I DID IT!!! I BROKE MY MOVIE'S SPINE!!! :D

I just experienced, like, a half-hour long writer's orgasm! Like, a story-gasam!

A STORGASM!!! :D

Here's why:

Writing (fiction) is about story and character. You could say Story, Character and World, because I believe that a strong factor in why we watch movies and TV shows over and over again is because we enjoy hanging out in that fictitious world that the storyteller has created. Take Seasons 5 and 6 of Buffy for example: Those weren't the best stories that they told then, but we still liked hanging with the Scooby Gang.

But the world doesn't exist without the characters there. Imagine 2-minute shots of the empty halls of Sunnydale High or the quad, or empty shots of the Bronze. After about 35 seconds you'll want someone -- anyone, at that point -- to step into frame (character) and do anything (story).

So for practical purposes, I consider the world part of the characters, because it really reflects upon and is reflected by the characters that live there.

Blah.

So, when you're a novelist you can just set some characters loose in a world and sort of see what they do. I've read some MAGNIFICENT novels where there was very, very little story. But I didn't care! I really enjoyed the characters (and world) and the ideas the writer wanted to get off his/her chest through these characters.

However, in screenwriting -- where structure is god -- the writer falls into the opposite trap. Characters and their world sort of feel stiff and fake, and you really don't care about what happens to these people; you're just waiting to see if the way the movie ends justifies the time you're spending watching this piece of... um, celluloid.

This is the problem I have often suffered from in my writing. The screenplays I've been working on all summer feel like a bunch of "...and then this happened and then this happened and then..." with no real character, nothing that REALLY made you particularly concerned about what happened next.

(I may exaggerate... I'm a bit harsh on my own work, I've been told...)

But a week or two ago this miraculous thing happened...

Three ideas for scripts that I felt really had something fused together to create... something NEW! Two of these ideas, I felt, were my "winning lottery ticket", only when I went to write them they... somehow didn't live up to expectations...

BUT THEN...

For the last week or 2 I've been running around in this rich, textured world, getting to know these people who do interesting things for interesting reasons! They were excellent tour guides, and I've been really enjoying getting to know them and their world!!!

However...

Like getting drunk at a party on Christmas Eve, I had this nagging feeling in the back of my head that there was something else I really should be taking into consideration.

That something else was story. Plot. Screenplay structure.

You can't really structure a screenplay until you know the entire story. I know others will enjoy hanging out with these folks as much as I do, but I have to give people a reason to come in and meet these characters in the first place!

Imagine a friend telling you she has this friend who is just so funny and you have to meet her! You go, "Cool. I can't wait!"

But then nothing happens.

However, if she tells you she and her friend are going out to dinner Wednesday night, do you want to come? then you go, "Yeah! Love to!"

So the story is the reason to hang with these characters, and I would poke around and try to figure out what that story could be (this should be a ridiculously easy process, easier than most writers would lead you to believe -- particularly considering that it's one of my most-developed skills as a screenwriter) but I kept drawing up a blank!

Coming off a weekend (Sun-Tues) without any real advance in cracking this figurative egg, I was determined that I would find this bugger Wednesday, when my "work day" had hours that I could spend pondering the problem.

But nothing.

Thursday rolls around... This is a bugger of a day in the best of circumstances, and this Thursday was actually quite do-able... up until the time my shift was supposed to be over and I discovered there was an issue about my replacement's schedule: I didn't have a scheduled replacement.

Still, I get off work a mere hour late (I though it might be as much as 4 hours late!) and get home, go right to sleep... but that's not unusual after a Thursday shift.

Friday I go to work, and I really hope I'll figure this out. I've had some interesting story ideas on the way to work, and I get a few interesting ideas over the course of my shift...

However...

Now, realize that in my mind, being able to write this screenplay soon means that I'll be able to rewrite it before long. After a rewrite or 2 (or 3 or 7) it will be in shape to send off to Hollywood, where someone will pay me money for it. When paid that money, I won't merely get out of debt and be able to breath a sigh of relief in a time when the American economy is circling the drain, I will then be able to be with the love of my life, and provide for her, and raise babies with her!!! (No pressure there, lol.)

So every once in a while I get these teentsy, tiny little anxiety pangs when I realize that I can't start the real work on my script just yet. Now, I'm largely Buddhist in my philosophy, so when I get those pangs I go to my breath and look around at the life surrounding me and remember to live in this moment, rather than get lost in "what could be", and lose my mind in the ruin that my life could possibly become.

But still...

I would really like to get started, in earnest, on this screenplay as soon as humanly possible.

So tonight (last night, really, Saturday night) I have the lightest shift of my work week. Plenty of time to figure out this Story-thang...

So I set about the problem.

I work it this way, I work it that way... to no avail. I mean, at some points I'm actually talking to my characters out loud (during smoke breaks, when I was alone, and also I was more whispering just in case someone was around that I didn't know about) and my characters really don't know what their story is. THEY'RE CHARACTERS. They can't see the Big Picture. That's God's territory.

