I needed my wife today! WWW.LIFEWRITE.COM

Hi, Steve Barnes here with Life Writing Live. I didn't make that 12 to 1 window that I'm trying to aim at. I'm sorry about that. I needed an extra nap after I got Jason off to school and that pushed everything back a little bit. This is going to be an incredibly high pressure week and I wanted to talk about the run up to a couple different things. One is that I'm going to be doing a webinar on Saturday about writing a short story in a month with Sentence a Day. Now, the beautiful thing about this is that it's going to be a horror story Halloween story. And we're going to be showing, we're going to be demonstrating that Sentence A Day pattern. You guys know I don't believe in talent. I believe in hard work and honesty over time. And that plus the idea of a Sentence a Day is going to be sort of the core of what it is that we're doing. The good news is that I talked to Tananarive and she's willing to do this with me. So you're going to have an opportunity to watch me and Tananarive creating a story from prompts that you create. You're going to give us the prompts for this and we're going to devise a story live in front of you and you're going to be able to have links to the dynamic documents online, probably a Google Doc because that's kind of the easiest thing to do. So you can actually see the process as it happens. We'll be talking about it now. This little section is called I Needed my Wife Today and there's a reason for that. One of the things I have to do in order to get ready to write that Sentence in a day is to get the current writing more. Yeah. Story is improv. Ross. Hi, Rodney. Basically, in order to do this, I have to clear my schedule enough. I just got a story back that I did with Larry Niven. I'll meet with him on Wednesday and we will discuss when we're going to do the rewrite process. It's probably not going to be much rewrite. It's probably just a little tinkering. But I really do have to admit that I want my brain as focused as it can possibly be for a month because it's going to be a high wire act. I have no idea the subjects that you guys are going to give us. We have to create it. We have to show how our methodology works. We're going to be discussing the process. I figured that doing it this way might be the most valuable thing that I can do for you. I'm also going to be recording everything that I'm doing here. Just in case we come up with something that makes a good little mini course. But one of the things I have to do before then is not just get the websites ready and the webinar stuff ready and so forth. But I have to clear my mind out. I've got a major project that I've been working on for the last month and a half. I've told you guys about that. It's a. It's a script that I'm working on. I got hit with the idea for this in early August, and it just knocked my socks off. And I've been working on. And I actually created the first draft of that script in a month, 126 pages and writing between 5 and 10 pages a day. It just come out, the characters and the situation fully fleshed. We're going to talk one of these days. I'll talk about that, too. But right now, I figure what I'd like to do is to get that as close to finished this week as I can before Saturday. In other words, starting on Saturday, I want to start working on this story. So I need to clear at least a week after that to get that story begun. So what is it that I need to do this week? I need to get the script done well enough that I could hand it off to a few very carefully chosen readers. These are people who've already made contact with them. So if you're not one of them, I'm not looking for additional people right now. They're very carefully selected based on some very specific criteria. But there's a lot of work that has to be done before that. Last night, I had a major epiphany about the story. That there were characters in the story I was absolutely in love with. And Suzanne says, happy that I can once again collaborate with Mr. Niven. I will collaborate with Larry as long as it brings him joy. I love him. I love working with him. It's not a matter of learning anymore. It's not a matter of forwarding my career. It's a matter of having a chance to play with someone dearly love. There is that. That part of me that is the kid, and there's that part of Larry that is the kid. And our two kids can get together and play. And even though that's an aside for Suzanne, it also is the truth about writing that there is the child part of me, which comes up with idea after idea, after idea. Then there's the adult part of me that disciplines that creative flow. Okay? This is why I say that I don't believe in talent. I believe in learning how to access that creative child self. Now, this is important. No matter what you're doing, no matter what you're doing in your life, you need to be creative. What I do in storytelling is a direct application of that creativity. What you do as a parent or a salesperson, a real estate agent or whatever still demands creativity, still demands energy. Some of the things, the things that have to do with dealing with my motivation, fear, breaking writer's block and entering flow state and stuff like that will be applicable to anybody no matter what they do. But frankly, this will be best for people who are interested