Live To Write Another Day

by Dean Orion

  Understanding and accepting this reality is so vital to your career. Why? Because no matter how much you’ve written in your life, you still have to start at square one each and every time. No two stories are the same, yet you will run into the same problems on story number one thousand that you ran into on story number one. Sure, some will come together easier than others, but you never get a free lunch. You still have to make each and every story work in its own unique way.

  And what’s the only thing that you can really count on through all this, the only thing that’s consistent from one effort to the next? That’s right, your process. Your process. Not the one that someone else has neatly laid out for you in a book about writing (including this one). The process that you’ve developed for yourself, the one that makes sense and works for you, the one that you will never enjoy more than when the story belongs exclusively to you. The one that you have no choice but to hone, refine, and love. That’s where your gold is.

  After all, if you’re going to spend your entire life doing something day in and day out, year after year, you better love it. Otherwise what’s the point?

  Villains vs. Villainy

  There’s one particular storytelling element that is especially relevant to this discussion about keeping your original story to yourself while it incubates. It has to do with the tension or central conflict in a story, which frequently involves the presence of a villain.

  It’s often said, and I think quite correctly, that the best villains are the ones that aren’t just evil, but are truly flawed human beings. While you clearly don’t empathize with these characters in the same way that you do the hero of the story, you understand their motivation, and you can see why they’ve become such a powerful force of antagonism in the hero’s world. In the case of theater, film, and television, if these villains are also portrayed by gifted actors as real, believable people, then their twisted, immoral agendas enhance the experience all the more.

  In some stories though, there is no villain in the form of a person. The true villain is a thing, an idea, an emotion. Take Romeo and Juliet, for example. There are characters in the story that antagonize in various ways, but the real villain is the intolerance that exists between the two families, the fear of the other. It’s this human failing, this overwhelming villainous force that conspires to ruin the happiness of the star-crossed lovers.

  If you embrace this concept and start looking at every story through this lens, you quickly come to the conclusion that every hero’s struggle is really a struggle against the underlying villainy, not the villain itself, even in stories where an actual human villain plays a clear and prominent role. In the hands of a talented writer, this character becomes a three-dimensional person, but really, it’s just the personification of the conflict.

  Where does this conflict come from then? What is the true source of this antagonism?

  As I’ve already mentioned, I think you always need to be able to clearly articulate what you’re writing about thematically. I think it’s also important to be able to identify what it is in your own life that’s inspiring you to tell a particular story at any given time. In other words:

  How is your life experience shaping this work? What’s going on in your life right now that you’re struggling with? What villainy, past or present, are you personally trying to overcome?

  When you can answer these questions, you’ve probably found the source of your main character’s antagonism. Even if your main character is nothing like you, even if their background, their personality, and their circumstances are completely different than yours, even if they’re not the same gender as you, their struggle is your struggle. This is another reason why it’s so critical to keep the process to yourself in the early stages of development, to allow yourself to become more conscious of this relationship between you, your story, and your main character and to keep it free from outside interference.

  We all have our demons to battle in life. The difference between us writers and everyone else in the world is that we’re driven to battle them with words—which means that every story we tell is an exorcism on some level, a constructive way of emancipating ourselves of thoughts and feelings we couldn’t possibly resolve in any other way.

  Letting Go

  Congratulations, you’ve finished your first draft. Woohoo! Guess what? Now it’s time to let it go.

  “What?” you say. “You just spent the last five pages telling me how important it is to keep this thing to myself, to nurture it, to savor it, to not tell another living soul about it, and now you expect me to let it go? Just like that?”

  Yup. Here’s why. Now that you’re done with that first draft, this brainchild of yours is ready to be born. And just like a real live human child, from the moment you introduce it into the world, it’s no longer just yours anymore. There’s a whole host of other people who will immediately have an influence on it, beginning with the very first person who reads it. You have no choice but to cut the umbilical cord at some point. The only choice that remains is when to cut it. So always, always, always make sure you’re 100% psychologically prepared before you do.

  The key to this tricky piece of business is to remain humble and remember that this story exists separately from you, that it’s a privilege to have been blessed with the gifts to tune it in and carry it to term. Your job now is to be the best steward you can be. Allow your story to be influenced by others, but also make sure the influence is positive and constructive and doesn’t dilute the original intention or the core message you’re trying to convey. It’s never easy, but with the right frame of mind there’s always a way to rise to this occasion.

