What to Do, What to Do

You know I can't resist trying to help you, but you don't want my honest help. I could put forth my best effort to draft a good synopsis for you, but you will toss it aside and say it's no good. Why? Because you didn't write it. Because you only want me to tell you that what you wrote is the best thing I've ever read and you are a fucking genius. But I can't tell you that.

What I want to tell you is that you need to rewrite this novel. This novel, that novel, the screenplay, all of it. It all needs to be seriously rewritten because no one come up with one draft and have it be perfect. No one. And, as I'm sadly learning, especially not you.

The main problem with you writing a comedy is that you are not funny. In that last chapter I read of Susie Essman's book, I learned two things: 1) I'm not wrong in thinking that the main character of the second worst novel ever lacks the passion we want to feel and the details we want to hear when describing why she wants to be a writer and 2) you're just not innately funny. I think I'm four chapters into Essman's book, and she describes how she started out memorizing comedy albums as a small child. Reading it, I was like, Wow, this is what that stupid paragraph in your novel wishes it were. They are two pages you should read and think about and take to heart when rewriting... Oh. You don't rewrite. Not seriously.

If I could, I would send you the first couple paragraphs of a synopsis—to justify the work I did rereading the second worst novel ever for a third time and to get the ball rolling for you. Then I would explain that this story starts to really blow after page 50. Why? There is so much action for the first 25 pages. It is a good fish-out-of-water story with lots of conflict between the main character, Gretta, and the higher-ups at the corporation where she works. The problems mount and... Gretta quits to become a full time screenwriter. Okay, so now our Man v. Man story has just become a Man v. Himself story. And that's fine and all, I guess, because Gretta is supposed to be on a spiritual journey, but there just isn't a lot of conflict in 300 pages of some write bellyaching that her phone hasn't rung in a month. We don't see her do anything. We're reading her diary entries and all she does is obsess about how this agent or that producer is ignoring her. People she's never even talked to! She says she mails out query letters, but there's never a scene where she's struggling with the wording, a scene where she has to wait in line at the post office, a scene where she scours the writer's market for new agents to approach. She doesn't DO anything for 300 pages. She doesn't even write. I mean, sure, we're reading her diary and after I think 200 pages she mentions that she's decided to start a new script, but we really never see her do any work. She's just bellyaching for 300 pages about petty problems.

Where is the humor? Gretta is trying to harness the power of positive thinking to attract millions of dollars and unparalleled fame into her life. Gretta is based on the most negative person ever. Not Eeyore, but definitely not Pollyanna. When Gretta, who is egotistical and judgmental, says her in-laws are vile, we should get to see what that interaction is really like. If her in-laws are based on your in-laws, then the way the scenes would play out is that the in-laws, who are equal parts amused and concerned, would question the sanity of quitting a well-paying job to sell a screenplay. They would innocently ask, "And you're sure this will work?" And Gretta would start foaming at the mouth, working herself into a tizzy about how this is the greatest screenplay ever and so-and-so is going to kill to be a part of it. And the in-laws would laugh. And Gretta would get upset that no one is taking her seriously and cheering her on. As you write it, we don't see any of the actual interactions. Gretta recounts asking her husband why he told his family anything about her writing. Yawn. There is nothing interesting in that conversation. And we don't believe Gretta that her in-laws are vile. And no one can question why, if she were able to succeed in attracting anything in the world, would she choose to be rich rather than cure cancer or save the environment?

The second worst novel ever should be at least a satire about how idiotic The Secret phenomenon was. But it's not even a humorous account of your life.

I have no idea how to tell you that...