Authors: Jerry Cleaver
Remember, the resistance is coming from your subconscious, which does not want to let go of its defenses and give itself over to the process. But the more you do this, the easier it gets. Taking the plunge will become easier and easier. Eventually your subconscious will be your partner rather than your adversary. Continue with this second part until you are able to do it without resistance. Then you can go on to whatever project you choose. You may want to go through all the pages you've filled in these exercises and see what you've got, or go onto something else.
12. The Invisible Enemy.
Often when you're blocked, what's blocking you isn't visible. "I don't know what's wrong. I just can't get started." There's a problem or unanswered question that you're not aware of that's holding you back. I was once writing about a character who was getting off work and heading home from downtown. He was going to take the subway. At that point, I stopped and began staring at the wall. I didn't know what to do next, but I wasn't aware that I didn't know. I knew what was going to happen when he got home, but how did I get him there? It was a simple transition problem, getting from here to there on the subway, but how did I make the subway ride eventful and meaningful? That's what was blocking me,
but
I wasn't aware of it. So, I sat there, feeling stumped, not knowing what to do next.
After a half hour in the fog, I realized what was going on, that the ride on the subway was the problem, that I didn't know how to make the subway ride eventful, worthwhile. Once I was aware of the problem, I was able to solve it quickly. How do you imagine I got the character home? Well, I had him finish work, head for the door, and then I wrote: "When he got home .. ."
I eliminated the subway ride completely, along with the walk home from the subway, climbing the stairs to his apartment, fumbling for keys, opening the door, etc.—all of which might have been meaningful in another story, but not in this one—not for this character. At that time, as I saw it, I didn't need any of it. He went from his work to home, inside his apartment, in one short sentence. I could just as well have said, "After dinner that evening," skipping even more and getting away with it. Fiction is selective. In this case, something I didn't need to do but thought I did, something I was actually able to do easily (that's not always the case), had me stumped, simply because I hadn't made myself put the problem in focus, hadn't asked myself directly, "What's the problem here? What's holding me back?" My problem was that I wasn't aware of the problem.
Thinking that the subway ride was necessary was the first level of my problem. Thinking that I
needed
to make it eventful when I
had no idea how and no interest in doing it was the other level. I sat there, unable to move, with a vague notion that I should do something even though I had no ideas and no desire to do it,
and
I wasn't fully aware of any of it.
I wasn't aware because I hadn't
said, "Exactly what is the problem here?"
Now, another writer might have done wonderful things with the subway ride. I might have also—in a different story with a different character. And even in this story, I might, in later drafts, have decided to use the subway ride. Nothing is final in this game, until you decide it is. The important thing here is that I couldn't see what was in my way, because I hadn't asked myself, "How do I get him home? What happens on the way?" And I especially hadn't realized that my problem was that I didn't know how to make this el ride worthwhile. And I hadn't asked, "Do I need it?" Once I did, I saw what the problem was and solved it easily.
13. Ask and You Shall Receive.
Often we don't have an answer to what's in the way simply because we don't ask ourselves. The most common unanswered question is "What's my problem?" Just asking and answering that
on the page
will put you on the trail of the solution. You can't solve a problem unless you know what it is. Now, if you ask, "What's the problem?" and the answer is "I don't know," the answer to that is "My problem is that I don't know what's wrong."The next step is to work on solving that problem— in this case by figuring out, defining, what the problem is.
But what if you can't figure out what the problem is? What do you do then? Well, no matter how bewildered you feel, there's always a way to move toward a solution. When you are unable to define the problem,
guess.
Guessing is a wonderful tool. After all, guessing is a major part of creating fiction. Fiction is a game of
wondering and guessing and imagining. So, when you can't figure out the problem, ask yourself, "What might it be? What are the possibilities?"
ANECDOTES
Here are some anecdotes that make some good points about all of this.
When Tom Wolfe had his first major assignment as a reporter, he did all of the legwork and got all the information ready and then became totally blocked. He went to his boss, the editor, and told him that he couldn't do it. The editor said, "OK, get all your material together, put it down so someone can make sense out of it, and I'll have George do it." Wolfe went home, wrote, "Dear George, this is what I have," at the top of the page, then laid out all the information for him. When he took it in the next day and handed it to his boss, his boss took it, scratched out "Dear George" and told him to give it to the printer. (When the pressure is off, you write better. You may have to trick yourself into it.)
In another anecdote, Wolfe says that he goes to write at a studio away from his home so he won't be distracted. He says that he first gave himself so many hours to put in before he could leave and go home. But he found that he could waste 4, 5, or 6 hours doing nothing just as easily as he could waste 2 or 3. His solution was to force himself to write 1 page per half hour until he wrote 4 pages, and then he could quit. He says that he's always able to force out 1 page every half hour even when it seems awful. On bad days he does his 4 pages and quits. The strange thing, he says, is that later on when he looks back over what he's written, he can't tell the difference between the pages he forced out and the ones he wrote when he felt inspired. (You
can't trust your emotions when they're negative. No writer can judge his own work.)
A little girl asked her father what he did at the school where he worked. "I teach people how to draw pictures," he said. "You mean they forgot?" she said. (You have what you need already. You just have to learn [remember] how to use it.)
