Writer in Residence

Hey Doggies,

So it’s our last blog on the dog.  Tristan and I have loved being here and getting to interact with all you avid readers and literary lovers.  Remember to enter our writing competition and we hope you all love reading ITS YR LIFE.  We’d love your feedback on the book so feel free to email us at Tristan’s website www.tristanbancks.com

So how does a Melbourne girl finish up on a cool site like this?  As many a parent has told a kid, leave a place looking better than when you left it…..hmmm, well, what does that mean for me?  How do I leave this website better than when I got here?  I can’t, it’s already very cool.  So instead, I’ll leave a pearl of wisdom.  If you want to be an artist, whether it be a writer, actor, director, painter, comedian, singer or musician, the one thing you should always remember is to launch yourself into a project with your soul gushing!  All great projects are filled with heartfelt intention.  If you love your project and it’s coming from the depths of your being, you’ll no doubt create something amazing.  You just have to have the guts to expose that passionate part of yourself.  

And just because you are currently in school or a job that’s not your dream, doesn’t mean you can’t start working on your goal.  If you want to write a book, write it!  If you want to paint, paint!  If you want to make a movie like Sim in ITS YR LIFE, grab a camera and start shooting.  The only person who is stopping you is you.  Go for it.  Check out these Aussie artists who took a leap into the unknown and followed their passion:

Cool Aussie Photographer Sally Flegg

Very funny Aussie comedian, Simon Kennedy

The talented playwright Brendan Cowell

Matt Reeder the Aussie film producer and actor

That’s it from Tristan and I.  Feel free to check out our websites for up and coming projects.

Best, Tempany!

www.tempanydeckert.com 

www.tristanbancks.com

Hey

This is my last post for the month (Tomorrow Temp will announce the next DogBlogger). Thanks so much for giving me my first real blogging adventure. I want to finish up with some stuff on how acting, screenwriting and filmmaking skills can help you as an author, things I picked up on other people’s sets and making short movies of my own like Soar, The New Boots and Change the World in Five Minutes.

Here are my six top tips:

1. ‘Show, don’t tell.’ Rather than having a character recount how they felt when something happened, drop us, the reader, into the scene and show us the event unfolding. Let us feel the adrenaline and emotion first hand. Screenwriters are very good at this.

2. Create a Soundtrack for your book. If your book was a movie, what would the soundtrack be like? I create a playlist for each book and listen to it as I write. It dictates the mood of my book. You can check out the soundtrack for Mac Slater, Coolhunter 2: I Heart NY here if you have itunes.

3. Hone your ‘ear’. They say that writers who create good dialogue have a ‘good ear’, which means they’re always listening to how people really speak. Check out the ‘Overheard in New York’ site for great dialogue from the streets of NYC and start jotting your own snippets that you hear on your travels.

4. Do Pre-Vis! Filmmakers are big on Pre-Visualisation. Filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino don’t step onto a set until they’ve seen the whole movie play through in their mind. When I’m writing a book, I stick images up around my workspace, make scrapbooks and slide shows that help me ’see’ my story as I write On it’s yr life, those images ended up in the book!

5. Read ‘Story’ by Robert McKee (at most bookstores). It has been the screenwriter’s ‘bible’ for the last ten years or so and it’ll teach you HEAPS about structure in a really easily-readable way.

6. Find out what your characters want. Actors do this. They find a simple objective and they try to get that thing from the other character in the scene. If the two characters in your book want opposing things, that’s conflict and drama.

So, that’s it! Here’s a shot of me looking pitiful on the set of Dust, a film I worked on as an actor for an amazing Australian filmmaker, Ivan Sen. This was after a fight and a major dust storm (created by giant wind turbines) on a cottonfield out in western NSW.

A big shout out to Laura, Bianca, Andy, Ken, Shel, James, Alison, Jessica, Morgan, Sarah, Zoe, Esther, Jack, Luna, Saba, Brian, Dee, Kerry, Tempany and the rest of y’all for adding comments and ideas over the past month. A blog like this only survives on the strengths of its contributors!

Best,

Tristan.

www.tristanbancks.com

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Latest Reviews of IT’S YR LIFE:

Persnickety Snark

The Reading Stack

Later in the day, more on how acting and filmmaking impact on your work as an author!

