Great Characters - Great Impact

We know that great writing provokes our thinking, widens our scope of the world. Some of us have even experienced great writing that motivates our actions. Years ago, I saw a play called "Jeffrey" in New York. In the play, one of the characters volunteers at an AIDS maternity ward feeding newborn babies. I was touched by the gesture and decided to look into it as something I would do myself. As it turned out the babies weren't separated in New York city maternity wards because their was little chance of spreading the HIV virus among newborns. Nice to know.

I spent the next few months feeding and changing babies. That experience taught me that if I wanted to adopt a child, I could handle it. A few years after that, I did adopt. Am I suggesting it was because of the character in Jeffrey? Probably not, but it sparked a flame that was already burning within me. And, I believe great writing can do that. A great character challenges us to behave in different ways than we ordinarily would, approach a situation differently or take action where we would never have thought to.

I stop now to think about all the characters that come to mind. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Jay Gatsby, Scarlett O'Hara each left a mark in me, each planted a seed of "emotional DNA" in my being. We each have a list of our own literary heroes. Now, stop for a moment and think about all the young writers your work can help illuminate in the future. The stories boiling up inside of you may very well mean the world to someone looking for their own voice in writing in the future. By devoting yourself to your craft now, you're helping to strengthen the writers of tomorrow. You may be the writer than someone looks up to and wants to emulate. Your words can potentially change the course of someone's life. Your characters can leave a mark on generations to come. Don't think for a moment that your creativity is not that important. It is, in fact it's critical!

But who'll write your stories if you don't?  No one has your particular view point of the world.  No one has your unique way of expressing things.  No one shares your exact powers of observation.  I've always said that five stolen moments during the day is better than nothing.  But the truth is writing anything requires getting through that first horrible draft.  Then it requires many rewrites.  When the time is right it will require feedback from people you trust.  But, writing like the greatest architecture, stands the test of time.  It lives on.  It breathes a life of its own and extends beyond you in ways you can never imagine.  Sometimes the most important thing to remember is just keep the pen moving across the page - keep the fingers dancing on the keyboard.  Like a muscle, writing gets easier the more you do it.

In general what we tend to remember most about great movies or novels is their characters.  A well written, three dimensional character is at the heart of every great story.  The audience needs to identify with your protagonist.  We need to know who we're rooting for.  Rich, unusual characters will lead you to the new comedic and dramatic territory.  Think for a moment of the people you remember most from your own life?  What was it about them that captured your attention?  Can you incorporate these traits into one of your own characters?  Can you take a foible or quirk from someone in real life and exaggerate it to good use in your own fiction?

I was recently working on a character who lives a life of seclusion in the Brazilian rainforest.  I liked what I had so far but when I added a surprise element the character took on a new life.  I think he's much more interesting and well-rounded now.  What I gave him was a great love of jazz.  Then to make that visual, I gave him a trumpet.  Now I have him bringing his trumpet to the jungle and taking it out to play at night.  Now the character has a "hook" that engages our interest.

Linda Seger, a sought after teacher and script consultant in Hollywood has written a great book on the subject, "Creating Unforgettable Characters."  I highly recommend putting it on your writer's shelf.


This week's suggested website: The Gotham Writer's Workshop  (www.writingclasses.com) is located in New York City (hence the name).  This group publishes some great books on fiction and screenwriting.  It also offers courses in-person and online in poetry writing, play writing and even memoir.




This week's writing prompt:  Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Using the first person point of view, have your main character tell us (the reader) an episode from his or her life.  Let your character describe a defining moment, an accomplishment, an epiphany or an embarrassment.  Be sure to let your character use his or her own vocabulary.  Let it be conversational, in his or her own voice.  Limit this exercise to one page.

Friends, Fragments and First Drafts

When it comes to writing, I never throw anything away.  Like mining for gold, writing is a process of excavation and sifting through sediment to get to "the good stuff."  You dig deep for the truth your characters want to embody.  You dig deep for themes that reveal something about the human condition.  The sediment that is disturbed comes in the form of many drafts.  Awful, incoherent, sometimes nonsensical drafts.  It's essential that you learn to keep these drafts so you can sift through them later and ascertain their true value at a time when you're not so emotionally attached to them and can reread them with a different perspective.

I have folder stuffed with early drafts.  Unfinished, fragmented, and raw.  Why do I keep them?  I feel that for a writer its okay to be a hoarder.  There's no way to know what nugget of dialogue will make it to a finished scene.  Sometimes months or years after writing something you stumble upon it and it sparkles a fresh stream of thinking or reignites the original fire behind it.  When you have forgotten even writing it, that's the best.

Another important thing to remember: Never show anything to anyone while its still in development.  It's unfair to all parties involved.  A kind word from a friend can easily distract you.  A tiny bit of criticism from a relative is enough to stall your efforts or worse, sabotage you completely.  Case in point, back in May of 2010 I was about 70 pages in to what I thought was a good story about a newly divorced woman in her senior years.  It came from the complaint I've heard repeatedly from actresses that there aren't any really good parts for women and certainly not women over forty.

I want to create a character and situation people want to see but Hollywood (in its mad rush to make a gazillion dollars) just isn't listening.  I made the mistake of showing my infant script to someone close to me for feedback.  In hindsight, I ask myself, how could I have been so stupid?  Feedback on what?  I wasn't even close to finished yet.  None of my characters were fleshed out enough to evoke any sense of compassion in the reader.  Plot points were still loosely conceived, scenes were out of place or incomplete.  It was still in that messy "first draft on paper" stage.  The reaction wasn't good and worse still, I let it sit on the back burner for months, feeling dejected.  What a set up!  But that's what we writers do to ourselves.  Learn to keep your creative process to yourself until the right time.  Rewriting and editing will come later.  It's a distinct process.  A wonderful book on the editing process is The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lemer.

There is a time for criticism, feedback and polish and there's a time for free-association, wild abandon and creative exploration.  Mixing the two approaches can have hazardous consequences.  The need to create something perfect may keep you from creating anything at all.  Perfectionism is another way of keeping yourself blocked.  It sounds so reasonable, so admirable: "I'm a perfectionist."  But, the truth is if you wait to write something perfect, it'll never happen.  You'll never write anything.  Perfect doesn't exist.  No one writes a pretty first draft.

Give yourself permission to excavate the depths of your psyche.  What may come up initially isn't pretty but like that crusty sedimentary earth that covers gold, our first drafts are valuable layers of raw elements that with time and care may bear or reveal unexpected fruit.



This week's suggested website: (www.finaldraft.com) Final Draft is a screenwriting program available for both Windows and Mac.  It's easy to use and recognized as the industry standard.

This week's writing prompt:


Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Imagine a specific locale.  It can be a cabin in the wilderness, a corner office in a skyscraper or any other location from a script or novel you're working on.  Close your eyes and try to capture every detail.  Be sure to include your sense of smell, taste and touch to describe the environment as well.   Write for five minutes.

Screenwriting: 101 (Where Do I Start?)

I've always enjoyed being at the beginning of things: a new job, the first day of school, a brand new project.  I remember being filled with excitement at the possibility that something unexpected might happen whenever a new situation presented itself.  For many people, being at the beginning of a long journey or complicated process can be intimidating and scary.  But, if we move beyond our fears, doubts and distractions "beginnings" can offer unexpected magical power, wondrous surprises and foster our creative intelligence.

When working on a new project, I look forward to the prep time, the planning stages where everything is still possible and you're only limited by your imagination.  Before criticism and logic sets in.  It's a magic time when the world is your canvas!  If you like jumping off into the unknown, writing may be the perfect vehicle because it requires a certain amount of fearlessness.  Few things are as intimidating as the blank page. 

Recently, I have been traveling the country on the festival circuit promoting my film, WATERCOLORS.   Almost everywhere I go someone asks me,  "How did you get started?"  The simple answer is:  I just started.

