Have I been educated out of the ability to tell a story?
The impetus for this blog is I've just been knocked back for funding to write a screenplay. Again. I've been working on this story for a couple of years now. I thought I had a good chance but I didn't even get shortlisted. So it must be a really terrible screenplay.
If you are a writer, or any kind of artist, you know this place. Nothing works. I'm a failure and should just get a real job. Coals of self-pity heaped upon my head.
Sir Ken Robinson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY (and Rod Boucher) believes education is all about getting a job in an industrial society. It destroys creativity. Destorys creativity? I've been busily educating myself to write for the last eight or so years: Bachelor of Arts followed by a Grad Dip in Screenwriting. What have I learnt? Three Act Structure, Character Arc, Mid-point, Denouement. All useful tools but it doesn't teach me how to write, how to connect with an audience and communicate the heart of the story.
So this blog is about what I'm reading, watching, hearing and where the story is, the heart of the story. Today it's Cate Kennedy and her story The Word of the Year. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/firstperson/
It's innocence lost. It's about the kid that calls last night 'yesternight' and wonders why we don't describe the night as 'darky' even though we say sunny. It's about the slow destruction of that kid.
I know I've found the essence of the story because there are tears in my eyes. For The Word of the Year it was a kid's description of her dad's 'watermelon smile'.
Can I get my innocence back? I'm going to try to write a story without education, without structure or theme or intent. I'm just going to write with heart.
What are you writing at the moment? Where is the heart in your story? Don't be a stranger.
For years I was concerned that studying screenwriting would destroy my enjoyment of films - I'd always be analysing them. But it hasn't: I just appreciate the writer's skill more when I'm swept along by the story - and I'm scathing about writers whose stories fail to engage through basic flaws in storytelling. (It carries across to other media too: I recently saw 'The White Guard' and could only conclude that Andrew Upton really can't write.) We need to be educated in the principles so that we can absorb them. They're not so much a recipe for what does work as a way to understand why things don't work. Write from the heart, edit with the head.
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