Some more bumps in the road, but mainly due to the content nature of my writing exercises. If it’s related to the teleplay I’m working on or deeply personal, I’m choosing not to share it with the public. I’ll try to balance it out more as we continue.
I’ve mentioned before that I really like word economy. I enjoy looking at the blank screen before I start writing. Ideally, I’d like to say as much as possible in as little space as possible. Why tell a story in 1,000,000 words if you can tell the exact same story in 1,000? It’s the whole notion of “curating a museum” that I’ve covered in previous entries. And, as in that previous entry, in order to curate a collection, you have to start with… a collection.
Tonight is another one of those nights when I’m not feeling particularly inspired to write. I had a good series of improv shows on Thursday and Saturday, which is always nice. I also had one of my stronger two-person scenes in an improv class on Saturday. My instructor was focused on teaching experienced improvisers how to take pride in their unique skill sets and perform in a manner that takes advantage of those skills.
As an improviser, I feel like my strongest assets involve the beginning and ending of scenes. I know how to find buttons well and love to hold onto good ideas improvisers toss out in scenes. If I can find a way, I’ll try to deploy a button tailored to that one idea I held onto at the end of their scene. I never try to force it, but I keep it in my back pocket in hope that some prime opportunity develops for me to use it. I’d say my success rate for buttons is a good 95%.
I also feel like I start out scenes with really great ideas. I subscribe to a lot of the thoughts Mick Napier puts forth in “Improvise”, and one I find extra compelling is the idea to enter a scene with some sort of choice in mind. For instance, I like to enter scenes without knowing too much about my character, but latching onto one idea that I’d like to explore in that scene. Typically, it’s a motivating force for that character, like “this guy really wants to be the world champion of Battleship.” It’s often a silly idea, but something that I can keep in my head and fall back on as needed. I can filter everything my scene partners say or do through the lens of “how would this affect my character’s desire to be the world champion?” The scene doesn’t have to involve or even mention whatever the motivating factor is, but that desire stays in the back of my mind and often allows me to create some depth for the character.
I try to choose things that my scene partners won’t endow me with ahead of time, so I don’t manage to contradict them if I’m thinking heavily about the motivating factor. If my partners in a scene start endowing me with character traits, I often can add those to the one thing I brought to stage to begin with. In the Battleship example, my character’s age, gender, race, sexual orientation, hair color, etc. don’t really prevent him/her from wanting to be the best at Battleship. Those factors might have some sort of impact on how I reach that goal, but it won’t be problematic for me to embrace all those endowments and act upon them.
Apparently, The Annoyance Theater stresses the importance of taking care of yourself in the scene first. It makes sense. If you can’t take care of yourself, how can you be relied upon to take care of your scene partners? Good improvisers give themselves some tools that their partners can latch onto and use if needed. These improvisers don’t always focus on themselves, but they build enough a character framework to be functional and to allow focus to be put on any person in the scene.
I think that’s important to any collaborative process. How can a person join a band if he/she doesn’t know how to play an instrument? How can you write a screenplay with a partner if you’re not familiar with the fundamentals?
The one thing my teacher in Saturday’s class asked me to focus on is the concept of “widening the circle”. He likes to view two-person scenes like Venn Diagrams. Character A has a circle, character B has a circle, and the area where they overlap is where most of the scene happens. If a character is too one-dimensional, it’s hard for him to have anything to relate to the other. The wider each circle becomes, the more ground there is for overlap and for a richer character to come into focus.
I’m not too sure where else to go from here in tonight’s writing exercise. I’ve been watching Season One of Friday Night Lights with my roommate lately, and I really enjoy it. The characters are well-defined and even the ones who seem really one-dimensional have a lot of breadth in that one dimension. The show is an interesting vehicle for exploring different personalities all in one small Texas town. Although the A storyline almost always revolves around the football team, side storylines can involve non-football players, parents in the community, even tangential neighbors. It’s a lot of fun to watch and the score from Explosions in the Sky is always a good touch.
I feel like strong characters are a defining element in any TV show’s success. I love Arrested Development, and a large part of that is due to how wonderfully the characters are constructed. The same goes for The Wire, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Mad Men… Hell, ALL of the shows I love feature strong characters. I guess the aspect is similar to Napier’s idea. How can a TV show feature compelling plots and situations if there aren’t strong characters to begin with? If people can’t find themselves emotionally invested in the characters, why should they care what happens to them? Why should they care what happens to the show itself?
I find myself in a bit of an additional challenge now: my deadline is June 1st for the teleplay and it’s April 2nd. I’ve got to write this thing FAST. Well, ideally I’d like to get a functional draft going so I can revise it several times and replace dead scenes with better ones in time to make my deadline. First, I’ve got to have a good premise. I thought for a month about one that seemed flawless, but it was largely conditional on a certain holiday, and I feel like it’s a bit gimmicky. What if someone reads the script way out of season? It won’t help at all. In fact, it will probably hurt.
