Guest blogger M.S. offers a fresh take on teaching screenwriting, using an unconventional approach that helps young writers push through anxiety and discover their passions, fears, desires, and unique voice. With the aim of building a vibrant, supportive workshop environment, M.S. shares a provocative discussion and a set of writing prompts for high school students below.
"Oh-oh, what's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love but a second-hand emotion??" —Tina Turner
"Nothing in the world belongs to me.
But my love, mine, all mine, all mine." —Mitski
One of my all-time favorite short story collections, a minimalist masterpiece, is Ray Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."
I remember reading Carver for the first time, his simple prose like a lightning bolt; this was Hemingway on GLP-1—raw, electric, cut-to-the-bone writing that bypassed my cerebral cortex and shot right down my spine into my veins and heart.
Carver (and Mitski, and Tina Turner) understood something essential: a truth that good screenwriters, novelists, and poets have long held to be self-evident. When my screenwriting students get stuck, I write the following quote on the whiteboard:
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we... (Fill in the blank.)"
Hands rise and suggestions fly...
"By what we do?" (nope)
"By what we say?" (sometimes, but… not always…)
"By what we eat?" (Sour Patch Kids?)
The answer:
We are shaped and fashioned by what we LOVE. (insert appropriate love emoji here)
And what's love got to do with it? (again.)
Everything.
My screenwriting workshops uncover these essential truths when several writers, stuck deep in their screenplays, halfway between the shore of "great start" and "I'm drowning mid-stream," bemoaned:
"Professor, I'm just not in love with my story."
Yeah... love hurts.
So, do we abandon our stories, our ideas, our characters when we "fall out of love with them?"
Or is there another way?
I challenge my lovelorn workshop:
"Has anyone in this room ever fallen in love with the ‘wrong person,’ someone who was inappropriate for them?"
(beat)
Hand, after hand, after hand(s) fly up... hesitantly at first, then confidently high in the comfort of crowds.
Maybe it was a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or a best friend—but we've all fallen for someone, or something that our family and friends and our own gut said wasn't our "usual" thing.
And I say that's AWESOME.
Here's where we go next: The "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" exercise.
Go back a few years, I tell students. Talk to your younger self. Your inner-child.
Now, make a list of things you "love," and things you "don't love." (Hate is too strong a word, but sure... go ahead and be a hater if that's you doing you).
People you love/and don't love.
Foods you love to eat/and those you won't touch.
Clothing and make-up and brands you love - and stuff you wouldn't be caught wearing in public.
Who do you crush on? And why?
And when did it change? Did it ever change? (I'm betting yes.)
Yes… Change... Grow…. Morph… Evolve…
When did you stop pushing your salad to the side of the plate, and when did you start loving it?
When did Boba become less slippery/slimy - and more an irresistible craving?
When did you start wearing those jeans, and those sweats, and those shoes — when you used to mock them?
And when did that person become less annoying/and more hmm… someone you (wow) find intriguing…
The truth is that we are often drawn to the "other" - the "opposite" - the inappropriate. That which is taboo or verboten or not "us."
And for good reason... It's HOT.
There's a reason we fall into, and out of, love with people, ideas, colors, scents, flavors, and swag. Exploring that tension, that cognitive dissonance, speaks volumes about who we are and whom we are becoming. It's how we write characters and conflicts and why we keep struggling and writing and watching to the end.
It's why Ross falls for Rachel, and Chandler marries Monica. It's why Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew becomes Ten Things I Hate About You. It's why Anna chooses Kristoff, and Hermione and Ron "work." It's why you watch "KPop Demon Hunters" 3x… until you don't… and then you find yourself singing along at a birthday party screening.
We are humans, and we are in/decisive, and we are flawed, and we are constantly falling into and out of love.
(And repeat.)
So go ahead and fall out of love with your characters and story, I say to young writers, but not before questioning why you loved them in the first place.
"Someday," I tell my Mitski-loving, Nerds-scarfing 9th grade daughter, "you're going to fall in love with coffee, and a band, and a romantic partner that I don't really like.."
It's inevitable.
Or as Mitski puts it..
“You're the one
You're all I ever wanted
I think I'll regret this”
Yes...
I already do.
M.S. is a filmmaker and university instructor in Northern California.
From Write the World: Inspired by the author's approach but not yet ready to go full Socratic method in your classroom? Try the screenwriting prompts below as a first step: