Limelight burns more than Twilight

There's a great interview with Stephanie Meyer in Entertainment Weekly's Web site. The best-selling author of the Twilight series of teen vampire love said that being this successful -- first three books becoming movies, fans clamoring for more writing -- has blocked her on the project.

Everyone now is in the driver's seat, where they can make judgment calls. ''Well, I think this should happen, I think she should do this.'' I do not feel alone with the manuscript. And I cannot write when I don't feel alone. So my goal is to go for, like, I don't know, two years without ever hearing the words Midnight Sun. And once I'm pretty sure that everyone's forgotten about it, I think I'll be able to get to the place where I'm alone with it again. Then I'll be able to sneak in and work on it again.

While you work on your first book, you can be alone. But once a book hits with the splash that Twilight gave to Meyer, you'll never be alone again. This is the business side of writing, the one that creates fans, makes you a celebrity and rich. Meyer is about the same age as J.K. Rowling was when Harry Potter ascended. But the Twilight empire has emerged much faster (some say the writing is a little under-baked) and this is Meyer's first dance in the limelight. She talks of a new project she wants to work on that revolves around mermaids. You can look back at the movie careers of Quentin Tarantino, Orson Wells, even Kevin Smith after Clerks to see the challenge. The limelight was so hot that their second act was where the twilight fell on them.

You can climb back to the light, but it helps to be able to foresake the fame and quiet all those voices. An artist has to stay true to their own voice. If not, then your romance in the world of vampires might be dead to you.

As for waiting two years to release the next installment of Twilight, it's a period where her publisher gets to prove its faith. They may need to release an imperfect Twilight book to be able to let Meyer cast off the yoke of Edward and friends. Two years is an eternity for an impatient publisher. Time means something different to the undead, though. Last week Meyer was looking toward the movie screen, not the word processing screen. Her blog reported:

We only have to wait 71 more days until New Moon the movie hits theaters! In case you don't want to have to count the days on your calendar (like I just did) every time you think about Edward and Jacob, I've added a countdown widget to the New Moon Movie page

How hot is Twilight's limelight? Hot enough to withstand the wisecracks and endure self-parody. On Facebook you can find a group called Because I Read Twilight I Have Unrealistic Expectations in Men

Of course, that should be "expectations of men," but it's only English written by 266,000 fans in the group. This is fame and fun we're witnessing. And after 29 million copies sold, it would seem we're all witnessing.

Wild about Wilder

Movies can teach all of us a lot about story. Billy Wilder, legendary film director, won three Oscars for his screenplays in a storied career. (Two more for direction; like many great screenwriters, he took command of his stories once he got behind the camera.) The Wikipedia entry on him says he was so successful because

Wilder's directoral choices reflected his belief in the primacy of writing. He avoided the exuberant cinematography of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles because, in Wilder's opinion, shots that called attention to themselves would distract the audience from the story. Wilder's pictures have tight plotting and memorable dialogue.

Wilder's best storytelling is all over the map in subject matter, from the wordplay screwball comedy in Ball of Fire to the film noir groundbreaker Double Indemnity to the grit of Hollywood in Sunset Boulevard. Most serious? Alcoholism, in The Lost Weekend, which earned him two of those Oscars. And then there's Some Like it Hot, where he introduced the world of 1959 to the humor of cross-dressing. A hidden gem is Ace in the Hole, where Kirk Douglas growls his way through a media circus of his own creation: he's a reporter -- like Wilder once was -- trying to get back into a $1,000 a week job.

You can see a succinct 90 seconds of his story theory in a film clip on the NPR Web site (Real Player is required). Wilder died in 2002, but before he moved on to the next level of storytelling he left behind his 10 rules of story; nearly all of them can be applied to genre, literature or movies.

(As told to Cameron Crowe:)

1. The audience is fickle.

2. Grab 'em by the throat and never let 'em go.

3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.

4. Know where you’re going.

5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.

7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They'll love you forever.

8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.

9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.

10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then -- that's it. Don’t hang around.