Steve Cuden: On today’s Story Beat.

Haris Orkin: Hardest part about writing is just keeping your butt in the chair. Discipline and persistence. I recommend people do it every day. And you just have to just keep at it. Can’t wait for inspiration to strike. You have to do it long enough until you kind of reach this kind of flow state like athletes do. And it takes time and you have to kind of learn to do it. And it’s from repetition that you get to that point.

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden. A podcast for the creative mind. Story Beat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Haris Orkin, is a prolific novelist, playwright, screenwriter and game writer. His play Dada premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse. His feature film, A Saintly Switch, was produced by Disney and directed by the great Peter Bogdanovich. Haris has written screenplays for Universal, Sony, Fox, and Paramount. He’s also written numerous video games, many of which have been nominated for the WGA and BAFTA Film Awards. Games he’s worked on include Call of Juarez, Red Alerts, Shadow Warrior, Black Hawk down, and many others. Haris recently released the sixth book in his James Flynn escapade series called From Lompoc With Love. I’ve read the first book of the series, You Only Live Once, which is one of the cleverest, wittiest, and most fun takes on the super spy genre that I’ve had the pleasure to read. I’m a huge James Bond fan, and I was thoroughly caught up in James Flynn’s hilariously delusional and unexpected exploits. The book series has been optioned by producer Sherry Marsh and Will Arnett’s company and is currently being shopped to streaming studios. I, for one, will eagerly await, to see how Harris’s books are brought to life on the screen. So for reasons and many more, it’s a great privilege for me to have the screenwriter and author Haris Orkin as my guest on Story Beat today. Haris welcome to the show.

Haris Orkin: Well, thank you for inviting me.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, it’s a great pleasure to have you here. So let’s go back in time a little bit. When did you first notice things like movies, TV shows, plays, books, the entertainment industry? When did you first think about it as something that you were interested in?

Haris Orkin: Well, I, you know, I was very into all that from a Very early age. You know, the James Flynn books are based on James Bond Bond. Someone, a delusional patient who believes he’s James Bond. And, so I remember I really was dying to see the James Bond movies. I see them advertised. I was probably 9 years old. My parents wouldn’t let me, see them. They were, you know, in the theaters, and not until I was, like, 11, I think I finally. I finally bored them down. And I remember they actually, At the shopping center where they showed it nearby, where I lived in Chicago, they had, a guy there with a jet pack like James Bond wore in the. In the mov. Who actually flew in the jetpack in the parking lot. And that was very exciting. so, you know, it just really stuck with me.

Steve Cuden: Those. Those jet packs could only go up and down, right? It was basically, you were up for a few seconds and you were back down.

Haris Orkin: You could probably go forward and back a little bit, but you did not have a lot of control over them. You had, like, little. Not exactly sure how they worked. The guy looked very uncomfortable doing it, though, that I remember.

Steve Cuden: So those kinds of shows, those kinds of stories were. Were your early influence then it was James Bond and action stories and that kind of thing.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, yeah. I loved action movies, and I loved comedies. I loved both. So I was kind of into both. I remember watching the Producers, and my father was very much into comedy, so he would take me, we would go to see comedies. we’d watch Monty Python on TV when it came to us, and, so all that stuff, though. And my father made a living doing comedy radio, so I did see it as something you could probably do for a living, since he seemed to be doing it for a living.

Steve Cuden: Haris I was gonna save that for later in the show, but I’m happy to talk about your dad now. I was a big fan of your dad and Radio Ranch and Orkin and Burtis. I thought that was one of the great comedy teams of all time.

Haris Orkin: Oh, well, thanks.

Steve Cuden: And you grew up under that influence, right?

Haris Orkin: I did, yeah. When I was a, kid, he was working at, WCFL radio in Chicago, which was the big rock station with wl. he, created a show called Chicken man, played on that show, but then got, syndicated all over the country and even Armed Forces Radio, Soldiers in Vietnam at the time. And, so I remember him, you know, sitting at the kitchen table writing those in the morning, you know, before he’d go into work. And, I’d go with him to the studio and watch him Record. So, yeah, no, that was a big influence on me, I’m sure. he had so much fun doing it. It just looked like, you know, if I could do a job that was that much fun, I should probably try to find one like that. Though, I have to say, I didn’t really consider it seriously until I was in college. You know, some reason I decided I was going to be a lawyer. And I think my. I think my dad probably pushed me in that direction, thinking that, you know, you know, it’s very insecure life being a, creative person. So he sent me, you know, he kind of. He didn’t tell me that I had to be a lawyer, but he kind of nudged in that direction. And so, you know, I was in college and I’d worked at law firms in the summer in Chicago, though most of me, I worked in the mail room. And one, of my main jobs was to retrieve the senior partner’s hat, because he’d go to lunch and forget his hat all over town in Chicago, and I’d have to go pick up Mr. Hopkins hat and bring it back.

Steve Cuden: So you grew up. You grew up in a comedy centric house. Your father was a very funny man, and you had that influence. And I think that shows in your work. Clearly that’s something that you had around you. Do you think that being around someone like that is important to be facile in comedy?

Haris Orkin: No, I don’t, because I know so many people who are comedy writers or comedians who didn’t grow up around a comedian. I mean, sure. It doesn’t hurt, though. You have to. You know, a lot of times comedians at home aren’t that funny. You know, that whole, idea that, you know, they’re funny out. Out in public and they’re performers, but when they’re home, you know, they’re kind of tortured. And there’s a little truth to that, I think, you know, so. But, you know, but he could be very silly when he wanted to be. And, you know, and I probably did learn a lot from just, you know, being with him. And also, you know, I worked for him for a while, too, as a teenager. He’d bring me in to, like, write things to help him or brainstorm stuff with him and Bert. And so I, you know, I picked up some skills doing that, I think. And, m. What I majored in in college was, creative writing and economics, which is like, it couldn’t be more diametrically opposed, really. But, I did. I did spend some time working with WBBM News Radio in Chicago. Like, as, they call it a field term. And they’d send me, on, you know, I was like a junior reporter. So they sent me to a Catholic Bishops convention and like a, it was like a press conference where they’re announcing the new fishing licenses. So I admit it wasn’t the most exciting things to be, but I kind of realized that I really wanted to make stuff up. I didn’t want to have to like, rip things off the AP and just regurgitate them. So by the time I graduated college, I realized I wanted to do something creative.

