Reading from Peloponnesia-my novel publi

Posted: 09/07/2011 | Author: Tom | Filed under: Uncategorized | Modify: Edit | Leave a commentReading from Peloponnesia-my novel published this Fall-about a producer with dementia & a script he owns – SundayPM RuskinTheaterSantaMonica

PREP: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT CLASS STARTS

Posted: 08/17/2011 | Author: Tom | Filed under: Uncategorized | Modify: Edit | Leave a commentPREP: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT CLASS STARTS 8/22
This two week burst of lectures with amazing breakdowns of the character
work in Nolan’s Batman movies is vintage Scott Myers gointothestory.com
approach to screenwriting. I love channeling Scott’s presentation of
these issues. I step up with my own take on the craft work. Character
is everything. Great story requires it. And if we ask the right
questions about our characters, if we realize the essential roles
different paradigms of characters perform in our scripts, it allows us
to create living, breathing, full blooded characters that jump off the
page. This walk through the theory of characters can be a game
changer. The class starts Monday, August 22. It is a great way to
supercharge your Autumn writing and help get that draft where you want
it by the end of the year.

MY PREP CLASS AT SCREENWRITINGMASTERCLASS.COM

Posted: 05/24/2011 | Author: Tom | Filed under: Uncategorized | Modify: Edit | Leave a commentStart a new script project now. My online Prep Class at Screenwritingmasterclass.com starts May 30. I love it. Exciting 6 week course gets writers to the heart of their new script project.

The Death of the Book

Posted: 04/20/2011 | Author: Tom | Filed under: Uncategorized | Modify: Edit | Leave a commentlareviewofbooks:

Ben Ehrenreich

Image: Dirty Book #1 © Tom Benedek 2011

Pity the book.  It’s dead again.  Last I checked, Googling “death of the book” produced 11.8 million matches.  The day before it was 11.6 milion.  It’s getting unseemly.  Books were once such handsome things.  Suddenly they seem clunky,  heavy, almost fleshy in their gross materiality.  Their pages grow brittle.  Their ink fades.  Their spines collapse.  They are so pitiful, they might as well be human.

The emphasis shifts with each telling, but every writer, editor, publisher, bookseller, and half-attentive reader knows the fundamental story.  After centuries of steady climbing, book sales leveled off towards the end of  the 1900s.  Basic literacy began to plummet.  As if television and Reaganomics were not danger enough, some egghead lunatics went and  built a web—a web!—out of nothing but electrons.  It proved a sneaky and seductive monster.  Straight to our offices and living rooms, the web delivered chicken recipes, weather forecasts, pornography, the cutest kitten videos the world had ever seen.  But while we were distracted by these glittering gifts, the internet conspired to snare our friend the book, to smother it.

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Photograph from Peloponesia: A Tortured Narrative in the Los Angeles Review of Books

Posted: 04/18/2011 | Author: Tom | Filed under: Uncategorized | Modify: Edit | Leave a commenthttp://lareviewofbooks.tumblr.com/

My Novel, Peloponesia, is in the LA Review of Books – in manuscript form, covered with dirt. (The photograph is called Dirty Book #1.)  Easy to decipher.  Hard to read the words.  Available on Amazon and at a book store near you later this year.