Alan Watt's Blog, page 3

Stay Curious

“The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious, you might never come home.” – Jeanette Winterson

When my son was three years old, he was Captain Hook for Halloween. It was fascinating to watch him. He cared way more about playing pretend than he did about the candy. It would have been easier for him to lose the hook and dig in with both hands when our neighbor told he could take as much candy as he wanted, but what mattered to Ray was the story he was in.

One morning he got up and ran into the family room to put on his white bear paws and hat that my costume designer gave him on the set of my film Interior Night. He told me that Stanley was missing and we had to go and find him. My son tells stories all day long . . . and he never worries about whether or not they will get published.

It’s inspiring to see that level of commitment.

He literally lives for story. It makes me wonder why are we so drawn to story. I think it’s because story is the way we contextualize our lives—our imagination is the tool we use to find meaning, to resolve dilemmas, and to make sense of our world.

And yet, as we grow up, fear gets in the way—we start worrying about who is going to love us and how are we going to pay for everything, and often we fall into the false belief that we cannot rely on our intuition or imagination to guide us—and yet, we have this desire to write.

I think that the act of writing is really a process of shedding all of our false beliefs for the truth. The three-act-structure is a process of winnowing away our protagonist’s misconception of the way things are in order to lead him back to his true self.

Picasso said, “It takes a very long time to become young.”

Story often begins with an idea or an image that ignites our imagination. We become curious, wanting to know more, to see how it is going to play out. The desire to write is connected to the desire to resolve something we don’t yet understand. However, there can be a tendency to objectify the creative experience, to believe that we are somehow in control, that it is our job to figure out our novel or screenplay. The problem with this is that we tend to write our idea of the story—we think we know what is going to happen and we don’t allow our characters to take the lead. Being curious means that we trust our characters even as they lead us away from our idea of where we think the story should go. We must allow them this privilege!

If we do not allow our characters to stray from our preconceived vision of the story, our work will be predictable. It is not that our ideas are wrong, it is just that, sometimes, we fail to grasp the depth of conflict required to satisfy what we are trying to express. Our characters want something—the stakes are life and death. By going after what they want, they will meet with antagonistic forces.

When we allow our characters to struggle mightily we are rewarded with a more dynamic scene that dramatizes our ideas in ways we may not have anticipated. Our work becomes more specific.

When we approach our work from a place of wonder, anything is possible.

When we let go of the pressure that we are supposed to solve something, or that there is something we ought to know, we can relax and ideas and images naturally accrue.

There may be a period of time when the story doesn’t cohere. We may have a series of disparate images, a sense of our hero at different points in the story, and we wonder how on earth he is going to get from here to there. Understandably, this can make us nervous—or we can get excited by how dynamic our book or screenplay is becoming. As long as we hold it loosely and stay connected to that initial impulse, our story has a way of telling us where it wants to go.

Our subconscious seems to be constructed in such a way that it is forever searching to find order in chaos. It is the ultimate Mr. Fix-It. We don’t need to crack the whip. In fact, it is when we start cracking the whip and fretting about whether the writing is any good that our subconscious starts shutting down.

It seems that the more we show up for our writing each day, the less credence we are inclined to give our anxiety. Every day is different, and there is little connection between our feelings and the quality of our work. When we surrender to our curiosity, our story reveals itself to us in ways we may never have imagined.

I can’t wait to find out who my son will be tomorrow.

No Dilemma, No Story

One thing that has been coming up a lot in my classes is the tendency for writers to “figure out” their plot. This is due, at least in part, to story structure being taught by story analysts as a formula, which can lead to frustration and interminable rewrites. The process of creating a story is akin to a Polaroid coming into focus. When we think it’s our job to figure it all out from the start, we get stuck. When we place our attention on the protagonist’s internal struggle, their central dilemma, the story begins to reveal itself in surprising and dynamic ways.