Steve Cuden: So your dad knew. Clearly, as anyone that’s in the business for any length of time, your dad knew that it was very difficult to make a living at it and to keep sustaining all that, that sort of forward momentum. And he wanted you to go into something that was steady and regular. Like, many parents of people, many parents that are in the entertainment industry, they want their children to do something else. But I’m going to guess, and you correct me if I’m wrong, that, it’s. It’s in your blood. You wanted to do that. It was a passion of yours.

Haris Orkin: I’m almost obsessive about it. I couldn’t really prevent myself from. When m. I was in college, I did a lot of creative writing. I wrote plays and sketches for like, reviews and things. And it was just the thing I love to do the most, really. So, But, you know, I wasn’t sure how to make a living at it, you know, when I graduated college. And he, like you mentioned Dick and Bert, they did comedy, radio, advertising. And so I thought, well, maybe, you know, they’ll pay you to do advertising, so maybe I’ll get a job in advertising. And that’s kind of where I started. So.

Steve Cuden: And you’ve clearly, worked in many different disciplines and genres. You have, written a number of novels. You’ve written screenplays that have sold and been produced. Ah, you’ve had plays produced and a lot of games. How did you get into so many different disciplines? How did that happen?

Haris Orkin: desperation really. At least for some of them. You know, I had to make a. I had a kid, you know, I was married. I had to make a living. And so I, ah, kept trying different things. you know, I really wanted to be a screenwriter. That was my intention while I worked in advertising. And that took me seven years before I finally sold a script. I mean, I wrote like 15 scripts probably before I sold one. And then I had a pretty good career as A screenwriter for, you know, about 10 years. Any kind of business like that. It’s, you’re hot for a while, then you’re not hot. I had a couple movies made, but nothing that was like a giant hit. I ended up like going back into advertising and I kept writing screenplays and I kind of got back into it again. I sold something that got made as a Bogdanovich, directed that one. But, I, you know, and I, and I, I started as a playwright. So I did that in college and I did it after college. And and I loved, doing theater. I love. And I belonged to a theater group in Chicago and I belonged to one in, Los Angeles. I, you know, good friends in theater. So it was fun to have plays produced and kind of, you know, it’s very hands on and very collaborative, but.

Steve Cuden: It’S very hard to make money at that.

Haris Orkin: Oh, I couldn’t make any money at.

Steve Cuden: Playwriting is, ah, almost impossible to make money at. So yes, you’ve got to go off and find if you’re going to be a professional writer. And I assume at some point you made that decision whether you were in college or after that you were going to go make a living at it. So you had to figure out how to do it. And you say it took you seven years before you started to really, catch a little fire. What was it that you did in the interim? How did you keep pushing yourself forward?

Haris Orkin: Well, that’s what I, well that’s when I was working in advertising, honestly, and I would just get up. You know, advertising agencies don’t start at the crack of dawn a lot of, so I would get, you know, a lot of partiers and such in advertising, especially in the 80s, I would get there like at 10am So I had time in the morning before I went into work to like spend two hours every morning just working on screenplays. And that’s what I did. And I got a lot of encouragement, you know, people, a lot of close calls, but, you know, nothing. So, you know, I got an agent eventually, but it still took a while before, you know, that first sale. And I, you know, I sustained myself with advertising and also I was doing the plays, at least creatively. That kind of also kind of satisfied me.

Steve Cuden: So you were writing every day then, even though you weren’t selling any of it yet, that you were writing every day?

Haris Orkin: Yeah, it was a real discipline for me. I, I felt like, you know, I didn’t know the idea of the 10,000 hours, that idea that you have to put that much time in to get good at something. But I just did it every day. Like I said before, I was somewhat obsessive and once I had an idea that I really liked, you know, it was hard to keep me away from it. So I just, you know, and I’ve done that, you know, my whole life. Now.

Steve Cuden: Would you say all of your creative writing tends toward both action and light hearted comedy or something? Witty stuff. Is that your, your forte? Is that your wheelhouse?

Haris Orkin: It’s probably my main wheelhouse. So I just finished a novel that’s like a straight thriller that, you know, there’s some characters in it that are, have that have a lot of funny lines but it’s much more of a straight ahead thriller. And my agents just taking that out now. And and for the games I write, I’ve written everything from you know, World War II stories to things centering the Civil War to westerns to horror to zombies. You know, in the movie business you tend to get pigeonholed as being able to do one thing pretty well. And I was pretty basically a comedy writer and I like doing it and that’s what I mainly did. But in video games I’ve kind of really spread out into all different kinds of genres.

Steve Cuden: So that’s, that’s clearly evident from the titles that, that, that I read earlier and there are many more that you, you wrote. and do you enjoy writing games?

Haris Orkin: Oh, I love it, yeah. It’s really fun. Honestly. I was a big gamer before, before I started writing them. I play with my son because it’s, I just love the interactivity of it. I mean it’s like no other medium. It’s the player who’s you know, receiving the story is immersed in it in a way that you can’t really be in any other medium. And it makes it tricky writing for games because a lot of times you want to give the players some m agency so they have choices but then you want the story to be consistently good in whatever direction they take it. So I find it, you know, especially when I first started, there hadn’t been a lot of really great stories in games. you know, and that’s part of the reason why I went into it. I thought, well these stories could be a lot better and the acting could be a lot better because I also ended up casting and directing the voice actors as well as writing the scripts. And I just wanted to try to improve stories in games. right around the time I was doing that There were a lot of other people doing it as well. It’s just, it’s just like kind of an undiscovered territory. It’s like where screenplays. There’s like a certain structure that people are, used to and especially movie studios with games. I was like, there is no set way to do it. Every game is different. I don’t know if you. Do you play video games much?

