Category Archives: Story
Scattering Stars Like Dust
“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.”
― Rumi
So does our creative expression.
Sometimes we get so focused on our creative work that we forget the magic.
We forget to allow the magic to be there.
Today, take a step back from your current project.
Let yourself see it in its entirety. Not what’s wrong with it or what’s left to do.
See it in its wholeness.
Its beauty. The dream that came before the work.
Let it speak to you.
Don’t say anything back.
Live in that space today.
Protect Your Work’s Message, Not the Words
Theme, or message, is the DNA of your creative work. It’s not something you consciously add or layer on top of it. It’s where the Story touches the human soul. Message comes from within the work, it emerges organically and exists before the work comes into being. It’s there, though sometimes it takes a bit of gentle digging and patience to uncover it.
As the Writer, you’re the first Trustee of the Story. It’s your job to shape, craft and decide how the Story can be expressed in the most powerful, effective way. If it’s a novel, these decisions are entirely up to you. For a screenplay, this is where you have the most power, up front, to direct how a reader experiences the script and to ensure the Story has the substance to make it through the creative collaboration of nearly 200 people. It is your first and often only chance to lay out your vision for the characters and theme for the other writers who will be tasked with contributing to it.
Which leads to a question: does the Story ever really belong to you? I don’t think it does.
We’re the first Trustees. Charged with caring, nurturing, and writing the strongest Story we possibly can. Giving the Story the best possible chance of growing up into a powerful, self-reliant film by the sheer quality of our storytelling’s framework.
No matter how robust a script is, other people are going to take over caring for it. We have to remember our role as First Trustee and when given the opportunity, be willing to stand up firmly for what we know is sacred to the Story and the characters, and be willing to stand down, as well. And to do that professionally, we have to remember that there is more than one way to get a message across.
When I was starting out as a features writer, one of the first things I had to learn was to “let go” of the story to hand it over to an editorial team. I quickly learned that there is always more than one way to tell a story and still get the same message across. It’s the message you have to protect. Not the words.
When you are driven to protect the message, and not the words or expression, you’ll be able to craft your work to its fullest, and most powerful, potential. And when others are given the task of contributing to it, you’ll know what to measure.
It’s true that once your Story is bought, you may never have another word to say about it again. All the more reason why we have to make sure a script is the strongest, most robust ‘framework’ it can be.
The Trust Story Has in You
“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.”
― Rumi
And that’s true of Story, too.
Stories don’t finally meet us, they’re in us all along. Which should give us faith that the stories we write, the art we shape and craft, matters.
We are not our Stories, yet the emotion of every story belongs to us. The Stories that choose us know us well. It doesn’t matter where you believe Story comes from – whether they are formed in the imagination/subconscious or are part of what we choose before we come to this life – what matters is that Story knows that you alone are the only person who can give it form.
If you work alone in your art, you carry the full trust of the Story. If you are the first author of a Story that others will revise or alter, you carry the full trust of the Story.
That trust is sacred. It’s not something we should toss aside carelessly. It’s not something we should rationalize with the thought: “it’s just a story – how much can it matter?”
Story is everything. It is how we shape our lives, how we experience our lives, how we categorize and assign meaning to what we experience here. Story with a capital “S.”
We live our entire lives as Story.
It makes perfect sense that some of us would chose to work more intimately with story-creation during our lifetimes here. Expression of emotion and experience through art and writing is how we grow, expand, learn and more fully appreciate our beauty as human spirits in this world. Humanity entrusts us with the role of adding to the collection of voices who have spent time here and left; and leaving messages for those who are yet to come.
So how do you respect the trust Story has in you?
- Listen to the Story’s characters. Craft experts can advise you on craft. Only the characters can advise you on Story.
- Honor the timing. Some characters need years to be ready to share their stories; some know you need years to be ready to express it.
- Pay attention to Guidance. The books you read, the films you watch, the blogs you read, the colors and shapes that speak to you – when you’re in the midst of a project, they all have the potential to guide you.
- Don’t force anything on a character. Sharing pain, fears, insecurities, mistakes is not easy. Characters struggle with it just as much as you would. Be gentle and be strong for them.
- Surrender to the Story. Let it move you, touch your spirit, bother you. You’re the first trustee of the story, it should have the greatest affect on you.
You honor Story fully when you accept your role as the storyteller, when you make space for it in your life, when you stand up for it and behind it.
How can you honor Story today?
Shhh….listen. Let your characters speak.
If you write novels or screenplays, you probably know that the Story exists whole before you write a single word of it.
Non-writers often assume that writers “make up” stories. That we invent characters, put words in their mouths, decide who they are and what they’ll do. And, if you read many how-to-write-fiction or how-to-plot-screenplays, you’ll also begin to wonder: Is that how other writers do it? Planning, scheming, plotting it all out? So mechanical? Perhaps that works for some writers.
For me, that would be impossible.
