Brad isn't clever. 30 minutes. Unfiltered. Every day. Rinse. Repeat.

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?