So, now I’m finding myself scrambling to write here for 30 minutes as well as gather data and start narrowing down my options. I want to create a list of about 100 items that could be covered in my script. From there, I will narrow it down to one to two key items and keep the rest prioritized as backup. It’s a weird feeling do a bunch of research about the universe my spec script is set in. It’s real world research, but for the purpose of parody and exaggeration.
I want to find something that I can cover well AND inject personal experience. It seems like many people find a way to package their best personal experiences and translate them into a great moment on a TV show.
In other news, I’m plowing through episodes of Friday Night Lights with my roommate. The first season is INCREDIBLY good thus far, but I’ve heard season two is quite poor. It’s a strange feeling, watching a television show. When I get hooked, I want to pump a constant stream of episodes into my life on a daily basis. I almost want to gorge on the episodes and become intensely familiar with the universe at a rate that’s typically faster than intended. This is the standard “Why watch one episode of Show X a week that’s filled with commercials when I can just see the entire season in a row later on?” argument.
I love the overwhelming feeling of starting a long series with several seasons. Six seasons of Six Feet Under intimidated me when I realized each one was close to sixty minutes long. I could only afford to watch one or two a night while I was a junior in college, and only if I didn’t have a lot going on then. That show definitely led to my Netflix subscription getting throttled down a bit. I would grow impatient enough to learn to go rent one disk at my local video store while requesting the next one on Netflix. I was able to feed my habit and finish the show within a few months. It was a wonderful show, and like all great television shows, left me profoundly sad after I finished the body of work.
I watched The Wire in a similar fashion, but I had just finished school, so I had significantly more time on my hands. After a while, it hits that there’s simply no new surprises waiting for you in the universe of that show. There’s nowhere left for those characters to go, nothing new for them to say. You’ve seen it all as it was intended, and while you’re eternally grateful for the opportunity, you can’t help but wish more was waiting for you.
Improv shows definitely happen the same way. The best advice I’ve heard on editing scenes in a show is “it’s better to end scenes too soon than too late.” If you could graph out the average scene on a 2D plane, where the X axis is time in seconds and the Y is quality, the graph would probably resemble a triangle—the scene climbs in quality at first with a slope of about one. There are some bumps along the way, but it keeps building steam until it hits the absolute funniest moment. No matter how good the rest of the scene is, it’s no longer as good as that best moment. It often decreases in quality as time progresses. I’d argue that the best place to hit the edit is right before that apex. You may miss a phenomenal moment or two, but if you do it right, you leave the audience wanting more. You never leave them with a feeling like the scene went too long. You just wipe the slate clean while things are still getting good and try to repeat that pattern.
It might be better if you could constantly edit at those apexes, but I think that’s the “white whale” of improv. Good improvisers can see that a scene is great and know that the scene doesn’t have much room left to climb, but only the best improvisers can consistently see the exact moment to edit a scene. Hell, they still have problems with it, I’m willing to bet. It’s like the Price is Right - you want to come the closest to that moment as possible without going over. Going over is bad.
I am supposed to be wide awake right now, but I’m starting to grow tired. It’s not even 9:00 yet. I need to find more caffeine apparently.
Good TV shows have an advantage over improvised shows in that each scene can be meticulously dissected and reconstructed. Rather than guessing where to edit a scene, you can go line by line and find the exact right point to pull the trigger. It’s a very focused and calculated edit. Improvisers fly by the seat of their pants using good intuition and experience. Writers use good experience and careful planning and revision to find that moment. They’d be reckless and/or lazy to do otherwise.
One other thing struck me last night after my troupe’s first show in our April run downtown. At a bar post-show, one of the guys who watched us mentioned how he was unsure about the show Rescue Me on FX. The guy who brought this up grew up in New York, and the show follows New York firefighters. Apparently, since the show is on FX and not Fox, the show can get away with more cursing. However, the show can’t get away with all cursing, so the firefighters are forced to say the same types of phrases over and over again when cursing. Explained to me, “it’s obvious the writers REALLY want these guys to drop f bombs all over the place, but they can’t, so they substitute words in that don’t make a whole lot of sense contextually. It’s as if the guys keep saying, “Shit you, you mothershitter.””
It’s a strange choice. On one hand, FX should explore their additional freedom gained from being a basic cable channel and not a prime network. On the other, you can’t force things that clearly lie outside of your boundaries. It’s distracting and makes the characters seem a little less genuine and believable. Would a bunch of men living together in a house working a high-risk job curse a lot? Most likely. Would they curse in a strange fashion that seems counterintuitive or weird? Probably not.
Food for thought.
Agh, time off is no fun.
I prioritized a bit to finish a short but fantastic book: Rework. The founders of 37signals decided to condense many of their tried-and-true methods and philosophies into a collection of bite-sized essays. Each essay is accompanied with a simple illustration and the entire package looks phenomenal. It only took me two hours to read through the book, and that was with a bit of interruption. Regardless, there is one important lesson I’d like to focus on today: making time for stuff. I’ve written about it before, but it helps to reiterate and draw additional focus to the topic.
