THE SPARK, THE "EVEN BETTER", AND GOING WITH YOUR GUT

The emotional side of screenwriting often proves to be a flurry of feelings, instincts, and syntheses of ideas with time. You'll find yourself pouring your pain, joy, suffering, and even relief into your script (depending on the story), realizing its emotional honesty, and elevating it well beyond your initial idea.

Three of these (related, but not necessarily consecutive) signs are important to identify, since for me, they've proven to be valuable in knowing when a script I'm writing is resonating with me.

THE SPARK

Have you gotten an idea that's led you to endlessly scribble down other ideas, details, and plot points? Has it revved up your creative motor to such a high degree that you can't think of anything else?

Then inspiration has struck.

It has grabbed you, like a good story just grabs its audience, and it simply won't let go. You have to write it now, and even if you don't yet have every detail nailed down, you know enough of the "skeleton" for it to keep your interest, well enough for you to see this story through.

The story could be based on something that happened to you, or not. Or its outcome is the total and more dramatic opposite. Or it's an older idea you had filed away that has now gained new life combined with another old or new idea.

Whatever it is, if it has grabbed you, don't ignore it.

THE "EVEN BETTER"

At this point, you have a good idea of where your story is going to go. Say you've had some time to let said story, its characters, and their own emotions "sink in", especially if they're based on parts of yourself. Now you've gotten to the script's emotional climax (though this "even better" could be at any point in the scriptwriting process).

Suddenly, you may find your own emotions (channeled through your characters) taking over. One character lets out their anger even more because you've "grown attached" to them and want them to express themselves further. Another character might feel greater remorse than you initially planned, whether it's in direct reaction to the first character or not. (Oftentimes, it is, like two great actors playing off each other.) Or alternatively, your two characters, while upset and just as angry as the previous examples, are both remorseful afterwards and want to be friends.

The key, of course, is the role of emotion. If these characters and events are rousing up your own emotions as a screenwriter, then chances are, they'll do the same (if not moreso) for your audience.

Now when I call this the "even better", I mean the end result of this heightened emotional component is the "oomph", the "gusto", the improved version of what you had planned before. Your characters have now come alive in a more emotionally honest way that hadn't been guaranteed. They've "paid off" your own emotional investment in a "2+2=5" manner.

Of course, it's best not to go seeking out this "even better" as you're writing. Creativity cannot be forced, remember, so let it all happen naturally.

GOING WITH YOUR GUT

Now, you might be at the stage where you've long refined, rewritten, dissected, shaded, and colored your script. It has life, a heartbeat, and a spirit of its own.

One day, you might think of changing a small part of your script, be it a sentence, a character action, or even just one solitary word. So you make that change.

But then, you feel that something doesn't sit quite right with it. It might not be terrible, but perhaps now it doesn't flow so naturally with the rest of the language you've chosen. It might imply something else that you never intended to allude to. Or maybe, you just can't formulate a reason at all why it doesn't feel natural. Perhaps you had simply "fixed" what hadn't been broken. So you change it back to the way it was, and all is right with the world.

That is your gut speaking.

You've become so attuned to your script's "heart" (emotional core), and how your characters and their dynamics truly are, that you can now sense when even the smallest detail feels "off", no matter how slight it is. This knowledge is quite powerful, and informs everything you visualize with said script. It also means your script is emotionally consistent enough for you to almost "predict" how these factors will be, even for situations that never actually happen in your script.

At the end of the day, only you will know what feels "right" for your script, and as a result, it will be as individual as you.

Copyright © Chynna Moore