Alan Watt's Blog, page 5

What Happens Next?

“Be curious, not judgmental.” – Walt Whitman

Hi Writers,

A fatal mistake many writers make in beginning a new story, is allowing themselves to be seduced by their premise. They set about trying to figure out their plot at the expense of allowing their characters to live. It is crucial to understand that character suggests plot, and that when we put plot before character we tend to get mired in our idea of the story.

The first step in creating a fully alive story is imagining the world, which simply means envisioning your characters in relation to each other and asking “What happens next?” With each idea or image that springs to mind, we follow it to its conclusion. At this point we are not trying to figure out our story, we are just panning for gold.

Let’s say we imagine our protagonist having an argument with his wife. What happens next? Does he confess something? Does she reveal something? How does it escalate? How does the story turn? And then what? And then what? Keep asking, “What happens next?”

Here is what we are not doing: we are not trying to figure out a plot so that we can place our characters into it. Character suggests plot. As we imagine our characters in relationship to each other, situations naturally emerge.

I work with many writers who cling desperately to their idea of the plot only to realize later that they have painted themselves into a corner. They reach a point in the story where they are moving their characters around like chess pieces, trying to keep the story interesting, yet the characters’ behaviors no longer ring true. By allowing our characters to live and interact in our imagination without following a prescribed plan, our subconscious is free to make non-linear connections that our conscious mind would never have delivered.

This process is thrilling because our characters are alive. They are engaging with each other because we have not restricted ourselves by prematurely imposing a plot. They can change with a flick of our pen. We are not bound to a single plot, because we have not labored for months, refining scenes that may not make the final draft. What if our hero, a hardened New York cop, suddenly tells us that he is a she? What if our romantic comedy suddenly tells us that it wants to move from a sweltering summer in New Orleans to Christmas in Vermont? Great! We have not become so tied down by details that we cannot pick them up and move them across the country or switch their gender.

 

Writing the Forbidden

“Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are so ingrained in our society we rarely stop to think about it. I can write anything I want – dark fiendish plots without fear. I can criticize the FBI, the CIA, the President and Congress without giving it a thought.”

– John Grisham

 

It is challenging at times to let go of our idea of the story in order to allow the actual story to emerge. If we are stuck, the way out is not through forcing our idea, but rather inquiring into the nature of our character’s dilemma.

In the Coen Bros. dark comedy, Burn After Reading, the dilemma is vanity. It might be characterized as, “How can I have love when I don’t believe I’m enough?” It is a set up, a circular problem that can never be resolved. This question arises over and over again in the film. All of the characters constellate around this question of how to get the love they want. The filmmakers are exploring the nature of yearning to darkly comic effect.

In creating our stories there can be a tendency to want to figure it out. Remember, the desire to write is connected to the desire to resolve something within ourselves. To some degree we are always writing our story, therefore, we are going to be touching that tender spot in ourselves.

Notice how we must confront a dilemma for ourselves in writing our story: If we are trying to resolve something and we don’t have the answer, how can we finish it? Writing our story is a setup. It asks everything of us – because if it didn’t we would never surrender.

Here’s the solution: be the wise man or woman on the hill. Know that a place lives within you where the dilemma is resolved. This place doesn’t live in our heads. It lives in our subconscious. Our subconscious understands that life is not about good and bad, winning and losing. It understands the nature of existence is about cause and effect, action and consequence.

It is crucial that we maintain an objective distance from our work in order to be a channel for the images that want to be told through us. Put simply, we need to cut ourselves some slack so we can get to that raw place. When we go to the place of not knowing, we discover what we know. But if we think we already know we never move beyond what we merely believe. Knowing is a place that can contain the dilemma. Belief is the precarious place where our hero is forever buffeted by the winds of change.

