Thursday, December 13, 2012
17. Semantics / Conceptual Metaphors / Finals / Slashes
(My #16 was accidentally on draft mode and not published.)
Have there really been 17 weeks? I know I've been early sometimes and late other times. I tried to write one of these for each week, I may have ended up doubling some weeks... I have no idea.
I don't like being basic. I find it contradictory to art since I think art is about shooting past what you thought was your potential. I think that's mostly what I've been repeating time and time again here on this blog.
Taking an extreme left brained class like linguistics with a right brained (at least in my strategies) screenwriting class has caused issues for me. For this semester, I've been able to slide into the right brained side with more ease, but flipping the switch the other way has been fierce. Doing both at the same strength at the same time is overwhelming. I'm currently more in my linguistic mindset after a paper, presentation, and final which I think admittedly I did more mediocre on than usual. Perhaps if I pushed more into linguistics these past four months I would have suffered in screenwriting. It's difficult to balance the two at the same time, at least while writing my initial pilot draft. I would bargain that now that's its a more analytical task of going back through and dotting and crossing my letters, I won't be leaning so much on the right side. I don't think I'm a one-sided brain kind of person. In fact, I think that's what makes me unusual. But trying to think in both for a semester... which I've done at times... is absurd now that I ponder this.
This fall has been the best part of the year for me. I feel like things are transitioning well from here to spring too. It's been a rough road in graduate school. When I first started this journey, I told myself, "I have my wings now, but I need to get them detailed." I'm trying to understand my own feathers.
I do believe in having a large writing portfolio. I've proven to myself I can write across the genres. I think I want to take a bold step. I'd like to make up my own genre. Ha! Yeah, I've lost it...
It's probably going to be more of a sub-genre, or a child genre. I see a lot of opportunity in the Ozarks not being used. So before I do anything gutsy and move to a coast, I think I want to take some chances here to create something wild, organic, touching, beautiful... and my own. Instead of replicating the voices around me, I'd like to go more into something unique that I've found internally in myself. I'm not sure it will be anything new concept wise, but I think it'd be fresh even if it's been seen in some capacity. I want to give myself a chance, and I think sometimes in order to do that you have to go out and create that chance yourself. I have learned that in creativity that one of the reasons I like being behind the scenes is that I can inspire performance and there's something gratifying in that. There's nothing more vulnerable than being the actor, the singer, or the dancer. It's so much more raw in the spotlight.
As with writing, I think it's important to have a thousand ideas in store. A writer should always have so much to write that they feel their life won't be able to grab at all of it. (The pronoun "their" really should be acceptable in singular cases. I'm tried of wanting to use it that way, stopping to think about changing it, and then being distracted by a pronoun.) Writing takes practice. Without a thousand different ideas, it can be difficult to fuel the need to write.
I want authenticity in my writing. I think in order to do that I have to seek out truth for myself. Authenticity is what the soul craves, but I think we're overwhelmed in a world run on superficiality. I think the worst insult to writing would be that it's superficial. I cringe at aspects in writing that ring superficial. Sure, it exists in the real world, but that's everything I want to avoid -- just like being too basic. There's a time when simple math problems are appealing, but I think as you grow and appreciate math -- larger sequences rub your mind in more of a philosophical way. Granted, ones and zeros can offer a lot of information... I can't believe I just went there. Okay. We're not just a bunch of binaries. There's little, in my opinion, that's left to black and white thinking. I find that reasoning underdeveloped, generally speaking.
The more I can think of in spectrum form, the more I find that I understand. I hate micromanagement and placing people into camps of good and bad. There's really a nice amount of blend in figuring out how much something can be given freedom and how much structure. If we're counting but the ridges on checkers, we won't play the game.
This post is a mess. This is why you shouldn't take linguistics and teleplay writing at the same time. There's too many conceptual metaphors, and I'm having way too much fun trying to connect dots here. This is why you should take linguistics and teleplay writing at the same time.
