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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-19 @ 18:48:37
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- 2007-06-20 @ 10:49:34
Well with me the usual answer lies in What excites me about the idea is usually also what scares me.
So in the case of 'Red Mist' what excited me was the idea that 'we in the present could be punished for what we were in the past.' It came about after a chance meeting with a school friend of mine .. here we go another ramble alert. My mate and I have been friends since school we don't see each other often maybe once a month but when we do we fall into the same rhythm of talking about films, books, tv, computer games (my wife always describes my phone chats with davy as two hours of infantile sh*te talk .. but what do they know!!) ANYHOOS we were in town one day and we ran into another school mate who we hadn't seen in a while he immediately referred to Davy by his school nick name .. a name I had given him. I felt a bit wick. What seemed funny nearly 20 years ago suddenly felt petty and sad and cruel. Now Davy wasn't bothered by the name, he had far worse for me. But it got me thinking "What if he was?" what if my nick name for him really messed his wee head up, we'd grown apart, he'd become some nutjob thirsting for vengeance. What if ... One rainy night he knocked on my door buck naked, skin scrawled with nicknames and a butchers knife in his hand. I would of course apologise to Davy tell him I didn't mean anything by it .. i was a kid .. everyone was doing it .. I'm all grown up now .. I have a good job ... a wife I love .. and davy would just stare blankly back at me grinning. Davy didn't care about any of that. Davy had become the sins and pain of the past personified and he was gonna kill me for who I was then not what I am now ..... that 'what if?' scared the Cr*(p out of me. It was the genesis for Kenneth. I already had a 'kid in a coma' killing people 'What if?' scenario but adding this concept of 'the past getting you in the future' really got me excited and fired up and the two became one. Does that help?
davy is alive and wel and living in secure accommodation ... lest i think it's secure they said that about michael myers ...-
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-20 @ 12:43:52
Yes, that helps. Very interesting too. (you're not a sick puppy at all)
As soon as I wrote my question, I thought: I bet it'll turn out to be a matter of "it makes me laugh" or "it scares the bejesus outta me". And it did. Sounds like it's more a matter of asking 'how' or 'in what way' the idea excites you than 'why' it does: does it make you feel sensations of dread, or pity, or anger, amusement, righteousness, potency, hope, laughter, that kind of stuff? It's your emotional connection with the idea that will provide the surest compass bearing to your destination.
Yes? No? Sort of?-
- 2007-06-20 @ 15:56:02
Yes no and sort of.
It's a kind of weird process. Heres another example I had a 'What if?' of - the locals of a small rural village threw folk into a big hole where they got ate up by some kick ass monster ... deep heavy shit man
Which in turn got me thinking about how rural and coastal towns that rely on summer trade for survival have this weird love hate relationship with the outside world. There is no real love lost. The locals see the out of towners as eejits easily parted with their money, often the outsiders are travelling for miles and having a wee laugh up their sleeve at the locals as well. So with that notion you exaggerate it up a 10 time sin the horrornumbercruncher and you get "a town of weirdos sacrificing tourists to some ancient creature in order to prosper supernaturally (all ripped off lovecraftian twaddle but so far i like it)Now the thing is this idea now appears to be about dependency how it can be a malignant thing etc etc But I'd never sit down and think I want to do a story about dependancy .. this one started with ... what if the locals here threw folk into a big hole where they got ate up ...
That make any sense??-
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-20 @ 16:55:23
Sure. But I wasn't talking about theme - which I agree has to emerge as the idea develops, not the other way around.
What I was suggesting was that, as part of this 'nugget' business, you should try to note -
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-20 @ 16:58:13
... to note in what way the idea excites you, in terms of emotion, or sensation. If there's no emotion (or too many), then you've probably got a bit more spadework to do before you ready to jump in. Know what I mean?
Sorry, there's that truncated comment thing again. Agh! -
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- 2007-06-20 @ 19:46:25
That's a pretty difficult process I think, one that's entirely subjective to the writer. I mean, personally I have 'what if?' ideas I've no interest in writing and then others I feel I have to write. It comes down to a lot of considerations more than just emotional attachment to a concept. I think it's more a spark that something in your head needs to be shared with people, on a basic level, like a good joke or anecdote, it's a story you want to share than can be best told in the form of a screenplay (then hopefully film).
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-20 @ 22:57:14
It didn't seem too controversial to me to suggest that, in the process of developing your new idea, it might be of value to identify the nature of the excitement it provokes in you, in terms of emotion.
But, hey, perhaps it is.-
- 2007-06-21 @ 10:20:29
I think anytime we ask questions of what we are writing and why we are writing it we will be in a good place. That questioning continuies all the way through to completion. We might never get the answers. Sometimes things just blow our skirts up ... and we don't know why. We know we like it and we hope others will too. When I look at my projects this 'past coming back to get you' theme is pretty prevalent ... I musta been well naughty. I think its a good thing to consider what ideas trigger an emotional response in us. Not just from a writing point of view but just as part of our own quest for 'self knowledge' .. I shoula been a hippy.
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-21 @ 17:00:00
If you're wearing skirts, you might as well be a hippy, Spence!
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-21 @ 15:19:50
I wouldn't call it an emotional "attachment", more of an emotional connection or investment. Big difference, no?
Interesting. Is there really such a thing as a story best told as a screenplay? I never thought of it that way. For me, a screenplay is nothing more than a necessary stage on a story's journey into sound and image. It's a blueprint, a means to an end. I'm not even sure it's absolutely necessary. After all, there have been films made without proper scripts, good films and all.