Let’s give ourselves permission to write the forbidden. We may feel that we are exposing our deepest secrets. Good. People only care about the story! While watching Burn After Reading, do we wonder if the Coen brothers are the vainest people in America, or if they have ever secretly taken a hatchet to someone’s head, as Malkovich did to Richard Jenkins? Do we wonder if perhaps they are secretly saving up to buy butt implants like Frances McDormand in one of the opening scenes? Of course not. Here’s why: vanity lives in all of us, as does the murderous impulse, as does anything we can imagine. Terence, the Roman playwright and philosopher, said, “Nothing human is alien to me.”

When we write from the personal, we connect to the universal. In acknowledging our weaknesses, we are set free.

Technique

“Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.”

– Martha Graham

 

Hi Writers,

Technique is developed over time. By reading and writing, we absorb a sense of story structure, cadence, and rhythm; we learn how to create and release tension. We deepen our relationship to our protagonist’s dilemma, and ultimately (God willing) we grow in our understanding of human nature. Through sitting alone each day and allowing our imaginations to wander, and then writing down what we see, we develop what might be called technique.

Technique is a word often used by people who do not understand the creative process. It can imply an “outside in” approach, as if the artist simply harnessed his technique and the work suddenly appeared. Technique involves cultivating a spirit of curiosity. Although there is a rigor to creating a story, it is not a right-brain rigor, but rather a marriage of knowing the right questions to ask while maintaining a relaxed state. Buddhists call it “detachment.”

The novice writer can burn himself out too quickly. He can panic at the first sign that he has lost control of his story. Writing a story—whether it is a novel, memoir, or screenplay—demands we accept that our story is bigger than we are. We cannot hold the entire story in our brain. When we become too dependent on plot we tend to lose sight of the reason our story wants to be told, i.e., the theme. What are we trying to express?

Technique involves continually returning to this question while synthesizing all the seemingly disparate character and story elements that come to us through this single question. Our theme is played out in every moment of every scene through a single dilemma that all of the characters in the story constellate around.

This process is a mental dance of sorts. Dancers know that if they don’t stay relaxed, and if they think too much, they will trip and fall. It is the same for writers. While we are asking questions, we are not demanding unequivocal answers, but rather, we are moving in the direction of the most dynamic way to tell our story.

I once had the opportunity to meet Paul Schrader, a hero of my youth. The brilliant screenwriter of the classic Martin Scorsese films Taxi Driver and Raging Bull among others, had called me to discuss optioning a story I had written. I mentioned how my third act had a problem in the hopes that he would offer a brilliant solution that would set me back on the path.

He didn’t.

What he said was even more helpful. “Kid, third acts are a bitch.”

The relief I felt was indescribable. If my childhood hero struggled with third acts, maybe I could stop making meaning out of my own struggle and just show up on the page. Just because writing a story is difficult, and at times, seems nearly impossible – this does not mean we are unqualified to write it. When we stop questioning whether or not we are able to do it, and put our focus where it needs to be, on the primal drives of our characters, we are employing what some call “technique.”

Backstory

“The past is prologue.” – William Shakespeare

When we are stuck, it is inevitably because some part of our backstory is unclear. Backstory refers to what happened before our story began, and is often revealed through exposition. A clearer understanding of our backstory will inform our characters’ present circumstances.

The challenge in clarifying backstory is to not force it to conform to our idea of the story. A character’s place of birth, level of education, relationship history, family dynamic, culture, ethnicity, religious beliefs, and political leanings are all in service to our story. Character is malleable; all of this information is changeable.

The act of seeking the ideal character is not something we can figure out. As we inquire into our story, ideas about our character’s past will come to us. They might seem surprising and unusual. They might even appear to want to take our story in a different direction.

Sometimes the appearance of a different direction is really just a stretching of the original idea. Nothing is lost if we entertain an idea for a few moments, yet sometimes the novice writer can get rigid about this, like they want to hold the whole story in a small container, and they fear that to add one more idea might lead to a super-saturation point.

Let’s say that I have a character who feels somewhat nebulous. He is a Senator, running for reelection. As I inquire into his backstory, I sense that while married he had a child with another women, a situation that has been kept quiet for years. What on earth does that have to do with my main story about his best friend, a priest who is dying and wrestling with the decision of whether or not to reveal a dark secret?