More than a few passages in Rework left me happy that successful individuals felt the same way I did. One of their key points in an essay is something I’ve strongly believed in: everyone has time to do something, it’s just a matter of whether or not they choose to do it.
I’m sure I tell myself every now and then that I simply don’t have time to go the gym or to run some seemingly simple errands. I delay. I stall. Ninety nine percent of the time, I DO have time. I may not have time to do everything all in one day, but I can prioritize to make any of those items on my list a possibility.
I guess I feel the same way with some relationships with people. Truth be told, if they want to spend time with you, they will find a way to make time. If they give you this lame “I”m really busy this week” excuse and don’t provide some counteroffer to hang out in the future, they probably don’t want to see you. With some people, I don’t think it’s a conscious choice to spite someone by saying “I don’t have time to hang out with you”, but it’s clearly an issue of personal preference. Often, these same people who tell you they are incredibly busy will sleep in on the weekends, watch TV, and/or relax a bit.
We all feel busy when a lot happens in our lives, but we also find ways to make time to see our friends and colleagues. Sometimes, we work harder and more efficiently on a project to free up some time in the near future. Sometimes, we see our friends with knowledge that we will be up later that night working or up early the next morning.
If somebody really wants to see you, he or she will find a way. It’s that simple.
Never tell yourself “I don’t have enough time to do X.” Instead, question how you are spending your time. Look for ways to cut down on activities that have less priority and focus more on the things you feel are most important.
I want to write every single day. In a perfect world, I will be shortly. I keep playing silly games with myself where I try to schedule my writing late at night, when I know I’ll be incredibly tired. When faced with the prospect of 6-8 hours of sleep or 5-7, I tend to pick the earlier of the two. I’d really like to get a consistent amount of sleep each night, so I am also trying to focus on that right now.
Unfortunately, sleep is the one thing I gamble away the most. I put 90% of the other things I want to do in life ahead of sleep, and that has long term effects which aren’t any fun. I wind up being less efficient down the line, and it’s something I need to correct. Rather than sacrificing 30 minutes of sleep time for writing, I should be sacrificing 30 minutes of time spent catching up on TV shows or clearing my RSS feeds.
What will YOU do to make time for yourself? It’s harder than it seems. There are tons of things I want done by the end of the week, but I know most of those won’t happen. As a result, I’ve got to curate that list of items and select a choice few I can focus on. Once I clear that list, then I can go back and look for other items to take care of.
I think people stress out a lot when they try and juggle too many options at once. It’s overwhelming to have your hand in 35 different projects. You’ll neglect most of them, forget some even existed and then split your focus horribly between the one or two you are trying to accomplish at any one given time.
Let go. Put some of those items on a distant backburner and learn to be okay with that.
It’s not always fun, but it is the best thing to do. It’s as far of a situation as one can hope for.
Right now, my eyelids are starting to droop. This isn’t what I want to have happening always for these writing exercises. I can’t write at maximum efficiency when part of my brain is tired. It causes minor havoc. It causes my brain to wander and guess how much time is left out of my original 31 minutes (the answer was 7:19).
These last seven minutes can be crucial. It’s around when I feel like I’ve totally exhausted the casual discussion of a subject yet am still forced to write. Words have to fill this screen because I want 30 minutes of uninterrupted writing, even when inspiration doesn’t strike.
The more I read up on sitcom writing, the more it seems like it would be an incredible opportunity. I’ve got to go for it. I’ve got to put an appropriate amount of focus on it and learn how to balance that with 7-8 hours of sleep each night. It’s not an easy task, especially when living with a law student who encourages me to stay up late to watch TV with him.
Perhaps the main difference between winners and losers is what happens in these metaphorical seven minutes. More work clearly needs to be done, but there’s no road map - only pitch black. Do you forge ahead and do your best? Do you contemplate and reflect on the past? Do you sit there unsure of where to go?
I used to reflect on the past OFTEN. It was a bit addicting to just look back into my head and find all the happy moments. I have developed a mindful approach to live in the moment over the last few years, and I find that to be extremely helpful. Memories and life experiences are grand, but they aren’t worth abandoning action in the status quo. Your memories are not tangible. They are in the past. Why worry about mistakes made or celebrate past triumphs when you can go LIVE now?
This is time I need to pour into writing.
It’s odd to find that inspiration can be fleeting. I mean, it makes sense to me because it happens again and again, but I feel like it shouldn’t. One would think that once some external force causes air to rush into your sails, that you should launch forward and keep going until you’re finished. Unfortunately, this never seems like the case for me.
I find that it’s easy to get inspired, but I’m rarely ready to go at the exact moment inspiration strikes me. If I’m sitting in the middle of a conference downtown, I can’t shut the world off and focus solely on my own writing from that point. If I have a brilliant idea while driving my car or walking around, it’s very difficult to harness it and unleash it with the same passion at a later time.