A dilemma is a problem that can’t be solved without creating another problem. You know you’ve got a story when your protagonist wants something that is impossible to achieve based on their current approach, or their current identity, necessitating a shift in perception, i.e., “When George Bailey leaves Bedford Falls, he will have a wonderful life.”

Remember, problems are solved, while dilemmas are resolved through a shift in perception. Our story only becomes interesting when we identify the underlying dilemma. Problems are not interesting: I’m in the desert. I get a flat tire, I call AAA and the guy comes and fixes my tire. Boring.
Dilemmas are interesting. I have a flat tire in the desert. I call AAA. The guy who comes to fix it is the guy sleeping with my wife. Now we have a story.

If you simply focus on how your hero will solve his problem, you are, on some level, controlling the process. Solving the problem is not what the story is about. We care less about whether or not your hero gets what he wants, and more about how he will get what he needs.

This process requires acknowledging that we are not in control of the process. Our job is not to figure it out, but to ask the right questions.

The brain is good at doing one thing: it answers the questions we ask it. When we ask neurotic questions like, “Why is this so difficult for me,” our brain provides us with neurotic answers like, “Because you are a hopeless, unlovable oaf.” Not helpful. But when we place our focus on character and theme our story comes to life. The question we should be asking is “What is this thing about?” Make it primal. Is it about connection, revenge, ambition, freedom, forgiveness, loss, abandonment, isolation, obsession . . . ? What is about? Over and over again, ask yourself “What is it about?”

Your protagonist is an extreme through which you explore your theme. This just means that we want our protagonist to have a dynamic arc, in order to convey meaning. If our hero is seeking connection, we must look for ways to show the challenges she must overcome, otherwise there is no dilemma.

So, to recap:

1. What is my story about thematically? Make it primal.
2. What is my protagonist’s dilemma?
3. How is my protagonist an extreme through which I can explore the theme?

But That’s What Really Happened

“I’ve given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can’t divorce a book.“
—Gloria Swanson

In writing fiction we inevitably come to that moment that is lifted directly from our real life, but fidelity to real events can create a block in the rewrite. In an attempt to be faithful to the event, we can lose our connection to the truth of our story. The facts of the event are not enough — we must also provide our reader with context; what does this event mean in terms of the larger story? Sometimes we can have such an entrenched idea about what happened that we miss the essential nature of the incident. Our perception of the event can often limit our understanding of it.

The question to ask is, “What do I want to express through this event?” Seemingly important moments become suddenly irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if Aunt Maddy lives in a four-story Brooklyn walkup or the plains of Nebraska because what we’re really interested in is the nature of her prickly relationship with her husband, Uncle Petey, who runs a diner on the corner, or a cattle farm.

When we shoehorn real life events into our fictive world, it throws our story off the rails. It’s like when you download a file on your computer and it asks you to put it in a different format to make it readable. By distilling the event to its nature, our reader can be made to understand the nature of Aunt Maddy and Uncle Petey’s marriage, regardless of where the story is set.

A similar principle applies to memoir writing. Just because something happened in our life does not mean it necessarily deserves to be in the memoir. Memoir is not journaling. If we were to recount every blessed event that happened in our life, the story would never end. We’re interested in the nature of the events as they lead our protagonist to a new understanding. If the same beat is played throughout the story, we might want to choose one or two beats to illustrate the point, so that our reader does not endure endless repetition. What happens is less important than why it happens.

WRITING EXERCISE

Notice where you’ve culled material from your real life and ask yourself what you’re attempting to express through the particular character or event. Distill it to its nature, and if the character or event isn’t fulfilling what you’ve set out to say, alter it to suit your purposes.

Why Writers Get Stuck

Einstein says, “You cannot solve a problem at the same level of consciousness that created the problem.” Writers often get stuck because they believe it’s their job to figure out a solution to their protagonist’s problem. It’s not. Here’s why.

Our protagonist doesn’t have a problem. He has a dilemma.

A dilemma is a problem that cannot be solved without creating another problem. When we approach our story as if our protagonist is struggling with a problem, we tend to want to figure out a way to fix it, which short-circuits our work. By inquiring into the dilemma, we see our story from a wider perspective.