The stories I write, choose me. The characters already exist, they know who they are. And they know the story. Because it’s their story. For whatever reason, they choose to trust me with it. It’s about relationship. Listening. Getting to know them. Asking questions and letting them tell you.
Yes, that sounds nutty to someone who hasn’t experienced it. But most writers know what I’m talking about.
Having a problem with your storyline? Ask your characters. Listen to what they have to say and to what they’re not telling you. And be patient.
The stories I write have to do with wounded people rediscovering their innate strength, value and beauty. Early on in the screenplay I’m working on now, I was antsy. I wanted to see ahead, to know what the major events were going to be. I wanted to be assured that the story unfolding would actually make sense.
What did the characters do? The lead character who had experienced the most pain in the story asked me to be tender with them.
Duh. Here I was writing a story about tenderness and I wasn’t being tender with the characters.
Needless to say, the character made his point.
Don’t try to force anything on your characters. Instead, listen to them. If they trust you, they’ll tell you.
Characters want to tell their story. They’ll work with you to find the best way.
And they have a wealth of expertise on just how to do that.
Shhh….listen.
Rodeo Drive and Kosovo: The Power of Illusion and Story
At age 22, I stood by a window in a hotel on Rodeo Drive, courtesy of Sony Studios, and watched. Celebrities, obscured by dark limo windows, passed by. Aspiring actors-serving-as-doormen sweated discreetly in the heat hoping today would be the day their big break would walk in. The world’s affluent strolled the streets amidst khaki-clad tourists who snapped photos of every street sign. It was a world of beauty, of ease, of illusion; a world separated by a veil where very talented people are bound by expectations of a public who has no idea how hard they have worked, how much faith it has taken, how close each one who has “made it” has come to never making it at all – not for lack of talent or opportunity, but because it hurts so damn hard to pick yourself up, takes so much energy to keep believing. Even after success has come. Yes, a world where being good at what you do means that everyone believes they have a right to you – but no one actually knows you.
(What kind of a world do we live in where because you’re a talented artist, you have to worry for your children’s safety? Where people take a bite out of you and think that for some reason, it doesn’t hurt? That you get used to it? Really??)
You are, after all, a human being like everyone else. You’ve never felt otherwise. You’re thankful, god-damn thankful, for where you’ve come, what you’ve achieved. You wouldn’t trade it for anything. Yet sometimes you wish that those staring after you knew that at times you stare back: gazing into their ability to be known. Not known of.
Yes, I gazed out the window and I watched.
In the background in my room, ABC News broadcast a report from the 1999 NATO airstrikes in Kosovo. The American reporter struggled to find words as tears etched a crinkled farmer’s face. His family gone. Eating breakfast together that morning, lying dead in a field by lunch.
I stood by the window and listened to the grief of a father, broadcast to the world. His reality and the world outside my window seemed worlds apart. But were they?
Illusion. Reality. Story.
The news ended and a tabloid came on. The reporter had no problem finding words to extol the latest rumor of a celebrity going through a divorce. Unflattering images of her flashed across the screen while dramatic words, carefully chosen to incite the worst assumptions, were read off the teleprompter. Gushy, dishy, juicy, don’t-miss-this, can-you-believe-it, he-must-be-sleeping-with-this-other-Celebrity. Poor-her. Oh-but-we-love-it. Stay-tuned-for-More.
God. Enough.
We believe the tears of the farmer. We don’t believe the tears of the celebrity. Why?
Illusion. The world of filmmaking produces illusion. And rightly so. Stories that aren’t real are carefully portrayed as if they are. We write them so they’ll feel real. That’s what good storytelling does. It draws viewers into the story so perfectly – so entrancingly – that for two hours they forget that it’s not real.
They forget that it’s not real.
And they forget that the people who make these stories possible are real.
The money, the glamour, the lifestyle, the ease. These, like the polished film are the end results of an invisible process. Part of the beautiful Illusion. But the Illusion is not why people make films. We create and view films because Story is integral to our existence as human spirits. Because we believe in the power of Story. We are Story. We live Story. We come from Story and we create Story. It’s everything. The farmer in Kosovo. The celebrity in divorce. Worlds apart? No. Human Story.
I stood at the window and looked out at a world where illusion and story create reality.
How much of the Illusion is controlling your life? Where do you draw a line between authenticity and meeting expectations? As a successful artist, how do you ground yourself? Where do you choose to expose your humanity, where do you hide it?
Can you dispel Illusion if you dare to let people see your humanity? Would you still be respected? Would the magic still be believed in? The irony lies in the fact that the public believes in the Illusion, but devours the slightest tidbit of Story because they want to feel that talented people are “just like us.”
What would it take to start telling stories of the creative decisions an actor has to make, the long hours, the physical toll, the psychic and mental exhaustion and rewards of living in and with characters for months on end? Or the silent conflict a director endures trying to hear his intuition over the noise of budget? Or the weight a screenwriter feels, conscious of the difference one word can make.
Could the gap between Illusion and Story be bridged? What do you think?
Let’s find out.
creative inside out 