in writing. Okay, so what I realized last night was that there were characters that I was totally in love with and another character that I found interesting. Really interesting, fascinating. A lead character who was at a little bit of an emotional distance from me. I wasn't in love with them yet. And I need to be in love with them if I want my audience to love them. And I realized that I. That this could happen in the moment when they fall in love with another person and that other person falls in love with them. That the process of falling in love with is a combination of recognizing someone's strengths and vulnerabilities. The strength is attractive. If they have no vulnerabilities, then there's no place for you to insert your heart. There's no room for them in your life. In their life. There's no room for you in their life if they're invulnerable. Why does Superman need anybody, one might ask. The vulnerability is that he feels separated from mankind. So his lala blow us connects him to mankind. So the moment at which these two people see each other as loneliness, not just see each other's strengths, where they recognize both the strengths and the vulnerabilities and begin to cautiously create that dyadic pair that is the core of human life. You know, whether one is reproducing or not. You know, the same thing would be true in a gay relationship or a relationship between people who aren't interested in having kids. There is that question, will you be strong enough to stand with me against life? Will you be gentle enough to be kind to me? Are you vulnerable enough to need me? That I had built this character up in terms of the strength, their courage, their cleverness, their intelligence. But I had not allowed myself to ask, where's the vulnerability in the right way. So these two people stripping themselves of their masks. So one is a man and one is a woman. In order to do this scene, I had to. If I was by myself in a room, I would simply ask myself about all the women that I have known, what I believe they would do in a particular situation, how I think they would feel about what I've written. If I've talked with these people enough, I should be able to have a pretty good idea. But the other thing, of course, is to get in touch with the female part of my own personality. I just don't think men and women are that different. I just don't. And I think that most people, you know, who grew up with siblings of the opposite gender or have been in long term relationships, they know this. There's just not that much difference. And if you take a look at gay relationships, they have just as much trouble as anybody else communicating. So the biggest problem is the human divide, not the gender divide. It seems to be a gender divide. If you've never tried to be intimate with somebody of your own gender, you know, if you have, you'll know, oh, wait a minute. This stuff, you know. Yeah, everybody feels like an alien. Everybody feels different because they are a different person. Gender isn't that important. So the basic things are the same. So if I start with the basic assumptions of similarity, but then add, you know, shade things just a little bit, I think I'm on the right track. But the best thing for me to do is to go to a woman, ask a woman, how would a woman feel about this if she was in that situation? How would a woman feel about this if she saw this on the screen? How do you think you would feel? Do you think that your reactions are typical questions like that asked of enough different people of group X? And this is where sort of writing the Other comes in. So you talk with some members of the Other and you establish rapport with them so that they trust you. And then you ask them these questions and you listen to their response. And if you do this enough, you should be pretty good. You should be able to form an opinion. I would think any woman who grew up with brothers and has been married for 20 years should have an opinion, an informed opinion about men. I think the same thing about men. If you had sisters and you loved your mom and you've been in a relationship with a woman for 20 years, you better have an opinion about women. So the same thing is true racially too. If you grew up surrounded by black people in a black neighborhood, or white people in a white neighborhood, and you're black in the white in the first case, black in the second, I would think you'd have some opinions. Those opinions may not be as strong as a person who's actually a member of that group. But I believe it was Chekhov who said that everything I know about humanity I learned from myself. The real question is, if other human beings are a mystery to you, you can't know yourself very well. If you know yourself well, other human beings will not be a mystery to you. But having a woman who I love and I trust, who understands writing and understands me, who's actually engaged with this story, Even though I'm taking the first draft, even though it's my idea, I developed it primarily, I'm doing the first draft. Tananarive has created a context in my life where this kind of idea could come to me in the first place. Also, once I came up with the log line, the basic pitch line, developing it into five page pitch, she was there helping me think that through. Once I developed it to a 16 page pitch, she