Hey Canines,

Well firstly, how cool was Tristan’s last blog?  I really want one of those Mos Def T-Shirts.  That is just out of control cool.  I really like Mos Def too.  Did anyone see him in the film, BE KIND REWIND?  Very funny.  The director of that film, Michel Gondry uses a lot of his dreams to make his art.  He has a lot of dreams about giant hands and so in all his music videos or films he includes giant hands.  Bizarre, huh?

So how did my career as an actor influence my writing?  I don’t know about other writers, but when I write, I see a mini film in my head and I just write it down.  I’m not sure if that is how everyone writes but that’s certainly what happens to me.  After reading so many film and TV scripts, I often think of moments in my books as scenes!  I few times I’ve said to my editor, ‘in this scene’….which is a little bit embarrassing!!

As I write I often feel the character’s emotions which is how you feel when you act.  The energy and pace of your writing changes depending on the emotion and drama of the scene - sorry, moment and going through the emotions of your character whether it be in acting or writing, often informs you of where the character wants to head next.  You don’t have to pre-plan it, it just happens organically through the flow of the emotion.

My favourite part of writing books, plays and screenplays is that I get to play ALL the characters instead of just one.  Which as an actor I will never have the chance to do.  So that is quite a luxury.  When you write or read books, do you hear different voices for different characters in your head?  Do they smell differently?  Do they move differently?  Of course.  Our imaginations are unlimited.  When you let your imagination go, anything is possible.  

I just finished my animated TV scripts today, so I’m off to celebrate!  Yay!  Here’s a photo of me on a set.  Yes, my character just got killed.  Don’t worry, it’s fake blood.  That’s the make-up artist applying it.

Three things that colour my world right now:

1. Civilian Space Travel (Cool animated vid of first sub-orbital civilian spaceflight here.)

2. Zen Buddhism - I had a guitar lesson the other night from a buddhist, motorbike-riding  geologist and he reminded me of some stuff on ‘no-mind’, staying present, getting out of my head and into the moment. And he taught me ‘C’ and ‘G’. Fingers are still sore from steel strings.

3. Rapper, Mos Def releasing his latest album on a t-shirt. I dig anyone who’s working out ways to take the music / book / movie revolution in new directions.

Three things that inspired the writing of it’s yr life:

1. Michael Franti & Spearhead album Stay Human (Listen here)

2. Freegan website freegan.info - peeps changing the world by not buying stuff they don’t need.

3. ‘Designer Kidnapping’ - Paying someone to kidnap you. Weird and wrong but seriously intriguing.

Hey Temp, can you talk a little in the next post about how your background in film and TV has influenced your work as an author?

T

www.tristanbancks.com

www.itsyrlifebook.com

Hey Pups and Poodles,

In my writing, I use whatever is around me to inspire and shape my character’s world.  In ITS YR LIFE, nearly everything that was happening to Milla and Sim was happening to Tristan and I in various ways and forms.  

Today while I was reading the paper I found some cool characters for my next book.  While walking along the beach in Sydney I was inspired by the smells and sounds and the purple clouds that hung over the surfers.

What’s going on in your life that inspires your writing?  What art, music, TV, film and books shape who you are?  Currently I’m listening to Lily Allen’s latest album,

I just read about this lady in Sydney, Anna-Wili Highfield who makes horse and owl sculptures out of paper

and I just finished the v cool book, THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH.

Everything we experience as humans can be used in our art.  Some kids think they are too young to have any good stories to tell, but that’s not true.  Everyone has a good story going on in their lives.  You just have to be brave enough to let it out.  Maybe what inspires you right now will inspire you to enter our writing comp?

What are three things that currently shape your world?  Tristan and I would love to hear them.  Temp

I’m on deadline today for a short story I’m writing. A bunch of authors were given a photograph and we had to write something inspired by it, NAPLAN-style.

I like the story that’s evolved. It’s kind of creepy and engaging and I like the characters and world and tone. (It feels like The Verve track, Appalachian Springs, which I’ve been listening to on repeat while writing.) But I’m stuck on the final line. I’ve written it twenty times. And the problem is, when the final line isn’t working, it suggests that maybe other things aren’t working further up the chain.

When Temp and I were in Sydney earlier in the week she said that she’s often disappointed by endings. How ‘bout you? What are your fave book endings? What makes for a great ending? And, when you write, are you good with endings or do you suck?