It’s too easy to hope that inspiration will nudge you in the right direction and keep pushing you when you grow weary or start to lose your way. Truthfully, inspiration merely kicks things off when it is at its best.
What separates people from success and just another failed idea is perseverance. You should consider yourself lucky to have days where you want to pick up the pen and write or start to clean up around the house. Those days don’t always come. As many of the talented writers seem to indicate, most days… that inspiration won’t be there at all.
Perhaps one has to develop that same sense that most have when they struggle to rise out of bed in the morning. Even if I had the best job in the world, I feel like I will still have this initial moment of hesitancy where my body requests more sleep while my tired brain struggles to determine why that’s a bad idea.
Of course it’s a bad idea to stay and sleep in and avoid work. It has long-term ramifications that the tired mind can’t easily see. If you sleep deprived chess grandmasters and other athletes, they won’t be at the top of their games either. They’ll miss key moves.
So what do you do? You engrain a habit to the best of your ability. You try to get the 8-9 hours of sleep your body wants. Sometimes, you will succeed. I know that even when I do manage to get 8 solid hours of sleep, I still wake up tired. You just have to fight that overwhelming urge of resistance to sleep.
You have to fight resistance. I’m not content with my position in the status quo. I’d like to be doing much more. There’s a great deal of resistance surrounding me and it’s nauseating to fight it sometimes, but I have to trudge forward. Like walking into a sandstorm, fighting resistance can often be difficult and painful. It’s much easier to give way and let the storm push you back. It’s easier to run to shelter and try to wait out all the storms on the horizon.
Unfortunately, those storms will keep coming, in one form or another. You can wait forever, half-heartedly satisfied with the status quo, or you can do something. You can fight. One foot in front of the other.
Set small goals that you can measure and succeed at. It’s easier to feel good about your progress when you can see its results. It’s overwhelming to try to think about a massive project all in one capsule. If someone asked me to build a house by this time next year, I would be intimidated. The ONLY way I would succeed is through careful planning and small, measurable goals.
June 1 is my deadline to submit a teleplay. It’s intimidating to think I’ll have one done by then. Ideally, I’d like to have one that I’ve thoroughly edited two to three times ready by then. The only way I can get there is if I keep my writing going. I may miss out on some fun events or just on life in general, but I want to keep putting one foot forward.
Now is the time to be passionate about things and to throw most everything I have at them. Why hold up? In the future, I might be tied down and worried about other problems. Now, I’m just worried about being happy. That’s a wonderful problem to have.
I’m encountering some resistance now as I write these words. There are ten minutes or so left in my exercise and I’m growing increasingly tired. I feel like the last paragraph was a pretty good stopping point. It would be easy to stop there and write things off. But I won’t. I’m determined to write for at least 30 minutes a day, every day that I can.
Hell, something interesting may develop out of one these stray paragraphs as my stream of consciousness veers away from the previous topic.
I wonder what it takes to truly succeed. I know I am putting forth effort and starting to make progress, but what one event will throw me over my hurdles and into my dreams? Will it be a sum of these moments—pounding away on a keyboard in the dark with nothing in particular in mind?
In a way, it’s an excellent record of the 30 minutes and my thought process throughout. However, I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to create a fantastic record. I am using these 30 minutes to become a better writer. i don’t need to relive them by looking at my writing in the future. If anything, I can edit it down some, but I have this weird problem with writing to myself as if I know I’m going to be looking over these entries later. Will I?
For now, it’s just words strung together on a screen. There’s no real end in sight, and that’s a good thing. I know the timer will go off sometime in the near future, but not knowing when pushes me to go further. Rather than think, “Ok, I’ve got enough to time to come up with a solid closing line,” I just keep typing. Good lines come and go, but I’d rather discover one by accident than waste precious time trying to impress an anonymous reader with a random closing shot.
I feel my eyelids getting heavy. It is starting to get harder to open them. Sleep draws near and I can’t wait for it. I am desperate to check the timer again and see how much time is left, but it’s a stupid move. Why should I care if there are two minutes or two seconds left? The time will come either way, and my checking the clock only stalls my thought process.
Agh, I need a haircut. It’s starting to intrude on my everyday life. Maybe I’ll put in a call to Hayley tomorrow and see what she can do for me. A part of me will be sad to see it all lopped off, but I am free to make my own decisions. For me, anytime I choose to get my hair cut is the “right” time.
I’ve noticed I use the word “unfortunately” a lot in sentences. It’s as if my preferred sentence opener is, “Unfortunately, …” That’s unfortunate.
Tonight, I pick the torch back up. Rather than the usual Explosions in the Sky soundtrack, I’ve opted for one of the more instrumental Broken Social Scene albums. We’ll see if there is a noticeable difference. I’m a bit more inclined to pay attention to some of the awesome songs I like. For instance, I forgot how magical the intro to “KC Accidental” sounds live. I’ve seen Broken Social Scene thrice, and they always put on a good show. I heard they kicked some major ass at the Arts & Crafts showcase during SXSW this year.
