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 comes up with a cool metaphor for writing with a hot image — volcanoes:
This week we dug deeper into our main character and wrote a protagonist treatment. The lecture was insightful and the writing exercise was a very useful experience, but I was at a loss on what to write in my weekly dispatch. Thankfully, the morning it was due, a small insight came to me while sipping a cup of Guatemalan coffee, sitting with my family watching smoke billow from a volcano.
Recently, my family embarked on the next phase of a Central America adventure. We moved from Costa Rica to a more permanent spot in Antigua, Guatemala. It’s an old Spanish colonial city with beautiful architecture, cobblestone streets and fascinating ruins (the result of the region’s many earthquakes).
Geographically, Antigua is known for being tucked in a valley surrounded by three large volcanoes. One of them, Volcán de Fuego, is famous for always being active. On most days, from the roof deck of our house we can see the steam and gas billow from Fuego’s peak. Of course, my kids are in absolute awe of this. As they stare, little mouths agape (actually, it’s more like hopping around trying to shout over each other), it provides an opportune time for mini geography lessons.
This morning, as I listened to my wife deliver a fun, little lecture on things like tectonic plates, magma and the like, it dawned on me that a volcano is very similar to a fully realized character in a screenplay. We only see the beautiful exterior and we’re thrilled by the central conflict, but for the narrative eruption to occur there must be a molten pool below the surface, that stuff bubbling up through hidden tensions that shift and collide over the character’s core. In other words, the character’s internal world and back story.
When writing, it’s obviously important to focus on the central conflict and climax, the eruption if you will. But to make this as effective as possible, we also must understand what lies beneath. We must dig down and discover the character’s unique tectonic plates and secret pressures.
This week, when attempting to unearth my protagonist’s back story, particularly her wants, needs and fears, I tried to go all the way back to the source, which in this case was her childhood. While most of what’s in my treatment won’t end up in the script, it will no doubt inform what’s on the page. And, hopefully, all this will make for a more meaningful and impactful moment when my protagonist’s internal Volcán de Fuego is ready to blow.
I’ll often use the metaphor of an iceberg when talking about character development. However I have to say this idea of a volcano conjured up by Troy is another excellent one: tectonic plates, secret pressures, eruption. Yes, yes, and yes!
All that ‘stuff’ is there in our characters, bubbling and roiling around, ready to explode into consciousness. We just have to do some psychological spelunking to discover it.
Tomorrow: Another Dispatch From The Quest.
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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