was there with that too. Now I'm doing the first draft, but I'm asking her questions, questions, questions. And today I had this core insight and some things we did not know about a female character in the story, I said, and I waited. It was about, you know, 24 hours ago, a little less than 24 hours, that I had the insight that I was not in love with her. But I already knew that there was something that was missing from her. So for about 36 hours, I had been sort of asking myself, what's wrong here? What, what am I missing here? And I came up with an idea and I. I spent about 12 hours rolling it around. I went to sleep with it, I woke up with it. And before I would even ask her the question, why? I guess it's shyness, nervousness. I don't want my idea to get slapped down. Nobody likes to hear no. So I examined it from several different points of view. Would this make sense? Does it make sense historically, psychologically? Does it make story sense? Would it move something forward? Does it help? Does it provide images that we have not seen? Does it. Does it create something special? Is it a special spice in the stew? And once I had all those things, I ran it past her and she approved of the idea immediately. Oh, no problem. Of course, of course. Such and such could happen over here. Oh, okay, great. So I now know this person a little bit. And then there's that question. Well, in terms of falling in love with her. What do we need? Does it make sense that the scene in which she falls in love with the male lead is the scene in which we peel away some of that strength, show her softness, but at the same time, we're peeling away some of his strength, showing his softness. We're showing the moment at which they see into each other more deeply. If we play that right, will it give the audience that experience we want? She agreed that it would. Then we thought about. There is something called the dark night of the soul. You know, the hero's journey that I use to plot with. I also use it to plan my projects. There's this thing called the dark night of the soul. Usually happens in the last 25% of the story. It is the moment of greatest failure. Okay? In this particular case, in this particular movie, there is a structural dark night of the soul. In other words, what the audience thinks is happening. And then there is the actual dark night of the soul, the moment that, from the character's point of view, is the deepest moment of despair. Okay? And once we identify the difference between those two things, then it became, how can we set this moment up to be as deep and as dark and as painful as it could possibly be? Because great victory comes at great price. And if I want the audience to walk out of the theater feeling, wow, what a movie. Wow, what an experience, which is, you know, you always have to ask, how do you want people to feel when the story's over, when they close the book, put down the story, turn off the television set, walk out of the movie theater? How do you want them to feel? Everything you've done in that story has been to set up the feeling you want them to have when they walk out of the movie theater, if that makes sense. So Tononari came up with a real suggestion, a beautiful suggestion, and I immediately jumped for it. Immediately jumped for it, by the way. Hi, everybody. Hi, Ed. Hi, Mark. Hi, Lance. Hi, Nancy. Hello, Ross and Jennifer, my old friend. And Rick Mathis and Ronnie aloft. Thank you all you guys for being here. And what I'm going to hope is that what I've been talking to you about, about how valuable it was to be able to sit and talk to Denonoret, or how valuable it is to move back and forth to the male and female aspects of your personality, or how valuable it is to move back and forth to the child and adult parts of your personality. I'm going to be putting on display for you live, starting on Saturday, four weeks, okay? You go to. To Register for this. You go to life right dot com. Register for it@liferight.com totally free. All you have to do is show up. We will have some replays but you got to register for it. And if you will, if you think you know people who would like this, writers, groups, other stuff, share it with them totally free. And we're going to have an amazing time and it's going to be scary as hell because I'm going to be letting you see how I actually think at every step of the process of creating a story. And Tananari will be showing you how she thinks. And there will be times when we disagree about things. We might fight live on camera. Who knows? It happens. I mean, I fight with myself about stuff so it's only natural that I'm going to fight with my partner. And the rule between me and Tananarine is we have to be able to fight. But the relationship itself is never on the line. So if you kind of wonder what it would be like to watch two people who love each other, two frankly world class writers who love each other, working together, taking the entire process apart, putting it back together from beginning to end. Join us starting this Saturday. If you know someone who you think would love it, show them this video. Give them liferight.com liferight. Com come and join us. We're going to have one heck of a good time and it's appropriate that this Halloween because I'm going to be scared to death. You take care, guys. Bye. Bye.