Steve Cuden: Probably not much to my chagrin. I am not a gamer. I have. I’ve played almost nothing, no kind of games whatsoever of a video game, variety of other kinds of games, but not video games. And so I don’t know that world real well though. I know m. I have many friends, from my days in Hollywood who are video game writers. So it’s not. I’m not foreign to the concept of it or have had conversations about it, but this is interesting to me. What are the similarities and the differences between writing video games and screenplays, aside from the fact that screenplays are very rigidly structured? you’re saying that each video game is different in the way you approach it. So that’s a huge difference because most screenplays doesn’t matter the genre. You’re going to write it in a certain format. You’re going to write it, with a certain structure in mind. What are the differences?

Haris Orkin: Well, I mean, one way to show that is like when you write a movie script, you’re writing in a particular way form using final draft or some other program like that, which, which will format it a particular way. In games there is no formal. I mean you can write parts of the script in final draft, but I write a lot of the script in Excel because, you, you know, it’s. It, it kind of just works better in Excel because there’s thousands and thousands of sound files and lines of dialogue or that have to be inserted into the game and depending what the player does, will hear different things. it’s a little bit like three dimensional chess in a way, writing for video games. But so the way they’re similar is that is the creating characters because you want to. In terms of creating a character, you go through the same process whether you’re writing a video game, novel or a movie. At least I do. you’re kind of just working out all the details of who they are, why they do what they do, other motivations, their backstory, all that. For certain games that are more linear, you do work out. You can work out an outline that kind of takes the rest of the story you know, throughout the whole, from beginning to end, knowing that, you want to also create in those kind of stories the illusion of agency. Even though the player is going to all gonna, they’re all gonna go down the same path eventually, you want to give them the illusion that they can take whatever path they want. so it’s, you know, then there are some games that are like open world games, where they can go anywhere they want in this world and they can go to a different town and they’ll meet new people and you, and you have to have dialogue and you know, little stories for all of them.

Steve Cuden: So do I understand correctly that video game, for lack of a better word, scripts or the documents that go with it are much denser than a typical screenplay, which is usually somewhere between 90 and 120 pages.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, like I would say a linear, like a linear kind of video game would probably be like six or seven screenplays in length. An open world game could be like 20 screenplays. and so when you write open world games, for the most part you work with the team and it’s like writing TV season, like a TV season almost, because different, you know, tv, they assign different writers, different scripts and it’s the same kind of thing with that kind of big video game. And then there’s like an over somebody who’s like a game director who kind of oversees it all, a narrative director and makes sure that there’s a consistency to it.

Steve Cuden: It all has to all look like, and feel like it’s coming from one place.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, the characters have to be consistent and yeah, and the tone has to be consistent, you know, and I’ve worked on a lot of like franchise type games that have been around a while. So I had to kind of learn all the Lord and the franchise and those characters and make sure I was true to them. Like, I worked on the Resident Evil game that came out two years ago and you know, so I had to like learn all that lore and all those characters. When I was first offered that job, I was, I really enjoyed the Resident Evil games because I thought they were so kind of campy and funny, you know. And I remember telling the team at Capcom that, you know, I really enjoyed how funny and campy they were and they were like funny campy. I mean they were like, you know, I think when it’s translated from the Japanese in English, something went awry there a little bit probably. But so the game I worked on was a little less though. It still was a little campy. But a little less so.

Steve Cuden: So, so where do you begin when you’re going to write, for instance, a screenplay? You know, you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have somewhere to start. It’s usually for most people, either a plot or characters. Which is it for you? Is it usually story first or characters first?

Haris Orkin: I’m pretty much for almost everything I write, I’m kind of characters first because, you know, the characters then kind of drive the plot. though sometimes, you know, I’ll have an idea of a plot, but it’s like without, without the really deep characters or really, you know, complex characters. To me, if I start with the plot before the characters, sometimes it feels like it just kind of lays there. It doesn’t really have as much, drive to it. because, you know, the actors need something to play. The actors have, you know, and so pretty much as you’re writing the characters, the characters have something they want and that’s what drives the plot, you know, so. Or something they don’t want. It could work either way.

Steve Cuden: I was always trained. Simple plot, complex characters. Which is what you’re saying.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, that is true. And that’s true for, games and for movies actually. You want to try to keep the plot fairly simple because, it’s too hard for. You’re playing something over the course of 20 hours, you’re not going to remember what you played 15 hours back. If it’s too complex and there’s enough complexity within just the game mechanics and such, I think sometimes. But there are games that are, you know, so that way they’re similar. Now novels, I find, can be more complex. You can have, you know, we can have a lot more complexity in the plot.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, well, a, novel can go sprawling. It can go for a thousand pages if you wanted to. whereas a screenplay has to be much more contained. I’ve read, as I said, I’ve read your first of the James Flynn books. it’s so much fun to read because it has a really strong pace and the characters are extremely well drawn and it’s very funny. Obviously it’s very James Bond esque. While at the same time you managed to. I don’t know how you did it. To me, it was a miracle. As I was reading it, I didn’t know what I was going to read until I opened page one. And suddenly a short while later, I knew I was reading something that was spoofing not only James Bond but also Don Quixote. And that just kind of blew my mind. How did you come on that combination?

Haris Orkin: Well, I actually, the idea was, before I started, before I came up with Flynn, is I wanted to do a modern day version of Don Quixote. It’s like one of my favorite pieces of literature, you know, of all time. I just love that character. and I wanted to do something modern day for that, you know, and I really, honestly, I didn’t realize till later that, that my father had done that, with Chicken Man. I mean, Chicken man is kind of Don Quixote too. It didn’t even occur to me, honestly until years later that I did the same thing. But I didn’t want it to be a superhero. Ah. I was trying to find something a little bit more grounded in reality. I loved James Bond movies and I just thought that would make sense. Someone who feels out of control in their life would want to become somebody who feels like he could do anything, you know, and then those movies he m. Could. Right. So in the books, so, so you’ve.