If you've decided that writing for the screen is something you must do, and are willing to dedicate yourself to the many lonely hours ahead then training and practice will determine the measure of your success.  The practice is all up to you but for the training, there's help out there and lots of it.

The amount of literature available on writing for the screen (most of it very good) is exhausting to contemplate.  In fact there  is an entire industry devoted to teaching people of all ages to write for film and TV.  College degrees, workshops, online certifications, lectures, podcasts, books, etc. keep pumping out more and more content to supply the insatiable demand of aspiring writers.  And with all the new media being developed the hunger for content has never been greater!  This was not always the case.

I came upon the work of Syd Field early on in my career while studying communications and theatre in college during the early '80s.  Syd Field was the first to define and explain the foundations of screenwriting in a manner that was accessible not only to the seasoned professional but to anyone who ever had a great idea and dreamt of writing a movie.  His first book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting is still the book I keep coming back to after all these years.  His thoughts on character, plot, structure and the daunting task of crossing the desert that is Act II stand out in my mind today as clearly as they did thirty years ago.  It's a great place to begin.

In my view, Syd's book laid down the groundwork.  Over the years, professors, editors, writers, story analysts, network and studio development executives all contributed to the now massive canon of literature on the art of writing the screenplay.  My bookshelves are filled with them.  It's great fun reading them all and I absolutely believe that much valuable knowledge can be gleamed from them.  A few of the best I've sampled are Robert McKee, John Truby, Michael Hauge, Linda Seger, Christopher Vogler, David Howard, Pilar Alessandra, and the late Blake Snyder.

Ultimately, beginning a screenplay or novel just boils down to just a few simple things.  Firstly, taking the time to nurture and honor your creativity.  Even if you have to steal five minutes a day for your writing practice, make sure it's your five minutes, your privacy must be sacrosanct.  Secondly, you must sum up the courage to face the blank page and let yourself go. 

This week's suggested website:  The Writers Store (writersstore.com) The one stop shop for books, DVDs and everything on writing for the film and TV industry.

This week's writing prompt:

Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Imagine your main character (or one your still developing) has just won a $10,000 shopping spree.  What would your character buy?  What stores who he/she visit?  (This may help you undercover some personal tastes and/or needs your character may not have "revealed" in the last exercise. )  Let your character indulge in any secret or illicit pleasures with the money too!  Write for five minutes.

Writing Under The Influence

I think having a profound desire to write and live the "writer's life" in all likelihood stems from a deep love of reading.


Like just about all writers, I'm a ravenous reader.  It started when I was young.  My mother was a school teacher and I lived in a household that encouraged learning.  I was surrounded by books.  I can still remember the blue and yellow hardcover Hardy Boys mysteries lying about my room, dog eared and well worn.  I particularly loved adventure stories and the home spun frontier stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I was fascinated with the wilderness.  It was a world far removed from my own reality.


The ability to create a believable world and share it with others is clearly an ancient and universally human need.  It's a desire that transcends cultures and religions.  Throughout the ages human beings have weaved and shared all kinds of stories.  It's a deep rooted need.   After all, even the early cave paintings were stories.  


In my family, a good storyteller was always well regarded.  But storytelling was already a vanishing art form among us when I was a kid.  Some of the old timers still could do it.  My grandfather, probably the  best of them all,  could do it for hours and keep everyone entertained, usually around the holidays.  My grandfather's vivid descriptions and uncanny comic delivery  were far more entertaining than the stories he told.  In a sense, he was just a good performer that made the best out of his mediocre material.  Around this time in my life I noticed that good writers created fresh new worlds, filled with interesting people all the time. 


I can remember the exact moment when I knew I wanted to be a writer.  I had just finished reading John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men."  I was nine years old.  The story transported me to another time and place in the same way that Alexandre Dumas or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle transported me with their great stories.  But Steinbeck struck a unique chord with me.  He had created something I considered visceral.  His use of words stimulated my senses of hearing and smell, sight and sound.  I was deeply involved in the story and its outcome.  Lenny and George are still vividly real in my mind's eye, as if it were an experience I lived through and not just read about.  I knew then that I wanted to wield the magic wand like Steinbeck had.  I wanted to create new experiences, new landscapes and populate them with great characters.


