What is your writing process?
For me, every story begins with “what if?”. That is such a truism for most writers that it sounds like a cliché. But it’s not. You truly need to let the dog off the leash and see where he goes, what tree he wants to sniff, what squirrel he wants to chase, what fire hydrant he wants to mark as his own. That’s what the dog’s story becomes and that’s what a writer does. He lets his imaginary dog off the leash and follows it, chasing after all the ‘what ifs’ his characters face in the course of a story. What if the hero is arrested based on bogus clues, but what if he really is guilty of the crime? What if the heroine has an affair but is so guilt ridden she tries to commit suicide, only to find out she was successful and now has to bargain in the next world for a second chance in this one?
Years ago I worked in advertising and there were two clichés that were nevertheless true. “Let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes” and “Let’s follow it and see what it eats.” The first might seem more appropriate after the story is written and you can gauge an audience’s or a readership’s reaction to the material, but the very first person to react to the story is the writer him or herself. When the writer follows the thread of a story to see where it’s going – or in effect, what it eats – he or she has to stop along the way and reread what he or she has run up the flagpole. If the writer can’t salute it then he or she has to back up and find where the tale went off the tracks and fix it. At that point the process of ‘what if’ becomes “then what?” When you start with “what if” there is an infinite number of possible answers, and when you choose one answer, you create a narrower set of possible directions a story can take until you’ve posited the final “what if” which will have a very limited number of possible answers. The hero lives or he dies. The villain is punished or he escapes, the word ends or it doesn’t.
David Flynn has worked for
as a writer and actor (under the screen name Patrick Flynne) and is a
member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of
Television and Radio Artists (SAG/AFTRA). He has appeared in
numerous motion pictures, both studio and independent productions,
and in the daytime series, All My Children, Another World, Guiding
Light and Loving and as the ongoing character Representative
Ingersoll in videos for The Onion.
He has also performed as a
spokesperson in numerous industrial films and television commercials,
as a voiceover artist in radio broadcast commercials and as an
English language narrator, editor and writer for several series on
Ebru-TV, a Turkish company currently broadcasting on the Internet.
David has written 18
screenplays, including THE WAR CHANNEL, a Bronze Award Winner for
Best Dramatic Screenplay at the Worldfest/Houston International Film
Festival. This script was optioned by the Auerbach Company at
Columbia TriStar Television. He has also co-authored two
screenplays, one a Silver Award Winner for Best Dramatic Screenplay
at Worldfest.
Under its original title,
THE BRIDE OF DREAMS, the screenplay for THE UNDYING was one of
fifteen semifinalists (out of a total of 3900 entrants) for a Nicholl
Fellowship, a screenwriting competition sponsored by the American
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). The Nicholl is
considered to be the most prestigious screenwriting competition in
the industry.
His novel THE WHISPER MAN
is the first in a series of mysteries that focus on unusual crimes
and criminals in New York City.
Author Links –
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HTEW8CS
Book Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Amazon
Release Date: Jan 3, 2014
Buy Link(s):
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HTEW8CS
Book Description: Sex,
vanity and psychology are the weapons David Barry uses as he kills
for money in THE WHISPER MAN.
David's prey - and profit
- are the wealthy of New York City,
with each murder crafted to
look like a suicide, an accident or the work of another, but always
with the goal of increasing David's balance sheet. When a close
friend of Manhattan ADA Joseph Kane dies at the
apparent hand of
his wife, Kane refuses to believe in her guilt. He investigates the
recent deaths of several prominent and wealthy New Yorkers and
decides there may be an undiscovered killer behind them.
Kane develops a prime
suspect and triggers a battle of wits with the brilliant and
arrogant
David Barry who must kill again, not for profit this time but to
protect his identity. The jealousy of Kane's insecure wife and
conflicts with his boss become the tools David will use to destroy
his adversary.
Excerpt:
The
moment after the crash was filled with screeching tires as following
vehicles tried to stop or avoid the two ruined cars. If traffic were
heavier it might have been a three or four car pile up but since the
street was fairly quiet, no other vehicle added to the destruction.
The two cars had struck each other on the right front fenders,
leaving the drivers’ sides untouched. Behind the now deflating
airbag Per Arnudssen sat in shock. He did not consciously register
the fact that the driver’s door on the Cadillac was swinging open
and the driver was stepping out.
Later,
witnesses at the scene would describe the young Latino with the
greasy hair under the tightly tied “do-rag” who ran from the
scene of the accident. They would describe the puffy jacket and
hoodie he was wearing, the baggy jeans and the large Nikes with the
shoelaces loosely tied in the street fashion of the day. They would
point north on Eleventh Avenue and east on 29th Street where they saw
him run. It all happened so quickly and so unexpectedly. That was
all the Police would have to go on.
#
The
driver of the Cadillac stopped running as he turned onto 30th Street
after crossing Ninth Avenue. He slowed his pace to a street swagger
until he reached the narrow opening between two buildings. He
glanced around quickly before slipping into the alley. Sure that he
was not being observed, he stripped off the jacket and the hoodie and
threw them on top of a garbage can. Next he slipped off the oversize
sneakers and the baggy jeans, and they followed the jacket onto the
garbage can. He was confident that within a couple of hours they
would be found by a bum or an addict and sold to someone else for the
price of a few hours of diminished consciousness. Recycled into the
city’s economy, they would never be identified as the clothes of a
hit and run driver.
Underneath
the Nikes he wore slender white tennis shoes. Finally, he slipped
the do-rag from his head and used it to wipe the grease from his face
and ditched it in a different trash can. David Barry, wearing a
buttoned down shirt, crew neck sweater, khakis and an attitude of
innocence, walked out of the alley and over toward Eighth Avenue.
David
decided that his plan had gone so well that he would take a leisurely
stroll back to the scene of the accident and look over his handiwork
before going out for dinner. By the time he reached 26th Street, a
considerable crowd had gathered and was being held back on the south
side of 27th Street. He joined the crowd and slowly worked his way
to the front of the group. He watched the actions of the Police and
the EMT team for about ten minutes before finally deciding on Thai
food.
Giveaway:
1 DVD of The Undying, written and produced by Author, David Flynn
The
Undying is a 2011 American supernatural romantic thriller written by
David M. Flynn and
Steven Peros and directed by Steven Peros. The
film stars Robin Weigert, Anthony Carrigan, Wes
Studi, Jay O.
Sanders, and Sybil Temtchine. Wikipedia
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