Name Your Haunters
Think about those works of fiction, drama or film that haunt you, that pop into mind again and again regardless of how many years it's been since you last encountered them on the page, stage or screen.
We all have at least a couple. Some of us may have a handful. I like to refer to these as haunters because they do haunt us and it seems we will carry a connection to them all the way to our graves.
What are some of yours? Take a moment to jot down one or two titles.
Right now. (Don't worry. I'll wait.) Here's a little video for inspiration.
No matter what form your stories take, if you have an artist's ego, you probably hope that the stories you write will be the ones your audience never forgets.
If you think about it, the stories that you just never tire of all have certain characteristics in common.
What might they be?
Can you name them?
Let me venture a guess. (And if I'm wrong, I hope you won't be shy about posting your corrections in the comments section right here.)
The Human Being at the Center of the Story
Usually, it begins and ends with a character. A character who grabs hold of our imagination and won't let go.
Which characters do you find yourself returning to over and over, wondering about their predicaments and how they managed to live with or die under them?
What sorts of problems or challenges do they face? Why not make a list?
and their elusive verb.
Now, if you had to pick one verb that would be the one action your haunter protagonist has the most difficulty with what would that be?
Write this down too. Here's an example using one of my favorite films of all time, Nights of Cabiria by Federico Fellini.
The main character in this film is Maria 'Cabiria' Ceccarelli a hard-scrabble prostitute who first appears to be completely street-tough, cynical, practical and unromantic. She appears to be an island in every sense of the word. In short, the verb she struggles with is: trust. She lives in a world which seems to assign a dollar amount to everything, so why not her heart as well?
Unanswered questions to keep you up at night
Finally, ask yourself what you find most interesting about this story.
In my case, I think it's the fact that by the end of the film Cabiria has allowed herself to trust, to love, to risk and she has lost everything. And so, if human beings were creatures of pure logic, we would expect her to return to the closed cynical tough way in which she entered the story in the very first scene. But she does not. Because she is human not machine. And she has tasted the joy that comes with trusting and loving and so somehow through this terrible turn of events having been swindled by a con man who faked his love for her she has been given an unexpected gift. She has discovered something about herself she did not ever suspect -- she has a heart and she wants to love and be loved.
And now having lost everything -- her house, all her life savings -- she is no longer afraid. And we somehow sense that she will survive and very likely thrive.
So there's something very specific here that really does speak to everything I find most alluring in theatre or film. It's the person who has been making their way through the world with a mistaken idea about themselves and their discovery will be painful but it will be deeply moving -- to the character, to those around her and to we who are watching it all unfold.
Now that green text above? That's my own unique obsession.
What's yours?
As luck would have it Nights of Cabiria is now playing through December 30th at Film Forum in NYC.