Emotional Beats. "Method Writing"

I think it was Jane Espenson who recently blogged about writing emotional beats and how they can affect you as you sit there on your keyboard. She said she knows people who cry while they write. No shit.

I remember when I wrote a scene where my lead girl hears the last words of her man who offed himself. Boy. Half a box of Kleenex. I don't know if it's because I use compound characters or why the hell I'm "in the picture". I felt so horrible. I felt like I needed to call someone. Damn, middle of night. The crisis helpline, perhaps? I seriously considered it allthewhile questioning my own sanity, which means that in a way I was a candidate for the crisis hotline. "Sniff, sniff, hello? Yes, I'm writing a script, sniff, and the love of her life, the man she wanted to re-unite with, sniff, went over the cliff on his motorcycle". Yoah, that would have gone over real well with the hotline-volunteers.

The next few days I felt drained. No need to get near the script. Exhausted and tired. Idiot that I can be sometimes, I sought consolation - from a Normalo person. Yeah, I know. That could be a surefire way to get yourself committed. (Not to Writers' Bootcamp, of course, or to a nice retreat.... Stories do exist about writers' attempts to get free food/shelter/paper/pens ... and the loony bin's better than the slammer. Or so the logic goes.) Stating the obvious: Miss Normale gave me the look. No, I didn't see it. You could practically hear it over the phone. The silence. The way it took her a while to say something completely unhelpful. I sailed over the cliff straight down the Grand Canyon. She was up there, locked in completely where one watches documentaries on animal life and never gets lost in anything. That reality that just is, not the one you may create yourself, occasionally... Anyway - at least that scene I wrote panned out exactly as I had hoped it would....

Same script, different scene: I sat down to write a scene where my lead girl gets chewed out by her best friend/confidante, the helper char. It went extremely well. Then helper snapped, fired a comment at lead girl that was so out of line and below the belt, lead girl turned into an ice block, helper slammed the door as she left the scene. Lead girl poured herself a whiskey. On the rocks. I sat in shock. Nooooooooo.

OMG, helper, what are you doing? Are you nuts? She'll never talk to you again, look at her! Not for a very very long time, anyway, and only if you come crawling and have a really, really good apology. Do you have one? I don't. I can't have that, you're the helper, don't you get it? You have to be there for her. Urgh! I need more coffee. And a few cigarettes. Huh, what do I care, I just delete what you said and pretend nothing happened. No. Coffee. Cigarettes. Om, om. Breathe. Finger next to the delete key, I re-read. And re-read. I can't delete it. I can't. It's great. It's true. I'm screwed, but that's how it went down.

All I could think was: I'm screwed. Helper's not being there to do her job. Om, om. I'm over. End of story. Three days or so of agony over that. I felt very lost. I knew this was how this scene had to turn out, this was the truth. I simply was a bit fuzzy as to why exactly.

Until I wrote the inevitable apology. And that's when I learned why helper girl said what she said. Had nothing to do with lead girl, of course. She wasn't angry at her as a person or a friend, she was shooting the messenger for delivering a truth she didn't want to know or have to face.

So I was left to figure out what lead girl was going to do without helper. This unfortunate turn of events made for a better story. The chars did nothing wrong, they were just being true to themselves. The argument and the apology are two of the best moments in that script, I think.

Of course, if something like that would happen during the 14-Day-Screenplay challenge, I'd be so screwed.