Figurative language doesn't scare me. In fact, put more metaphor into your screenplay. The more wild the metaphor -- the more tantalizing to the audience. We need new visuals to inspire, and to get there is going to take reinventing the metaphors. I want prose that's as lucid as my dreams. I want the reality that's there, because if I'm going to spend roughly 33% of my time dreaming, I would like more to help decode what exactly that neurologic euphoria exactly happens to be.
Semantics is your friend. Maybe men are like syntax and women are like semantics; they both operate together but... I don't think they quite relate. Goodnight everybody!
16. Auxiliary Characters / Old School Stories
When developing characters, I'm open to where any character may transform whether a lowly one line guest or one of the protagonists. I spend much more time with the characters I intend to be the main cast by deliberately daydreaming about them, considering the fullness of their: origins, flaws, desires, setbacks, living spaces, lineage, relationships, etc. I have found a number of times that a character I threw into a script just to fill up the necessary space ended up being upgraded to a more essential member. Currently with the pilot teleplay, I can think of three characters that this was the exact case: Rebecca, Lise, and Edgar.
I regret to say that's how the women begun their fictional selves, but at the time of their development I was trying to have an initial understanding of Caden. Rebecca was disgustingly two-dimensional and almost deux ex machina in rescuing Caden. I then wrote a short story about Rebecca and began to give her a soul outside being a tool to end a problem.
Lise was frankly an archetype. I threw her into a dank barroom and felt she married well into the lengthy description I had made before grappling with Caden... because I was being chicken with introducing my protagonist These were all pretty novice tricks, but those preliminary short stories from years ago were the igniting spark for the story universe I have today.
Lastly, Edgar is one of the last created main cast characters (to date). There were certain needs in the story world that were not being addressed, and the more I thought about what those problems were (an outlier in the villain community, eloquence, strong ethics, a realization of the evils of one's own society, etc). It became clear that I needed someone to fill that role; Edgar was by far one the most inevitable characters. In fact, I think in many ways when creating a story universe you don't create characters, you discover them. It's almost as though you're scratching at a black hole hoping to pull out fossilized quantum foam -- that's a more precise way of looking at character development. You have to predict where characters belong, ask questions of who is this person's boss, who is really in control, who could challenge this character, who can represent innocence here, and what could complicate and deepen this further? Characters, like actors, have to be pushed farther than you would initially invision their emotional performances and story arcs.
In the middle of nowhere... the mind may focus on a scene with a zombie pushing a shopping cart. The writer may spend the next few months crafting a story around how this zombie came to be and why he's pushing a shopping cart. Ultimately the writer may decide that the zombie and the shopping cart are unnecessary and can be cut. And that cutting that initial scene made the whole of the story all the more seamless. Characters operate in the same way. They need to shift to their best performance, and their development origins may be wildly different from their ends, but I think if a character isn't pushed to its potential it will remain flat, typical, and an unfortunate piece of boring nothingness. It's due to writer's hubris that so many characters remain stilted. If writers dare more for their characters it not only fosters a greater design, but an audience that will care, be enticed, and more than likely depict a more accurate reflection of reality.
Don't let the characters who grow overpower the protagonist. This is challenging since I would say in so many creative works the protagonists generally are not the favorite of the audience. I can name a few favorites. Like Mulder. The focal light is on the hero. The audience will be confused by too many strong characters competing for the light: it makes things blurry, over saturated even. Give more percentage of the story to the lead(s).
On another point entirely, I am a big believer in paying homage to legends, myths, fairy tales, classical literature, and the like. I think this helps to make an already strong story have a more dignified and mature sense about it. I also think studying the story maps of these stories and playing off them creates stories that better resonate. If the recipe for worthwhile fiction is out there and has an example, go ahead and use that blueprint... but make it your own (like replacing blueberries with chocolate chunks).