I found my time at SXSW Interactive/Film, and thus time off from work and these daily writing exercises, to be quite inspiring. I tried to attend Interactive panels that I found both intriguing and non insanely technical. I managed to sit in on one very technical panel (HTML 5 Video) and I was lost for part of it. I found panels on design to be highly entertaining, surprisingly. I guess the concepts just translate well to anything. While there are specifics that apply to large web-based platforms, those core concepts can be extracted and interpreted through various lenses. I found a Film panel on Title Design in movies and that was also FANTASTIC.
I’ve always appreciated film title sequences, but I don’t think I’ve ever had an opportunity to sit down and learn about them. It was great to see two experts in the craft share their insights and inspirations. I was able to appreciate the sequences with greater depth and view them critically. The next time you see a romantic comedy or an action sequence, watch the title sequence and think to yourself, “What kind of movie does this title sequence seem to portray?” It’s easy to see with something like Mission: Impossible or the Bond films, in my opinion. The Pixar films always have amazing and imaginative title sequences, but it’s hard to classify their films beyond animated adventures.
I also saw several films I enjoyed and caught up on a bit of extracurricular reading. I’m only 60% or so through “REWORK” by the founders of 37 Signals, but I HIGHLY recommend it. It’s a lovely collection of short essays and illustrations. In true 37 Signals style, they gathered up a great amount of useful material, boiled it down to its core concepts and presented it in a simple yet elegant format. The essays are very compelling.
To paraphrase one of these essays, the authors encourage readers to act like curators in a museum. Museums typically have giant stockpiles and warehouses filled with art to display, but they don’t display it all. Most of it is kept out of sight. Curators make important decisions to show only a fraction of the content. What’s shown is just as important as what isn’t shown.
I love that concept. If you write a 700 page book and throw in every idea you’ve ever had, it’s going to suck. It’s going to be overwhelming and hard to appreciate each individual element. Rather than drown in the sea, cut it down. If you’re a comedy writer, you can’t shoehorn 7000 jokes into a set. You’ve got to pick and choose. Content generation is one talent, but content selection is just as important these days.
I like to think of these writing samples as filling my warehouse. I’m not trying to curate things yet. A year from now, I imagine I won’t like everything I’ve written here. Undoubtedly, I’ll be able to select any entry at random and edit it down to a more presentable format. Beyond that, I’ll probably find only a handful of my entries worthy of editing and presenting in another format.
This goes along with what I’ve written before and what I’ve heard people like Hurwitz say over and over again: before you can offer people your best work, you have to create a lot of crap. Hurwitz hated his first few spec scripts. He probably didn’t like many after that. But I know I’d feel better submitting a teleplay to the film festival I’ve selected if I had several to choose from. The only real way to prove mastery of a field is to do it yourself again and again. Each time, you learn. You can take those skills and apply them to future works or retroactively edit previous works.
It’s just a matter of pushing out products. You can tidy them up and edit them down later. In order to get there, you have to create something to work with. This is where I suffer as a perfectionist. I’d rather not write three crummy teleplays. I’m sure anyone would prefer to just write one great one if they had to choose. But life doesn’t work that way. You have to get in there and get your hands dirty… often.
I saw a documentary called SATURDAY NIGHT during SXSW and it reminded me a lot of this idea. The film followed the cast of Saturday Night Live around for a week and displayed how a show is created from relative scratch each week. The core effort appears to happen on Monday, when all the writers try to crank out as many sketches as humanly possible overnight. By the deadline next morning, around 50 sketches will exist. 50! 50! I’m going to wager that, even with a crack staff of seasoned comedians and writers, most of those sketches aren’t great.
The staff reads through each sketch and consults with the host to select something like ten sketches worth pursuing. For the massive all-nighter these staff members pull each week, 80% of their work goes to waste. It’s good. That means the rest represents the best 20% available. The senior staff writers can then pass over each of the finalists and tweak them.
I find an SNL episode successful when half of the sketches evoke big laughs from me. It’s a bit intimidating to realize that’s merely 10% of the proposed material for that evening. That’s the power of curation.
Yes, there was quite a lapse in my posting. It was all due to one event: SXSW. I spent every single night (and most days) until Sunday partaking in SXSW-related activities. It was magical. Sunday was a day dedicated largely to getting back on track and today was a sick day.
Regular writing begins promptly tomorrow. I don’t plan to have any continued disturbances. In the spirit of SXSW, I had a lot going on and was rarely near a full computer. I spent a few nights away from home and never got that downtime that I view as vital for a good writing exercise.
On a positive note, I’m more inspired than ever and ready to tackle the spec script I’ve planned out.
Tonight is definitely one of those nights where I don’t want to write at all.
Tonight is one of those nights where I don’t want to write.
Tonight, I don’t want to write.
I think and speak more in the terms of the first line, but I prefer to write more in terms of the third line - clean and efficient. It can still be just as honest as the first line, but without the gratuitous words in between.