  For most writers, novices and veterans alike, this can be a pretty anxious time. It’s worth noting, though not necessarily any more comforting, that storytelling has never been a one-way experience. From prehistoric campfires to the stages of Aeschylus and Molière, to the bright lights of Broadway and Hollywood, writers’ works have always been shaped by the common culture. After all, that is your goal as a storyteller, right? You want to share your stories with the world—you want to let other people be a part of them, don’t you?

  Like it or not, at this point of the process, your story, like the millions that have come before it, now belongs to everyone. And the sooner you accept this fact, the better off both you and your story will be.

  SURVIVAL GUIDE SUMMARY

  6. This Draft’s for You

  Things to Remember:

  •Don’t share your original story with anyone before you’ve written your first draft. Let it develop free from outside influence.

  •The real reason you write is to experience the joy of expressing yourself. Never lose touch with this simple fact.

  •No matter how much you’ve written in your life you must still start at square one each time, and make each story work in its own unique way.

  •Every story you write is an exorcism, a way of freeing yourself from thoughts or feelings you can’t quite resolve any other way.

  •The moment you give your script to someone else to read, you have given it to the world. There is no turning back.

  Questions to Ask Yourself:

  •How is your life experience shaping this work? What’s going on in your life right now that you’re struggling with? What villainy, past or present, are you personally trying to overcome?

  •How can you infuse the struggles of your personal life into your story’s main conflict? How can you infuse them into your main character?

  •Have you done absolutely everything with your first draft that you set out to do? Don’t leave any stone unturned.

  •Are you 100% sure that you’re ready to give your script to someone for feedback? Are you truly ready to let it be shaped by the common culture?

  7. The Art of Giving Notes

  You may be wondering why I’ve decided to include a chapter on giving script notes in this survival guide, as well as why I’ve chosen to place it before the chapter on receiving script notes
. To be honest with you, I spent a lot of time thinking about this myself, and the conclusion I finally reached was this:

  If you understand how to give a good note to another writer, then you will have a much better understanding of what to do with a note, good or bad, when you receive one.

  I have to admit that part of me is also writing this chapter for all those producers, executives, editors, dramaturges, agents, and anyone else out there whose job involves giving notes to creative writers. If I can shed any light on the writer’s psyche with respect to this process, and give you folks a few pointers as to how to be more effective, then that would be yet another proud feather in my cap.

  Have a Constructive Attitude

  To say that you should always give constructive criticism to another writer is kind of like saying that you need to brush your teeth every day. It’s the healthy thing to do (for both of you).

  According to my dictionary, the definition of constructive is “to serve a useful purpose” or “to build up.” This means that as the person giving notes you have to do more than just identify problems. You have to offer ideas for potential solutions. You have to actually be constructive.

  Remember, you are trying to help another writer tell a story as best as they can. So first and foremost, you need to make that writer feel that you’re on their team, that you are right there beside them on this construction project, wearing a hard hat—not just some pencil pusher who doesn’t want to get his or her hands dirty. Nothing will help you prove this to the writer more than if you bring concrete ideas to the table, even if those ideas don’t quite work perfectly. It’s the fact that you’ve taken the time to try and come up with something—anything—that the writer can actually use that makes the difference.

  This is sound advice when giving notes to any type of artist, but when it comes to creative writing it carries even more weight, because unlike drawing or painting, composing music, making computer animation, or working in almost any other art form, the basic skill set—writing—is something that everyone has. Everyone knows how to put a sentence together (presumably), whether you’re a professional writer or not. And everyone has a certain visceral understanding of storytelling. This perception of common competence—that anyone can be a qualified note giver because everyone knows how to write—makes having a constructive attitude and letting that attitude inform the notes just as significant as the very substance of them.

  This is especially important when you’re giving notes to a writer who is somewhat green. If the work clearly has a lot of issues, you’ll need to exercise a little restraint. Please don’t get into all the problems, as much as you would like to. Just find something positive to say about their idea, give them a few things to chew on that will help them take baby steps toward improving it, and leave them with a sense of excitement about the road ahead. Like novices in any other line of work, novice writers need encouragement more than anything else. You just have to allow them to develop and trust their writer genes to do the rest.

  Have Some Humility

  This is a biggie. It’s so much easier to recognize the flaws in other people’s work than it is to recognize them in our own. As a result, sometimes when you read another writer’s story or script, whether you’re aware of it or not, you suddenly become filled with this false sense of superiority, this lethal dose of misguided power, as if you’re some omnipotent writer-god who has all the answers.

  Why does this happen? First of all, you have the advantage of having fresh eyes. You haven’t been trying to tell this story for months and months. Second, because you’re not down there on the ground trying to build the damn thing brick by brick, you also have the benefit of sitting back and looking at it from a five-thousand-foot point of view. No wonder you feel like a god! So here’s your chance to throw a few lightning bolts at the mere mortal who’s made the mistake of asking you for help, right? Do me a favor, don’t be that guy. Always give notes with empathy and humility, and remember, the next time it will be you on the other end of that lightning bolt.