Be good to hear. And send me good vibes. Deadline’s in a few hours.

Tristan.

Just Finished: Paper Towns, John Green (What did y’all think of the ending?)

About to Dive Into: Letters to Leonardo, forthcoming book by Dee White

Watching: Entourage, series 4.

www.tristanbancks.com

Hey Dogoonas (hmm, running out of dog words),

Hope you all saw the link to our writing competition that Tristan posted at the end of the last blog.  We’d love for you to enter.  I’ve got a feeling there’s going to be lots of fascinating entries.  Write away!  

So Tristan and I have been running around doing press and signing books.  If you want to get a signed copy of our book ITS YR LIFE, go check out Abbey’s, Kinokuniya and Dymocks in Sydney’s CBD or Bloomin’ Books in Caringbah, NSW.

I loved finding out who your favourite authors are.  There are so many cool books to check out right now.  I was salivating looking at all the new titles that have just come out.  So many great books and not enough hours in the day to read them all.  

About to dig in to THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH which was recommended to me by the lovely Allyx over at Kinokuniya bookstore in the city.  Can’t wait!  

It was so great to see Tristan after all these years.  Still can’t quite believe that we wrote a book together without having seen each other for roughly 13 years.  How crazy is that?  But now he’s back on a plane so we will be back to hanging out via the web.  Just like our characters in ITS YR LIFE.   Oh dear.  But, that’s life. 

These are the last group of kids in one of my writing workshops.  They all had really different and unique styles, from horror/fantasy, comedy, drama and absurdism.  One time I made them all try a new style and the results were amazing.  They only thought they were good at one type of writing, but that exercise proved them all wrong!  At the end of the workshop they all wrote a special piece and I had professional actors from shows like CSI, MAD TV, WILL AND GRACE and NARUTO that read them out loud at a presentation night.  It was very cool.  

Look forward to reading your comp entries, Temp

So, we’re asking you to write a micro-story based on the writing process we used for IT’S YR LIFE. We’d love you to write a story as a series of emails or IMs between two characters. You have to tell your story in just eight messages (four from each character) of three or four lines each message. You can either write it by yourself or with a writing partner. Full deets are at www.itsyrlifebook.com

It’s open to any Australian resident under eighteen. The winner will have their entry published over at www.itsyrlifebook.com and two hours of writing advice and feedback from Temp and I.

You can email us the story or you can submit it right here on the Dog Blog (but if you submit via the Dog, be sure to e us your contact details separately.)

Good luck! Can’t wait to read what you come up with.

Check Out: Six word stories at www.smithteens.com (your life in six words).

Watching: Where the Wild Things Are trailer

Hey Canines and Teen Wolves,

This week Tristan and I do press for ITS YR LIFE.  Unfortunately, the Morning Show got cancelled, so if you are at school and unable to watch, fear not, we will not be on!!  (I’m intrigued to see who is though…).

We’re going to go in to some cool magazine offices and do interviews and photo shoots, always fun to talk about writing and share your work with the world - and get to dress up a bit, as I usually do my writing in my PJs.  I realized I don’t love skype meetings cause it means you have to get out of your jammies!!  

I was thinking about what T was saying with Flow, TED lectures, youtube links, twittering and it took me back to a cool book I read a couple of years ago called SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS by Marisha Pessl.  It’s about a teenager who is pretty much a genius, and whenever she talks about stuff going on in her life, she adds book titles that have similar topics and themes.  It’s pretty amazing and it gives you an incredible reading list of great books to go grab.  I loved it.  It’s also a murder mystery, thriller and romance.  I’m not sure if it’s classified young adult but regardless, it’s a v cool read.  (Oh, and it also has a super cool website - click the link above to check it out).

But how great is it when books not only take you on a fictional adventure, but give you little goodies between the lines.  ITS YR LIFE gives you cool websites and info links about interesting stuff.  What other books provide you with that added zing?  I’d love to hear of some great ones you guys have found.

Tomorrow we do interviews at TV WEEK, NEW IDEA and TV HITS.  I wonder what questions they will ask us about our book?  If you could ask your favourite author any question, what would it be?  Send us the q’s, I want to hear them and find out who your fave authors are!!  Better go soak up the Sydney sun, it’s so nice to be out of LA!!!  ?