There’s an improv exercise I keep finding myself drawn to in a book I read a while ago (Acting on Impulse). The exercise is called Primal Truth and involves an improviser telling and retelling an actual story.
First, Hazenfeld (Hazenfield? I don’t know… No distractions!) encourages improvisers to tell very personal stories. If I were to tell you the story of how I took out the garbage last week, I wouldn’t find it particularly engaging on an emotional level. You would probably lose interest. When a story is deeply personal, the audience can feel the improviser’s emotional hesitancy to provide all the details. Both parties are compelled - one to tell the story, the other to scoop up every last detail.
Hazenfeld clarifies that it might be easier to pull off these personal stories if the improvisers know and trust one another. They should know that the stories won’t leave the room. I don’t put my trust in many people, but I’d be comfortable doing this exercise with the rest of my troupe. It’s that result of a personal bond forged over the course of a few years together.
But pack to the point: improvisers will first tell the story in a timeframe of two to three minutes. After this, Hazenfeld asks the improviser to repeat the story, but to condense the timeframe down to something like a minute. The improviser will have to sacrifice words and details in order to package it neatly within a minute. It’s not too hard.
Following the second version of the story, Hazenfeld wants the improviser to repeat it again, this time within the context of two to three sentences. The details are less important than ever, but the way the story makes the storyteller feel becomes quite important.
After the third version, improvisers repeat the process one last time: all in one sentence. We’re not talking about a run-on, either… Just one sentence that lasts a few words. If I recall correctly (I read this book two years ago and never went back to it… an error I will soon correct), the goal is to get the improviser to state how he or she feels about the story less than what actually happened. Instead of the three minute story about how you and your girlfriend broke up, Hazenfeld wants to hear the core nugget: I dumped her and regret making that decision daily. Bam. That’s a charged line. You can tell how the person is feeling when they say that. It’s clear cut.
Hazenfeld uses the exercise more to encourage improvisers to identify emotional states and connect with them on stage. I feel like the whole revision process applies particularly well in writing. Instead of getting a writer to connect with emotional states, a writer can connect to solid theses or ideas.
If I could sum up a movie in two sentences so well that you would never have to see it, would you bother watching the movie? I think many people wouldn’t. I think word economy is a precious concept. I only have so many hours a day that I can read. I’d rather read all the essential elements of an article than find my way trudging through paragraph after paragraph of written sludge.
Good writers make you want to keep reading. I think a lot of rookie writers make the mistake of saying too much or going into an unnecessary amount of detail. One of my sisters has a habit of telling stories filled with extraneous details. She’s become much better about it lately, but for a while, it was hard to listen to her tell any story because you knew and wanted to hear about part X, but she first recalled all about lunch at Z and other elements that are completely trivial in comparison.
Regardless, tonight, I don’t want to write. I’m tired. I feel like I can asleep the moment I crawl in bed. That is a rarity. However, these are the nights when I know I must work. I must keep putting forth at least a little effort during the days like this. I must learn to write when unmotivated, and still write well.
The words come, like I said. They always do. You just have to keep typing, even when you eyelids grow heavy and you can’t wait for the timer to go off indicating the completion of 30 minutes of work.
The urge to check that timer grows by the second, but I will fight it. The same basic force that convinced me to start writing everyday will make sure I keep hope alive even in grim times.
Sometimes, I wonder if a mistake was made and that I never set my timer to go off at the end of my daily session. Would it be such a bad fate if I spent extra time writing? No, it would not be.
Ugh, I looked anyway. 5:34… Well, closer to 4:34 because I manage to always set an extra minute in case of interruptions or distractions. That still seems likes a very long time. I am growing exponentially more tired and can’t wait to finish this post.
The easy way out would be to just stop the timer and call the day early. I want to keep going because slightly hard work like this still tends to pay off every now and then.
So, what do you talk about when you’re tired? I’m at the point where my thought process is starting to shut down and I’m losing basic mental facilities. I feel like I would if someone woke me up early and tried to get me out of bed. I’d probably put forward a convincing argument about why I should sleep a bit more, all while not fully cognizant of the situation. Most people would probably leave temporarily after my successful campaign to sleep for an additional two minutes. It’s not much, but it’s a start.
I have no idea where the rest of this is even going. I’m trying my best to stay awake. YES! Time.
What motivates you? For me, it’s definitely the little bit of time I spend every now and then daydreaming about the future (which is weird, because that seems like a way to guarantee I’ll never be happy… always looking on to what’s next. I am happy, however. I’m in a good spot right now.)
I realize more and more that each day is another day I can be working towards a goal. I’m not talking about slaving away spending every waking moment trying to accomplish one task. That seems a bit much. If you’re trying to sculpt a life-size bust of Hugh Downs out of the lead from #2 pencils, then that may be the best way to approach the situation. If your goal is something that only takes an hour or two to complete, then it’d be easy and worthwhile to accomplish in one relatively brisk effort.
