I Can't Wait To Read His Story

Of all the lame advice given to young authors, "write what you know" is up there at the top. If everyone did that we wouldn't have the works of Jules Verne, or St. Exupery's The Little Prince. Better advice, I think, is write what you dream about. A producer I knew had done a film about a karate guy in South Africa, and it was successful enough that he wanted to produce a sequel. I was asked to come in and pitch story ideas. For days I wracked my brain, trying to figure out something I knew about that could lend itself to South Africa and karate. Came the day of the pitch and I was still blank. While I was driving to the meeting I thought of The Magnificen Seven, and with that as inspiration I hastily cobbled together in my mind the outlines of a possible story in which a guy gathers together some friends to outwit a baddie. Facing the producer and his henchmen, I began the pitch. "Think Magnificent Seven," I said, and without hesitation everyone present shouted, "yes, that's it!" Without saying another word, I got the deal. (It's called Kill and Kill Again, and turned out to be the 2nd top grossing picture in the country at the time of it's release. Go figure.)