The Importance of Story
I usually start out with my students giving them a big speech about the importance of story. I consider 50% of my job actually getting them to buy into that value system. This is easier said than done. People write for different reasons, and most of those reasons are pretty ego-centric. It’s hard to find the humility to surrender these things for the sake of the story. This isn’t meant to be critical of them as people, as it is only natural. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less malignant to the task at hand. Each story has its own integrity and the writer must surrender their own wants for the sake of the story.
I will skip the speech here, but I do think its worth saying that it is one thing to say your priority is the story, and it’s another thing to actually put the story in front of your own desire to convince yourself and the world what a wonderful writer you are, how much talent you were born with, why you are “right” and what wise themes you think the world would be better off to pay attention to. (I had to abandon a play last year after determining the entire thing was conceived more for a desire to preach than the need to tell that story. I was 70 pages into it, but its merciful execution had to be done.)
So let’s assume we all buy into the task at hand which is to tell this story to the best of our abilities. If we accept that, then before we can really start writing we need to know two things: just what is the story we are telling and how do we tell it?
I will skip the speech here, but I do think its worth saying that it is one thing to say your priority is the story, and it’s another thing to actually put the story in front of your own desire to convince yourself and the world what a wonderful writer you are, how much talent you were born with, why you are “right” and what wise themes you think the world would be better off to pay attention to. (I had to abandon a play last year after determining the entire thing was conceived more for a desire to preach than the need to tell that story. I was 70 pages into it, but its merciful execution had to be done.)
I find it a far more useful thing to surrender to than stating that you are a screenwriter, which is far less specific than it first appears. Knowing and accepting this as the job at hand (telling the story) will prove extremely valuable as more and more clutter is thrown at you by your own imagination and by others “giving notes”. With each piece of clutter you will have to decide whether it helps the task, hurts it, or is neutral (To give credit where it is due, it was actually Peter Drucker’s “The Purposes and Objectives of a Business” from Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1974) that got me focused on not only identifying what business you are in but how that affects your decision making process). Everyone in Hollywood talks about story (it’s an insincere buzz word dropped in just about every development meeting), but few people know how it applies, or how to get past all the distractions of the process and make it the priority.The importance of seeing yourself as a storyteller cannot be understated.
So let’s assume we all buy into the task at hand which is to tell this story to the best of our abilities. If we accept that, then before we can really start writing we need to know two things: just what is the story we are telling and how do we tell it?