Steve Cuden: Told us, you’ve told us, in this show, already a little bit about James Flynn and the fact that he’s a psychiatric patient and that he’s delusional and all those good things. He thinks he’s in a, in spy agency of some kind, but he’s actually in a psychiatric hospital. But tell the listeners a little bit more about what this, not just the series is about, but, how you got to that first, story of him breaking out of the psychiatric hospital and doing things that are very spy esque.

Haris Orkin: Well, I originally wrote it as a screenplay, which you may be able to tell because it’s very kind of visual and action packed. I think when I first sat down I just wanted, I wanted to create a Sancho character and Dulcinea. And it just made sense to me that Sancho would be a orderly at the hospital. And I didn’t really know what Flynn would get into when I first wrote it, when he first started, when he first escaped from the hospital, you know, after I wrote that initial, at least had that initial idea that he was a psychiatric patient who believed he was James Bond or someone like him. I said, I did sit down and outline the whole thing. I’m unlike a lot of novelists I know, which is unbelievable to me. some of those people just write, sit down and just write without an outline. I always like to have a detailed outline and then I kind of throw the outline out as I go somewhat. If I come up with a better idea along the way I’ll toss it, I think I just kind of take the story where the characters take it.

Steve Cuden: Well, outlining is a big part of screenwriting. There are very few screenplays that are written, certainly in the studio system and certainly for tv, that don’t come outlined first. So that’s where your background is. And it was natural, I assume, for you to start to outline your book. Do you also outline the games, your video games?

Haris Orkin: I do. You kind of have to, because it’s a very expensive process, building a video game. And it’s a lot of people doing a lot of work. Giant teams of, like, hundreds of people for the big games.

Steve Cuden: All right. So in the James Flynn books, you. You, You wrote it as a screenplay first, where you. I assume you tried to sell it and it didn’t sell.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, I actually had it optioned. and I had a lot of interest, and it actually got me, like, assignments. but it didn’t. It didn’t, you know, get to the point of getting made or getting, you know.

Steve Cuden: So I want to. I want the listeners to understand what you just said, which is very important if they’re interested in going to Hollywood and being a screenwriter. You wrote something that got interest in Hollywood. It didn’t get produced. It didn’t get through to that stage. But the fact that you wrote it and people liked it got you other work. That’s a really important thing about Hollywood writers, is that you. Your work should not ever be thought of as wasteful because it can get you other things, even if that never sells.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, I mean, I had drawers of, you know, screenplays that didn’t have got made. Files and files of them. you know, and honestly, that’s part of the reason I wanted to start working in games is because I was just kind of tired of development hell in this screenwriting world. And I didn’t. Yeah, I didn’t work in tv. M. I had some movies done. There were TV movies, but I’ve never worked on a series. it’s.

Steve Cuden: That’s more. That’s much more of a grind. that’s. You know, you get into a rhythm on that thing, and you’re churning out one after the other. That’s more of a grind versus, you’re writing a novel from a screenplay. So you had. Not only, correct me if I’m wrong, you not only had an outline to write the screenplay, then you wrote the screenplay. And the screenplay probably essentially was like a big outline for you.

Haris Orkin: It was. But, it’s interesting. You Know when the process of writing a novel based on the screenplay, you know, it’s a very interesting experience and a little scary. I wasn’t as comp. Well, I wasn’t as confident with, about my prose. you know, I was very confident about, with my dialogue. You know, writing a novel is like, it’s a lot more writing than a screenplay. And I, But I realized once I started getting into it that I had an opportunity to go so much deeper into the characters and so much deeper into the world. And you know, you have to describe, you know, you worked in animations, you know this, and I’ve done a little bit of animation writing. You have to describe everything in detail in a way you don’t in a regular like live action screenplay, for the artists. And you know, and so in a novel even more so, you know, you want to create every sense. You want to like, pretty much describe, but you don’t want to do it to the point where it’s like, becomes tedious. So you have to kind of know where to, you know, you kind of have to treat a little bit like haiku, just touches of it. But you do have to have all the senses kind of, you know, described so that people know where they are, what’s going on, what it feels like. And in novels, which you can’t do in screenplays or stage plays, you don’t have any. You don’t get the internal thoughts of the characters, where in a book you can like just go right in the head and get all the internal thinking and things that they never verbalize.

Steve Cuden: So that’s why you only write sight and sound in the screenplay. You don’t write what’s going on in a character’s head or their thoughts. But I’ll tell you what, if you ever, if you ever get a chance, if you ever get a chance to write a musical, you’ll find out that there is a device in a musical that allows you to go internal and that’s called a song, which is a whole other animal.

Haris Orkin: I would love to write a musical. That’s the only thing I haven’t worked on.

Steve Cuden: Well, you probably would be pretty good at it because, you have that kind of sensibility. And musicals are much more akin to screenplays, screenwriting than they are to plays, because a play can not move forward. But a musical like a screenplay, has to move forward horizontally and have that thrust forward at all times. I am curious, in the books, did you know when you sat down to write the first one based on your screenplay, that you were going to turn it into a series. Did you know that then?

Haris Orkin: No, I didn’t. I had no idea I was going to do that. You know, I was just trying to just create that one book. And so I wish I would have realized I was going to turn a new series because I would have like, planned better. and because writing the second book I had to go back and figure out because now I was like, kind of stuck in certain. I had to like, kind of just extend from the first book out. And if I would have thought about it, I would have like kind of planned for the future and I didn’t. that’s the thing that self writing for a series is a book series is challenging. where you have to, with every subsequent book you have to kind of like, you have to assume that not everyone’s read the first book. So they may, you have to give them enough information that they understand what’s going on, who the characters are, what’s happening. And you have to mention a few things from the past because for the people who had to read the first book, but you don’t want to mention in such detail that it gives spoil, you know, it gives spoilers to the people who haven’t read the first book. So it’s a very tricky, balance.

Steve Cuden: And you don’t want to bore, bore the readers who read the earlier books with the same information.