  Giving notes with humility also means resisting the temptation to take ownership of the other writer’s story. You need to be careful not to come off sounding like a know-it-all; you can’t give the other writer the impression that you think you can do a better job with their idea than they can. Again, you’re there to help, not rewrite the story. Not that you shouldn’t have strong opinions. Strong opinions are good, but your objective must be to lead the writer in a direction that will yield positive results, not force them to come around to your line of thinking. You can’t help them unless they trust you, and if they feel their story is being hijacked or they’re being jerked around, they will not trust you.

  Focus on the Big Idea

  The legendary writer/director John Huston once said: “A good screenplay is like a bell. When you ring it, every scene in it reverberates with the theme of the story.” I have always loved this concept, not only because it so eloquently sums up a very universal truth about writing, but because it also applies to note giving so well. The more you can focus your notes on issues that speak directly to a story’s core message, the greater the impact you will have on the writer’s next draft. Not that this is an easy thing to do. Which brings me to another important point:

  Giving good notes takes work.

  When another writer asks you to read their story and you accept, you now have a responsibility to spend the time and effort it takes to not just read it, but to think deeply about it. You have made a covenant with the writer, so you owe it to them to give your honest and most well-considered opinions. If you don’t think you have the time or the energy to do so, my advice is to be honest and just tell the writer flat out that you can’t read right now. The writer may be a little miffed, but not half as upset as they will be when you finally get around to phoning in your feedback.

  Assuming you’ve made the commitment, the best way to start is to read the script or story through more than once, make notes to yourself, and then ask yourself the question: What is this writer trying to say with this work? If the message is unclear, then that’s your first note to the writer. Start by simply engaging the writer in a discussion at this very high level.

  Next, I always try to find no more than three things the writer can address that speak directly to the theme of the piece or at least to some major aspect of it—big things that “reverberate,” as John Huston said. Try to make these notes as specific and executable as possible, and again, try not to give more than three of them. In fact, sometimes one razor-sharp thought that cuts right to the heart of the thing is all that’s needed to illuminate a whole new world of possibilities.

  For example, in one of my spec television pilots, the first scene involves the main character arriving home after disappearing for three years, only to find the woman who was once his fiancée in bed with another man. This other man is now her husband. The main character has been missing for years and has a severe case of posttraumatic amnesia, which means there is a donut hole in his memory, so he doesn’t even remember how or when he went missing. I thought I was pretty clever beginning the story this way, but the note I received was that rather than strengthening the scene with a degree of shock value, catching the fiancée and her new husband having sex actually seemed to distract from the main character’s real dilemma.

  Thematically, the story is about a man struggling to reclaim his identity, so when I removed the sex, the scene was suddenly able to breathe and took on a much deeper sense of delirium. This proved to be a significantly better approach. Why? Because now I was striking directly at the heart of my story, which speaks to the struggle we all face in a world that often confuses and conspires against us.

  The note giver in this case didn’t tell me how to execute the rewrite. They merely pointed out a weakness (i.e., catching them having sex seems to cheapen the main character’s dilemma) and suggested a different approach. “What if he came home and learned his fiancée had married this other guy, but in
a different context?” the note giver said. They understood what I was after with the piece as a whole and gave me a very specific, executable note that, sure enough, ended up reverberating throughout the entire script.

  Focus on Structure and Character

  In addition to focusing on the big idea, there are two other ways of framing your notes that I have found to be very productive.

  One way is to give notes that specifically address the structure of the story. If a story isn’t working, you can almost always trace the problem back to an element that hasn’t been adequately set up or an important piece of information that is missing, not allowing something else to pay off later. So as you read the piece, flag the areas where something feels off. Then go back later and try to identify the scene or the moment earlier in the story that appears to be connected to the off-kilter moment you flagged. Most of the time the setup is there, it’s just not executed well enough. Other times, if the writer is really lost, it will be entirely AWOL. Either way, looking at the story in terms of both setups and payoffs can be a pretty effective approach.

  Another good way to frame your notes is to focus on the characters and their motivations, because even the most plot-driven stories need characters whose actions continue to move the story toward its logical and inevitable conclusion. Does the behavior of a particular character make sense for the situation? What does the character want in a particular scene? What does the character want from the other characters in the story? What do the various characters want on a deeper, subconscious level? All these questions are helpful in giving good notes because, again, they start to drill into the core message of the story.