Story and Screenwriting Reflections

I have always been a storyteller – how good of one is, perhaps, yet to be seen.  But my life has always revolved around stories.  From a young age I was inundated with stories from my father.  Every place we went had a hidden story.  Every car trip began with an “I remember when” and every complaint was properly answered with a “When I was your age” tale of hardship.  In my current life as a drama teacher, my focus is always on the story.  I find them the most powerful resource in teaching a concept or principal or opening the path to feeling.  I always encourage my students to focus on the story, on the journey of the characters.  My head is filled with stories of my childhood intermingled with the books that I am obsessed with reading and the musicals and plays that consume my work life.  For me, fiction becomes real.  And words become a scene.  I love reading Alma and staging the battle and trickery sequences in my head.  I encounter the written word, especially in novel form with the eye of a stage director.

So, if nearly every element of my life is focused on visual storytelling, screenplays and writing them should be simple, right?

(Insert sarcastic joke that I am far too exhausted to write.)

When it comes to screenwriting, I find that dialogue is a struggle for me.  I decided to take the story that I shared in the first assignment, but that was of me when I was a small child.  I find that I don’t really know how kids talk and find it extremely difficult to make the dialogue I write sound authentic, seeing as though I don’t spend much time around children.  I think the old adage that you should write what you know should be expanded to say, “Don’t write what you don’t know.”

Perhaps at this point of time, it would have been wise for me to switch gears and choose another story that was easier to conceptualize…perhaps about a group of argumentative people trying to put on the largest stadium fireworks show in America…but that would have far too much profanity for an assignment at the Lord’s University. 

So, instead, here I am.  I’m writing a piece, focused on a memory that really does mean something to me and was rather foundational in my life, but I find it challenging to make this story reach and audience and create a theme upon which to make a meaningful piece of theatre.  Is anyone else going to care about this story – which seems so everyday and insignificant?  I also found that the memory I chose to use for my story was only a few moments long in real time.  I think, for shooting purposes, it would be best to do this in either real time or elongate time a bit to emphasize certain poignant moments.  I struggled with how to end the piece as well.  I didn’t want it to be too sappy, though my memory is, of course, covered in sugar coated marshmallow memories.  I think I need more format research work and to try to break out of the novel format to which I am naturally drawn.  Ah, well.  It’s a work in progress.