The Importance Of Play

And What It Taught Me About Writing

It’s a New Year and in many ways a new me. I feel a change and thankfully this time it feels good (2014–16 I’m looking at you). In truth I feel changed, or rather back to the truest form of myself.

I’ve had a rather tough go of things over the past “few” (I’m being kind to my timeline here) years, battling chronic illness as a teenager to twenty-something left me developmentally and emotionally drained and yes I’ll admit delayed.

Life and figuring sh** out has been my agenda for the past few years and we’re talking depression, dismorphia, disillusion and a loss of identity.

It didn’t help that I was the kind of “wise” child, born beyond her years and eager to be taken seriously and put to ground so I could take off running. At thirteen I had a clear direction for my future, all logically laid out- well as logical as a thirteen-year-old obsessed with comic books, stunt fighting/choreography, writing, acting and performing can be.

Yeah, I was an genuine weirdo with unconventional taste brought up in unconventional means. I was a dreamer and a doer, unique and often times frustrating combo as I’ve come to find. I longed for action and a life that was in my control, so I gave myself what means of it I could. Using my Mother’s advice that I should play with my little brother more as an excuse I created a world in which my longing to be an adult and passion for all the above could thrive.

Yes superheroes were involved.

But more so were characters, stories, story-arks and continuity were involved. It was through this world that I learned how to interact with the fast paced environment of creation.

Through role-play and improv I learned perspective. Varying, differentiating,unique and diverse perspectives that I needed to be able to change, shift and respond to on a dime. I mean you got to keep it interesting for your audience after all.

And that’s how I saw it. As a legitimate experience, by that I mean I treated it as though I were presenting this each day to the world on some grand scale or other, be it a television show, a mini-series, a novella, soap opera, or even better a comic book.

This taught me that there is no way out once you are in. Once something has been said it can’t be unsaid, once something is done etc. There are no take backs in life. Not completely applicable to actual writing- trust that I know the benefit of outlines, revisions and editing - but it is important to keep yourself sharp, to challenge yourself to make something work no matter how much you may want to redo it.

Needless to say that this “game” fast outgrew that moniker. They all outgrew me, for they were bigger then me. Suddenly this world, these characters became a physical presence in me and anyone who was close to me lives.

They had a touch of humanity that other characters can sometimes lack, because I lived as them, really allowed them to live, as though each move they made was as real as life, with the repercussions of action, reaction and interaction.

In allowing them to live in this imaginative, freely expressive, outside the borders of restriction and structure I allowed them to evolve. To surprise even me with what they said, did, who they loved, and what their motives revealed about them.

It was a world outside but inside my own- as Nick Carraway would say “within and without” myself.

Not only did these characters become a constant in my own life but a lifeline to those around me. They had a life of their own, one that sometimes people would even forget me in! And as writers be it screenwriter, novelist, comic book author, short story scribe etc, isn’t that what we strive for. To create real long lasting impressions with the characters we birth out of fountain pen and half chewed number twos?

Those writers who manage to become great articles of pop culture and literary wonder are the ones who manage to connect with their audience on a human level. Too often are characters used as plot points, as simple vessels to drive the writers vision instead of being the ones who create the story through who they are.

Humanity and the unique perspective therein is where true story exists. Is what makes any story an experience. One that pulls the audience into its world and begins to invade their own.

I learned this through the simply action of playing a game. This game evolved into a passion which turned into love and has given me the biggest insight into my own life, future and self that I’ve very truly known. Now it has become the method and means by which I create: TBM aka The Being Method (something I am eager to share more about in future posts!).

For now I wish to leave you with the simple idea of abandoning structure and allowing yourself to play with your characters, that’s right. For in order for others to embrace them you first must experience them.

Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. — Albert Einstein