When I graduated from my MFA program, I had a couple of hundred pages and no better idea how to write a book than I did going in. I didn’t understand structure, I didn’t understand my process. I didn’t know how to go back and shape something out of the pile of pages I had collected over two years. I didn’t know, even, if I had a point.
So, I made the choice after my MFA program to study screenwriting. It is the MOST structured form of prose writing (poets know that poetry is the most structured of all). And at first I rebelled. The box felt limiting, and worse, wouldn’t you come out with predictable, repetitive stories where you know what’s going to happen before it does?
The answer turned out to be – no. The structure didn’t do that at all. It forced me to work harder at thinking about my choices because it is so easy to fall into cliché – that is, it is always easy to fall into cliché, but working through structure made it clearer to me when I was. I left my screenwriting program with two lumpy screenplays who didn’t quite make a perfect structure, but definitely had more shape than any of my novel attempts ever had.
I learned to use the tools of screenwriting’s rigorous structural demands as brainstorming tools. Loglines can tell me right up from whether or not the story I’m telling is the one I care about. I can tell from an outline if one section is too long, or if I’m repeating myself – and I can brainstorm something new. I can tell right away if I’ve headed into cliché, and try again and again to steer clear.
In the end, I have melded the two parts of me – the one that sits pleased with the story I tell myself in front of a computer, lost in the language and beauty of it all and the one that analyzes – much more quickly than I have ever thought possible, what doesn’t go into my work. And that is what sitting with form can offer.
Today, make one list – all the things that drive you passionately to writing your book. What about your character excites you? How do you imagine your reader feeling as she closes your book? Free write it for 10 minutes and feel the excitement that drives to you write.
Now, write a simple log line – one sentence that explains the character and the story arc. Can you feel your previous excitement in this sentence? If not, how could you? Fiddle with it until that sharp little sentence captures what’s most important to you about your book and your vision. Paste it next to your computer.
What’s your story – in one sentence?
Angie Powers has an M.F.A. in English and Creative Writing from Mills College, where she won the Amanda Davis Thesis Award for her novel, The Blessed. She also has a Certificate in Screenwriting from the Professional Programs at UCLA. She is the co-director and co-writer of the short Little Mutinies (distributed by Frameline and an official selection of the Palm Springs International Short Fest) and was a quarter-finalist for the Nicholl Fellowship and at Blue Cat Screenplay Competition for the full-length screenplay of Little Mutinies. She’s twice made it into the second round of consideration for Sundance Labs and is a Cinestory semi-finalist this year. She also wrote and directed the short Hot Date, which premiered at Frameline. She is currently finishing a new novel and a short film.