A Good Story

Hemingway said: "The first draft of anything is shit."

But for one particular screenplay that I laboured over, the second, third and fourth drafts were also going to be shit. And it would stay that way until I made some big changes. So, I had to start over, almost from scratch. I had to get back to craft. And I had to abandon proselytizing.

But that was the whole point of that script! I wanted to yell at haters to stop hating and targeting vulnerable people. The result was that all my dialogue was on the nose: bad guys said arrogant and/or stupid things and the good folks, well they were just brimming with goodness. The whole shebang was sentimental, preachy and boring.

Greta Gerwig said: "Write whatever you want, cinema can do anything."

Nah, Greta. I mean, sure go ahead, if you don't mind making a terrible movie. I believe she said that following the sensational reception Barbie received. Who wouldn't think "cinema can do anything" if you can write a mega box office hit that began life as a doll?

Once when I was in high school I did some THC then went to art class where I put oil pastels to paper in a flurry of colour and inspiration. I felt like I was a wizard fashioning pure magic; all else disappeared and it was just me creating an amazing masterpiece. If it had been a movie, wind would've been blowing through my hair, the sun would've bestowed a halo on me and a chorus of angels would've provided the soundtrack.

The next day I was curious to lay my eyes on my fantastic creation. But what I saw was a big smear of orange/yellow sunset with a white birdlike blob in the middle. It was supposed to be an albatross, it was supposed to represent freedom. It was an amateurish mess.

The same kind of thing happened with my proselytizing screenplay (but there were no drugs involved). I wrote in a passion and a fever, creating something brilliant that I felt was sure to put an end to hate. I just wanted to tell all the assholes to fuck off and leave marginalized communities alone.

But you can't flat out do that and expect to interest or entertain people for a couple of hours. In fact you'll do the opposite, you'll turn them off completely, and hate levels will likely spike as a result. Because there's no art in such a creation, it's not worth even one kernel of popcorn.

You can, however, do it for yourself, just to find out what drives you, what you want to say. And then, like taking a chisel to a block of marble, you can start to chip away at what doesn't belong; soon you'll see your story taking shape.*

Hem also said: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."

I did that. I ditched the screenplay format and painted my story with sentences that didn't have any other duty but to show where lies the truth. And finally it became a good story, well told. Good enough that it was featured in Portraits of Courage on the Substack of Charlie Angus/The Resistance. The link to my story is at the bottom of Charlie's excellent intro.

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Thanks for reading!