Remember The Quest: Are You Confused Yet? #WBW

WAY, WAY, WAY BACK in 2013, I was selected to participate in THE QUEST - a 24 week screenwriting workshop adventure traveling from story conception to typing "The End". Part of this process was weekly blogging on our realtime feelings and experiences. On #Way Back Wednesdays, I will share one of my weekly QUEST blog posts.

Special thanks to our fearless QUEST leader, Scott Myers, and I strongly recommend his screenwriting site - GO INTO THE STORY.

This blog was posted on August 28, 2013 - the original link is HERE...

There are three little words that will crush a writer’s soul like my Uncle Bubba with empty PBR cans against his oversized forehead. (There was this one time when the beer can wasn’t empty and who knew a head could bleed so much, but that’s another blog post.) This life sucking string of words that you hope to never leave your reader’s lips is “I am confused.”

(*** 2016 UPDATE & FACT CHECK - Uncle Bubba is not a real person, but the embodiment of many great southern gentlemen. ***)

At home, effective communication is the key to my survival. Being the only owner of a Y chromosome in a house full of X’s, I only get a small allotment of words per day, and I must make them count. I also dabble in youth sports coaching and over communicate by strategy. You don’t want parents getting time wrongs for practice or games, and you don’t want blank stares from players at half time. Just ask my daughter what happened when I yelled “sit on the ball” to her in the final seconds of a very close basketball game.

At that thing that helps pay the bills and the tax man, misunderstandings can cost you millions of dollars. We must be as explicit as possible with everything that we do, because confusion equals failure. All of which leads me to…

(*** 2016 OBSERVATION: I really like to blog about the tax man. ***)

This week’s Quest was all about the SCENE – begins, middles, ends; structural goal and emotional goal; character purpose; main conflict; and theme. Our exercise was to write a scene from our stories identifying all of these scene elements.

As with all my past assignments, I put on my “Mad Scientist” lab coat and decided to experiment. My goals were to identify all the elements of the scene before I wrote it. I also decided that I was going to try my hand at a “Walk and Talk” as well as incorporating other tropes found by hitting the random link on TVtropes.com. As an Act 1 “Walk and Talk”, I would have 2 characters walking through different rooms and hallways “gun hanging” while crazy sight gags went down in the background.

(*** 2016 BONUS SWAG: For those wanting to play along at home, I posted my confusing "Walk and Talk", R-Rated scene HERE. Re-reading it today, it was confusing, there are moments that make me wince, but there's a couple of nuggets in there too. ***)

On the positive side, my fellow Quester said my scene was “fun”, “crazy”, and “very visual”, but on the more important side, each one said it was “confusing”. Wah-oh Shaggy! Few lessons learned: #1. Translating from your head to the blank page is hard, and maybe that’s why I find writing dialogue easier. #2. Never submit something until it’s ready. I knew that it was confusing but was so proud of this new born 6 page sequence that I wanted to post it’s baby pictures to the web as soon as possible. #3. Smashing beer cans on your head only makes the pain worse.

Did that make sense? Are you confused yet?

(*** 2016 REFLECTIONS... Man, it was my first attempt at a Comedy, and I was trying way too hard to be funny, but I was/am pretty awesome. ***)

In next week's #WBW - "The Gospel of Theme! Amen! Damn It!"

#TheQuest #WBW #writing #screenwriting