“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination.”

- Albert Einstein

STAYING CONNECTED TO THE SOURCE

The rewrite uses the left and right brain simultaneously. We’re shifting gears between our imagination and our analytical mind. As our story evolves, we begin to see that it’s not precisely the book we’d imagined. There may be scenes and characters that we thought would be in our first draft, but couldn’t find their way in, while there also may be scenes we can’t bring ourselves to cut, yet they clearly don’t belong.

How do we know what to keep and what to discard? How do we make our story become what it is supposed to be? Everything else can be held loosely, but that raw primal impulse that got us started is the source of our story. We must stay connected to it as we continue to shed, layer, shift, edit, and add new material.

Through this process we’re moving in the direction of the most fully realized version of our story. It’s not a linear process, but we do have some guideposts to keep us on the path.

As we move more deeply into our first act, we’re looking for ways to show the opposite side of the protagonist’s apparent problem. Let’s explore how an opposing argument is revealed roughly two-thirds of the way through our first act, thus illustrating the dilemma. In essence, a dilemma is a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation. Once, we’ve explored the “damned if I do” through the inciting incident, we must take a look at the “damned if I don’t” aspect through the opposing argument. It is only through understanding the nature of the dilemma that our reader will understand clearly why our protagonist makes his decision at the end of Act One. The opposing argument informs the protagonist’s dilemma and keeps our reader connected to our theme.

Let’s say a man wants to protect his grandparent’s legacy, a sprawling ranch that’s been passed down through generations and is now entrusted to him. Times are tough and his ancestors’ legacy is in jeopardy. Perhaps, in an attempt to protect the ranch, he commits a crime, which puts him in jail. While incarcerated, he realizes that his grandparent’s legacy was not their ranch, but rather, their work ethic and integrity. In the end, though defeated, he experiences a shift in perception, and it is from this new understanding that he can build a new life and carry on the true legacy of his forbears.

The dilemma could be that in order to protect his idea of his family’s legacy, ie: the ranch, he must jeopardize his reputation. In the first act it would be important for the writer to understand both sides of the protagonist’s dilemma in order to illustrate this for the reader, otherwise the central conflict could become vague and the underlying meaning of the story could be lost. If the inciting incident was a situation that foretold the loss of the ranch and all of the various consequences, ie: how it might affect his livelihood, his family, his reputation, and his future, the opposing argument might involve the presentation of an alternative, a single nefarious deed that could make all of his troubles go away, but flies in the face of who he believes himself to be. Act One is where this dilemma is set up through action, leading inexorably to the decision to commit the crime that sends him into the second act.

Although we may likely have written a scenario that can serve as the opposing argument, the challenge in the rewrite is to make it as clear as possible. If the man lacked integrity, it would weaken the dilemma and confuse the reader. If the man didn’t care about his family, it would lessen the jeopardy and the reader would not be clear on what was at stake. In the rewrite, we want to look for ways to raise the stakes, not in an attempt to “milk the scene,” but rather, to clarify the dilemma, so that our reader remains connected to the theme.

TODAY

Identify a scenario somewhere in the middle, or perhaps two-thirds of the way through your first act where you might illustrate the opposing argument of the protagonist’s dilemma through conflict.

Until next month,
Al

“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith; Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”

– Reinhold Niebuhr

THIRD ACTS ARE A BITCH: REFRAMING THE PROTAGONIST’S GOAL

Whether you’re writing a screenplay or a novel, every well-told story contains this crucial element: somewhere toward the end of the second act, the protagonist experiences a surrender, a death of his old identity.

The purpose of story is to reveal a transformation. We must die in order to be reborn. Most stories begin with the protagonist wanting something. The stakes are life and death; if he doesn’t achieve his goal his life will be unimaginable. At the end of Act Two he recognizes the impossibility of achieving his goal and he experiences a death of the meaning he’s attached to it.

Whether his goal is to leave Bedford Falls like George Bailey, or to amass enough fortune to gird himself from the vagaries of life, like Citizen Kane, or to hold onto his youthful irresponsibility, like Seth Rogen in Knocked Up, the end of Act Two is the moment when the protagonist becomes awake to the dilemma he’s confronting, thus realizing the impossibility of achieving his goal.

This does not mean that he longer wishes to achieve his goal, but rather, he recognizes that his attempts at achieving it have, in fact, prevented its success. It is as a result of his surrender that he reframes his relationship to the meaning he attached to it. Perhaps he realizes that what he had taken personally was not personal. Perhaps he discovers that his idea about himself was misguided.