For most of us, that’s not the case. I dropped a good 40 pounds between my sophomore and junior year of college. The entire process began as soon as I set foot off the plane that carried my father and I from Pasadena to Dallas. I’m not sure why, but shortly after UT won the National Championship and “lived the dream”, I randomly decided it was time to get in shape.
I added a weight training class to my schedule and managed to exercise over the weekends as well. My success was a result of an hour or so three times a week and, more importantly, a conscious effort to discipline my eating behaviors.
Now that I’ve accomplished that goal, I know I can do it again. It doesn’t seem frightening or intimidating. What does start to get me frightened, is this goal of writing for a sitcom. I really, really want it, but that damned fear of failure does everything in its grasp to prevent me from pursuing that dream with full force.
This little experiment with Tumblr is one of the first steps I’ve taken to actively combat the problem. Tonight marks the seventh post, so I’ve succeeded in making it seven days while writing for 30 minutes each time.
The words come. They don’t always come easily, but they do come.
In order to keep connecting the dots, I’ve got to keep executing various elements of my long-term plan. At the heart of it, I still need to write for 30 minutes every day. I’d prefer if it’s unrelated. It’s a fun way to keep progress of everything.
Here’s what I’ve set out for myself:
1) Acquire a book to help learn basic script formatting and structure for sitcoms. [CHECK]
2) Establish the tumblr account to make sure I’m writing even on days when I’m really busy with the rest of my life. [CHECK]
3) Select a show to write a spec script for. [CHECK]
4) Begin an in-depth analysis of each episode of the show… Watch one to two a day and take notes to help understand characters, plot progression and typical layouts.
5) Start writing a spec script.
6) Complete the first draft of the spec script by April 1st.
7) Revise the script by April 15th.
8) Revise the script again by May 1st.
9) Get the script registered with the appropriate agencies.
10) Enter the script into the Austin Film Festival (deadline: June 1st).
It’s ambitious, but possible. In order to get there, I need to be devouring the book I purchased. I’m reading it a bit at a time, but not as fast as I need to in order to start pulling good material. I also need to be devoting about an hour a day at least to studying my target sitcom. I hope to get started with that tomorrow and will try to find a way to keep doing it during SXSW, even though it may not be really convenient.
Part of me worries about the time I won’t spend socializing with friends while working on this stuff. However, that’s the trade-off. Everyone has their own goals. Some people are good at taking care of them in the time when nobody sees them. Others choose to be around people constantly in order to distract themselves.
If I don’t hold myself accountable now, who will a year from now? I’m glad to have the job I have and the friends I also have. Ultimately, I want to use the one skill I’ve been honing longest, my sense of humor, to the test. I want to share it with people one on of the biggest stages possible. My current job, while a great experience, will not help me accomplish that goal. I need to be working to satisfy the requirements of my job during the day and work again to satisfy the requirements of my dreams before night falls.
Things get complicated when I add in another important gaol to me.
1) Get 8 hours of sleep each night.
I’ve settled with 7 hours a night on average for the last few weeks, but I need more. Sleep is a basic requirement of being well-rested and prepared for both work and play. Without a proper sleep schedule, I won’t be able to consistently arrive at work on time. That sort of problem could lead to a person getting fired, which would put me in a situation where I’d feel guilty to be doing anything other than looking for a place to work full-time again.
I love the job I have now. I will fight to keep it. So far, I think I’ve done a great job and have given nobody much of a concern to let me go. It’s a good feeling to get up and go to work in the morning because I like the people I work with. I haven’t always been in that situation.
And still, my heart lies with the sitcom. This is a battle I want to prove to myself. I feel like there are probably a good deal of people with as much talent as I have. Now, it’s going to be a matter of who can execute best. I doubt many of the best writers ever figure out how to pull off that stuff. Hell, I’ve seen some AWFUL writing on TV. For all I know, that could be a result of the people trying hardest being rewarded with writing jobs.
Nobody will know that you are the best juggler in the world if you never share it with other people. So remember to set your focus and stick to it. Don’t give up the fight. If you’re fighting for something you believe in and care about, then it should require less effort to get out of be each day and start tackling the minor goals in your way.
There’s an army of distractions out there for people, from video games to really compelling books to friends who always want to spend time with you. I like to visit many of these distractions from time to time, but the real trick is never staying long. If I play a video game for 30 minutes a week, then I don’t feel as bad as when I play 30 minutes a day.
Tonight, there’s a feeling of nostalgia that I just can’t shake. I guess it’s a feeling like the end of an era is drawing near on my social life lately. I forced a few friends to go with me to the weekly pub quiz at Fado back in December 2008 and the holidays prevented me from going again until mid-January 2009. Once I started going in January, I made it a mission to make the quiz a weekly event and actively campaigned to get people to go with me. I knew one of my shift managers from a job I was working at the time would be up for the event, and once I dragged him to one, he was set. For a while, the pub quiz team was me, the shift manager, his girlfriend, one of the guys in my improv troupe, and his girlfriend. The team limit was always set at six, and I don’t think we’ve ever had a static sixth member. People have come and gone when filling that sixth chair. It’s typically a rotating cast, but the core of the group was always the other five. Some weeks, one of those couples couldn’t go. Rare were the instances when both couples couldn’t attend.
