The Writing Process - Part 1 - The Notecards

The Notecards

Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black goes over his process in this video, and I love how he takes processes that I've read about, and attempted to implement, but makes them concrete. 

 His focus on research and specificity is incredible - that to make interesting, believable characters, you have to make them very specific - and those specificities will make them universal!

Second, his notecard process - He begins with some basic notecards, bringing in research, trying to think of interesting scenes, etc, and then he lets it evolve. Obviously, even people with no experience screenwriting are familiar with laying out notecaards to begin a story - but what I saw in the video that set it apart was his stacking of them. by tying them into little bundles, he can keep key elements, but lets them have their own kind of flexibility.

Third, he reads the script, watching the movie over and over in his head.- throughout this process, I'm usiing screenwriting terminology, and I've done the majority of my research into the writing process in screenwriting. Unless someone has a compelling argument why this should not be the case, I believe that as a visual medium, comics have the most in common with movies, and writing story for comics is almost entirely the same.

After struggling constantly with trying to assemble my ideas into something that resembles a 3-act form, I let myself in to the restaurant early and spread out on the bar

Notecards are expensive, and we've got a lot of paper lying around, so I broke out the paper-cutter and divided some old menus into 8ths.

 For the purposes of this post, I've got a comic idea that I've been working on based around my first real firefighting experience.  I wrote out some of the basic plot points, and tried to build them into something that had a kind of rhythm.  I don't know about you guys, but even when interesting things happen to me, I rarely feel like they fit into a reasonable structure.

I still feel super intimidated by writing - I've spent years working on my art, and still can't help but feel like I've got so much further to go, and I know that this is another process that takes aspiring novelists and screenwriters decades to perfect, so for the moment, I'm just working on developing ideas, becoming more comfortable with the process.  

Does everyone feel like there's a story inside them?  That all you need are the tools and the confidence to let it out?  When I read a really beautifyl story, that inspires me to write my own.  Austin Kleon in Steal Like an Artist says "Write the book you want to read."  Like most simple things, this one is the most frightening.  I suspect you can never truly reach that height.  It will never be as good as the story in your head.  but maybe it will be close enough to make a connection with a reader.

In a following post, I'll try to follow my own advice, and bring a story past the card stage.