As James Joyce states in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, our job is to toil in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. He is saying that we are pioneers. This takes courage, as we are forever pressing up against our doubt. We are being asked to create something that is bigger than we are, which, on a practical level is impossible. The problem arises the moment our brain registers the potential for failure. It sounds the distress signal, wanting to protect our ego from a fatal blow.

This is what happens when our limiting ideas clash with our sense of our hero transformed. We get into our heads and try to figure out a satisfying ending to the story. I’m not sure it’s possible to figure it out. I believe that our role is as co-creators, and what we must do is become curious as to how our protagonist arrives at this new understanding. When we do this, images and ideas emerge that gradually reveal this shift in perception. We can’t do this if we’re holding so tightly to our idea of our ending that we don’t allow for a wider perspective.

Our protagonist’s self-will no longer works in Act Three, and neither does our own. Since the desire to create is connected to the desire to evolve, we are in some way the embodiment of our hero. When he recognizes the impossibility of getting what he wants, we experience that jeopardy on some level as well.

Story structure is an immutable paradigm for a spiritual transformation. If this sounds too new-agey, think of it as simply a shift in perception. Since this is not something that can be figured out, we are naturally going to experience fear and doubt. Writing is an act of faith, but not an act of blind faith. We can have faith in structure.

If you’re struggling with Act Three, be curious about how your protagonist reframes his relationship to the meaning he’s attached to his goal. Notice how he recognizes the nature of his struggle as opposed to the appearance of a struggle. Allow images to emerge. Hold them loosely and gradually you will begin to see that although his situation may not have changed, he has altered his relationship to the situation, and can then move forward from an empowered place.

Until next month, Al

BANISHING REDUNDANCIES

redundant: 1 a: exceeding what is necessary or normal : superfluous b : characterized by or containing an excess; specif : using more words than necessary.

Redundancy is not only a sign of lazy writing; it can also pull us out of the story by interrupting the narrative flow.  There are many types of redundancies in writing, from rehashing story information, to repeating themes unnecessarily, to using the same word or phrase within close proximity. Some words are like suntan lotion: a little goes a long way. If you’re going to use the word eidolon, fine, but only use it once.

When we read our work out loud we can catch most of the redundancies at the level of words, and find ways to remove them. Let’s try an exercise.

Read the following short paragraph.

         “Bob drove to work early. He worked six blocks from home, and when he got tired of working in his office, he did his work from the donut shop next door.”

Can you convey all the information and only use the word work once?

“Bob drove six blocks to his office. When he got tired of staring at the same four walls, he worked from the donut shop next door.”

Well done.

Now let’s look at a common problem: how to prevent exposition from becoming redundant. For example: sometimes a character must repeat information to another character. How can we avoid redundancy if the reader already knows the information?

Perhaps we could just show the other character’s response. Or maybe it could be dramatized and the second character could demand to know the story, and we could see the story told again, but from a new perspective, thus revealing new information about the characters’ relationships.

It is common for novice writers to repeat information ad nauseum. It’s the author’s job to find creative ways to keep the narrative moving forward.

A close cousin of this redundancy is beginning the story long before anything actually happens. Unless you’re F. Scott Fitzgerald, we probably don’t want to read twenty pages of backstory in order to get up to speed on the characters. Try to find ways to begin the action immediately, and creative ways to convey necessary information as the story proceeds.

Which leads us to structural redundancy; sometimes a beat can be played out repeatedly through varying situations, and the redundancy isn’t at the level of words or situations, but rather, of tension. The story is not building through rising stakes. This may be a structural problem, and it can be solved by first recognizing the redundancy.

It’s a dark day for the writer when the structure isn’t working, but as Ernest Hemingway said, “Every writer needs a good bullshit detector.” Though I’m pretty sure those were not his last words.

Here are a couple of ideas if the story feels like it’s moving sideways without building in tension: consider tearing out scenes that feel emotionally similar but add little new information – and/or be curious as to how the stakes might be raised by exploring the dilemma at the heart of the scene.

Fiction is different than real life. Real life is mundane. We eat, we work, we laugh, we cry, we sleep – we do it again. The purpose of fiction is to imbue these events with meaning. We’re not interested in the appearance of eating and sleeping; we’re interested in the underlying meaning that is being expressed through these incidents.

It is through inquiring into why a particular passage has been written that we begin to understand precisely what we were attempting to express, and the scene springs to life, thus raising the stakes.

Until next month, Al