Problems are solved. Dilemmas are resolved through a shift in perception.

Perhaps our story began as a premise, a character, or a single idea, but underlying this initial impulse was a subconscious quest for resolution. The creative impulse seeks to make order from chaos, to contextualize a series of events with the intention of making new meaning from them. As storytellers, we’re drawn to unresolved situations: Will George Bailey leave Bedford Falls? Will Dorothy’s dreams come true somewhere over the rainbow? Will Harry Potter triumph over Lord Voldemort?

These questions appear to present a problem but they are actually providing a context through which we can explore a resolution to a dilemma. If Jimmy Stewart did leave Bedford Falls at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, we would be disappointed because he would not have learned that his life is already wonderful. Similarly, if Dorothy’s dreams did come true somewhere over the rainbow, we would miss the point, and if Harry Potter simply destroyed Lord Voldemort and that was the end of it, there would be no context for the theme, which is that good and evil must coexist.

The desire to write is connected to the desire to resolve something we seek to understand. By noticing the central dilemma in our story, we see where it exists in our life. By exploring its resolution in our life, we find its resolution in our story.

Here are some examples of dilemmas:
– I want intimacy, but I don’t want to reveal myself.
– I want to have faith, but I don’t trust God.
– I want to be forgiven, but I don’t want to confess.
– I want love, but I don’t want to commit

If we believe that love should complete us, we might misinterpret each relationship that does not complete us as an absence of love. Or we might seek success believing it will bring us joy, and with each achievement we despair at the elusiveness of joy. Obviously there is nothing wrong with desiring love or success, but when we believe that our salvation lies in their attainment we actually create the impossibility of achieving these goals. By exploring the meaning our protagonist makes out of his goal, we begin to glimpse his dilemma.

Notice how dilemmas are visceral. They engage the imagination and demand an emotional experience.

There are two key ingredients to any dilemma: 1) A powerful desire. 2) A false belief.

To be human is to struggle with a dilemma. We spend our lives trying to solve our problems. What makes writers brave is that we are curious about what lies beyond the apparent problem to the underlying pattern. By exploring the nature of our protagonist’s dilemma our story often opens up in unexpected ways.

12 Maxims of The 90-Day Novel

I hope you’re enjoying your spring. My post this week is actually a list I call 12 Maxims of The 90-Day Novel. These are twelve things to consider while writing your first draft:

1) When we stay out of the result, we move in the direction of our story.

2) Story involves a transformation. There can be no transformation without surrender.

3) Our idea of our story is never the whole story. It’s not that our idea is incorrect, but that it is incomplete.

4) We are a channel for the story. When we hold our idea of the story loosely and allow our characters to live, our perspective on the story widens.

5) Character reveals plot. By staying connected to our characters’ primal drives, conflict arises, and the plot thickens.

6) By allowing ourselves to be surprised in our daily writing, a coherent narrative gradually reveals itself.

7) When we try to figure it out, we tend to kill the aliveness of our characters and our story flat-lines.

8) When we explore the nature of a moment or scene, we connect to what makes it universally relatable.

9) By exploring the opposite direction of where we believe our story ought to move, we are led to a more dynamic and clearer version of the story.

10) When we see our characters as functions of a universal dilemma rather than real people we tend to loosen our grip on how they ought to behave, and consequently they appear more like real people.

11) Story is malleable. When we stay connected to the ineffable impulse that got us started, the order of events may alter, characters might be conflated, scenes added or deleted, but the essential story will remain the same.

12) In creating a story, we cannot make a mistake. Everything we write either belongs or is leading is to what ultimately belongs in our story.

What is My Screenplay About?

When we think of our favorite movies, there is invariably an element that is so novel, so surprising, that it ignites our imagination. Think of the character Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. He is not the stereotypical shambling, schizophrenic serial killer but a thoughtful, erudite doctor, a psychiatrist. When paired with the character of Clarice Starling, a young, attractive FBI agent saddled with drawing crucial information from him, their relationship becomes a mesmerizing psychological seduction.

