Admit the glaring licenses you have taken that you think most folks would never notice.
I wrote a screenplay set at an Army Air Force Base in WWII, and there must be at least ten details that I glossed over, fudged, that all but the guys and gals that were there would never notice.
I had the commanding officer’s Adjutant basically do his own job as well as that of the Ground Executive Officer and the Air Executive Officer. Easier to do that than clutter up the screen with characters that have two or three lines then disappear.
The CO’s Driver has absolutely no other function, though most of the time, he/she would also be a clerk/typist sort.
I have one character refer to Eisenhower’s relationship with his female driver (Kay Something-the-other), though I doubt there were even rumors floating around about it outside of upper echelons.
So, come clean, fellow writers. Cop to your worst. That way when I read your novels, stories, what-have-you, I can appear all-knowing to my friends.
Sir
Mods, I think this is a “poll,” rather than a GQ, but it’s also mundane, but maybe not pointless. Who knows?
I always write a character in my screenplays that I’ll play in a cameo. In one, it’s a bookstore clerk, in another it’s a receptionist in an office building. Very little acting, maybe one or two lines of dialogue. Just enough to get me into the film.
In my prose, the characters that seem to be autobiographical are not, whereas the made-up-seeming ones are.
The narrator of my abortive first novel is the literalization of what I find attractive in a woman. Incidentally, it was the feminization of myself, too. Needless to say, it was fun writing from her POV.
I played hell with South Florida geography in my debut screenplay, Tips.
My second screenplay is set in an anonymous east-coast city, but it’s really Washington.
The third screenplay doesn’t make sense until the second time you read it, at which point the ending is foreshadowed from the first act.
Sex scenes in my writing are very hot and heavy when I’m not in a relationship when I write those scenes, and are very romantic/ordinary when I am.
I do, also, Montfort, though I never give “myself” lines, nor do I seriously dwell on it, i. e., I know it would probably never happen. I always have images of Pee-Wee Herman in his cameo in the movie within “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure”: Voice dubbed badly, unable to stop glancing at the camera. I love/hate ubiqitous, unimaginatie credit names, so I usually write myself in as “Bearded Redneck At Door,” or something to that effect. Of course, the redneck" portion is total artistic license.