Most of my reading these days is limited to scripts or my favorite weekly magazine, The New Yorker.  But I recognize the need to fit more reading into my routine.  Writers especially should make it a habit to read as many books in as many subjects as possible.  Reading flavors and influences your own writing in direct and sometimes surprising and unconscious ways as well.  One can never read too much.  I was never one of those lightning fast readers who could consume novels seemingly at will like a fire.  A novel is a considerable commitment of time on my part.  But I feel that even I should manage at least 6 novels a year.  


Let's agree to allow ourselves to be drunk with good writing and good reading.  Let's be willing to keep our minds open to everything.  Approach every moment with a sense of curiosity and wonder like we instinctively do as children.  Inspiration can come from anywhere and the truth is we live under the influence of all the great writers that moved us when we were young and those that continue to move us now.  


Make time to read every day and open your world up to all the new adventures and possibilities that are out there.

This week's suggested website:  Trigger Street (www.triggerstreet.com) an online community of writers sharing their work and providing each other valuable feedback.  


This week's writing prompt: 


An Exclusive Interview with....  

Give yourself five uninterrupted minutes of quiet time.  Now put your story, novel or screenplay's main character in the spotlight.  Imagine him/her sitting with Charlie Rose, Oprah Winfrey or Larry King about to give an exclusive interview.  Let yourself have fun with it.  If you like, cast a famous figure from the past like Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow in the role of journalist.  Imagine this host asking your character deep penetrating questions the kind that can sometimes be embarrassing or incriminating.  Write for five minutes. 

Commitment to Daily Practice

A while ago, I promised myself I would write 1,000 words a day.  No exceptions.  I would commit myself to sitting down to the blank page everyday no matter what.  After all, a writer writes.  That's what defines us.  When we write we're writers.  When we don't -- we're garbage!  (Well maybe not all of us, I was thinking of myself in particular.)  I long ago discovered that when I'm not writing I'm a miserable, depressed, pathetic, self-loathing person.  I can't help but compare my measly efforts at writing with all the great writers of the past and present.  Reportedly, Winston Churchill wrote 10,000 words a day.  I struggle to imagine where he found the time.  So, that's what the mind does. It's programmed to make comparisons.  Higher/lower, bigger/smaller.  Typically our assessment of things is based on concepts of duality like "up" or "down" that we can easily grasp.  But that kind of thinking doesn't support a writing life.  It's like comparing fingerprints.  They're all just different; any comparison would be pointless.  My writing is uniquely my own.  My 1,000 words a day would be uniquely my own.  My little "stamp" on whatever was happening in the moment.


Needless to say I kept up the practice for a while with an admirable amount of idealistic energy and regularity.   After about a month I had a nice start to my novel.  You know, the novel.  The big, epic romantic one I've always dreamed of writing.  It wasn't easy.  Far from it.  After a few weeks I couldn't keep it up.  Some days I just ran out of steam or felt like I had nothing to say or I had said it all already.  Even more often I just felt like everything I was writing was just plain shit.


Now I've learned to squeeze the writing in where I can.  I'm a writer who tries to write everyday.   That's the best I can do without lying to myself.  I wish I could say that I was one of those disciplined, crazed romantic figures that I admire so much.  But my life seems quite ordinary and far removed from an F. Scott Fitzgerald or an E.B. White.  I write when I can in hotels, airports, cafes, or wherever I happen to be at the time.  Still, I managed to find the time to become  an award-winning photographer and filmmaker.   I have to keep reminding myself of that.  The world has given me a good measure of recognition for my creative efforts.   I'm grateful.


At the moment there are several ideas spinning around in my head (as usual).  I've begun to commit two of them to paper.  How much I write every day is unknown.  What is known is that I won't ever let myself go too long without returning to the page.  1,000 words a day is a great goal but I don't want to make not hitting that mark an excuse not to write at all.  After all, there is no excuse.