Haris Orkin: Exactly. And my editor actually, yeah, was very helpful with that because, when I gave her the second book, she was like, you don’t have to, you know, she’s the one who was telling me, you don’t have to go into such detail explaining all this. And you know, for people who read the first book and the people who haven’t read the first book, it’s going to just be nonsense to them. They’re not going to, you know, so it took some time. Now, you know, now I’m on the. I’m writing the seventh book right now. The sixth book’s coming out in February and the process is a little bit easier for me. I have a better handle on how to do it. So without giving everything away, I.

Steve Cuden: Assume that you know nothing about being a spy other than what you’ve absorbed through the culture. You weren’t ever an actual spy, were you?

Haris Orkin: Yeah, that’s true. I do love spy novels and I love history and I’ve read a lot of like, history of all that stuff. But you. Same with the Westerns. Like, I wrote a Lot of Western video games. I love the history of all that. But, you know, in a way it works out because this is a mental patient who doesn’t really know what it means to be a spy either. But a lot of the humor comes in him bumping up against actual people who are actual, you know, actual spies. so I did have to really learn about that to get a good sense of it, because everyone, the whole rest of the world, is like this straight man to him, in a way. So.

Steve Cuden: And so did that require you to do a lot of research?

Haris Orkin: Oh, yeah, I do. I do a ton of research for the. For those books.

Steve Cuden: So where do you begin? Is it. Is it online or do you go to libraries? Where do you research stuff?

Haris Orkin: Well, yeah, used to do it all in libraries. now it’s. Of course, I just do it all online. yeah. And, you know, I’ll order a lot of books. Sometimes I’ll go through Amazon. I’ll, you know, do searches on Google. I’ll read like, like biographies. I read a bunch of biographies of actual people who are like, spies or commandos, things like that. I, I do a lot of reading. I probably read a book a week. I’m. I’m working on a idea for a, Western right now set in 1915, and it’s actually gonna be set in Hollywood. And, so I’ve been reading tons of books on. On that era in Hollywood and. And all the different, Western stars of the era and a lot of the outlaws and lawmen who came to Hollywood to, act as, consultants to the studios. And, it was just a fascinating era, but I love doing that research. But I found a bunch of books on. On all these different. All these different subjects.

Steve Cuden: Well, I believe the early cowboy stars were actually cowboys. They came from that world.

Haris Orkin: Yeah. I mean, somewhere and somewhere. Or they learn to be, at least eventually. yeah.

Steve Cuden: And. All right, so how long does it take you to write the following? How long does it typically take you to write a book? How long does it take you to write a screenplay? How long does it take you to write a video game?

Haris Orkin: Okay, well, a screenplay. A lot of times when I’ve been hired to write them, I contractually have to finish them within a couple months. I mean, like, so those. I usually write in two, three months, though. I, you know, I’ve written a screenplay in, like, two weeks before. and, you know, because it’s just pouring out, and then I’ll do a lot of rewriting. But, a Book, the first book took me a couple years. Now, you know, I can write one of them. If all I’m doing is just working on the book, I can write it in about four, to six months.

Steve Cuden: Including the outlining the development of characters and all that. That’s the tote, the total deal.

Haris Orkin: Oh yeah. I mean, you know, but I’m doing a series though, so a lot of that’s already in place in terms of the characters and such. But there’s a lot of new characters every time as well. So. Yeah, no, I can do that pretty quickly. But it’s very rare that I’m only working on one thing at a time. I usually have like a game project or other things I’m working on. if I, if I get one, I try to get one done a year, one novel a year within the series because that feels like if I wait too long between, between books, you know, the people who I do have as fans are going to kind of, lose interest possibly, or whatever. So So I try to do one a year. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: I’m fascinated by the fact that you work on multiple projects at the same time. I do the same thing and I know a lot of writers do. I’m curious, from your perspective, what do you do to manage your time and how do you do that to get from the beginning of a project to the end while you’re working on other things, how do you time manage?

Haris Orkin: I have to kind of work out a schedule to do it and that’s. I do. I. And I usually will. Only I’ll work on one thing in the morning and something else like in the afternoon. I can’t jump back and forth like within the same hour or something because it takes me a little while to get into the correct mindset of what I’m working on. and sometimes I’ll just work one day on one thing and then another day, another thing. Or I’ll, I’ll work on like, ah, if I have like a deadline for video game, like I just, just had for something which I can’t reveal because hasn’t been announced yet. But I had to like put the book away for like two weeks to just work on that. But you know, with, with writing for games, sometimes you know, I’ll write a bunch of stuff for them and they’ll then, and then they have to kind of put it all together in the game and then there’ll be some time in between. It’ll give me time to work on my book.

Steve Cuden: I truly appreciate the fact that it’s very challenging to have two totally different projects or more in your head working at the same time. do you ever find that as you’re say, for instance on Deadline on one that somehow the other is leaking in that you ever conflate projects? Has that ever happened to you?

Haris Orkin: Yeah, I’m sure. I have a feeling they do affect each other. I’m not sure I can point to any one particular thing that. You know, the trickiest thing for me is when I’m going between like, like a really dark horror to like comedy. and I’ll have a tendency to like, try to get too funny in the horror and then get too scary in the comedy. So I have to like, I have to be kind of go through it again on a rewrite and it’s hard when I have a good joke, it’s hard to cut it, you know, even though it’s in a horror movie but. Or horror game.

Steve Cuden: Well, you don’t want to lose your. Your true darlings, but sometimes you have to lose your darlings, don’t you?

Haris Orkin: Yeah, sometimes you can kind of, you know, just put them aside and use them somewhere else though. I think it’s important with horror movies or games to have moments of humor just to help leaven that. So it’s not just constant like tension and suspense and fear. You know, it’s like it makes it. If you have a lot of up and down rising kind of action, I think it makes it much more effective.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely right. You. It’s almost requisite that you put in moments of release relief and then eventually get to the ultimate relief being catharsis at the end of whatever your story is. Hopefully you get to that catharsis. You raised something a moment ago that I think is very important and you’re a great person to talk to because you have so many, such a wide range of disciplines, that you work in, is tonality. You’ve already alluded to it. There’s very different tone in the James Flynn books than you would from Black, Hawk Down. Those would be two totally different tones. And you have many different tones. How do you for yourself determine what the tone of the story is? I’m going to assume it’s based on the characters in the plot. But how do you get that tone in your mind’s eye for each different project? How do you figure that out?

