Lighting Up Stories
Ah, Christmas movies… Are you a Grinch or are you, like me, an enthusiastic? If you landed on this post, chances are, you love Christmas movies. Each year, my daughter and I make a point of watching the most cringing Christmas movie. Our favorites: Lindsay …
“The question is not whether or not we are capable of making AI more intelligent than us. The question is, will we be able to live with it?” – Dr. Robert Ford, Westworld (2016). This line from the thought-provoking TV series Westworld perfectly captures the …
Like cooking, writing needs essential ingredients. And like cooking, the better your ingredients are, the better is the end result.
So what are those ingredients?
The concept is the core idea of your story. It’s the HOOK.
The concept of your project is what sets it apart and grabs people’s attention when you send out your manuscript or screenplay, making them curious and eager to read it.
The concept answers the question: What is the story about? (in a broad sense).
To create a great concept, you need to start with the very famous What if question. If you can’t put your idea into a what if question, you’ve got a problem.
What if AI wants to rule our world? (Westworld) What if you die and end up in heaven instead of hell where you belong? (The Good Place). What if a great number of people disappear randomly on the same day at the same time? (The Leftovers).
If it’s a good concept, it should present a conflict to come, and we want to know more about it. It creates a sense of excitment. I strongly recommend to start with your concept before writing your story.
The theme is the underlying message of your story.
It could be your opinion as an author. Opinion doesn’t mean that you have to teach your readers a lesson. Writers are not there to do a lecture. It’s more about your UNDERSTANDING of the topic you decided to talk about.
The deeper meaning (or theme) is not always obvious, but it’s always there. It answers this question: What is your story saying? Or Why does it matter?
If done well, everything in your story should reflect your theme: the characters, the settings, the plot itself… The theme is like a diamond, it has different reflections.
A theme explores a universal human experience, what it means to be a human being (love, loss, loneliness, fear, poverty etc…).
For instance, the themes of the TV series Dead To Me (excellent TV series by the way) are Loss, Love and Friendship. And the screenwriter Liz Feldman explores many angles of those themes. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.
The plot, however, answers this question: what happens in the story?
It’s more about the actions and events that occur in the story and move it forward. That includes all the problems, conflicts, obstacles, and resolutions that shape the journey of your characters.
The plot is difficult to craft, because it should be believable but not predictable.
The key is to follow your characters AND to ask yourself: ‘Is this scene a bit cliché?’. If the answer is ‘yes’ then go against it.
The last ingredient is the reason why people care about your story: the characters, because they identify with them.
The concept, the theme and the plot will attract them to your story, and the characters will make them stay until the end. It’s probably the only thing they will remember years after reading your story.
So take care of your characters, get to know them, live with them, hear them speak and make sure they are unforgettable.
There is no good story without those four elements.
The concept grabs attention–It’s the big idea and should be exciting.
The plot answers the concept in actions done by your characters, and the more those actions are unpredictable, the better your story is.
The theme gives the story an emotional and intellectual depth. It makes people think about it way after they saw your script or your book.
And the characters embody everything mentioned above.
Well…I don’t’ know about you, but now that I’ve talked about cooking, I’m feeling quite peckish… for writing!
Happy writing x
Hey, let me tell you a secret: I’m never in the mood for writing. I think about writing all day and night. But, when it’s time to sit in that chair and work… I do something else. Oh, but I have many good excuses. You …
In life, there is never a time when you say: I’ve arrived! I’ve always thought that we were all part of a big game. The first time I shared this thought to one of my classes, I had a complete silence and shocked eyes in …
Who’s not afraid of talking in front of random people ?
And if I hear ‘Hey I’m not !’ It’s because you’ve done it before.
So here is the deal, you have an important pitch, an interview in front of a panel of people or even bigger…. a public speaking gig and you don’t know how the hell you’re going to survive this.
BREATHE. You’ve got this.
Here are 10 ways to get you started.
Oh gosh. There’s nothing worse than getting in front of people when you don’t know:
a) what to expect.
b) when you don’t know your subject.
So first, do some research. Find out what you have to talk about.
Secondly, ask for how long you’ll be interviewed for.
My best interviews are the ones when the host told me as many details as possible beforehand. Then I know what I will be talking about. I can get my bullet points ready. When I say BULLET POINTS I mean it. I don’t prepare a speech ever. I prepare KEYWORDS.
For an interview, I try to prepare all the questions they could ask me.
For a pitch or a gig, I prepare all the major points to highlight.
Prepare your subject inside out. Know it. Own it. Breathe it.
Before going to a new classroom, I FEEL the space.
