Searching for Stories
We recently struggled through the creation of a short film script. This script, a few pages at best, took only an hour or two to write but we struggled for days and weeks with the process of “writing” but more specifically, finding our story. I write “finding” for very deliberate and distinct reasons. We so often speak of making up or creating ideas of fabrication whole characters and events that it seems obvious that we are in fact storymakers. Or are we?
For me, stories are not created but discovered. Whether sprung out of our physical experiences, the experiences of others, or our imaginative experiences, we are not the creators. That original leading character – a composite of your subconscious, your strange Uncle Jeffery, and that dream your friend told you about seven months previously. That innovative location and event – just intellectual and creative vomit from old news broadcasts, childhood vacations, and pictures from the daydreams of your geography class. This is our imagination, a melt of memories forging gleaming ingots of fresh story.
But these stories, they come from our imagination. Our imagination is the convoluted conglomerate of a life lived and imagined and consequently capable of creation through reformation. In this minor facet, yes we are creators, but on a grander scale, we’ve been discovering bits and pieces of our stories throughout our lives. But more important than the arguable truth of this notion is in the way it influences how we find our stories.
With the mindset that we must create or make up an idea, forming a story is a daunting task. We have to force our mind into submission and struggle with it in order to create a unique conception on command, a task we all struggle with as evidenced with the long periods we spent trying to come up with our stories. But what if we change our viewpoint? What if, instead of wrestling with the task of creation we instead focus on the simple act of discovery. Discovery, for stories, is a moment that can occur at anytime, anywhere. Our lives are filled with characters and their stories, they travel around us constantly throughout our day, and if we make the effort to open our eyes and watch for quirks, listen for one-liners, and let our imagination combine what we see and what we know, finding a story becomes as easy as a walk in the park.
I’m a 19 year-old Telecommunications Arts major at the University of Georgia. I write about film, photography, and technology in addition to sharing ideas, reviews, and materials.
Nice. A storyteller primarily task is to listen and observe, for the creative process is ultimately about discovery. Unpacking, unearthing, a storyteller task is to shine light on something that already exists or had. Whether the story is inspired by events internal/external to a person's life the story really isn't about them per se. They are the one who just so happens puts the story together in a narrative form.
With this perspective has the writing process actually become easier?
Much easier, which is why I'm sharing this. I struggled for a long time with "making up" a story. It was painful, pulling teeth painful, and I would dread it and consequently avoid writing at large. Then one day something clicked and I realized there were stories EVERYWHERE. It was like opening my eyes for the first time.
I now carry a notebook with me all the time. It is filled with characters, phrases, ideas, notes, and everything else I can cram in it. Almost none of it will ever find it's way to paper in this raw form but it provides a great resource to look towards and well to draw inspiration from.
I am jealous that you figured this out so much earlier in your life than I.
The pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty, somewhere in his work, wrote about finding vs making, not with regard to narrative, but to ontology and epistemology. Might be worth your while to explore his work.
Also, the idea of bricolage might be work a read, particularly Levi-Strauss, the anthropologist. "In Levi-Strauss' sense of bricolage, the myth-maker repeatedly breaks down prior structures of narrative, intuitively refashioning "new worlds from fragments" without a prior blue-print or overarching plan" (http://culturalproduction.wikispaces.com/Bricolag... Basically, bricolage uses found objects as tools, bending them or reshaping them to accomplish a particular task. Through experience, observation, listening, doing, we assemble fragments that are of use to us — each of us finds different things, or combination of things, useful — we are singularities. We then use these found objects to reinvent life, not to imitate it. That is key. Writing, filmmaking, art should not be imitation, but invention. We, as artists, have a responsibility to see anew, make anew, to dismantle structures and use the shattered pieces to make something that matters, that touches people and allows them to see their worlds anew — that inspires them toward a constructive anarchy.
A few thoughts. What do you think?
I'll have to look into those authors. As for the re-invention of life as art, this is what I was trying to get at. I wrote that "Our imagination is the convoluted conglomerate of a life lived and imagined and consequently capable of creation through reformation" implying that we create through what we have lived. The point of my writing was to illustrate the difference in thinking when it comes to story creation. I've watched, and been a victim of, an inability to create stories because of the pressure I put on the creation aspect. I was stuck on the idea of making up an original idea and the task would always prove to be too much for me to undertake. I was perpetually stuck.
One day, it clicked and I realized that I simply have to write what I know and what I know is not limited to what I've lived but includes what I've seen, heard, and imagined as well. It was then that I began to think about writing as not spontaneous generation but reintegration. I had to pass the mental roadblock of writing new ideas to get to building stories from life.
There is also the notion of juxtaposition; placing things, text, whatever next to different things, texts, etc alters meanings of both. Another writer: Walter Benjamin, the German critic, discusses this. His work is most accessible in Susan Buck-Morss' book "The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project."
I think the idea of discovering stories is an interesting concept, and I would have to agree that inspiration for scripts is easily found in the world around us. The ability to create a script from these lived experiences is what makes screen writing an art form. One of my writing teachers once told me that there are no original ideas left, just original interpretations. I believe that one of the most intriguing aspects of film I how different writers interpret everyday life.
So is it possible to deduce that those who experience more are better equipped for story-making? Or is it possible that a good story teller can take even the most miniscule detail of something and turn it into a grand adventure. My thought is, could someone write a story having never been out of their room? And what kind of story would that be?