Dispatch From The Quest: Troy Klith
Over the course of the 24 weeks I am working with the writers in The Quest, each will write a weekly dispatch to share with the GITS community. There are several reasons for doing this, the main one educational: Hopefully you will learn something of value for your own understanding of the craft from the experiences of the Questers. I should also add they are a great group of people, so I expect you will enjoy getting to know them.
Today: Troy talks about best laid plans…
This week we dove into character archetypes and protagonist arcs. While the lectures were fascinating, what most resonated with me is that there is so much freedom within the guidelines. For example, in Ferris Bueller the protagonist doesn’t arc at all, his best friend does. What I must force myself to remember is that there are no rules, only tools to help map out the journey. Scott has repeated this often, but the advice is easily forgotten.
As a personal aside, this week my wife and I moved our family to Costa Rica (the beginning of a 6-month journey). Before the trip we laid out a plan that we hoped would make the experience as smooth as possible. We focused on the first few days, believing the beginning sets the tone for the entire trip. Well, no amount of planning could have prevented the massive accident we encountered on the way to the airport, which delayed us by 2 ½ hours, causing us to miss our flight check-in by 15 minutes, which, because we’d already rented our home, necessitated having to stay in a hotel for 2 days with 3 children incapable of understanding how this could possibly happen, resulting in my sulking 5-year old mumbling his first curse word, “This is shitface.”
The point of my digression is that no matter how well you plan, you’re likely to encounter something unexpected that throws everything out of whack. And the same goes for writing. You can map out your plot, characters, theme, etc for months, and still find yourself stuck and confused. But while we can’t anticipate everything, and will inevitably encounter bumps in the road, it’s helpful to realize that sometimes the story presents itself in different ways, and that might be a good thing. In my personal example, while our original plans were shot, we actually spent the two days chilling at the hotel pool, talking excitedly about what was to come. The beginning of our journey was much different than we’d planned, but it was okay. In fact, it was kind of great.
Writing is like this, too. Back to this week’s focus on character archetypes, we can agonize over the fact that we don’t have a proper Nemesis or Mentor or Attractor character, only to realize (once we take a deep breath) that our story presents itself slightly differently, and these functions play out in other ways. For me, I struggled with creating a “Trickster” character only to realize this function already existed in my story, but it was in the form of a house, not a person.
So, again, I remind myself: There are no rules. Only guidelines. Ones that will hopefully sustain me when I find myself in those inevitable moments when I look at my story and mumble: This is shitface.
I guess by now everyone knows the mantra I coined years ago: Watch Movies. Read Scripts. Write Pages. That is one key to learning the craft of screenwriting. We may also add this:
Live Life.
This works on multiple levels in relation to our growth as writers, one obvious thing: The lessons that life teaches us.
Soon the Questers — and those of you who are Going On Your Own Quest — will start the Prep part of the process. The goal there is to develop and generate a thorough outline. But even armed with that map, we cannot know for sure the final contours of our story.
Hence a dichotomy: We fling ourselves into Prep hoping to break the story, yet we know the specifics of the narrative may very well shift out from under us when he get into Pages.
How do we know this? Because these type of surprises happen in life all the time, Just like what Troy detailed about his family’s recent travails.
And those surprises can be a real shitface experience.
On the other hand, if our story shifts because our characters have come to life and are venturing off the pages of our outlines, as scary and unnerving as that may be, we must have the courage to follow them. It may take us 5, 10 or more drafts, but if we trust the process, our characters will lead us to where the story needs to be.
And then we go from shitface… to happy face.
About Troy: Born Midwesterner with heart in San Francisco, but nothing beats NYC. Entrepreneur. Writer. Lover of the underdog. Grateful father of 3. @troyklith.
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