I begin to wonder if this is a story about secrets. Perhaps I wonder what it means to have a secret, and if it is possible to be forgiven when a secret has been held for such a long time that it has affected the lives of many people. Perhaps I wonder about the value of revealing the truth, and weighing revelation against silence. Perhaps I wonder about integrity. Should a man come clean about his past, even if it means it could adversely affect not only his career, but the lives of his family?

All of these questions sprang from the single impulse: “What if the Senator had a child with another woman?” The nature of “child with another woman” in the context of this story might have to do with secrets. In another story, the nature of “child with another woman” might involve issues of responsibility, isolation, guilt or forgiveness. It is valuable to explore not only to how new back story information affects the plot, but also to notice how our subconscious is constantly offering clues that can help clarify our work.

SOME THOUGHTS

1)      Is the backstory information that I’ve included really necessary?

2)      Does it belong here, or can I reveal it later?

3)      Can I dramatize the way this information is revealed?

4)      Can I layer in essential information, thus dropping any unnecessary passages?

The Lens Through Which We See Our Story

“I find that when I am working I become like an antenna, and suddenly, somewhat like a paranoid schizophrenic, everything relates to my screenplay: a mentioned recipe, a joke somebody tells, a billboard that I see. It all becomes grist for whatever screenplay I’m working on.” – Wesley Strick

When we begin working on a new idea we often start by imagining the world of our story. We allow our imagination to wander and we see possibilities for our story all around us. It could be in the way the mailman tips his head when he greets us in the morning, or the way our neighbor averts her eyes when she sees us, making us wonder what secrets she is keeping, or the way a child waves from the sidewalk, pure innocence and exuberance. Everything we see and hear can be refracted through the question: “Where does this live in the world of my story?”

If we seek to pull an exact moment from our real life we will have limited success, but if we can distill a moment to its nature we are going to see possibilities for our story everywhere. If, for example, we are writing a monster movie set on Mars, we can still draw inspiration from the mother in the china shop who admonishes her child for breaking a vase. What is it we notice about this woman and her child? Is the mother blaming the child for something she should have seen coming? Is she angry because she is embarrassed? Does she speak to the child in a positive manner, explaining the importance of respecting other people’s property?

We may ask, “Where does this live in my monster movie?” Even if there is no mother and child in the film, there could be two characters of unequal status, the novice and the master, for example. Does the master get frustrated with his young charge? How does he speak to him? Is there something in the way the mother speaks to her child in the china shop that elicits an “ah-ha” moment for us?

We are exploring the nature of events in order to develop a more specific relationship to our story. Since the desire to tell a story is the desire to resolve a dilemma for ourselves, we are continually drawn to moments that spark our imagination. It takes work to do this. It is sometimes easy to dismiss. From the moment we hear the woman’s admonishment we may notice our curiosity piquing. Make a conscious choice throughout the day to ask yourself where something lives in your story. It is an exercise of making character and theme more important than our idea of the plot.

Make it Cinematic

 

A picture paints a thousand words. Since a movie is a story told in pictures, a screenplay is the blueprint from which the director takes his cues. It is not the screenwriter’s job to provide camera shots, in fact that is usually the sign of a novice, but it is our job to provide compelling description that conveys meaning, elicits emotion, and ignites the imagination.

Think about your favorite films. It’s likely that what you remember are a series of images; Michael Corleone walking out of the restroom and shooting the men at the table in The Godfather. The final image in Annie Hall of cars driving down the street as seen from inside the empty restaurant where Woody Allen has just run into Annie for the last time. Shirley MacLaine standing on the elevator in The Apartment. Leonardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet standing on the bow of the Titanic. The tracking shot in Goodfellas where the gangsters enter the Copacabana nightclub through the kitchen, or the one where the gangsters talk in the car while the restaurant they just set fire to burns behind them. The final shot of Thelma and Louise driving over the cliff. The final shot of the boy running in The 400 Blows. Ron Burgundy doing his vocal warm-up during the opening credits of Anchorman. Clarice Starling’s terrifying walk toward Hannibal Lecter’s cell as she meets him for the first time in The Silence of the Lambs.

