tell you how many people type a certain term into amazon and it will also tell you how books with those keywords make. The tool will help you figure out if there is a market and if you have a chance in that particular market. It will launch end of June. KDP was designed to provide book marketing tactics for writers and currently has 45,000 subscribers. Dave is also the one who answers the contact page questions himself directly. We also discussed the importance of marketing and writing your book simultaneously.

Most authors will wait to market until they are done writing or almost done writing. If you do it simultaneously, not only are you increasing your marketing but you will likely create a better product as well. Dave also is a big advocate of paying it forward so if his works helps you, he asks you to pay it forward for others. You can connect with Dave and Kindlepreneur at www.kindlepreneur.com. If you want more information on Laura Powers, you can go to her website www.laurapowers.net. You can also find updates on the Podcast by following the Write Hot Podcast on Facebook.

Money Monster posts too many losses in its indictment of Wall Street.

Money Monster would like to be a shrewd dissertation about contemporary America, similar to 1970's classics like Dog Day Afternoon and Network were in their time. Unfortunately, the script here is too predictable and its characters two-dimensional. Jodie Foster directs George Clooney and Julia Roberts in the story of a financial cable show host who's taken hostage on air by an irate investor (Jack O'Connell) who lost his shirt. That's a timely premise, what with all the issues concerning Wall Street these days, but it squanders the opportunity with rudimentary flaws.

The story plays out in real time, but its ticking clock is abandoned with half an hour left. Most of the supporting characters are woefully underwritten. And even its villain is nothing more than a greedy CEO. How cliché. The Big Short indicted the whole broken economic system, but this popcorn thriller doesn't come close to that film's sting. It's not a bad investment for two hours at the Cineplex, but it should have been something much more worthy.

Unique and fresh. Let's dig in to why those two words are so important where a pitch is concerned. First, you all know what a logline is, yeah? I assume so, but if you don't, you're in the right place. A logline is basically a written form of a pitch. It's a way for a producer to read a short and quick version of your project's summary within one sentence. When I'm reaching out to producers on behalf of the writers in our Development Program, for example, I'm sending along loglines for those producers to consider. They read through a bunch of them, decide on whether or not any of them spark interest, and then they request the script. All based on the logline. So in a lot of ways, your foot in the door is the logline, or in other words, your pitch. You can see why I'm spending so much time building this episode up and hitting all of the conceptual points first. I can't stress enough how important it is for you to be able to nail a pitch, and by "nail" I mean, prove to whomever is listening that you know how to tell a story. Maybe we can start there, really. A story.

What is a story, really? Have you ever really tried to define what a story is? To actually sit down and come up with your own definition? We all assume we understand what that word means, "story", but have we really given it much thought? I'll break it down for you, and hopefully you can get a better sense of it too. It starts with purpose. What's the purpose of a story? Ultimately, it's to entertain in some way, shape, or form. I could dive in to the meaning of the word "entertain" too, but let's not go off on too much of a tangent here. A story is also a way to inform. Here is information I have to share, let's share it with others. We, as screenwriters though, are not journalists delivering a non-biased relay of information or news. We're not simply telling someone that something happened. That's just information. Information turns into entertainment when it is told as a story. So... story is both information and entertainment. Fine. Basic. Your eyes are probably glazing over as I speak and wondering when they hell I'm going to just get on with it. Here we go... 

SYS Episode #139

Chad L Scheifele

An excerpt from Jacob Krueger's podcast: 

"...This is a series I've been wanting to talk about for a very long time. And we're going to do so from a different perspective than we usually do when we talk about TV series.

Oftentimes on this podcast, when we've spoken about series we've talked about big picture stuff. We've talked about theme and engine and structure. But today, what we're going to do is zoom in really close on one particular episode.

We're going to look at Season 3 Episode 5, and we're going to break it down to its fundamental craft elements: the way that the scenes are actually constructed."

The first rule of superhero movies that every single person knows is that your super hero is supposed to be a super good guy.

Superman: yeah, he's a good guy. Spiderman: sweet kid, good guy. Batman: a little dark, good guy. Thor: a very good guy. The Incredible Hulk may have a problem with anger, but deep down he's a really good guy. And Ironman may have a bit of an ego problem, but at the end of the day he's a good guy, too. The world of superheroes is populated by good guys facing down pure evil villains.

