Speaker 1: How do you define story and how do you teach it to clients and students?

Speaker 2: I think the basic idea of a story is going to be that you are following a character or characters. It is entirely possible to tell a story of multiple characters. You don't only have to tell one person's story. It's nice, you can do it, but it's also possible to tell a story with 11 main characters. It takes a lot of work. You have to follow each main character and follow their story all the way through the narrative. But in fact, I believe any story is really about how a character trying to accomplish something runs into other people who either help or harm their intention. It's sort of like Isaac Newton's theory of the billiard balls that once they get set in motion, they will roll in that same direction because they're being pushed by a physical force. And I think a character is also doing that. They're trying to get somewhere and they're rolling in a certain direction until either they hit something or something comes along and knocks into them and then that changes their direction. But they're still trying to get to that one place. The physics kind of falls apart there because billiard balls aren't trying to get anywhere. But the idea that things are moving until they run into something else which is also moving is sort of how characters work. Every character thinks they're the main character. If you have your hero walk into a hotel and try and get a hotel room, that hotel clerk, they think they're the center of the movie because they're the center of their story. And this person coming up to them is either getting in their way or they're trying to charm them or whatever it is that they're doing, they're trying to do something. And that interchange is the basic building blocks of story. That's what you call dramatic action. Someone trying to accomplish something which mostly involves interacting with other people. Sometimes the action can be I have to take this suitcase and put it on a train, whatever. But there'll still be I have a thing I'm trying to accomplish and that's what story is. I have a thing I am trying to accomplish. I am a character and I need to get this thing and it will be a more interesting story if there's something in the way. If I am a character, I'm trying to put a suitcase on a train and I go and I put it on the train and nothing happens. It's a very short boring story. If they're carrying a suitcase and another person comes and they steal the suitcase, it's more of an interesting story. And it's a more interesting story if that person's got something important in the suitcase. If it's just a suitcase they could say oh somebody stole it, oh well I'll go get another one. Not that strong a story. Every story is about a character trying to accomplish something and having an obstacle. And what they do, what action they take in the face of the obstacles is your story. The obstacles don't have to be external. The obstacle can be I'm really afraid of the train station. I need to get this suitcase to my uncle and he's going to be at the other end of the train so I've got to get this suitcase onto the train but I'm terrified of loud noises. That's a story. The only obstacle is in there but it's real. So every character is facing obstacles. The obstacles don't have to be physical. They don't have to be another character. They just have to be something that's getting in the way of them trying to accomplish something that's important

Speaker 1: to them. Can you explain how questions and choices inform the writing process? Writing

Speaker 2: is a process of questions. There's a couple of things that I wish I could like get tattooed on the inside of people's eyelids that they knew. Think in scenes and writing is a process of questions. It's not a thing you have to fill out. It's not a form that you have to fit into. Writing is a question. It's always a process of having something. It could be just I want to write a western or I want to talk about how love hurts or I want to talk about how love saved my life. Whatever it is that you start with, then you start to ask questions. How am I going to tell this story? Am I going to tell it through a character who gets it or a story that doesn't get it? Everything is going to be a choice. Every question that you ask, if you write down that question, how am I going to tell this story? Who is the main character? Everything is a question and those questions are who is it about? What do they want? Why can't they get it? What do they do about that? And how does it end? I think I skipped one. Oh, why doesn't that work? Right. Who's it about? What do they want? Why can't they get it? What do they do about that? Why doesn't that work? How does it end? I did a whole video on this called the six essential questions, so I explained it better there. But those six questions basically will help you write anything. They'll help you write a movie. They'll help you write a video game. They'll help you write a series because that's the essential thing that you get of how am I going to turn whatever feeling or idea I have into a story is a person who is trying to do something to get something and there's something in the way. And then eventually something will end it. Either the end will be I don't get it or I do get it. And whatever they do that they had never tried before is how it ends because if they had tried it before it would end before. So who's it about? What do they want? What do they do? Why doesn't that work? What do they finally do? What is the end? That's storytelling. And it can work for three acts or 27 acts or one act. It always works. It's my go to set of questions. And then just keep asking questions. Who is it about? It's about a plumber. Where is he from? Just ask who, what, why, where and just keep asking why. Why is he afraid of heights? Why does he love this particular person? Every time you ask a question and you get a specific answer you're moving closer to writing a scene.

Speaker 1: Film Courage What's the easiest way for someone to figure out an enjoyable writing process for themselves?

