Next Episode: Writing.
School just started for me while Sean is hard at work with life in general, I suppose. But no fear; the next episode is on its way. We considered the topic of Japanese lanterns and diffused lighting, and at one point even chroma key—but it occurred to us that all this production-stage mumbo-jumbo is sorta bells and whistles next to a recurring problem: writing.
The writing process is a subjective realm made of opinions and no reliable facts. We’ve avoided it for those reasons. Technical details, like lighting and camerawork, are far easier to grasp.
So be it, then, that the next episode will dig deeper into the pains of writer’s block. It’s a little unnerving wrestling this particular topic. Yet who knows. Maybe something useful can come out of this attempt. Plenty of books and tutorials teach structure and pacing, and I’ve been there and done that. And at the end of it all, I still struggle, just like anyone else (you people do struggle, too, right?).
You see, it’s not that I don’t know how to build a skyscraper; it’s that I don’t know what kind of skyscraper I should build. That sums up my stance on writer’s block. I’m not sure if you all see it the same way.
I definitely struggle.
Either I write too much detail or not enough. Too much can be fixed with a good editor. Too little and it’s not even worth shooting.
You know, guys, this is where the rubber meets the road…
As was said by Academy Award(r) winner Shirley Booth, “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.”
It’s hard to make something out of nothing… which is why it happens so seldom.
Cheers!
The hardest part is in coming up with a legitimate idea. The second hardest part is in sustaining that idea. If the idea is solid, then the details will follow suit.
The episode will be straightforward, with little mention of things like “the inciting incident,” the climax, and all that junk. Just having a solid idea, I think, should be enough for people to take to the stage and be on their own.
Yes, I suffer from writer’s block often. I write poetry most of the time and many, many times I get an amazing concept, and it’s hard to put that to paper, especially in rhymes. For example, I have a poem entitled “A Pirate’s Life for Me” which basically says that thought and enlightenment is a vast ocean. I enjoy sailing in this ocean and I criticize those who live on an island of conformity and thoughtlessness (big words rule!). Now that sounds like a short little animated music video. Well, all off-topic discussion aside, I’m looking forward to the next episode.
~peace.
Since a great deal of what I write is comedic in tone (if not a flat-out comedy), there’s an additional layer of complexity to slather on…
Is it funny?
Did a gag I put in here undermine the structure I was trying to build there? Are there too many gags? Not enough? Is the humor too subtle? Is it too crude?
It’s a fine line.
Cheers!
The possibility of “writer’s block” seems to increase for me in inverse proportion to the number of projects I’m juggling at any one time… the more projects, the less chance of clotting on any one of them. One project gets stuck, switch over to another one to relieve the stress.
You do have to be able to keep track of what you’re doing… but it seems to me that this is what computers are good at – helping you manage your time.
@Al
It could be that multiple projects help to stimulate the mind. The only flaw is that it slows down the process of one over the other; and I guess to anyone concerned, it can dilute and homogenize the “artistic value” behind any one project. But this is nitpicking. The desperate can’t be too picky.
In my case, I usually find that one story tends to branch off into another story, one closer to my intentions. A combination of multiple projects and “whittling” it down to the bone, I suppose.