As Saturday night wears into Sunday morning, and my shift wears closer and closer to being over -- when I'll begin my weekend and have 3 days to write... IF I have something to write -- I even email a collaborator of mine (on whom one of the characters is loosely based) begging for help.

But here's my experience with collaborators:

They DO NOT give you what you need.

That's no poor reflection on them. It's just that the folks in my life (a) aren't writers, or if they are (b) they write different genres than I do. My buddy Kelly, for instance, is an amazing writer/director, but he's more Drama-oriented. He can give me an idea, but it won't really fit easily into a Horror/Action type of movie.

So I reminded myself that this writing thing is probably one of the aspects of my life that (at least, judging by past experience) is something I have to do alone.

Which means, though, that I already have been given, or have already earned whatever tools I need to solve the problem. (Everything is "spiritual practice" with me; that's just how I experience this life.)

So I look at the problem:

If this is the problem, then this character walks in and fuckin' solves it. No muss, no fuss.

No frickin' STORY, either!!!

Robert McKee very astutely defines Story as the gap between what a character expects to have happen as a result of an action he takes, and the world not responding the way he expects it to.

I think, "I haven't talked to my friend Aaron in a long time, but I don't have his number. I'll just call Tommy at work and get it from him." So I call Tommy, but unbeknownst to me Tommy has just been bawled-out by his boss for not fixing a mistake that Tommy didn't even make or know about, and now Tommy is struggling to fix this problem before he can even get on with his already problem-laiden day! So I call and I'm all, "Hey, Tom-bo, how's it hangi--" but then Tommy explodes at me about interrupting his work day, and not everyone works overnight and he doesn't call me when he knows I'm at work so why am I being such a selfish bitch and calling him when I know he's going to be busy?!!

Now a gap has opened up between what I hope to accomplish and actually accomplishing it.

(By the way, my friend Tommy REALLY IS that mean! He beats me often! And forces me to call him "Lord Tight-buns" as I cry like a little girl and beg him to let me get back to my meditating. It's pretty messy.)

So if I've got a problem that a character can solve easily, THERE IS NO STORY.

BUT THEN IT HIT ME...!!!

Reverse Engineering!

That's part of the beauty of being God: Time has no meaning!

There is always a temptation for the writer to take a situation and move forward through Time/Space with it and see how it plays out. I mean, that's how Life works, right?!

But when you pray for something, for instance, there are a lot of variables that have to fall into place at the exact right time for that to happen; folks have Free Will and stuff, and we're always making erratic decisions at weird times; so for an event to occur by divine intervention, we have to believe that God can move backward and forward through Time/Space AFTER we pray to make all the puzzle pieces fall into place in time for us to go "Wow! Thanks for making that happen, God!"

And the writer, being the Story-God, has that power!!!

(This all didn't really go through my head at the moment; I'm just adding this as a bit of a dramatic flourish.)

So I realize that if a character can solve the problem that easily, there might be something that happens to PREVENT the character from understanding the TRUE NATURE of the problem!!! :D

It's like the Logical Hemisphere of my brain (be that Left or Right, I really can't remember)
took the problem and said "Well here's what your problem really is. What you need is this." And my Creative Hemisphere goes "Oh, that's EASY! You just need this!" And then my Logical Hemisphere goes "Hey, that's a story beat you got there, let me write that down!" And then my Creative Hemisphere goes "And if that happens, then this would happen right after that." And my Logical Hemisphere goes, " Hey! That's ANOTHER story beat! I'll just... No wait! That's TWO story beats! I'll just write those down..." And as that's going on, my Creative Hemisphere is going, "And then THIS would happen, and then this, and then this..." and my Logical Hemisphere is typing as fast as it can, catching and categorizing all this story until...

I DID IT!!! :D

I fuckin' broke the spine of this screenplay!!! :D

Btw, "spine" is also called, in screenwriting jargon, the "throughline" which is the single line of story that runs through a movie like a roller-coaster rail: Stay on-track and the audience gets one hell of a ride; go off the track and everyone's fucked. (Including the track designer.)

So why does this excite me so much I feel the need to blog about it?

Because having an interesting world filled with interesting characters doesn't allow me to write pages. If I were a novelist, I could do that. But for a screenwriter, I need that throughline, that spine, before I can figure out what goes on Page 1. (In a screenplay, you actually have to grab the reader with the first line, then peak their interest AGAIN before they turn the first page!!! It's not dissimilar to being a songwriter in some ways.) Then I need to be able to structure the most interesting points of the story along a page-by-page layout to ensure that a Reader (a studio executive, development executive, producer, director, actor, anyone in the industry) feels fulfilled by the experience of reading my screenplay and wants to pay me money to shoot it.

Also, as I sort of stated above, I've had a few ideas that I knew had the characters/worlds that people would pay to see. And I've written some screenplays that I knew would keep the pages turning in an excited, breathless pace.

Now, however... with THIS movie...

I believe I have the balance RIGHT. :)

And that is one storgasmic feeling, my friend!!! :D