A mother asked her little boy what he was drawing. "I'm drawing a picture of God," he said. "But no one knows what God looks like," she said. "They will when I get done," he said.
The teacher divided her pottery class into two groups. The first group was told they would be graded only on quality. They would make only one pot that semester, but spend the entire time making the perfect pot. The second group was told that they would be graded on quantity alone. The more pots they made, the higher their grades. At the end of the semester, which group do you think made the better pots? The quantity group had produced far better pots than the quality group. (Quantity leads to quality. You cannot learn on one pot—or one story.)
Write the way you talk. The language of fiction is simple, emotional, direct. Don't send the reader to the dictionary. Use small words.
DAILY PREP LIST
These are things we need to remind ourselves of over and over. This list is worth going over on a regular basis to help prevent blocking.
There is always resistance to writing the first line. Write an instant line as soon as you sit down.
You must write badly first.
You don't think in order to write. You write in order to think. You don't get into the mood to write. You write to get into the mood. Write first. Think second.
You don't do it. It does you. Open up, and
let
it happen. Get out of the way.
Negative emotions (attacks on your work or yourself) are
always
wrong and beside the point. Whatever is happening is OK. It's the process, not you.
The story already exists. You're just writing to uncover the pieces and fit them together.
You are as good as your best writing. If you stick to it, no matter how deeply you slump, you will return to your best level and exceed it. Then you will fall away again. It's up and down just like the rest of your life (good days and bad days). You will always fall away, but you will always come back and exceed yourself—if you stick to it. Bad days are as important as good ones.
CONCLUSION
Now you have thirteen remedies plus some other ways of looking at blocking to help you when you get blocked. When you find yourself blocked, follow the procedure I've laid out for you in this chapter. It's no time to get into a discussion with yourself. First, put your feelings aside as best you can and practice your craft (chapter 8). If you're not unblocked after that, do the first four remedies in the list as part of one approach. Then, if you're not unblocked, start doing the others in whatever order appeals to you. If you do that, you will be unblocked long before you do them all.
All the techniques in this chapter and in the entire course are merely tools designed to help you uncover the energy and drama you
have in you. Tools are neutral. You can use them to write anything you want any way you want to write it.
EXERCISES
Two people competing for the love of a third person. Having to be nice to someone who's treating you badly. Being in a place where you don't belong—physically or psychologically.
[16]
Stage and Screen
This chapter may seem too short to cover both screenwriting and playwriting. But it's not, because the story form (conflict, action, resolution) is identical whether it's on the page, stage, or screen. There is no difference. So, what you've learned about story up to here has given you everything you need to create a story for the screen or stage. Also, because stories for stage or screen don't get into the mind the way the written story does, they're actually easier to write.
It's important to realize that
books and courses on writing screenplays or stage plays are 95 percent story and 5 percent format.
That tells us two things. One, story is the all-important ingredient. Two, there isn't that much to the format. What you get in this chapter is all you need to sell your play or screenplay—
if
you have a strong story. Have I said it often enough? It's the story, the whole story, and nothing but the story.
I don't recommend any stage play or screenplay books (or any other books) on story craft. All the books I've read on story (over two hundred) are either too vague or too complicated or give misleading ad-
vice. I wrote this book to provide what I couldn't find in any of the books I read.
So, the story form moves comfortably from one medium to the other. Novels become movies. Stage plays become movies. Novels become stage plays and then movies
(Of Mice and Men).
Once in a while a movie is made into a novel, rarely successfully. Stage plays often lose something when made into movies, since they are created for a confined space. Opening them up without interfering with the flow of the story is tricky. Also, the chemistry between live actors and the audience is lost on the screen.
But novels tend to lose the most when translated onto the screen, with a few exceptions.
Midnight Cowboy
was a weak novel that was made into an excellent movie. A novel is almost always too hefty to get into a single movie, so we only get part of it.
Lonesome Dove
was made into a multipart TV movie that had pretty much the whole story. They did an excellent job—about as good as possible. But was it as good as the book? No. If it was as good as it could have been, but still was not as strong as the book, what was the problem?
That brings us to the important difference between the written story and the performed story. The written story, as I've said before, gets into the mind. It gets into the secret life, the secret thoughts, of the character—the things the character will tell no one. So, by definition, you can't express such thoughts on stage or screen, since you only have speech. The stage uses asides or soliloquies, but unless you're Shakespeare or deliberately writing in an antique style, it doesn't work with modern audiences. Movies sometimes use voice-over, but a little of it goes a long way. It works best in comedy
(Alfie)
and as used in the soaps is often unintentionally comic or
heavy-handed. American Beauty
used it well, but sparingly. In contrast, novels are full of thoughts presented word for word on the page as they occur in the character's mind.
You can get close to the character's thoughts, and you
must,
you
must
find a way for your character to express his deeper feelings, often by forcing him to reveal them. That's the tricky part of doing a stage play or screenplay. So, on the one hand, we could say that what's easier about a stage play or screenplay is that everything is spoken, it's all dialogue, and you
don't have to
get into the character's mind. On the other hand, we could say that what's trickier about a stage play or screenplay is that everything
must
be spoken. It's all dialogue. You
cannot
get into the character's mind. However you put it, you can never go as deeply into the character on stage or screen as you can in the written story.