Hello, Creative Process My Old Friend
FADE IN:
INT. APARTMENT — NADINE’S DESK AREA — NIGHT
The desk is an organized mess of a ton of notebooks, all piled high. Pens are scattered around, and in the centre of the desk is an old Macbook, open to Final Draft, where NADINE (28, glasses, nerd) types occasionally. She goes through short bursts of extreme productivity, and then long periods of blank staring at the screen. This is one of those moments.
NADINE
What the hell am I doing again?
A demanding bark sounds. She looks down to see her feisty chihuahua glaring, a toy in his mouth. Distracted, she turns away from her work to play with him.
FADE OUT.
Narrative writing has been the constant throughout my life. Scriptwriting, in particular, has been the format that I have most taken to, and the one I feel strongest in. Upon reflection, this makes sense. I am a visual, concise person. I am blunt, impatient and always want to get to the point. I get frustrated writing long paragraphs about a character’s emotional state. While such paragraphs are important for understanding the character and their headspace, they do not push the script’s action forward. Show, don’t tell; this is the consistent rule I would wager that every screenwriter hears throughout their practise. There is an art to it, and crafting a narrative through writing only the visuals and dialogue is the best way that I can tell a story.
But why do I want to tell stories? What is it that drives me? Writing is certainly not easy. The scene above is what consistently reoccurs across all writing projects that I undertake. I imagine that most writers find themselves in similar situations, regardless of the form they favour. Writing is a discipline that most individuals think they can do and, more often than not, there is a romantic image of the successful writer having their work read or viewed by millions, with accolades bestowed upon them for their words. But as any writer can tell you, sitting down and doing the work can be a frustrating, lengthy, and difficult experience. At the same time, it can also be the most rewarding, fun, and greatest learning opportunity one can have.
Writing is how I express myself. It is a contradictory outlet. It allows me to both forget about any issue bothering me at the moment in my personal life, and at the same time examine my feelings around this problem more closely through characters and settings. It creates a distance from the problem at hand, and through that creative distance I am able to begin to move forward in resolving it. At the end of the day I create for me; it is my own personal therapy. Of course I would love to be a working writer; I would love to write something that reaches and inspires other people, and gives my words a sense of validity. But this is not what drives my work or me. If I knew that my efforts were not going to achieve any kind of fame or fortune, I would still write, because it is what I need to do. In the past, there have been times where I have tried to put it aside, telling myself to do something else. It takes a great deal of time and energy to create; but I always return to it, because it feels like I am denying a part of myself. I want to, I need to, and I have to create for me.
All of my stories are based on my own experiences, as well as what I want to see. I am an intersectional feminist, and am constantly irritated that certain narratives and perspectives are always amplified over others in society. These common perspectives have become tired and cliché, and I hate that there is a feeling that we must limit ourselves to only these ones. For that reason, I have made the decision not to write any white male protagonists. Their “struggles” are not interesting to me, and those films are not the ones I pay to go see anymore. It has been white men who have predominantly run and controlled the highest tiers of the film industry in the history of cinema. They have run out of stories to tell, and can only rehash stories that they have already told. In the past two decades, the films with the biggest budgets have been remakes, adaptations, and/or superhero films, the exception being Avatar (2009) as per The Numbers in December 2018. However, Avatar is arguably a remake of other films such as Dances with Wolves (1990) or Pocahontas (1995). But I digress; this is a different argument for another day. The majority of these films contain white male protagonists that follow the template of the hero’s journey in a three act structure. This used to be exciting to me, but now that I see it so often it is predictable and boring. I want to see something different; I want to see all women spending the next century making films about their stories, claiming their right to make themselves protagonists in the same brazen way that men have always done. These different stories are what interest me, and all of my ideas are based in them. I only write about what is interesting to me.
Ideas are plentiful and can be found anywhere. I have a million a day. If I like one, I write it down in my idea notebook, forget about it and come back to it later. I have had that journal for years. There have been many instances where I like a concept but I do not feel it is time to write about it yet. It may be years before I return to an idea. It all depends on where I am in my life and what it is I want to examine. For example, I recently returned to a horror film concept I had nearly a decade ago when I first began university. The idea was essentially based on a professor I had who I loathed (A quick sidenote; beware angering anyone you know who is a writer — we have long memories). I loved the idea, but I could not find a way to make it work that made me happy. I threw it away, annoyed and convinced it was bad because there was no workable solution I could see. Now, having grown up a lot (I would like to think), I understand why it did not work, and how I can fix it. I went through depression during my years in university, and there was a lot going on with me. Loathing this professor was the least interesting aspect of that time in my life, and once I realized that, I was able to begin crafting a stronger narrative. Time and reflection is what was needed to make the story better. While it is frustrating for an impatient person like myself to take time, I ultimately want to have a strong story that I feel satisfied with.
This feeling of satisfaction is when I know a project is done. I am my own worst critic, and am very hard on everything I write. I have never been able to label anything I write as “great”. Quite honestly if I thought something were done and needed no further editing, I would probably throw it away thinking it was the worst thing I had ever written. Nothing is ever finished, and all I can do is look for a sense of satisfaction with each piece. I must be content to leave it as is, flaws and all.
In this way, each story is its own human entity; an imperfect, frustrating, complicated being with its own personality, sense of humour, and peculiarity that I cannot help but want in my life. In short, each story I write is a dear friend, and I love them, warts and all.