Sometimes, there are elements that we have seen before, yet, they are assembled in such a unique way that the story becomes new. In the opening of American Beauty, the narrator, Lester Burnham, tells us that in less than a year he will be dead. Although we have seen this device with the William Holden character in Sunset Boulevard, by setting the story in the suburbs and holding a magnifying glass to the mundanity of an all-American family, the story becomes unusual and fresh.

The insights that make our work unique often arrive as happy accidents. Our most compelling screenplay lives fully and completely within our subconscious, and our task is to continually shed our logical, linear idea of the story for its most fully realized version.

The first step in creating a screenplay involves asking “What is my story about?” I’m not talking about plot, but about theme. Your theme is explored through your protagonist’s want. What is driving him through the story? Is it a desire for freedom, connection, security, justice? Notice how EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN YOUR STORY wants the same thing. This might seem like a radical notion, but upon deeper investigation you will notice a uniformity of want. This is necessarily so because it is through this shared desire that your theme is explored.

Our characters are functions of our theme, and our theme is explored through a dilemma. The two ingredients to any dilemma are a powerful want and false belief. It is through reframing the false belief that the dilemma gets resolved at the end of the story.

So, what is your story about? What is the word? Don’t feel like you have to answer it, but rather be curious about what it might be. Let’s say it is revenge. Ask yourself, “What is the dilemma of revenge?” The powerful want is obvious, but what is the false belief? Perhaps it is that when I exact revenge I will feel safe again, or the world will make sense. What is the meaning that your protagonist attaches to his goal? This is the false belief. This sets up an impossible goal, i.e., dilemma. As long as he believes that revenge will make him safe, his desire for revenge moves him toward feeling increasingly unsafe.

Notice how frequently you get stuck when you try to figure out your plot. By placing your curiosity squarely on the dilemma besetting your protagonist, your plot will naturally emerge.

Becoming a Professional Writer

The publishing industry has undergone tremendous changes over the years. “Mid-list” writers who relied on decent advances from their publishers have found themselves shut out of the big publishing houses — not through lack of talent, but because they have yet to write a blockbuster. This has led to confusion and disillusionment among many authors who fail to see this as an opportunity.

The bottom line is that as writers our goal is to create a body of work. When we confuse the number of people reading our work with its quality or value, we risk endangering our voice. And when we fail to see our intrinsic power as storytellers, we grow disheartened and stop writing.

I receive emails regularly from authors, both published and unpublished, who have grown disheartened with the industry. It’s become like Hollywood. They are not the bad guys, but it’s important to recognize their function and not interpret their rejection as a lack of validation. When Random House bought Fifty Shades of Grey it was not because they recognized it as a towering achievement in fiction. This is not a comment on the quality of the writing (I haven’t read it), but a statement that quality was not a factor in its sale.

The music business, the movie business, and the publishing business have all changed, and will continue to change. As artists, if we are to survive and flourish, we must educate ourselves and take advantage of the new opportunities afforded us. We must recognize this time for what it is: the most exciting time in history to be an artist! But we must be willing to let go of the old paradigm and recognize our intrinsic power.

In 2010, I published The 90-Day Novel. Had I published it with a traditional publisher I might have received a few thousand dollars as an advance and a paltry 10% of the profits (and more importantly, I can guarantee you that they would have balked at the format which encourages process rather than result). Instead, I started The 90-Day Novel Press and released the book myself, along with two others and a third by Linda Jenkins (The 90-Day Play). As of today The 90-Day Novel has sold over 40,000 copies and continues to sell well.

With the advent of the Internet, it is now possible to take the power into your own hands. You do not need to wait for permission.

What Does it Mean?

Everyone has a story. It takes courage to tell it, be it memoir or fiction, because there comes a point where we must separate the facts from the truth. The challenge for the storyteller lies in distilling events to their essential meaning. When we scratch the surface of our story and begin to ask “why” our story becomes more complicated. This is often where writers get stuck. The more we hold onto our “idea” of our story, the more challenging it becomes to allow our characters to take on a life of their own.

