Live To Write Another Day (3 page)

When I was in my freshman year of college, I took an introductory philosophy course where we spent an entire semester studying a single book:
The Republic
by Plato. If you’re familiar with this classic work you’ll recall that within Plato’s complex dialogue there is an extensive discussion about the nature of reality, at the end of which he concludes that the “thought form of a thing” is more real than the material object itself. The reasoning behind this is that nothing in the material world could ever be as pure or as perfect as the way you imagine it in your mind, so therefore it could never be as complete or true. Heady stuff, I know, but bear with me here.

What is it that we’re actually trying to do when we write? We’re trying to bring a thought—in the case of creative or dramatic writers, a story—into material existence. But as Plato or anyone with the writer gene will tell you, that story never seems to make it onto the page quite the way it was intended.

Now remember what I said earlier about solutions to problems existing
out there
somewhere? It’s the exact same thing with original stories. They exist, I believe, as thought forms, floating around the ether in an absolutely perfect state. But when you first stumble onto one, you can’t quite make it out entirely. It’s kind of fuzzy and unclear, like a faint radio signal. Before you know it, you get a little curious about this signal and you start to tune it in. You try to listen to it a little closer. And closer…and closer…until finally you get this feeling deep in your belly that this is not just any random radio signal. It’s a very specific signal that must be paid attention to. Now you make it your business to tune it in. This is the point when the writer gene starts to express itself, and the point where my process begins.

Over the years I’ve found that I’m much more likely to make a script work if I start by researching the subject I’m writing about. To non-fiction writers, this is a no-brainer. “Of course you want to spend time researching the subject first,” they would say. If you’re a creative writer, however, sometimes you get so jazzed about an idea, so pumped up by that initial rush of inspiration, that you just want to jump right in and start writing. Unfortunately, I have fallen into this trap more than once and it’s a recipe for disaster, an almost 100% guarantee that your crisis moment will come sooner rather than later. Why? Because you simply haven’t spent enough time tuning in this story to execute it properly.

When I begin thinking about the idea that has somehow slipped into my brain and woken me up in the middle of the night, the first thing I do is surf the web. I’m not talking about anything exhaustive, just your basic Google search to see what interesting information floats to the surface. Then, after a couple days of bookmarking, downloading, and printing the various materials, I will buy about six to eight non-fiction books that more specifically support the angle from which I’m attacking the story.

Now, you might think this approach sounds good if you’re writing a crime story about the Russian mafia or a medical drama about heart surgeons, but not if you’re writing a romantic comedy. There’s not really much to research if your story is just about people and their relationships, right?

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Granted, a romantic comedy may not always rely as heavily on the underpinnings of a particular subject, and may not require quite as much research as a crime story or a medical story, but like all stories it does have characters who must come from somewhere, who must have jobs, personal histories, and/or interests that need to be fleshed out and made three dimensional. The truth is…

There is always something that you can learn from doing a little research that will help you tell your story—any type of story.

What’s more, the actual content of the research is only part of what I’m after. Hang with me here. There’s a method to my madness.

Once I have all the books, I begin the passive part of the process by simultaneously reading, highlighting, and taking tons of handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad. The notes are a combination of direct quotes from various texts, my interpretations of what I’m reading, and ideas about my story that are now starting to emerge. These could include ideas for scenes or characters, high-level structural ideas with respect to how I will lay the whole thing out, thoughts on the message I’m trying to convey, or anything else about the story that pops into my head.

The key here is:

I do not edit what I write on the pad or try to make any sense of it at this point.

Why is this so important? Because again, I’m not trying to impose my will on the story. I’m trying to tune it in. It already exists, remember? But at this stage I can’t quite hear the signal clearly yet, so I have to be careful not to overthink it, and to avoid being judgmental about anything I come up with. After all, they’re just ideas and nobody but me is going to read them anyway, so who cares how wacky, stupid, or off the wall they are?

This probably sounds like a painstaking process. I’m not going to lie to you, it does require a lot of discipline and patience, but once you get into it, it’s really kind of liberating. You just have to commit to it, completely lose yourself in it, and keep devouring all that information until you feel like you’re going to burst, like you’ve just eaten Thanksgiving dinner and are so stuffed you can’t possibly eat another bite. This is when you know the researching phase is over and it’s time to let the active part of the writing process begin. (Depending on what else I have going on in my life and what other projects I’m simultaneously working on, this
yellow-pad period
is usually about a three- to six-week deal for me.)

At this point, if I’ve done it right, I’ve read all or most of the books cover to cover, and I’ve compiled at least two or three legal pads full of notes. Now all I have to do is simply open up a new document on my computer and transcribe
them. This is the easiest part of the entire process. There’s absolutely no pressure. I’m not even writing really. I’m just typing. Sure, if I have another idea or two while I’m doing this, I’ll throw it in there, but I don’t feel obligated to. I’m working for minimum wage right now, essentially being my own temp secretary. Then when I’m done transcribing, I just name the file with the working title of the story and the qualifier “Notes.”

What does all this stream-of-consciousness, Thanksgiving dinner bloat buy you? Well, if you begin the process of writing your original story the way I’ve described, you will now find yourself with at least five to ten written pages (your “Notes Document”), which means you have just successfully kicked off your project without ever having to stare at a blank page.