These images provide subtext. When Leo and Kate stand on the bow of the ship with their arms in the air, we understand that they have fallen in love. When Pacino shoots the men, we understand that he has said goodbye to his old life and is now a gangster like the rest of his family. When Woody exits the frame and we are left staring at the passing cars, there is a feeling of exquisite sadness at the fleetingness of love.

There is a rule in documentary filmmaking that says never tell the audience what they are seeing. If, for example, Hitler is addressing a Nazi rally, the narrator might tell us about Hitler’s love of dogs. The point is that we are seeking juxtaposition in order to explore meaning. This principle is useful in narrative screenwriting as well. Our description can crosscut the dialogue in order to convey all sorts of meaning. Think of Kristin Wiig in Bridesmaids being told by her best friend that she has just gotten engaged. Her dialogue suggests that she is thrilled for her friend while her hand quivers as she puts the glass of wine to her mouth.

Also, what happens off screen is sometimes more arresting than what is displayed onscreen. Sometimes the image is better left to the imagination. What is not shown is as important as what is.

CHOICE

Why do we write? Why do we spend months, years, even decades engaged in the solitary act of creating a world on paper with no assurance than anyone will read it, except perhaps our immediate family, if only to find out what we think of them?

Sometimes I hear writers say that they have no choice, that the writing chose them. I understand the sentiment – in fact, I believe the drive to create is evolutionary, but to suggest that we have no choice is bullshit, and frankly, a dangerous idea. It’s important to acknowledge that we choose to write, otherwise we risk bondage to our creativity. Our work becomes too important and we may, on a subtle or not subtle level, demand a result that may not be forthcoming. Our lack of choice can make us tight and corrupt the process. We get up in the morning burdened by the chore. We must make something that is great. We must succeed. After all, this is our destiny. And then the horrible thought, “What if it is our fate that God called us to devote our life to a worthless cause?” At least indentured servants aren’t required to pour their hearts and souls into their work!

When we truly have no choice, we tend to rebel. We try to create a choice within our lack of choice, because frankly, everything is creative. Cooking is creative – and so is shoplifting. Giving birth is creative – and so is a knife fight. While there is a productive, life-affirming aspect to creativity, there is a destructive side to it as well. When we create we are simply using our imaginations to make something happen.

Without choice, we become victims. Victims tend to want to rebel, to assert their power, to forge an identity. That identity, the victim identity, tends to see things in a certain way. It is a narrow perspective of the world; hopeless, frugal, and fear-based. Victims live in survival mode, and therefore are unable to see beyond their own panic in order explore new possibilities, to inquire into why things are the way they are.

We all have access to a wider perspective. On some level, the act of creation is a search for love. Love is a subjective term, it is a mystery; something we continually seek to define for ourselves. If we are searching for love from a victim perspective, which is actually quite common, it becomes a search for what love can do for us. It is a way of saying, I am deficient in some way and require someone or something to validate me in order for me to be complete.

On a subconscious level, this is what happens when we believe that our writing chose us. When we accept that we choose to create, we take responsibility. Our eyes are open and we see reality more clearly. We are not seeking to be successful in order for our work to be valid. Our work is already valid, and it moves in the direction of gaining the public’s interest, because the collective consciousness seeks the truth.

When we write, our characters, our creations, are simply a manifestation of our internal beliefs. The plot is simply a backdrop, a field on which these characters act out the struggles we seek to resolve in ourselves.

By continually returning to the awareness that our writing is a choice, we give space for our characters to understand this as well. Our decision to fall in love was a choice. Our decision to get married was a choice. Our decision to get a divorce, stop speaking to our parents, have an affair, abandon our cat, rescue a friend, drink a fifth a whiskey – everything is a choice.

