Dispatch from The Quest: Emma Millions
Last week as we did here on GITS, the Quest writers focused on the first week of Prep. Today’s dispatch: Emma Millions on the origin of stories:
Where do stories come from?
Scott Myers recently tweeted this: “Jules Renard: “The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place…”
This really resonated with me as I am often amazed at how the blank page gets filled up when at the start of the writing day I feel like I have nothing. How does that happen? This week on The Quest we started prep by working on our protagonists. Who are they? What do they want and need? With previous scripts this stuff has firmly stayed in my head but now we had to write it down and share it with our fellow Questers. Oh lord. How on Earth am I supposed to take the jumble of thoughts and ideas in my head that, inside my brain make total sense to me, and put them on paper in a form that other people can understand? I started the day with trepidation, fully believing that the blank page would either stay blank or would be filled up with rambling nonsense that would mean nothing to anyone other than myself and my protagonist. But, to my amazement, within hours I had a perfectly understandable protagonist treatment. Not only that, my protagonist actually seemed to exist. He felt real. The stuff I was writing about him, he was telling me to write. I wasn’t making it up.
So, do stories exist, in perfect fashion, in some place just waiting for us writers to find them and put them on the page? A spooky psychic type person once told me that I ‘channel’ my writing. That I am followed round by spirits who help me to connect to ideas floating around in the ether or who whisper them in my ear like storytelling ghosts with nothing better to do than help me get commissions. Kind of like a screenwriting Sixth Sense — “I hear dead people”. I don’t know about that. I’m not particularly spooky in other areas of my life. Apart from my uncanny ability to turn up wearing practically the same thing as my best friend whenever we go out. But it actually does feel somehow ‘paranormal’ the way words flow from my brain to my fingers onto the page. When I am working on a project after a few weeks casually thinking about it, doing vague research and just letting it ‘sit’ in my brain I get into a place, which I call The Zone, where the idea just seems to come alive. I wake up with fully formed ideas, moments, plot points, etc and I just ‘know’ who my characters are. They exist as full on genuine entities, as real as the real people in my life and they do seem to talk to me.
So maybe they do exist, in perfect fashion, in some place, waiting for me to find them. Once, when I was obsessed with Quantum Mechanics, I tried to explain this phenomena on a sub-atomic level. In the Quantum world, everything that can happen, does happen. (Don’t ask me to explain, it makes my head explode, read some Stephen Hawking). And I started to wonder if maybe our stories are actually happening in parallel universes which, somehow, as writers, we find a way to tune into. Is this where stories come from?
I have no idea where they do come from. I am just glad they come from somewhere and fill up our blank pages. I had no idea what I was going to write for this journal when I started out and now the page is full. Whether that’s to do with the spirits following me around or whether the atomic universe is responsible, I guess it doesn’t really matter. However we find a way to create our stories it’s important that we do. So keep creating people — blank pages won’t fill themselves… or will they? Spooky.
Look, I don’t know if stories actually exist somewhere out there. But that is not important to me. What is important is that I believe they exist. Because if I believe they exist, then I know I can find those characters, I can visit that story universe, I can immerse myself there, and bring back that understanding to my writing in this world.
You’ve heard of that saying, “Seeing is believing?” Let’s flip that: “Believing in seeing.” If you believe your story universe exists, you will see it.
Tomorrow: Another Dispatch from The Quest.
About Emma: British based writer of ‘the funny’. Lover of cats and bad TV. Often found in pyjamas a bit drunk or a bit hungover. Occasionally does burlesque. Twitter: @emmamillions.