Haris Orkin: Sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll. Like for Black Hawk Down, I read a whole bunch of I read the book Black Hawk Down. I read a bunch of, biographies, autobiographies by some of the special ops who were involved in Black Hawk Down. Watch the movie, of course, watch documentaries on it. And for me, one of the things I really work to get is the voices of the characters. and that’ll help. Help determine the tone, you know, So I get that with documentaries like Blackout Down, I did. I got that from just reading their autobiographies. Like the Western I’m talking about now. I read this book by, that was written in, like, 1880 by someone named Charlie Siringo, who was a, Pinkerton and actually was a cowboy before then. He wrote a book about being a cowboy. And, And it was written. You know, he wrote it. It was in his own voice, and it was, like, really crudely kind of written in some ways, but it was really kind of entertaining for me. And he was like. He did some, like, horrible, despicable things. He was pretty much pretty racist, you know, and so it’s like, oh, wow. It’s like, you know, and, everyone. All the women he dated were like, 15 years old or 14, and that was a little shocking to me. I was like, wow. Really? That was how it worked. Okay. Yeah, but. Yeah, but getting. Getting the voice of the characters. It’s like I want to. Because I want to able to hear how they speak. And I’m definitely. I’m not a good. I’m not an actor. I’m a terrible actor, as a matter of fact. but I can. I think I’m good at recognizing decent acting, good acting. And I can tell when I have the voice in my head, you know, it just feels right to me. and there’s like, every character has, like, almost a musical quality that’s different from every other character. And if I can get that rhythm and music down, then I feel like I have the character down.

Steve Cuden: Are you able to, find your way to a character just by quietly contemplating it, or do you look for inspiration or how do you get to your characters?

Haris Orkin: You know what? I have to write the character to get to it. I remember having telling this to, like, a game company I was working for. They wanted me to kind of explain, you know, just give them the characters. And I said I have to kind of write it first before I discover who the character is. Even though we don’t use what I’m going to write, it’s my way into. I have to kind of hear them speaking with each other. And that’s how I kind of do it, just writing dialogue.

Steve Cuden: Do you know who Kali Khoury is?

Haris Orkin: I do.

Steve Cuden: She wrote Thelma and Louise. So she famously once said, and I may be misquoting it, but it’ll be very close, that she needs to find the quiet to hear the characters talking in her head.

Haris Orkin: Exactly. That’s basically it. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: And once they start talking, once you’ve got them going, they’re just going to work you through the whole thing, aren’t they?

Haris Orkin: They do. That’s how, you know, it’s, If you can get the characters down, they’ll take you through the story pretty much, you know. And, when you’re outlining it, you can. At least when I am, I can. If I know the characters well enough, I’ll know what they will do and what they won’t do. And that really will kind of steer the plot.

Steve Cuden: Oh. Have you ever had the experience of, someone in the studio system, tell you how a character would talk?

Haris Orkin: you know. Yeah. I have games too, as well, actually. You know, one of the things you have to learn, I think, as a writer, either that system or games, I would say I spend half my time, half my writing is writing, explaining why I’m doing what I’m doing, at least in the game world. You know, it’s like long emails explaining why it is I’m doing it and why the character is this way. and then, you know, because it probably feels like magic to them, or I’m just, you know, m making crap up. And I am just making crap up, but I have a reason why I’m making it up a certain way.

Steve Cuden: You know, my assumption is, as you, like every other writer that’s had any success, you have received voluminous notes over time on every project you’ve ever worked on, especially if it’s in a collaborative nature. I assume you don’t get too many notes except from an editor in your novels. But on a screenplay or on a video game, you’re going to get notes from people for whatever reasons. So what is your advice to those that are trying to figure out how to become writers, how to take notes. Do you have a methodology for taking notes?

Haris Orkin: I do. I had to learn that the hard way, honestly. when I first would get notes, I would be very resistant. When I worked in, you know, writing assignments for movie studios, I’d be very resistant. Very resistant. I would sit there kind of like, sourly, and I, you know, and, and I would just like, I don’t know how this is going to work. And I was just very negative about it. And, and, I learned that that was not a good way to go about it because they would just hire another writer, which is what they did. Exactly. So I learned to like, go, oh, okay, that’s an interesting idea. I would just like, say, oh, okay, that’s interesting. And I would, like, take all the notes down and then when I rewrote it, I would just use the ones that made sense to me. And they were fine with that.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, that is a perfectly wonderful way to do that. It is my philosophy. And it’s the philosophy, I think, of a lot of people who have had some success in that business because you have to make them think that they got their way in somehow, some way. And yet you can’t allow them to pull that one thread in your very nicely knit sweater. That pull lets the whole thing fall apart. So you, you have to protect your property at some somehow without insulting the other, side of the table.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, my wife had to live with my, you know, with my, you know, irritation about it all, you know, you know, even though I don’t show it to the people who are giving me the criticism, my wife hears it all.

Steve Cuden: Unfortunately, there’s nothing more disconcerting to me than when, when a person who has not worked on the project at all maybe has read one draft and they say to you, that character would never say that. And you go, what do you mean they would never say it? Of course they would say it.

Haris Orkin: It’s like, how do you know that it’s not even a real person, It’s a made up character.

Steve Cuden: Exactly. So. So I think that’s really excellent, an excellent thought about note taking. Take the notes, don’t fight the notes. And, and then hopefully you’ll actually get some kind of help from them. Maybe you will.