It is human nature to filter our experiences through our perception of the world, because we are always looking for meaning. When we read about a plane crashing into the sea and one hundred and sixty-two people losing their lives, we wonder, even if only on a subconscious level, “What does this mean?” To be human is to interpret the events around us. It’s primal. It’s a survival instinct. But when we stay in survival mode for too long, life begins to lose its meaning. We become fearful, paranoid, withdrawn. To be human is to seek meaning, and it is artists and writers that provide a context for the events of our times.

One of the first exercises we do in the 90-Day Novel workshop is something I call the “credo exercise.” You might want to try this right now.

Simply write for five minutes, beginning with the line: “One thing I feel strongly about is . . .”

This simple exercise connects the writer to the theme they are very likely exploring in their work. They often don’t even realize that this is what their story is about.

The next step is to distill the exercise to one arguable statement, such as: I feel strongly that everyone should be treated equally.

I then ask the writer to explore an opposing argument to this statement. They might come up with something such as: “Criminals don’t deserve the same rights as others,” or “When people are treated equally, there is no incentive to excel.”

Since story is, in essence, an argument, this exercise connects us to the antagonistic forces in our work and we begin to glimpse a wider perspective for our story.

It is common for writers to have an agenda, however subtle, so this exercise challenges us to explore our antagonists with equal integrity. The more we are able to find their inherent humanity, the more honestly we can explore our theme.

The purpose of story is to reveal a transformation. By the end of the story we want to understand WHY we all deserve to be treated equally in order to comprehend what equality actually means.

The Creative Process

When my son, Ray, was first learning to speak, there were so many new words each day – the syntax often fascinating and occasionally perverse. He also had a sophisticated sense of humor. He called his Winnie-the-Pooh bear “Pooh” and when I asked him the name of his favorite teddy bear, he grinned and said “Pee.” Nice.

I wonder if one reason kids are able to learn so rapidly is because everything is approached as play. They are not beset with adult concerns, and therefore they are relaxed and curious. They are also utterly dependent, which is really the place we want to be as writers.

When we take our rightful place as channels, we become dependent on some mysterious force that guides our words. This might sound crazy, but stop for a moment and think about where your ideas come from. It’s a mystery. Our ideas come to us when we’re relaxed, typically in an alpha state – in the shower, or driving, or sitting quietly in our office. Our minds are resting and the idea that had been alluding us suddenly appears.

There’s a quote that’s been attributed to a dozen different writers: “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” Part of this refers to the act of stripping ourselves of our defenses. Picasso said, “It takes a long time to become young.” I think he is referring to the hard work of creating the emotional environment for our imagination to play.

Although it might feel frightening and even unnatural for some, being willing to drop our ego is a loving act. We all have defenses, and they’ve served their purpose, but as writers we must gently let them go. We live in a culture that doesn’t particularly understand or support this creative act. In fact, it can be threatening. Folks are more interested in how much money you got paid for your book advance, and if you sold the film rights. Movie reviewers no longer talk about films without mentioning its’ gross at the box office, with the tacit message that box office is a barometer of quality.

It is human nature to want a positive result, but in creative work it’s akin to digging up the seeds to see how the flower is growing. I spoke with a writer recently who had stopped writing because she was afraid that what she wrote would not be good. This is our dilemma. Our desire to write something great prevents us from writing something that lives.

As writers, the key to relaxing is letting go of the result. We must do this every morning – for the rest of our lives. Some days are better than others, but at some point we begin to recognize that writing is a practice, a way of staying connected to ourselves and others, and that our job is simply to build a body of work.

