Skip to main content

Part One of One Way to Write Your Story

What is your passion?

When I was teaching creative writing, I asked the students their favorite movie or television show? The answers ranged from the best of Disney to the classics to smart-alecky attempts at humor.

Your greatest strength in telling your story is your point of view. No one has ever lived the same life as you, had the same experiences at the same time as you, or expressed themselves the same way as you. Unfortunately, this is also your greatest weakness. Your point of view may seem like some other artist, but it's never going to be the same. When someone reads and evaluates your work, they're looking for something new, but not that new. They want something just a bit different than what everyone else is producing. But you must be true to your vision of your story, and if you get as close to creating the story in your mind as possible, you're a success. If anyone else likes what you've done, that is icing on the cake. Your first customer is you. If your work intrigues someone to the point that they will give you money for it, that means you're both talented and a professional. 

Poet Emily Dickinson is a personal favorite of mine. She had a vision, expressed it, and was satisfied with the product. But when she tried to publish her work, an editor disagreed with her vision and changed it. She decided that keeping her poems true meant not finding a publisher that shared that expression during her lifetime. As a result, her work only found a wide audience after her death. While she wasn't around to see how the world accepted her genius, she died knowing that her work was her own and not someone else's.

What kind of written or film media excites, informs, and touches you emotionally?

If you are moved by a story, find out how and why. Did you laugh, cry, shake in fear, shout in surprise? Is there something in your life that is similar? Most people tell two stories: the way the world is or the way the world should be. Your experience will color the way you tell those stories.

The theme of that story affects you as a person and inspires you as an artist. A theme involves a question that works best when there is no concrete answer. More on that in the next installment.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

These Dreams

Are your dreams trying to tell you something? Dreams are intriguing phenomena that have captivated humans for centuries. Some people believe dreams are messages from our subconscious, revealing our hidden desires, fears, or conflicts. Others think dreams are just random images and sensations our brain produces during sleep. But what does science say about the relationship between dreams and the subconscious mind? And how can we use our dreams to better understand ourselves and our conscious minds? And what can creative writers take away from the idea that our subconscious minds are where we do our best writing? One way to approach this question is to examine the process of dream recall, or how we remember our dreams. Dream recall is not straightforward, as most of us forget our dreams soon after waking up. However, some people can recall their dreams more frequently and vividly than others, and some factors can influence the likelihood of dream recall, such as sleep quality, emotio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meanwhile

 Writing your novel can feel nearly impossible, but many techniques can help keep your readers engaged. One such method is using parallel stories, which writers can use to create tension and suspense. An effective way to do this is to end your scenes so that you cut between them at moments that leave your readers hanging. Writers sometimes call this technique “Meanwhile, back at the ranch.” The nickname dates back to silent movies when title cards between scenes signaled transitions. In the earliest days, studios didn’t make new cards for each movie but used a set of stock cards: “One Year Later,” “Comes the Dawn,” or “Wedding Bells.” “Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch” was the card used most often when the action, for example, cut away from the heroine being tied to a log just as the villain turned on the sawmill. The literary version of this technique dates back to at least Homer. Still, it was probably perfected in the nineteenth century when newly popular magazines serialized nov...
Post a Comment
Read more

Magalopolis

 I am still on the fence with this film. There's a part of me that looks at it as a screenplay, that seems both underwritten and overridden at the same time. Several scenes that seem to be improvised. Some other scenes that seem to be anything but improvised. In fact, almost stagnant in the way that they are delivered. There seems to be also a lot of Interesting ideas that are set up but are not particularly paid off period so check it out. But don't be surprised if you find yourself lost in Megalopolis.
Post a Comment
Read more