“The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious, you might never come home.” – Jeanette Winterson
When my son was three years old, he was Captain Hook for Halloween. It was fascinating to watch him. He cared way more about playing pretend than he did about the candy. It would have been easier for him to lose the hook and dig in with both hands when our neighbor told him that he could take as much candy as he wanted, but what mattered to Ray was the story he was in.
One morning he got up and ran into the family room to put on his white bear paws and hat that my costume designer gave him on the set of my film Interior Night. He told me that Stanley was missing and we had to go and find him. My son tells stories all day long . . . and he never worries about whether or not they will get published.
It’s inspiring to see that level of commitment.
He literally lives for story. It makes me wonder why are we so drawn to story. I think it’s because story is the way we contextualize our lives. Our imagination is the tool we use to find meaning, to resolve dilemmas, and to make sense of our world.
As we grow up, fear gets in the way. We start worrying about who is going to love us, how are we going to pay for everything, etc. Often we fall into the false belief that we cannot rely on our intuition or imagination to guide us. And yet, we still have this desire to write, to build, to create.
I think that the act of writing is really a process of shedding all of our false beliefs for the truth. The three-act-structure is a process of winnowing away our protagonist’s misconception of the way things are in order to lead them back to their true self.
Picasso said, “It takes a very long time to become young.”
Story often begins with an idea or an image that ignites your imagination. You become curious, wanting to know more, to see how it is going to play out.
The desire to write is connected to the desire to resolve something you don’t yet understand. However, there can be a tendency to objectify the creative experience, to believe that you are somehow in control, that it is your job to figure out your novel or screenplay. The problem with this is that you tend to write only your idea of the story. You think you know what is going to happen and don’t allow your characters to take the lead. Being curious means that you trust your characters even as they lead you away from your idea of where you think the story should go. You must allow them this privilege!
If you do not allow your characters to stray from your preconceived vision of the story, your work will be predictable. It is not that your ideas are wrong, it is just that, sometimes, you fail to grasp the depth of conflict required to satisfy what you are trying to express. Your characters want something—the stakes are life and death. By going after what they want, they will meet with antagonistic forces.
When you allow your characters to struggle mightily, you find a more dynamic scene. They may dramatize your ideas in ways you haven’t anticipated. Your work becomes more specific.
When you approach your work from a place of wonder, anything is possible.
Let go of the pressure that you are supposed to solve something, or that there is something you ought to know. Then you can relax, and ideas and images naturally accrue.
There may be a period of time when the story doesn’t cohere. You may have a series of disparate images, a sense of your protagonist at different points in the story. You wonder how on earth they are going to get from here to there. Understandably, this can make you nervous—or you can get excited by how dynamic your book or screenplay is becoming. As long as you hold it loosely and stay connected to that initial impulse, your story has a way of telling you where it wants to go.
Our subconscious seems to be constructed in such a way that it is forever searching to find order in chaos. It is the ultimate Mr. Fix-It. You don’t need to crack the whip. In fact, it is when you start cracking the whip and fretting about whether the writing is any good that your subconscious starts shutting down.
It seems that the more you show up for your writing each day, your anxiety loses its hold over you. Every day is different, and there is little connection between your feelings and the quality of your work. When you surrender to your curiosity, your story reveals itself to you in ways you may never have imagined.
I can’t wait to find out who my son will be tomorrow.
Learn more about marrying the wildness of your imagination to the rigor of structure in The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, or The 90-Day Screenplay workshops.
What Do I Write Next?