I admit, this five to ten pages is really nothing more than a bunch of brain spasms you had while reading all those books, but when you finally go back and review the notes that you’ve made, I guarantee you’ll be surprised at how much good stuff you’ve actually captured.

The important thing to understand is this:

By letting yourself passively receive this information and simply be the channel through which it flows, you can effectively get out of the way of the story, which exists in its perfect and purest form entirely separate from you.

Now you are much more equipped to tune in the rest of the story, because not only have you learned a tremendous amount about the world in which it takes place, you have also identified many of the emotional anchor points that drew you to the idea in the first place. It’s around these anchor points that you can now begin to build what I call a “Concept Document.”

Depending on the type of story I’m telling and the medium in which I’m telling it, the contents of my Concept Document will vary. If I’m writing a television pilot, for example, I usually like to include a section on potential future episodes, and very often I’ll include a paragraph or two on various long-range character arcs. If, on the other hand, I’m creating an interactive game or experience, those types of elements may not apply. But if interactivity is involved I will definitely need to include a section on the user interface (i.e., how the consumer will interact with the various parts of the experience). Regardless of the medium, however, the five basic sections I typically include in each of my Concept Documents are:

•
Logline

•
Theme

•
Tone

•
Characters

•
Story Summary

Whether you’re writing a stage play, an original television pilot, a screenplay, a novel, a narrative-based interactive game, or any other type of original story, it’s critical that you are able to articulate each of these elements with as much clarity as possible
before
you start writing the script. Again, patience is a virtue. You’re still early in the tuning process. Don’t rush it.

The challenge of writing a good Concept Document is to be able to take all those notes you’ve written during your research phase and distill them into a concise vision of what your script will eventually become. To illustrate this, I’ve provided the relevant sections from a Concept Document for a TV pilot called
Scotty’s Travels
, which I wrote “on spec” (i.e., creating a story/script
speculatively
with the hope that you will sell it once it’s written). I’m proud to say this script was honored in
Written By,
the magazine of the Writers Guild of America, as one of the best unproduced television scripts of 2004 (a dubious honor, I know, but an honor nonetheless!).

Let’s take this section by section:

Getting the logline right helps you boil the story down to its essence. It’s the
elevator pitch
, the
TV guide blurb
. Here’s how I did it for this particular concept:

Logline
:

SCOTTY’S TRAVELS chronicles the adventures of Dr. Jonathon Scott, a prominent psychiatrist whose life is turned upside down when he’s suddenly visited by an imaginary voice.

I like to try and get the logline down to one concise sentence like this, but it could be a little longer if necessary. Just think about how you would tell someone your story if you only had about fifteen or twenty seconds to do it.

Now let’s look at the theme. Identifying your theme allows you to hone your message and solidify it in your mind. You can’t tell a good story if you don’t have a clue as to what you’re trying to say with it. I generally dig a little deeper into this one, but still try to keep it relatively short and sweet:

Theme
:

This voice, whom Scotty dubs “Liberty,” magnifies discordant feelings already deep within him—that his career has gone awry, and that his purpose in life is still largely unfulfilled. To remedy this, Liberty encourages Scotty to make a daring choice—to give up all he has and go out and truly heal the troubled hearts and minds of the world.

But obliging Liberty comes with a heavy price. Not only is Scotty stigmatized as a crazy person, but where he must now go, his wife and children cannot follow.

At the heart of Scotty’s journey is the thing that we all seek as human beings, a sense of certainty that our life's struggles are meaningful. Throughout the series then, Scotty will be faced with both the external dilemmas of the people he meets and the internal longing that he has to return to his former life.

Now let’s talk about tone. In some ways tone is more about your overall voice as a writer than it is about each individual story you write, because as you develop you will naturally gravitate toward those subjects and genres you enjoy and are able to excel at. Just think about a few writers you admire. You like these writers as much for the way they tell their stories as the stories themselves. In other words, you like their voice, which grows out of the tone they infuse in their work over time, which in turn is something that you’ve come to expect from them. Yet each story they write also has its nuances and uniqueness. Taking time to describe the tone of each individual piece is a great way to understand the voice of the story you’re working on, as well as help you define your overall voice as a writer. Here’s how I did it for
Scotty’s Travels:

Tone
:

The tone of the show is both dramatic and comedic as each week Scotty blindly stumbles into the travails of a stranger’s life. The drama comes out of his efforts to help these people. The humor comes out of his "insanity," which we see from the inside out. That is, we see both the insane person wandering aimlessly, and the extraordinarily gifted person following the will of a higher power.

I like to think of it as TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL meets ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. Or more affectionately, TOUCHED BY A LUNATIC.

As you can tell, the thing I’ve learned about my own voice over the years (and have consciously tried to develop) is that I am best suited to writing drama with little touches of humor. I’m not a comedy writer. To do comedy well, you really have to be able to write great jokes, and that’s not me. My winning combination is a well-mixed cocktail of comedy and pathos, so I always try to inject humor wherever appropriate, and especially in places where the audience least expects it.

Then there’s your cast of characters, which at this point is an absolutely essential piece of the puzzle because their motivations will determine where your story will lead. Your cast is your compass. If you truly know each and every one of these people well, you will never be lost; you will always have someone you can ask for directions along the way, which will definitely come in handy when that crisis moment inevitably hits. Here are the main characters in
Scotty’s Travels: