"Dogfooding," A Word I Can Get Behind.

Much thanks to the great John August, a practicing screenwriter who isn't afraid to share the nuts and bolts of storytelling. He put up a post about "Dogfooding" and its "close cousin," which he refers to as "scratching your own itch." In his words:

If you’re writing a movie you yourself wouldn’t buy a ticket to see, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

It's tempting, when writing books, just to throw stuff in there to meet a contractual word count, or to vomit into the word processor in order to produce some letters that will go in between covers. But we must always fight the temptation and instead work to produce something we ourselves would value.

August's advice goes for any story you're telling, whether it be in fiction, nonfiction, or face-to-face. Heck, even the story you're telling with your life. Make it worthwhile, or you're wasting everyone's time.

FYI: The full post can be found here.

I'm Huge In Chattanooga.

I did an interview last week with Clint Cooper from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, and it turned into this really nice piece about The Soul of Spider-Man.

An excerpt:

The third movie, Palmer said, makes a good catalyst to talk about the nature of sin.

"It's the idea," he said, "that sin is not really deciding purposely to be evil or anti-God but to be self-oriented."

When an extra-terrestrial symbiote attaches itself to Peter in "Spider-Man 3," an already more confident Peter Parker becomes more vengeful, selfish and arrogant.

Similarly Christians, according to the author, decide they know what's best for themselves and determine if something simply feels right -- not considering the consequences -- they should do it.

My favorite part is the "according to the author" aside in that last paragraph. It just made me chuckle.

Anyway, thanks to Clint Cooper for the pub.