By approaching our work from this perspective of understanding that we always have a choice, we begin to make conscious what was perhaps previously unconscious. By doing this, we begin to UNDERSTAND what we did not previously understand.

And that is the goal of art; to make meaning out of a set of actions. Why did this happen? Why does this pattern continually play out in my life? I can’t speak for animals, but it seems that storytelling is primarily a human enterprise. Animals seek love, but they don’t seek meaning with the relish that we do. They just love. We tend to wonder why we love? This is an aspect of evolution. Evolution is an attempt to resolve a dilemma in order to grow, to become more fully who we are meant to be.

To grow is painful. To be conscious is painful. To make a choice involves discomfort, because it demands that we take responsibility. But it also means that we get to live in reality. To create from a place of fantasy, of groundlessness, is a waste of time. Without a connection to why we are writing, our work becomes merely an escape. There is nothing wrong with losing ourselves in our writing, but we are losing ourselves in an attempt to connect to a deeper sense of our humanity.

Why we write is more important than what we write, because our reason for writing directly influences the content of our work. This is why it is so important to remember that we don’t have to do this. No one is forcing us. The world is not in a rush for more books. There are more great works of fiction, poetry, memoir, history and cookbooks than we will ever have time to consume.

If we’re going to write, it is because we have a sincere desire to express ourselves. Even if we don’t quite understand precisely what we wish toe express. It might just be an inner yearning, but by making the choice to engage in the process rather than the result, our work has a chance to live. In doing so, what we write becomes essential, if only to ourselves, but when we begin from this place, it has a chance to affect the world.

Prose

“Prose is architecture, not interior design.” – Ernest Hemingway

Our words are in service to our story. Not the other way around. When we get too flashy with our adjectives and adverbs, we may distract and even confuse our reader in ways we might not be aware. We don’t ever want to replace substance with style. If every sentence is shouted from the rooftops, important content will get lost in the shuffle.

In painting, a color is understood in relation to another color. A particular green will mean something different depending on the colors with which it is in contrast. Just as darkness can only be understood in relation to light, if every sentence blares to us as a headline, we will have nothing to measure our climax against, and our story will lose its meaning.

If we keep it simple, each nuance will have maximum effect. In the rewrite, we are seeking clarity and meaning.

Stripping our prose to the bone does not mean that we are unconcerned with the rhythm of our sentences. We are interested in the flow of the words insofar as they are in service to our story, and nothing more. If we find ourselves trying to sound clever, or that we are falling in love with our words, it might be time to step back and ask ourselves if we are being clear. Long sentences do not confer genius, nor do big words. In fact, verbosity rarely makes our work more specific, but rather pulls the reader out of the story.

We are only able to see what is missing from our work when we remove what does not belong.

TODAY

Choose a paragraph and just for fun, remove every unnecessary word. Explore how you can condense it to precisely what you wish to say. Once the paragraph shines like a diamond, ask yourself one last question: “Is this paragraph necessary?” If the answer is no, delete it.

Dialogue

“If you have a good ear for dialogue, you just can’t help thinking about the way people talk. You’re drawn to it. And the obsessive interest in it forces you to develop it. You almost can’t help yourself.” –Robert Towne

Hi Writers,

DIALOGUE

The surest way to kill the aliveness of our characters is by insisting they make sense. When we follow the labyrinth of most conversations, we discover one constant: people are always trying to get what they want. This doesn’t mean that characters are always clear in articulating their desires, or that they’re being truthful, or that they must even understand each other.

The purpose of dialogue is to reflect the life and death stakes for our characters. Amidst the most mundane exchange is a yearning for something more. By staying connected to our characters’ driving wants, their speech reflects an attempt to achieve these desires. Dialogue isn’t linear, nor is it logical. With each attempt, our characters are met with antagonistic forces. The tension builds through the scene as each character attempts to realize his goal.

