As a writing mentor, I do my best to give advice and guidance in the way I wished to receive it when I was a young turk trying to make a name for myself.
I came up in a time where thinning the herd was a large component of the process. This meant mentors savaged your work over and over until you simply gave up.
Or not.
The idea that you would continue on after other working writers told you how useless you were is a mystery to me, even now. Yet, that’s what I did. For every single form letter, written response or critique, there was always a part of me that wanted it more than I wanted to quit. I truly understood that I was going to write whether or not I was paid to do so or could call it a “career.”
Storytelling is a strange bird. Sometimes you write with an almost extra-sensory power, and after the smoke clears, you cannot figure out how you did it. You seek a formula or way that helped you to craft such a compelling narrative.
Other times, it eludes you, and while you know you have fantastic ideas and characters, writing the story is a slog. You must force yourself to do it, bit by bit and piece by piece, because you know good ideas are hard to come by.
I love every aspect of storytelling and I love to talk about it. I love discussing the finer points of character arcs and why good writing affects us differently than bad writing. Even when the eyes of my friends and family glaze over as I try to explain the thematic elements in a story that no one is supposed to realize, but feels inherently after watching something.
I love it so much so that I don’t think I could ever give it up. The idea that I couldn’t express myself in this way is terrifying to me.
It is for this reason that I scratch my head when writing mentees take my guidance and notes, but fail to actually sit down and write. I assume they have the same propensity that I do to get the words out onto the page.
Spoiler alert. They don’t. Not always. It’s not necessarily because they disagree with my notes, because if they kept writing in a different direction that would be fine by me.
In my estimation, there are two major roadblocks to improving as a writer, and both are just as important.
First, you must have a love of writing. It has to be something you can’t stop yourself from doing. Even when it’s hard, and story problems threaten to topple your entire creation, you must be willing to keep going.
Second, you must be willing to rewrite what you have written. While finishing a 95-page manuscript already puts you in the top five percent of writers, the people who excel and make a living out of it are the top one-tenth of one percent. It’s rarefied air, and you don’t get there unless you work at getting better.
These two non-negotiables are enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is no easy way to do it. It requires tremendous drive and the willingness to fail. A lot.
None of this guarantees success, of course, but without them, you will never get there.
However, this differs from simply writing to express yourself or keeping a journal. Writing is a crucial skill for all people, not just because it’s a form of communication but because it helps us to understand our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a way our own thinking minds can’t.
That kind of epistolary writing doesn’t have to be regimented, and it doesn’t need to be every day. It can be, and often is, but I’m just making the point that any time spent writing is useful, but the mileage may vary.
For understanding story, crafting a narrative drama, and moving people, you must write, submit to others, hear their critiques with an open mind, and work to improve the elements that don’t work. There will be many, and it’s only through this process that you will see what has been staring you in the face the entire time, but you could not see it.
That’s what writing is. It’s unearthing parts of a story you had no idea your subconscious is trying to tell you. Often when a story problem stops your progress, you might find the solution has been sitting right in front of you. Not because you’re smart, but because a part of you was writing to that story all along and you just didn’t know it. When you see that you’ve laid the groundwork for the solution long before you knew there was a problem, this realization can be unsettling. It’s like voodoo. It feels like you are channeling the story from the spirit world, and in a way, you are. The trick is to be in the writing chair when it happens.
The exhilaration of discovering this might mean nothing to you when reading it here, but the direct experience of it will knock you on your ass.
For me, I have had some success as a film and comic book writer. Not the success that launches you into the atmosphere, as some others have. I’m not down on myself. I have my moments, and despite the times my writing has not risen to that level of attention, I am still here.
Yet, the craft still draws me in. I still feel that pull to get better, the love of learning new ways to look at story, and the sense of joy I get from creating something from nothing. I’ve never stopped and thought, well, this is a good place to stop and assume I know all there is to know.
Not once.
There is so much to learn. So much to explore and unlock. After a time, young writers learn a truth about their writing that knocks them back. They write a small but varied body of work and realize they are telling the same story over and over. Not the same plot, but the same story.
For me, my early stories were all about abandonment. The hero was always having to confront being left by someone important in their life. I didn’t know this at the time. I just looked back at the six to ten scripts I had written, and there it was.
We draw from our own life. Our traumas, problems, and essential core dramas are the soil we till to dig out our stories. We also don’t know at the time that we are trying to resolve our personal traumas through this process, and we eventually do.
Our traumas might not be healed, but the way we relate to these problems changes, and we cultivate a deeper understanding of them without all the emotional wreckage that plagued us before.
And yes, once resolved in our minds, we write different stories. We mine our childhood memories and experiences to find the next problem to solve.
Later in my career, I wrote a series of stories about belonging. The main characters strive to be seen while trying to overcome their fear of that very thing. I’m not interested in finding out why I write these stories; I just let them tell me what they want to tell me.
If only we would listen.