Speaker 2: The first important thing about your process is recognizing that it's yours. That there is not a right or wrong way. Some people write at night, some people write in the day, some people write in short bursts, some people write in long extended bursts. There's no particular better or worse process. The important thing about a process is it's something that you can do relatively easily for whatever reason it works for you. And that means you have to spend time paying attention to yourself, trying different things and seeing which ones work and which ones don't work and being really honest about that. I personally…I keep doing that, sorry. I personally…I turn out to write very well in short bursts. I thought I should do more because when I'm writing in a short burst it's like holy crap if I could keep doing this for eight hours I'd be a miracle. But I can't. And I would sit there and I would grind. After the burst was running down I would grind and not only would that be unproductive and begin to be disheartening but I would start to undo my good work because when you start to grind in a bad way you start to doubt. You start to feel bad and you say well I must be feeling bad because this work is bad which is not necessarily the case. It could be that your process is bad. And so what I would do is I would write something really good and then I would grind until I was unhappy and then I would say oh that sucks and then I would write something over it and destroy my own good work. And it took me a long time to pay attention to the fact that I do really well in short bursts. And if I stop when I feel myself starting to lose it and take a break, take a walk, do exercises, whatever, I can then come back and do another short burst. Getting myself to sit down again is rough but that's the thing I had to teach myself by paying attention to what worked. I've gotten much more productive since I learned my process. It's not for everyone. Everyone will have a process that's dependent on their own inner mechanisms and on their own reality. Some people only have free time on weekends. Some people only get a little bit of free time you know in the evenings and so they have to find a way to work at the time that they are allowed by their life. You have to pay attention to reality and pay attention to your own inner working and the best way to find out is to do it and see how it goes. It's always better to try and do some work and see how it goes. You'll never get to the place where you absolutely know that you can write and then you start writing. It's always a question of let me try this, see what comes out. That's the best test of a process. Film Courage

Speaker 1: And working these temp jobs for many other reasons aside from income and people, the study of people, helped you realize that was your preferred style?

Speaker 2: Forced me because I'm stubborn and I would just keep doing the wrong thing over and over again until circumstances forced me to work in short bursts and then I was like wow that actually is better. Trying to be open to your process, trying to pay attention to what actually makes the work good, what feels good. Feeling good is underrated like the fact that you know you have to learn to write when you don't feel good. For me having a process that I can say I always have five basic documents that I open like an outline, a place where I write notes and the text itself and a sort of overview. I'm going to be doing a video on this actually soon but that's my personal setup. Everyone has their own but what you need to do is find a thing that so you always when you open that notebook you're not thinking about anything except the contents of the work. You know ah this is the outline. The outline is going to be broken into scenes and the scene lines are going to look like this and I don't have to think about that. I have to think about what's in the scene. That's the best way to find a process is to get something that works for you. Some people will do it on their phone. Some people will do it. I would advise doing it in some way that it's written down in some form digitally on paper, on note cards. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you get it out of your head and into the world in some way that you can set it aside and come back to it. Set it aside, come back to it because with almost anything you're going to have to. You can't do it all at once.

Speaker 1: When did you have that aha moment that I don't have writer's block and my anxiety was although it was real it was just that wasn't my style of writing to sit at my desk at my parents basement or wherever and have the perfect music and ice tea. That actually wasn't working for me.

Speaker 2: It was unfortunately not an aha moment. It was an aha a couple of years and I think that that's actually sort of a misleading thing that our culture has developed from movies. That there's a decisive moment and after it you are always changed. In stories that is a very important thing. You need decisive moments when people are changed but in truth it's more like a series and I have a couple seasons where I get a little bit of it then I fall back into my old ways and then I have some reward or I think of something new and it's a process in which you try to do two steps forward one step back instead of the other way around because you're trying to head forward. You do a little forward, you fall back, you go a little forward and the main way it always is the doing of it. Just throw something on the paper even if it's just and I have done this. I've written scene where I say this is the scene where he comes home and is miserable and that I just took it out of the outline and I wrote it into the script because the next time I look at it I now am familiar with this process and I say okay I created a scene. The scene is a description. This is where he comes home and is miserable. Now I have to think okay how do we see that he's miserable? Ask a question. We see he's miserable because he takes his dinner out of the refrigerator and throws it on the wall. Each thing that you get when you ask a question to me it's always a process of questions and a process of writing down the answer. Now I have a scene where a guy comes in opens his fridge throws his dinner against the wall. Okay we know he's miserable. Now I can add a couple of lines move on to the next scene. Everything that you can do to put a little something down to create a bit of something for your creativity to hang on to. That's for me the essence of the writing

Speaker 1: process. Film Courage So if this were a movie then it would show Glenn as a temp and you know all right Charlie have a good weekend and then you had like a half hour and then the music plays and you realize wow this is it and here I am writing it. I actually think what we would do

Speaker 2: in that case is we would show that we would cut to the imaginary scene, we would play it out and so we would get to catch the thrill of the creation by seeing the created magic of this

Speaker 1: character in the scene. Yeah, I'm sorry I'm writing now. Film Courage No, I love it. So Glenn

Speaker 2: is the writer. Film Courage I'm sitting there writing and then we cut to or dissolve to. By the way that's a little thing. Most of the time A. Don't write cut to. William Goldman started it. It's a delightful thing in his scripts. Obviously they're going to cut to. How else are they going to get there? You're wasting page space. Don't say cut to. And most of the time don't say dissolve to or fade out or anything else because that's their decision. Unless it's really important that you dissolve, just write the next scene and they'll figure out how to get there. Anyway yeah get to Glenn's writing and then show that scene where the character is running to the phone booth in the rain and it's a great scene and people will get so excited by my creativity as a character that they'll want to know what happens next.