If our prose feels wooden or transparent, as if we’re just trying to move the story forward, we can ask ourselves what the characters want.The playwright Harold Pinter wrote elegant human studies that mined the world of the unspoken. At first glance his plays read as banal conversations, but upon further investigation, beneath the thin veneer of civility live tectonic shifts, life and death struggles.

If you’re going back through your first draft and find a scene isn’t working, here’s a quick way to get things moving: pull out a fresh sheet of paper and write a stream-of-consciousness dialogue between two characters. Write it quickly. Surprise yourself with what the characters really want to say. It’s often in the rewrite that dialogue comes alive. We have a little more security with our structure, a deeper sense of what our story is about, and we can loosen the reins.

Language is a means of communicating desire. Whether it’s to be seen and heard, to gain sympathy, to curry favor, to get information, to feel close, to punish, to win the girl, to hurt, to destroy, to reassure, to secure a position – we speak in an attempt to get something.

But here’s the thing: we rarely come out and say what we really want, because within every scene is an antagonistic force. Our characters all have something at stake.

In real life, people rarely say what they think and feel. Why would we expect our characters to do this?

Until we get out of the way, our characters are all going to sound like us.

Great dialogue contains tension. It understands what is at stake, and it walks that line. Great dialogue is specific. A single line can tell us a great deal about a character. Here’s a quick example:

I ran into a friend whom I hadn’t seen in a while. “How’s life?” I asked.

He sighed. “I want a car with a door that opens on the driver’s side.”

One last thing. Our characters don’t have to speak. If they don’t want anything, keep them quiet until they tell you their heart’s desire.

Opposing Argument

“The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.” –  George Bernard Shaw

 

Every story is essentially an argument that relates directly to the dilemma. Remember that a dilemma is a combination of a powerful desire wedded to a false belief.

In Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games, the author presents a dystopian universe where each day is a desperate struggle to survive and, according to the protagonist Katniss, love does not exist. The story begins with a lottery in which two children from each province are selected to participate in the Hunger Games, a competition to the death.  Katniss watches as her younger sister is selected for this Darwinian nightmare, and because this means certain death for the young girl, Katniss bravely volunteers to replace her.

When the boy, Peeta, is selected, we understand that he has been in love with Katniss all of his life, and suddenly the story’s central dilemma becomes apparent: “Can love trump survival?”

It is important to note that the theme of our story informs the plot, but that plot and theme are separate from each other. The theme (does love trump survival?) is the throughline. The plot is simply the events that arise to reveal the theme in all of its manifestations.

These children are thrust into a dystopian world. What better environment to explore the question of love versus survival? If true love can exist in the world of the Hunger Games, then certainly it can exist anywhere. The Hunger Games are a metaphor for the worst part of ourselves. These games are played out for the citizens of the Capital, a bloodthirsty yet overly sentimental mob whose only desire is to have their senses pricked.

Through this journey, Katniss struggles with the question, “Is Peeta’s love true or is it a ruse?”

The inciting incident raises the question of true love – this is done through showing and not telling. The act of replacing her sister shows us that it does exist. But now we must explore the opposing argument: “Will Peeta sacrifice his life so that Katniss can live? Just how quixotic is this kid?”

Exploring the opposing argument does not imply some formulaic relationship to structure. In fact, it is not even about story. It is a valuable tool in developing a more specific relationship to our theme, whether we are writing a poem, essay, memoir, or theater piece.

The opposing argument is important because it gives the reader a visceral understanding of the dilemma. This understanding is vital, because without it, the reader will not understand specifically what is at stake.

Every plot point is built upon the previous plot point. Without a clear sense of the opposing argument, the tension (or reluctance) surrounding the protagonist’s decision at the end of Act One may not be clear.

Whether we are writing a richly nuanced human drama or straight-ahead genre fiction, the principle of opposing argument still holds true. Do not fret that you might not have an opposing argument in your story. You do! It is not a matter of getting this right – it is a matter of developing the most specific relationship to it so that what you are saying rings like a bell. The opposing argument is not something to be figured out. There is a rigor to this work, but it is not strictly a left-brain rigor.