And what's wonderful about Deadpool is that its main character gives the big ole' finger to the entire notion of the superhero as the perfect good guy character. And, in doing so, Deadpool hopefully puts the last nail in the coffin of the whole Save the Cat formula: this notion that if the audience is going to love your main character he/she needs to be saving kitty cats out of trees and doing nice things for people.

That's not to say that Deadpool is a bad guy. He's a flawed guy a violent guy, a shallow guy, an annoyingly verbose guy with a hell of a lot of attitude. He's also a guy driven by love, but not driven by the love of the perfect girl next store. He's driven for the love of a prostitute who's just as messed up as he is.

Deadpool starts the movie as a super badass, work-for-hire hitman. He may have a heart of gold but definitely lives on the darker side of things. He comes from a really messed up childhood. He's petty, and selfish, and mostly self-interested, and not too deep. He does have a little bit of a soft spot: he's not an evil guy. His first assignment is protecting a girl who's being stalked.

But he's certainly not the prototypical hero we're used to seeing.

When we watch the origin stories of superheroes, we're generally watching an A to Z story. The story of a character who changes from being the dopey, put-upon, powerless, low-self-esteem dude who changes into the hero with complete power.

Of course that's a compensation fantasy for a lot of people. A lot of us feel like we're weak, or not as strong as we wish we could be. That we can't stand up for ourselves in the way we wish we could. That we can't quite be the heroes that we'd like to imagine ourselves as being.

So this is not the compensation fantasy story we're used to seeing in superhero movies of the weak kid made good. It's not the coming of age story of the guy who finally grows up. It's not the story of the wealthy child whose parents die at a young age and now he must become the Batman.

This is a different kind of story. And that doesn't mean that the character doesn't go through a huge change, because he certainly does. He goes through a change in relation to his own ego and his own vanity.

Ultimately Deadpool's journey is to get over his obsession with his looks, so he can finally be with the girl that he loves.

Deadpool's not fighting to save the world. Deadpool's not fighting to prevent the evil Ajax from filling the universe with superhuman mercenaries. Deadpool doesn't give a shit about all that. Deadpool only cares about getting his face back so he can get his girl back.

This is not exactly the noble selfless enterprise we're used to seeing in superhero movies. And yet when Deadpool does it, we're able to root for him entirely. Why?

There's an idea that the thing that makes us care about characters is how nice they are. But that just ain't true.

The truth of the matter is nice characters finish last. That doesn't mean you can't write a nice character. There are many nice characters that I've really enjoyed spending time with in movies. I love the Jon Favreau character in Chef, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, all the characters of Toy Story. Really good characters lovable characters.

But characters are also people, and the truth of the matter is there are a lot of people in the world who are flawed in wonderful, broken, and beautiful ways. You have a friend who's an asshole. And you love that friend even though they're an asshole. You have a friend who's unreliable. You have a friend who's selfish. You have a friend who's jealous. And you love these people. You love these people because you get these people.

And sometimes it's easier to get these people, who show us not just their good side but also their bad side.

The way that characters show us who they are is through a very, very simple concept. And if you understand this simple concept we will follow pretty much any character. We will follow Deadpool as happily as we will follow Leo's character in The Revenant. We will follow Deadpool just as happily as well follow a totally morally upright character like Captain America or Thor.

We will follow Deadpool because his want is super clear. Because we understand exactly what he wants. We understand exactly how he's trying to get it. We understand exactly why it's so darn hard. This becomes the backbone of Deadpool's story. This is what allows us to connect with him.

Like I said, at the beginning Deadpool doesn't break every rule. There is a saying by the great writer William Goldman that a commercial movie tells us the lie that we want to believe, whereas an independent movie tells us the truth we don't want to believe.

Now back in the day when William Goldman said this, it was probably true. But in today‘s era of movie making, the meaning of this statement has changed. And as a movie like Deadpool shows us, in today's market a commercial movie can tell us the TRUTH we want to believe and an independent movie can tell us the truth that we don't..."