(But don't get me wrong, I love the thrill of the writing the bullet, of EXT - RESERVOIR - NIGHT.)-
- 2007-06-22 @ 13:50:37
There are many stories which are absolutely not suitable for telling in the film format. Tales in which the drama is mostly inside the main characters head, for instance, are better suited to the novel format. I'm working on a story which takes place almost entirely inside a barn, and that SCREAMS at me, it's a play (that's not the only reason it has to be a play, by the way, but it's one of the first to come to mind). All depends whether or not we're coming at this from the point of view of the storyteller, looking to tell a story in the best possible way. Or from the point of view of a film-maker who loves to make films and therefore sees a story as a component, much as an actor and a camera are also components. The two are very different. And yet, can they co-exist in the same person? Do we love to luxuriate in a terrific story told well, which happens to be written as a novel - or does it HAVE to be the moving image? I know, this is a site aimed at writing for cinema, and that's where my own emphasis lies, but the art of telling stories is older and bigger than the last 100 years.
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-22 @ 15:04:46
Funny, too, how so many films are adaptations of novels or short stories; and then there's all those based on graphic novels, comic books, long newspaper articles.
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-22 @ 14:28:14
They certainly do co-exist. I agree.
And you'd have to wonder why anyone who was exclusively interested in storytelling would ever choose to try to tell their stories through the medium of film. It must be the most tortuous, frustrating, mediated process of all. If it ever makes it to the screen, there'll have been at least two other people 'telling' your story - the director, the editor - and stacks more telling you how it could (and should) be improved. -
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- 2007-06-22 @ 17:37:22
Hello Boys! I read your blogs with something that isn't quite fascination... more a curiosity what is going on in other peoples heads!
Re the point on why we want/ need/ feel driven to tell a particular story. I'm sure there are some stories which come about as purely commercial projects - right from conception but, traditionally a story has a resonance for us when it is a conundrum that we have inside ourselves and are trying to work out - externalise in some context or format. It is our own psyche struggling with a ball of knotted string and trying to unravel the mystery of it. Its theraputic displacement (!) - so much is hidden from us on a conscicous level that it isn't possible to deal with it directly so we may get our hero/heroine to go on the quest for understanding on our behalf. in dream therapy all characters ( and even objects) in a dream are aspects of ourselves - - maybe that is true in stories too - the light and dark, good and bad, antagonist / protagonist, the cigar and the chamber pot! I have been writing consiously about something that worries and vexes me greatly and I keep meeting in real life (dammit) - but in script I can get my characters to play out the different roles of the drama and get them to do things I personally wouldn't have the guts to do! But then I have to pull back and look at it from the dramatic perspective - is this going to work on a level that other people can relate to - how do I get the most dramatic impact into any given situation - still working on that one!
So the top layer is what excites/ stimulates/ gets you thinking/its the great "what if?" - on a deeper level it because it's something we need to resolve or make sense of within oursleves. We are personally challenged by that particular puzzle of human behaviour - but the context in which we set it & explore it can go from normal to extreme to bizarre !
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-22 @ 18:14:12
Hello, luv!
I don't know. I never meant to incite such a 'deep and meaningful' discussion. All I wanted was some clarification on Richard's 'growing the nugget' suggestions. But, in the absence of that, I struggled to my own (temporary) conclusion: that it's useful to sense our emotional connection with the original idea; not so much to learn about ourselves, as to provide a compass bearing for the journey that lies ahead, through the forest, across the ocean.
But it's true, all this could happen intuitively, you may never get lost along the way - lucky you! - and you may never have the need to ask yourself any such questions.
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- 2007-06-22 @ 21:06:11
Oh - I'm lost most of the time!! BUt as you say its a compass we need for story telling not an in depth analysis, but then being able to tell a story does require some objectivity and self awareness. Getting to the core of a thing means we have to be able to look beyond the surface to ask what is actually happening here, what is this springing out of. Stories that don't have a clear sense of their source seem to end up going round and round at one level and never getting to the good stuff, they don't confront the truth of the story. when you are on the right stream of evolving a story the energy naturally flows - (so i'm told!) - it grows itself. And when you're not in the flow you get stuck like I am now!
speaking of which - I have a little stunted bonsai of a story that needs some fertilising so Im away
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RichardP
- http://www.myspace.com/richardparkin
- 2007-06-22 @ 23:54:30
Absolutely, yeah.
As for your e-mail address, it is done. You cannot undo it. You are and shall forever be uncovered. -
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- 2007-06-22 @ 22:48:18
eeek - how come my email is up there? ! how do i delete that??
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- 2007-06-23 @ 00:04:16
Hello Christine,
great to have a fresh contributor,
I think you typed your e-mail address into the Site/URL box and didn't remove the tick in the Remember me box. Not sure how you get it removed, they may have to remove the whole post.
Needless to say I can't see anyone who visits the site misusing your e-mail address.
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@ 2007-05-31 – 08:39:45
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About me
The Nugget
I like this business of identifying what it is that excites you about your idea, trying to establish why it excites you, using it as a compass bearing, but doesn't this process call for a certain amount of clear-eyed candour, doesn't it entail a certain amount of self-knowledge? I've already found it quite revealing, if not a little disturbing. Or maybe I'm going too far? So, I have a naive question for you: what does this thing look like? That's to say, what did you have in mind as an answer to the question 'why does this idea excite you'? Could you perhaps give me an example or two?