Haris Orkin: you will. And a lot of times what I learned is that the note, even if the note, the specifics of the note are wrong, it may be talking about a larger problem. And, it may be pointing to something that’s not working. And even though their solution for it may not be correct, it may show me an idea of a. Give me an idea of what I could do to fix it.

Steve Cuden: All right, so you have been in both worlds, both the entertainment industry in Hollywood and also in the publishing world, as well as you also, you know, are in the advertising world as well. What are the big differences between those two worlds in terms of how you work with them? Is it a huge difference or is it very Similar.

Haris Orkin: It’s pretty big difference. I mean, you know, the movies and video games are much more collaborative. It’s much more back and forth all the time. And things happen really quickly sometimes and sometimes they take forever. But then when they do happen, they can happen really quickly and you have to get things done. You have to, you know, hit a deadline or get something rewritten really fast. With publishing, everything takes forever. It’s very slow. It’s a very slow process. It’s a lot of like, you know, no one’s in a hurry and you know, I’m a little bit of Type A, so it can be a little frustrating sometimes.

Steve Cuden: But what was you say are some of the things that a writer ought to think about doing in order to secure even a chance at getting published? Are there tricks that you’ve learned at this point that would be helpful?

Haris Orkin: You know, I don’t know. I think it’s a very tough business. to me all you can really do is try to write the very best book you can write. I don’t know if anything else will work honestly. and you know, that’s still no guarantee you’re going to get it published. Yeah, I think it’s still, it’s good to kind of understand the market a little bit, understand genres. I mean, I didn’t do that very well. I wrote a book that doesn’t really fit in any one genre. It’s humor, humor, you know, comedy, thriller. And it’s not a lot of people who do that. Carl Hiason, Donald Westlake, there are, you know, but there aren’t a huge number of authors in that category. You know, if I would have wrote a straight ahead thriller, I probably would have had an easier chance. But that really wasn’t my thing. You know, I just like combining comedy with action. this last book I wrote though is much more of a straight head thriller. So we’ll see if that has, that makes any difference in terms of getting a publisher interested.

Steve Cuden: So it’s a, it’s a shame that it’s hard to have something that’s different because that’s the old cliche about screenplays, but also it’s true about books that they want something that’s really unique and different but exactly like everything else.

Haris Orkin: Exactly.

Steve Cuden: Because they know how to sell X. They know how to sell a murder mystery, they know how to sell comedy, they know how to sell, romance, novels, they know how to sell those. And then when you start to mess with those formulas, if that’s the right word. I think formula is probably the wrong word. But if you mess with what they understand, then they get all confused and don’t know what to do with it.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, I mean, it’s true of readers, I think too. I’ve gotten a lot of reviews on the first book you read where people were like, I started reading and I had no idea what this was about. It just didn’t make sense to me.

Steve Cuden: And oh, I got it right away. I got it right away.

Haris Orkin: Haris Oh, I’m glad you did. And, and then, but then eventually people, you know, some people would get it and really like it and then other people would be like, o, this isn’t like a straight ahead thrillers. This guy’s crazy.

Steve Cuden: I will tell you, I don’t usually laugh out loud when I’m reading. I laugh out loud when I’m watching a, TV show, movie, whatever, but, but I rarely laugh out loud when I’m reading and I laughed out loud very early and throughout your whole book.

Haris Orkin: Oh my God. It’s a huge compliment. Thank you very much.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, absolutely wonderful to read because I’m because I am like you, a massive early on James Bond fan. So I’m reading all of the ways that you spoofed it and parodied it and it was very funny. I really got a great deal of joy out of reading it. So I’m glad you did. If you were starting out as a writer today, would you do things differently than when you first got into the business? And if so, how?

Haris Orkin: Yeah, well, I mean, because I know so much more now about how business works. I mean, it’s changed quite a bit since I started when I started, but I think I would be much more kind of focused on, on like one. I’ve done one thing I’d like it. I become an expert at like writing one kind of thing to start with and then just maybe spreading my wings later. Instead of writing so many different genres and different kinds of things, not knowing what I was going to be good at, I would pick. I think that that’s the main thing I do. I’d pick one thing and really hone myself, hone my skills and get good at that one thing.

Steve Cuden: You would, you would try not to be so diffuse in your, abilities at genres?

Haris Orkin: Yeah, I think so. Starting out, you know, but I think it. Part of the reason I did is because like I said, desperation was like, not sure where I fit in, what I could do when I, you know. And so I just kept trying Lots of different things. and, you know, now, in hindsight, I’m glad I did. I mean, it’s really been a very varied career and kind of fun that I was able to do that.

Steve Cuden: You haven’t been stuck or pigeonholed down one road. you’ve been able to do many different things. But it is. I agree with you, by the way, that if you aren’t, for lack of a better word, a specialist, if you don’t have a particular thing that you’re known for, it’s really hard to keep moving down different roads because they want you to write what they think you know how to write, even though you know you can write many different things. I think some of that has dissolved over time, but it’s still quite, quite much there.

Haris Orkin: But it’s still not as. Not as much as you would imagine. And it’s true of actors too. It’s hard for actors to switch kind of genres and switch what they do.

Steve Cuden: Or directors, you know, all of that, if that’s what they think that you do. If you had success with something, they want you to do more of what you had success with, even though that might not be your passion.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, well, it’s because they’re. Honestly, it’s like what I noticed when I worked in the film business is because the executives are trying to kind of COVID their ass. If they’re making a choice, they say, well, see, they did this before and it was great and it was very successful. And if they take a chance and it fails, it’s like, oh, they’re the ones who get their butts kicked. So.

Steve Cuden: All right, tell me what your philosophy is on pitching. I assume you’ve pitched lots of things over time. movies, books, games and so on. How do you pitch? How do you prepare to pitch? What do you think about when you’re going to pitch something?