The team chugged through some mediocre performances before we became comfortable with the Geeks Who Drink format and learned how to actively prepare. My Mondays practically revolved around getting off work, driving to Fado, eating dinner and studying for the quiz. While in this weekly ritual, I only skipped one week in March 2009. I was able to go until sometime around October before missing another week.
Eventually, my team had become synonymous with the elite teams in the field. We’d turn up the occasional crummy performance, but that would mean something like finishing in the top 50% of a field with over 25 teams. We’d usually finish in the top three or four.
Winning was fun and felt good, but I found something far more enjoyable about Fado: the company. My server turned out to be incredibly awesome and I would arrive early enough before the quiz started that the rest of the restaurant was mostly dead. When my server had few other tables, we would wind up talking. Some weeks, she would have the night off and I got to repeat the process with other servers. Through introductions by my primary server, I got to meet just about everyone that worked Monday nights in 2009. But more than just meeting these people, I tried really hard to have genuine conversations with all of them. I learned about their interests, collegiate backgrounds, hometowns, families and significant others. I genuinely cared about all of them and I still do.
Somewhere along this process, the quiz became less important to me on Monday nights and my relationships with all of these people began to take focus. Before I started working an 8 to 5 job, I was encouraged to stay after every few weeks and really catch up with the employees after they finished working (and started drinking). I wound up at a few birthday parties, got invited to the employee holiday party (but chose not to attend… I think that’s a night they should truly enjoy one another without worrying about customers) and wound up friends with many of them.
I became a Monday regular, but moreso than a person who shows up every week for a pub quiz. I was known by my first name by servers who had never met me before. People knew what I wanted to drink before I even ordered. It was awesome.
I liked competing in pub quizzes and winning a fair share, but I really enjoyed setting aside time each week to catch up with people from a completely different social sphere. It was nice, it felt fulfilling, and I looked forward to it each week.
Eventually, I started working an 8 to 5 job and couldn’t stay out late. Soon after that, Fado cut ties with Geeks Who Drink and struggled to take the reins of their pub quiz back. They still do a pretty good job with it, but I do prefer the effort of 50+ writers from Geeks Who Drink over the seeming 3-5 at Fado.
Tonight, I learned my primary server got a really good job offer in a field she actually cares about. I’m really excited for her because as long as I’ve known her, she wanted to get a job like this one. Now the timing works out, but that means no more pub quizzes for her.
There are still people I will look forward to seeing each week at Fado, but it’s a pretty devastating blow when the one person I felt closest to is going to be gone. It’s hard to encourage my teammates to go as well. They’ve all become busy in a way that most can’t do Monday night with great regularity anymore. There was a stretch where I would be the ONLY person on my team to show up for weeks. I usually still had a lot of fun with the people at Fado, but it’s still hard to go week in and week out when you know there’s not a great chance your friends will come.
I guess it’s a feeling I’ve had for a while… One that I’m sure most people experience where things are great the way they are and you don’t want them to change, but they have to (and they probably should). College was much better than high school, but I was far too naive to realize that as a senior in high school. I was really sad that most of my friends were moving away to other cities in other schools.
It’s the dynamics of relationships. I worked for a coffee shop for about a year before I could find a full-time job. It was a lot of fun, but mainly because of the people I worked with and for. My store had an issue with high turnover (rarely people getting fired… more like people getting better jobs elsewhere) and when each person left, it made it a bit harder for me to go back the next day.
I guess Fado feels the same way. One of my friends who used to work there as a server quit a while ago for personal reasons and it was frustrating to not see her each week. I still make an effort to see her or talk to her at least once or twice a month. Now, she’s moving away because her boyfriend has a really great job opportunity up north. Again, it’s something I’m glad for. But, I’m saddened I will see less of her.
There are lots of great memories, but it’s hard to hold onto the good ones and not wish for things to perpetuate like that. It’s an incredibly selfish feeling, and one I feel really guilty for at times, but I think it’s human. We want to be happy and we don’t have 100% control of the future to guarantee that we will be happier than in the status quo. Yet, part of life is making that jump forward regardless of how great things are.
It sounds stupid, but the best analogy I can think of in my slightly inebriated state is some of the levels of Super Mario Bros. 3 where the screen is constantly shifting to the right. You can either keep up with the pace of the screen and keep moving right, or your will be forced to do so by the inherent nature of the level’s programming. Standing still will work for only so long.
Wow, that’s a lame analogy, but it’s the best I’ve got right now. I like standing still. I’m someone who puts a lot of effort into the things I choose to do and I like to soak up the good qualities inherently related to them. I’m learning to change, but it’s taking time. I guess life forces us all to learn how to change.