I also think going deeper than the classic tale has ever been told is satisfying. Little Red Riding Hood is capable of so much more than we usually give it, but I have seen it redone in many ways that had me reevaluating the story for deeper storytelling. For instance, a cartoon I saw years ago where the narrator was the Wolf, but this wasn't apparent until the end when he's drinking a glass of Red's blood with a book in his hand (creepy). Borrow names used from classics; avoid the regular John, Anne, Chris, Megan -- make those middle names for fiction. And as much as I love Dracula -- don't have two characters with the same first name unless you want to be confusing and distracting.
There may be some charm to a John or an Anne (and in fact I've come across many) but I think this screams humdrum. Those sound like names of a wretchedly two-dimensional rom com. You know why rom coms are dying? Because they need to take risks.
I regret to say that's how the women begun their fictional selves, but at the time of their development I was trying to have an initial understanding of Caden. Rebecca was disgustingly two-dimensional and almost deux ex machina in rescuing Caden. I then wrote a short story about Rebecca and began to give her a soul outside being a tool to end a problem.
Lise was frankly an archetype. I threw her into a dank barroom and felt she married well into the lengthy description I had made before grappling with Caden... because I was being chicken with introducing my protagonist These were all pretty novice tricks, but those preliminary short stories from years ago were the igniting spark for the story universe I have today.
Lastly, Edgar is one of the last created main cast characters (to date). There were certain needs in the story world that were not being addressed, and the more I thought about what those problems were (an outlier in the villain community, eloquence, strong ethics, a realization of the evils of one's own society, etc). It became clear that I needed someone to fill that role; Edgar was by far one the most inevitable characters. In fact, I think in many ways when creating a story universe you don't create characters, you discover them. It's almost as though you're scratching at a black hole hoping to pull out fossilized quantum foam -- that's a more precise way of looking at character development. You have to predict where characters belong, ask questions of who is this person's boss, who is really in control, who could challenge this character, who can represent innocence here, and what could complicate and deepen this further? Characters, like actors, have to be pushed farther than you would initially invision their emotional performances and story arcs.
In the middle of nowhere... the mind may focus on a scene with a zombie pushing a shopping cart. The writer may spend the next few months crafting a story around how this zombie came to be and why he's pushing a shopping cart. Ultimately the writer may decide that the zombie and the shopping cart are unnecessary and can be cut. And that cutting that initial scene made the whole of the story all the more seamless. Characters operate in the same way. They need to shift to their best performance, and their development origins may be wildly different from their ends, but I think if a character isn't pushed to its potential it will remain flat, typical, and an unfortunate piece of boring nothingness. It's due to writer's hubris that so many characters remain stilted. If writers dare more for their characters it not only fosters a greater design, but an audience that will care, be enticed, and more than likely depict a more accurate reflection of reality.
Don't let the characters who grow overpower the protagonist. This is challenging since I would say in so many creative works the protagonists generally are not the favorite of the audience. I can name a few favorites. Like Mulder. The focal light is on the hero. The audience will be confused by too many strong characters competing for the light: it makes things blurry, over saturated even. Give more percentage of the story to the lead(s).
On another point entirely, I am a big believer in paying homage to legends, myths, fairy tales, classical literature, and the like. I think this helps to make an already strong story have a more dignified and mature sense about it. I also think studying the story maps of these stories and playing off them creates stories that better resonate. If the recipe for worthwhile fiction is out there and has an example, go ahead and use that blueprint... but make it your own (like replacing blueberries with chocolate chunks).
I also think going deeper than the classic tale has ever been told is satisfying. Little Red Riding Hood is capable of so much more than we usually give it, but I have seen it redone in many ways that had me reevaluating the story for deeper storytelling. For instance, a cartoon I saw years ago where the narrator was the Wolf, but this wasn't apparent until the end when he's drinking a glass of Red's blood with a book in his hand (creepy). Borrow names used from classics; avoid the regular John, Anne, Chris, Megan -- make those middle names for fiction. And as much as I love Dracula -- don't have two characters with the same first name unless you want to be confusing and distracting.
There may be some charm to a John or an Anne (and in fact I've come across many) but I think this screams humdrum. Those sound like names of a wretchedly two-dimensional rom com. You know why rom coms are dying? Because they need to take risks.
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