JPF Home Page Forums General Messages New Member Introductions & Helping Hands Some things I've learned here

Most actors who portray serial killers over play them. They are generally non-descript everyday types you'd rarely pay attention to rather than the menacing types in TV and Movies. It's how they get away with it so long (and why most never get caught.. the number of unsolved murders in the USA is staggering).

As for Sci-Fi, that's a great point... for my argument. What we HAVE learned about Mars is that it's a fairly benign planet which might have had life millions of years ago, but which certainly doesn't have little green men. So an actor playing one has an easy job... they can act like anything and be correct since there's nothing to compare it too. Not true of female angst music. Phonies are exposed quickly.

I had already said that co-writing with someone experienced in those things is certainly a good approach to write about topics you have no experience with. Seasoned writers can latch onto just about any life experience and fashion it into a strong song with the help of someone who lived it. Sometimes research can work, but in my opinion in a passion explosion like You Outta Know I think research would be less effective unless you were really in tune with it. One of the big appeals was how far it pushed the reality boundaries on mainstream radio even though some beeps were heard depending on the market. It seems far less that passion could have been faked without anyone involved ever having been in her shoes. Those with that much talent (and there are certainly some who could do it) are already getting cuts. Authors and screenwriters face the same challenges and it's why their communities have the same issues this one does. Most screenwriters don't write diverse characters all that well. They have the benefit of having both actresses and directors and other staff to help bring the reality to life fortunately. Music has an overload of the real thing clogging up the market. But what the market does not have is something only you can bring from your own life. If you have the talent to write your own experiences in a commercially desirable way, you'll find a market. But that's been a fundamental point here since day 1.

Brian