The more you concentrate your focus on point of view and
interior monologue, the closer you find yourself feeling a closer bond with
your characters. This creates for you
the sense of knowing what their goals and agendas are, allowing you to
fantasize exchanges of dialogue such characters in real life might have. The results are painful. Seeing the relationship between characters
brings up events, moments of teasing and exchanges of confidence that are
tangential to the story but revelatory about the characters.
Soon, you are seeing the nuanced web of relationships that
are there, outside story. You rush to
exploit it, creating moments of dialogue and attitude and the intimacy of
friendships that greatly amuse you, even as you realize they will have to go.
Perhaps you can tie in some of the material, prompting you
to keep it for yet another draft.
Trouble is, you become so fond of it that you begin to see it in a
different light, want to hang onto it even though the asides have moved away
from story.
Ah, the inner conflicts you evoke between your various
toolkit of writing selves, casting a shadowy film over the events that move the
story along. You are reminded of
virtuoso soloists in classical music or even the more proficient extemporizers
in jazz, wishing to add dimension to the basic framework, wanting to add
dimensions to the story.
By some acts of definition and examination, a story is a
completed system. You are in effect
trying to take on a mother-in-law apartment, something outside the original
design.
This is not intended to serve as a criticism of add-ons or
of modification in general, merely a reminder that story is an optimal series
of events. By expressed definition,
event is some form of movement or activity, even when the intended activities
are thwarted or shunted aside in some measure of frustrating distraction.
The temptation to begin wandering about in thought instead
of event becomes more intensified as intimacies and attitudes are brought to
the surface. You find yourself wanting
to stop short of outright condemning long bouts of thought in story because you
do want the character to have that part of his or her inner life as an intimate
experience rather than a foreign one.
The solution appears to be yet another vote on your part for
the literal aspects of drama, by which you mean the vision of your characters
having to do more than mere action or more than mere thought in order to convey
to the reader and to other characters within the story the true extent of
emotional involvement. How would an
actor deliver the lines? What gestures
or posture would the actor use to provide a complete and dimensional presence
as opposed to a shadowy one?
What combinations of pace and posture and speech cadence can
best demonstrate how the character is feeling?
How do you make an event out of a line of thought?
How many of your favorite characters tended more toward
persons of action rather than those who were essentially philosophical in
thought and contemplation? What events
are there in thought?
The mastery of the old Jack Benny events relating to the
alleged frugality of his persona are masterful to the point where, in one famed
skit, Jack Benny, walking in a park at night, is accosted by a robber who says
to him, “Your money or your life?”
Long pause, followed by a more impatient reiteration.
Silence from Jack Benny for yet another agonizing
pause.
“Well?” the crook
asks.
“I’m thinking. I’m
thinking.”
Thought, transformed into event. Alchemy.
Story, rushing in to fill the vacuum of silence created by
the thoughtful reflection on a character-based situation.
The quick answer here is to learn how to think action, think
in physical or decision movements. A
story is often a combination of thought and action, married with the
consequences of past actions coming to bear on those who are forced to make
present decisions.
How many times have you been instructed to think before you
act? How many times have you listened to
those instructions?
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