Sell Your Novel to the Movies

When I did a book tour for my first novel, someone asked, “Have you sold the film rights?” And when I said yes, there was this gasp, like I’d been showered with pixie dust because Hollywood wanted my story. Some of the best works of fiction deserve never to be cast and photographed; to do so would weaken their effect, make them earthbound and common. But the truth is, I had always seen this story as a film, and from the outset, the hope was to sell it to the movies. I have optioned it every year since it was published (an option is when a film producer pays you a yearly fee for the opportunity to make your book into a film – and when the option expires, you keep the cash, and hopefully option it again.) For whatever reason, there has always been a lineup of suitors for this particular story, and as my agent tells me, “You’ve made more optioning it than you would have made selling it.”

FIVE TOOLS TO MAKE YOUR WORK MORE CINEMATIC

WHAT IS THE STORY ABOUT?

In film, your movie is about ONE THING. This is not necessarily so with novels or memoirs, which is why some books are so challenging to adapt. When Martin Scorcese adapted Nikos Kazanzakis’s novel, The Last Temptation of Christ, he said there were six different movies in the book and he had to choose one. It’s helpful if you can distill your story to a theme, and notice how that theme is alive through the whole story. Don’t feel like you have to nail it down, but remain curious. Because if the story is about justice, then you will discover that every single scene is exploring what justice means.

EVERY SCENE MOVES THE STORY FORWARD

In film, every scene must advance the plot. Every scene exists for that reason. As William Goldman says, “Screenplays are structure.” Some writers assume that this means if you have a wonderful scene that is not advancing the plot then it ought to be removed, no questions asked. But perhaps what it needs is to be contextualized. Why is it there? What is it trying to do? Go through your story, scene by scene, and ask yourself honestly if each scene is advancing the plot. If what you want is a propulsive narrative, then here are some things to explore:

1) What do the characters want in the scene?

2) What is at stake?

3) What are the obstacles?

4) Is it urgent?

5) Am I disguising or dramatizing exposition? (In other words, don’t tell us, show us – take us into the experience)

If you can identify what the characters want, make the stakes as high as possible, and locate the obstacles that stand in the way of the characters getting it, you are on your way to creating a compelling scene that will move the story forward through meaning.

WRITING CLIFFHANGERS

At the end of every chapter (or sequence in film) you raise a question that demands to be answered. It can be really small or really big, but you put an itch in the reader’s brain that demands to be scratched. In other words, “What’s going to happen next?” And yes, I said, every single chapter. And once you understand this, it isn’t that difficult. Notice, when reading a book, the moment that you put it down. You probably put it down because the author gave permission to put it down.

EMPLOYING THE FIVE SENSES

Remember, you are writing prose, so you can convey through your words a sensory experience for your reader. Make it specific! Don’t write, “She smelled the flowers.” Gardenias smell different than roses or jasmine. Take us into the experience. What does asphalt smell like after a hard rain? What does milk taste like a day after its expiration? Describe the roughness of a sage leaf before you fry it in butter where it grows crispy and brittle and then melts hot on your tongue. Make it tactile. And what about sound? Does your story have a soundtrack? Right now I can hear the birds in my front yard, and my son is watching Magic School Bus on the other side of the house (he’s talking to the screen – according to him he’s sick and has to stay home from school and get caught up on Netflix). There’s also room tone, ambient noise. There is silence, which is completely different than the absence of sound. Walter Murch (Francis Coppola’s sound editor) when asked to provide his boss with total silence for a scene, gave him the sound of a buzzing mosquito turned up to ten. The silence was so complete that a mosquito sounded like a jet plane.

WHAT IS THE SCENE ABOUT?

One of the rules of screenwriting: Come into the scene as late as possible and get out as early as possible. We don’t need to see the characters enter or exit the scene. Cut to the chase. What is the scene about? This doesn’t mean that the scene can’t go on for pages and pages, but we want to get to the urgency as soon as possible and stay in that place. And here’s how you do it: Action verbs. Don’t just ask yourself what your character wants, but what are they doing to get what they want? Are they begging, pleading, charming, attacking, seducing, bribing, convincing, requesting, demanding, threatening? This is what we do in real life when we want something. What are your characters doing to get what they want?