4 Days in a Row!

I’m going to keep it up. But, to be quiet honest, doing this blog is a bit strange for me. I guess because it feels like a very public way of talking to myself. I don’t imagine anyone is really reading these words. I mean, I know you are, the stats and the comments tell me that. But I am not talking to you so it is a very strange concept for me to wrap my head around. It just feels so much like having a conversation with myself.

As an only child, I spent a great deal of time talking to myself. I never had the standard imaginary best friend. Instead, I would create elaborate scenarios evolving lots of different people. I must admit I have carried this habit into adulthood. So, it was natural that I immediately took to screen writing.

When I create a story, my first step is to develop my protagonist and the first step to that is to name them. Names to me shape a character. A girl named Susie and a girl named Samantha are two completely different people and their names are not interchangeable. Once a character has a first name the surname solidifies who they are in my mind.

Once I have their names I begin to be able see them in my mind. I hear them, I can see the way they walk, I can imagine where they live and what they do. When I write a character I often feel as if I am letting the character live through my words. In my mind they are real people. They have real lives, a past, a present and a future.

The next step is to create a world in which they live, and naturally other characters fall into place. The hardest part, the part that involves far too much effort, is creating the story. But it is the discovery of this story that is both the most exciting as well as the most daunting aspect of writing a screen play.

What is the most interesting discovery for me, in the process of learning how to write, is that my characters themselves start to move the story. They shape the scenes, they take control over my ideas and they even open new paths that I hadn’t seen before.

The trick for me as a writer is to control my characters. To shape my story into something that is pleasing to an audience and comes in at around 100 minuets. It is my job to push my characters further than they would go on their own and it is amazing to me to discover how they react.

I would not dare to say that I enjoy writing because it gives me some sense of power over these people. Although, the thought of being some god like entity sometimes does make me chuckle. No, I believe these characters teach me, shape me, help me to grow. They of course are a part of me, plucked from some deep recesses of my undiscovered mind. But they are also apart from me, bits and pieces from people I knew/know mixed together with my imagination.

It is amazing, ask me 4 years ago if I wanted to write screen plays and I would have probably laughed. Ask me today if I could live without writing, and I would probably tell you never.