Telling your story
Many of us find ourselves pursuing a writing career because we feel we have a story to tell. We think that our lives are so special and unique, our insights so interesting, that by just writing our lives in screenplay format, audiences will flock to the theaters and the awards will come pouring in.
Sometimes this is true. A few people have experienced something so compelling and intriguing that they merely have to change the names of their friends and family and they have the perfect screenplay. For the rest of us, it’s not that simple. Our lives are interesting, to us, but in reality, what we’ve experienced and found so profound, is something very average and boring. Worse than that, our lives are episodic and meandering, and simply telling our life story as it occurred will result in a long, boring, all-over-the-place mess that lands in the reject pile.
Despite this, “write what you know” remains an ever-present piece of writing advice. It sounds incredibly limiting, and I blame this advice for leading writers to think that they should write about their lives, in their town, in their time period, because that is all they really know. But that’s simply not true. If you can only write what you know, that means audiences could only relate to exactly what they have experienced. You should absolutely write what you know, but you need to write it in a way that works as a screenplay, and only if you are comfortable changing the details and facts of your story enough to make them work as a screenplay. As a screenwriter, you must be open to accept criticism of your work. This can be incredibly difficult if you are writing your life story and feel so close to characters (because one is you, one is your mom, and the other is the love of your life) and the events and the way in which they occurred. If the story is an exact, faithful retelling of your life, it most likely won’t work as a screenplay, and you’ll be too sensitive and attached to it to allow yourself to change it in a way that will work. If you truly feel your life story will work as a screenplay, write it, but put it away for now, until you have several years of perspective and distance from it, at which point you should be able to look at it more objectively and not feel you are lying or wrong when you make alterations to the true events that you experienced.
Most of us go through things that are poignant and meaningful to us, but that happen to everyone and aren’t all that unique. This is bad if you think that the story of your breakup was so awesome and the pain you felt so incredible that your story must be told because it was so emotional and meaningful. That won’t work because your story is common and boring. What will work about an experience you had that millions of others also had, is that you experienced a universal emotional experience that all those others can relate to. Take what you learned and felt during your experience and use that to inject depth, emotion, and meaning into every story you write. You can use the emotion and real feelings you experienced in any and every situation, that way you can write about anything while still using what you know-your emotional experiences-to reach an audience full of people who went through the same thing, all without being limited to only telling exactly what happened to you that one time. That is the part of the story that people relate to, not the setting, the exact plot, and the dialogue spoken. In The Wizard of Oz, we relate to Dorothy’s feelings of boredom and yearning for a more adventurous life, not her magical adventure in a strange land. Though it was an adaptation, the writers were able to create a realistic emotional experience by writing what they knew-the feeling of being trapped and longing for excitement-even though they had never been through exactly what she had. None of us have lived as Toys, but we have felt rejected, by a friend, a lover or at work, when a newer, smarter, or more exciting person has replaced us. We have felt the jealousy that Woody had toward Buzz, and because of that, we are able to enjoy the movie. Because the writers have gone through that they were able to write what they knew about those emotions even though they’ve never actually been toys themselves. Most people today didn’t live through life in a concentration camp, but writers are able to tell stories of the holocaust with depth and truth by drawing on their experiences of fear, of unfairness, of grief and loss and powerlessness, in order to write such films as Schindler’s List, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Counterfeiters, Sophie’s Choice, and so many others. Most people haven’t been in a mental institution but nonetheless were able to feel the same doubt and frustration and fear that the characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest felt, the same anxiety and confusion that was experienced in Shutter Island.
Writers put the emotional truth of what they know into a world and a situation they may not, and in doing so create a story that audiences will embrace and understand even if they have never been through the exact situation being depicted. Movies transport us to worlds and experiences we have never had and never will have, but reach us nonetheless through the emotions and universal human experiences they portray. It is this part of your own experiences that you should bring to your screenplay. Inject the truth of your emotional experience into your story and audiences will relate and enjoy your film, no matter what it is about.
