 |
|
|
|
Monday, January 15, 2007 |
|
Eric's POV - Writing: An Emotional Freefall |
|
|
|
Writing: An Emotional FreefallPOSTED BY ERIC ANDRADE OVER AT Eric's POV.
Having a great technique can literally catapult you to the top of your profession. It's true in acting. It's true in massage therapy. It's true in advertising. So it is also true in screenwriting. And these techniques can be taught. They have to do with breaking down the story, breaking down the character, breaking down the scenes, and you can find great techniques for your writing from him and him and him and her.
However...
Nothing and NO ONE can teach you how to let go. And if you're a writer like I'm a writer than I suspect you might know what I'm talking about. There are necessary points in your work that you really need to be able to understand what your protagonist, antagonist or ANGRY BARKEEP #1 is feeling.
Not thinking: FEELING.
And if you're any kind of writer, you probably like your role as the omniscient, detached, non-interventionst overlord.
But it may kill your script.
You have to be able to get in there when your boy is beaten down; the girl has left him; he's just come in from the pouring rain to a ransacked apartment; his cat ran away; there's a message on the machine from his mother telling him that his father finally succumbed to the cancer...and CRY with him.
Or laugh with him. I'm not sure what he would do there. You're the writer.
I don't know your life.
But I do know that if you can't empathize with your characters feelings in some way when they are sloshing through the hell that you have created for them to test their limits: then you aren't really testing yours. And your characters may seem flat and uninspired.
I'm challenging you to try to go there a little more. I'm not saying to go out and recreate those scenes with you as the main character in real life. Hell no. And I'm not suggesting that you confine yourself to writing what you know. What you are comfortable within your own skin.
I'm asking to write what you KNOW. You have the same set of emotions—the same range of emotions—that I do, and that we all have. And at some point in your life, you've probably been exposed to them. And since you're a writer, you've probably closed yourself off from them. But you know them. You've been introduced.
Rip off that bandage. Get some air in there. Feel that pain just a little bit.
Give your characters what they need: emotion.
Good luck.
//Eric Andrade
Read/Post Comments
Categories: [characters_] [plot_] [action_]Labels: action, characters, Erics POV, plot
Posted by
scribosphere @
3:20 AM |
|
|
|
|
|