Haris Orkin: Yeah, I mean, I don’t do it in games. That’s not something you have to do, really. or even books, but movies. I had to learn how to pitch, because that’s how they were sold, and I was terrible at that. And I ended up taking acting classes, to learn how to be better on, like, just on stage and be more comfortable talking to people in my body. And, And I did, you know, my wife. I got my wife to do it with me, and she ended up becoming an actress because she was really good at it. I wasn’t that good, but. But it did teach. It did relax me and made me a, better Better at pitching. And so I think my, my thing is I would get into too much detail. I’d get into the weeds too often when I first started doing it. And I finally, I learned the, you know, the thing where you do the, the one minute pitch of the whole story and then if they’re still interested, then you do like a five minute version of the pitch. And then if they’re still interested, you can go longer, even 15 minutes maybe.

Steve Cuden: But so you have to be well prepared, right?

Haris Orkin: Oh, it’s very well prepared. I, yeah, I have to really practice it and work it out. I write it and then I practice it. I know there are some, people who are just great off the cuff at pitching, which is interesting because sometimes they’re not the best writers. You know, they’re good at pitching, but not necessarily writing. I remember reading my sister’s a stand up comic and I would bring her. I remember I had a pitch at Showtime, it was a comedy show and I brought my sister with to me to help me pitch it because I thought, you know, she’d make them laugh.

Steve Cuden: So did it work?

Haris Orkin: Well, it was a good pitch, but we didn’t sell it. No.

Steve Cuden: So, so comedy is in your family. Your father was a, a, very fine comedy writer and performer and your sister is a comedian and you write comedy. So that’s clearly in your genes.

Haris Orkin: It is. And my two other siblings are teachers and they’re both very funny though. So I think they’re good teachers because they keep the kids laughing.

Steve Cuden: So I’ve been having just an absolutely fantastic conversation with Haris Orkin, and we’re going to wind the show down just a little bit. And I’m wondering, in all of your experiences and you’ve had many, can you share with us a story beyond what you’ve already told us that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny?

Haris Orkin: Okay. Well, this was a strange thing that happened to me. I was just out of graduate school and I was. And you know, I was working in advertising but looking for screenwriting jobs. The guy who was named Bill Jackson, who did a puppet show, children’s puppet show in Chicago, had come out to California and ran the, the film department at CalArts. And he was looking for a screenwriter for a TV pilot he wanted to do. And and he can. I’m, not quite sure how he connected. I think it was someone through the school connected with, with me because they knew I did comedy. And so he hired me to help him with this TV pilot, he wanted to do an adult puppet show that’s like, combined live actors and puppets. Wouldn’t be for children. It was going to be about a gang, two nightclubs, both owned by gangsters. And, one group of gangsters were humans and one were puppets. And they brought in. Broderick Crawford, was playing the, like, the big heavy. And, he was, you know, he was very old at that point. but, And did you see Bad Santa? Did you ever see Bad Santa? That movie?

Steve Cuden: I have seen Bad Santa, sure. Billy Bob Thornton.

Haris Orkin: Yeah. So I can’t remember the name of the actor who played the elf. He was the henchman for, working with Broderick Crawford. And then the guys who financed it were a bunch of producers. They weren’t producers. They had car dealerships in Michigan and they wanted to get into Hollywood, and so they decided to finance this pilot, but they wanted to do it. They wanted to hire women from the Playboy Modeling Agency to be in the audience, like at the nightclub. And so I remember they just hired all these Playboy ex. Playboy Playmates. And I remember driving around in a limo with them as we went all around la, picking them up to take them to the shoot. And I, was like, you know, I don’t know, I was 23. I’m like, oh, my God, this is great. Yeah. It may not be great for the show, but it’s a great. Yeah, it’s great for me, you were.

Steve Cuden: You were in a limo with a bunch of Playmates. Holy mackerel.

Haris Orkin: Yeah. And these guys from. These car dealers from, Michigan and, you know, and they shot the whole thing. I wish I had still had a copy of the, I never got a copy. I don’t think it never did sell, surprisingly.

Steve Cuden: And so you had it. It’s kind of like Roger Rabbit. You had the human world, the actual human world, and then the fictitious. In this case, puppet world. Not cartoons.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, that’s. Yeah, exactly. It was the puppets. I know. I think there have been things made like that now.

Steve Cuden: Well, they’re for kids. For kids. HR Puff and stuff, you know, that’s. Those sorts of shows.

Haris Orkin: Yeah, maybe it does. You know, there is that whole big furry movement. Maybe they’d be into that, the Furries.

Steve Cuden: In fact, where I live here in Pittsburgh, they have their annual convention here. The Furries are in Pittsburgh every year. Yeah.

Haris Orkin: That’d be fun to go to.

Steve Cuden: I’ve been to one. It’s a very interesting experience. I’m not sure I need to do it again, but I really enjoyed the one experience I had. All right, so last question for you today, Haris you’ve shared with us throughout this whole show a phenomenal amount of information that I think would be very useful to anyone trying to get into the business or, try to improve themselves in it. I’m wondering, do you have a single solid piece of advice that you like to give to those who are starting out and want to know how they can get into the business or, ah, maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to that next level.

Haris Orkin: What I tell people is, the hardest part about writing is just keeping your butt in the chair. Discipline and persistence. I recommend people do it every day, and you just have to just keep at it. Can’t wait for inspiration to strike. there’s a. A book by John Gardner called On, Becoming a Novelist. It’s a great book about writing, and that’s what he talks about. You have to, like, do it long enough until you kind of reach this kind of flow state like athletes do. And it takes time, and it, you know, you have to kind of learn to do it. And it’s from repetition that you get to that point.

Steve Cuden: I think that that is, about as sound a piece of advice as anyone could give for, especially for writers. I was always told that the formula for success as a writer was but liberally applied to chair. That was what I was always told, and I think that that’s it. If you want to be a great writer, you can’t do it any other way than to write and write and write well. Haris Orkin, this has been an absolutely wonderful Story Beat today, and I can’t thank you enough for joining me today and for your time, your energy, and for all this great wisdom that you’ve imparted on us.

Haris Orkin: Oh, it’s been really fun talking to you about this all. Yeah, that’s great. Thank you for bringing me on.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s Story Beat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to. Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden, and may all your stories be unforgettable.