Before I get into how I write, I think it’s first important that I tell you about my creative-writing philosophy: I’m self-taught, and I don’t follow rules.
I have never taken any creative writing classes, what’s more, I am totally against it for myself. I realize my stance on training is not for everybody and I know that some people really thrive off having a coach, instructor, mentor, whatever you want to call it, but when it comes to writing, not me.
There are several reasons why I feel this way. First of all, and I believe most importantly, nobody has a lock on creativity. Creativity is fluid: it’s round, it’s square; it’s big, it’s small; and no two people express it the same way. Given that, how can anyone tell me my work is right or wrong, good or bad? It’s merely their opinion. During my creative process, I simply rather not be influenced by someone else’s opinion.
Another reason for my writing philosophy is because most of the people whose work inspires me are people who didn’t have formal-training. People like Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, hell even Peter Jennings who was one of my favorite journalists, and if I’m not mistaken, whom never got pass high school.
I don’t know, there is just something about the work of people who thrive in their field with no formal training, that just seems so raw and real, and just has soul. Now some of you might be saying Michael Jackson didn’t have soul, but (insert record scratch) that’s where you’re wrong. Just listen to a Jackson 5 album – dude had more soul when he was 10 then some of these grown folks with albums running around here today. And Peter Jennings? His worked just came across with a kind of curiosity, and consideration that one gets when you have to figure things out on your own, uninfluenced by a biased professor’s guidance (nothing against college, I went, I think you should go if you want to go). And Aretha Franklin, well nuff said. Then again, that’s just my opinion.
One of my biggest goals with writing, beyond telling stories that resonate with people, is writing with soul. I want to make people feel something, and I also want to make people think. I think the surest way for ME to do that is to stay away from formal training.
How It All Began
Now onto how I wrote this scene. Oh, but first, let me tell you a story.
When I was a little kid, my sister used to do these voices. She would voice these characters and I would talk to them. As she got older, she replaced talking to me in different voices with talking on the phone with school mates. I, however, wasn’t as popular, so I picked up where she left off and made-up characters of my own.
I did it with a twist, though. Instead of pretending I was talking to imaginary people, I pretended I was those imaginary people talking to other imaginary people. It was like a one woman, or girl, show where I was all the characters and the whole thing was totally unscripted and improvised.
So anyway, that’s how I started creating stories and characters. I did it to fend off boredom, escape reality and entertain myself before I even realized or knew what I was doing.
I told you that story because that’s essentially how I still create characters to this day. I’ll get inspired by something that happens in my life, something that happens in someone else’s life, or something that happens in the news, and the characters just surface in my brain. And I have a story.
The Scene’s Setting
Ever since I saw “Jungle Fever” back when I was a kid, I’ve always really liked that living room scene. However, when I began writing this script, I didn’t set out to replicate it. It was more so a subconscious stirring of my imagination, given my cultural affinity to such scenes, including a similar one in the movie “Waiting to Exhale.”
Yet beyond that, a group setting scene proves to be a perfect vehicle to reveal more about a certain character or characters and drive the story forward in a short amount of time. Even in the short excerpt I shared last week, we were able to find out so much about Raya.
This scene comes toward the middle of the movie, so some of it you would have already known, like where she works and that she previously dated the same guy from the office, that this new girl whom she thinks unworthy, is dating. But we also find out that she’s working on a book and having disagreements with her agent about the direction it should go. We learn about her past dating life, and that she seems to be a serial multi-dater, but doesn’t hold down relationships long. We learn that she appears to have had a college-level teaching job prior to the one she currently has, lost it and had to work really hard to get another one. We learn that she not only resents this new girl for dating the guy she used to date, but she also can’t stand her because she believes she is unqualified to have a teaching role at the school, especially given her credentials as a YouTuber.
So this group setting, where the characters are in conversation, really lends itself to giving background information and putting things in context without having to actually play those parts of the story out. In other words, I didn’t have to write a scene of her at her previous job, or write a scene of her in her past relationships, I just let the conversation reveal that.
