There be Traps!

Having just finished a script a few weeks ago, I'm now kind of floating wild in the wind, looking for the next direction to take. The next big thing that requires my focus. I've been sketching out ideas for a couple new scripts - or, I guess, new ideas that I'm turning into script form, but could easily morph into a different format further down the line. Point is, I'm throwing a lot of ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.

And in some ways this is my favorite part of the process. It's just wild, untamed crazy stream-of-consciousness for the most part, where I fill pages of Word Documents with rambling speculation and false starts and conversations with myself. And as I do this more and more, I'm beginning to get a good grasp on what to write and what not to write. Yeah - as paradoxical as it sounds, even when you're brainstorming and anything goes, there are still major things you should avoid. You wanna know what they are? Well, okay:

-Negativity. In sketching out my main character's goals, I realized I'd set myself up for a challenging balancing act. And, in written conversation with myself, the next phrase I wrote was literally "Man! That is going to be so hard to pull off." And those words just hung on the screen as the end of the thought. Where could I go from there? As I looked over the words I'd just typed, all I could think about was how hard it was going to be. But you can never overcome an obstacle if all you do is focus on the obstacle itself. I couldn't type any further. I was at a mental roadblock. So... I backed up and deleted that sentence. And suddenly I could work again. As simplistic and reductive as it sounds, ignoring negativity was all I needed to start brainstorming again. I guess you could say that creativity is by nature inclusive, not exclusive; so putting some kind of negative value judgment on it won't help you much at this stage. (I still don't know how to pass that particular obstacle, but that's ok; I have several other directions I can work in. The important thing is that the creative process continues.)

-Egotism. The story I'm working on is high school-centric, a coming-of-age story about a kid who enters high school with specific expectations only to discover he's been pretty misinformed. (At least, that's what I'm thinking right now.) And I've been making a lot of headway on the major characters, their desires, obstacles, the really important story points. But at one point a weird thought popped into my head: "This script is going to be my revenge on high school." I really did not enjoy high school for several reasons - and, appropriately enough, a lot of the turmoil I went through then will probably pop up here or there in the script, at least on a subconscious level. But suddenly, revenge was first and foremost in my mind. How exactly was I going to do this? Was I going to target the system itself, or students, or cliques, or parents or... well, after a minute I realized I wasn't helping things. If I'm focused on using my writing as some (pretty hollow) form of revenge, against whatever or whoever, I'm not helping the story. I'm not helping the characters, and I'm not helping the audience. In the end all I'm doing is... well, you know the title of this blog. The point is, write a story for the sake of the story! Don't come at it trying to make a grand statement or exact revenge or make yourself look cool. In the best stories, the creator(s) should be invisible. Take your ego out of the equation and you've already taken a huge step.

The ego thing is actually tricky to balance. On the one hand, you have to trust yourself enough to put your ideas down, and you have to assume whatever story you create is going to be compelling enough to find an audience. You need self-confidence for this or you'll never get past daydreaming. On the other hand, you also need to mistrust yourself enough to be able to take criticism and - gasp! - make changes to your work. But it's not like anybody has an Ego Dial on their head that can be turned between Low, High and Off - so things can get complicated. For every writer screaming "Kill Your Darlings!", there's another successful guy admitting "I just write for myself". I guess, if anything, that shows you there's more than one path to success.

Anyway, my point is that it's very easy to hinder your own creativity, so don't do it! You'll have enough people trying to do that eventually as it is. But that's a topic for another time.