The Actual Writing Process
Okay, so now let’s get into the actual writing process. It’s very layered for me. Once the idea for this story came to mind, this scene was one of the scenes that just popped in my head. Several scenes in this movie actually did that. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like the bones of this scene came in tact, and I just had to put meat on it, and by put meat on it I mean add the dialogue.
In order to add the dialogue, I reverted back to the style I first did as a child: I became the characters and allowed them to talk to each other. I didn’t record myself when I did this – I never do. Perhaps that would be helpful, especially when trying to capture believable dialogue. But not only did I not do that, I also didn’t talk out loud. Each character has a distinctive sounding voice in my head, so hearing my own voice would have ruined it for me.
Sometimes I mouthed the lines or slightly whispered them. I feel like in a whisper everyone pretty much sounds the same. I do this because it’s very important to me that I write dialogue in a way that reflects how people actually talk, not only in what they say, but how they say it. My goal is to make you feel like you are watching an actual conversation, not seeing people pretend from a script. Of course, the actors have a lot to do with that too, but it all starts on the page.
Initially, as I wrote, I didn’t bother assigning names to the various characters’ lines. With the exception of Raya, the main character, and Lisa, who serves as the antagonist of sorts in this scene, most of the lines by the three other ladies had no names.
Looking back, I think that was a wise decision on my part because ultimately what they are saying is more important than who is saying it. The other three characters are quite ancillary to the movie overall. Their main purpose is to help us understand the main character, Raya, better.
After I got the conversation out, I went back and added names where there weren’t any. Not all the lines had no names, but a lot of them did. When I first went in to add the names, I did it arbitrarily, like who hasn’t spoken in a minute? Okay, let me put your name with this line.
Then, as I spent more time with the scene – took some things out, added more things in – I started to recognize characteristic traits in the lines. I began to recognize personalities, at which point I would take lines from one character and give it to another based on the personality I saw emerging with the lines. Now, I can distinguish the personalities of the three other ladies so if I need to add lines or change something, I already know who to attribute it to.
Make it Make Sense
Once the dialogue is out, I ask myself, what’s the purpose of this scene? Then I check to see if the dialogue satisfies the purpose I intended.
The main purpose of this scene, in it’s entirety, not just this snippet I’ve revealed here, is to drive the story forward. For example, in this scene, Lisa acts as a counter to the main character Raya. However, Janae acts as a counter of sorts to Lisa. As such, the scene gives you information with no clear-cut answers, only options—options that will have to be explored as the movie plays on.
Considering the Actors
While I don’t subscribe to being under someone else’s tutelage, I don’t completely ignore other people’s work either. I of course watch movies, but I also read scripts. A while ago I got a hold of the script from the first “Sex and the City” movie. In it there’s this scene towards the beginning of the movie where Carrie is walking down the street, sees this girl slap this guy then she gasps.
What I found interesting about that is that the script read something like, Carrie walks down the street, sees a girl slap a guy and she REACTS. It said reacts not gasps. The gasp, or whatever that was she did, was Sarah Jessica Parker’s choice as an actor. I just loved that Michael Patrick King, the writer and director, intentionally left room in the script for the actors to be creative and bring the characters to life. That’s something that I want to do with my scripts as well. Unless I’m dead set on a certain expression, I want to leave room for the actor to react. Of course if I don’t like how they react I will let them know, but I like that they have the option.
Fun Fact
The dollar store scenario from this scene actually happened to me…well kinda. I was in the 99 cent store about eight or nine years ago, and saw they now had a whole section for wine. I saw a bottle of Moscato, which I’d seen a lot of people talking about on TV at the time, so I picked it up. Then I noticed it was $2.99 instead of 99 cents. I didn’t tell the clerk about herself like LaShaunda does in the script, however I did think to myself what’s up with that? Because I remember a time when everything in the 99-cent store was 99 cents or less – not no more.
So that’s it, that’s how I wrote (and continue to write) this scene. If you have any questions feel free to let me know and I’m happy to answer!
Here’s to writing the movies you want to see.
Until next week.
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