I send greetings to it and to the people to come.
I become one with the walls, the desk, the stage, the mousepad and the computer. I prepare a magic bubble.
When my energy settles in, that’s it baby, I’m in.
But what if you don’t have access to the room beforehand?
Can you google the room or place? Can you arrive a bit earlier?
If you can’t, simply close your eyes and visualize the space, the people, and see yourself completely at ease in it.
If you have a pitch, pitch it to everyone you know.
Let them ask you questions and answer them.
If can’t answer their questions, do your homework and get ready.
Make an effort for your audience as if you were going on a date. Because it’s kind of a date anyway.
However you don’t want to wear something that is not you. If you never wear high heels, it’s not the time to try them out. Just be the best version of yourself. Enough to breathe confidence.
Don’t think too much of how you look though. Focus on what you are for, on the message you need to deliver. Focus on your audience not on how you look.
Before you get dressed, blast some Led Zep and dance, get some steam off.
Enough to feel so damn good. You need to have a high level of energy.
Have you ever come across a teacher or a speaker that has no enthusiasm whatsoever? It sends you right to sleep or make you think of your to do list. The last thing you want is to bore your audience.
Enthusiasm is contagious. Remember this.
Don’t say ‘I’m nervous’. Your brain is listening and as a result, it will make you sweat and stutter.
Instead tell yourself: ‘I’m so excited’. Your brain will also be listening and will help to go through it with ease.
They’re not your enemies. They want to learn from you.
They want to be inspired, to be motivated, to be enlightened. They want to spend a good time with you and you with them.
So send them love, you’re on the same page.
If you can, make eye contact with them, smile, send them good vibes. I promise you they’re going to feel it.
I teach a lot. And as it happens, I really love my 100+ students each year and the former ones too. I love their beautiful bright minds and as a result, I get brilliant results from my students, no one drops my class and they send me so much LOOOOve.
Boredom is your worst enemy.
The brain is sensitive to contrast. Therefore, in your speech, try to be lively.
Speak slow and then fast, crack a joke, be thoutful. Change your tone.
Mix your presentation. Have slides, film extracts, games, jokes and try to improvise if you can.
Don’t bore them with details or long anecdotes about your life. They don’t care. It’s all about them baby.
Be respectful in your speech of course but also with their time. They’re hear to learn something. They want a takeaway.
Figure out what they need and give it to them. They need to come out of your speech totally transformed.
One of the best seminar I have assisted in my life was ‘Breaking into Script Reading’ with Lucy V. Hay. I was a different person when I came out of this. Life changing.
My first live gig, I’m not going to lie to you. I was awful.
My first class, I was nervous as hell, my body was shaking, I was stuttering and sweaty. A nightmare.
Fortunately, I had no choice, I had to show up every week, so after a while, the shaking stopped. It took me years to feel at ease. Now I can say that I am a truly blessed teacher who has a blast with her students.
After my awful first gig, I had another one and another one and another one. I started to chill. Even better, I started to enjoy it. A few years back, no way I was going to say that!
Practice makes it perfect they say. I say practice makes it better.
And also, don’t forget that those events are wonderful opportunities to meet wonderful people. They can create new openings, new job opportunities, new luck in your life, so go for it!
By the way, here is my last gig and gosh I loved doing it. I hope they’re going to call me again next year!
Some of my friends told me they wanted to give up on their writing career. I know that they have been working very hard for more than 15 years. They wrote screenplays and published some novels. Yet, they don’t see the light at the end …
If you love marketing and love being on social media, this post is NOT for you. It’s aimed at people who are allergic to it. Like me. I’m a screenwriter and like all entrepreneurs, if I want clients, I need to promote my business. The …
If you’re a parent working from home, you know the drill. It’s when you’re in the middle of an important email that the kids come to you. They’re either hungry, bored, or they broke something that needs to be fixed NOW.
And if it’s not the kids, it’s a family member who decides to show up for a coffee because they need a break. As you’re a kind person, you accept and meanwhile the clock goes by and you haven’t done any work.
Of course, by the time they leave, you’re full of resentment and it’s time to do the school run or to cook dinner.
When you work from home, often people think you’re on holiday.
Therefore, your first task is to tell them that it’s not because you are physically here, that you’re available.
If they have a half a brain, they’ll get the message.
With the kids, however, it’s another matter and we’ll discuss that but before let’s define time management.
Let’s be clear about time management once for all:
Can you stretch time? Can you add an hour to your day?
Can you travel backward or forward in time?
Unless you’ve got super powers, for the majority of us, the answer is no.
So we can all agree that we cannot manage time itself. The only thing we can manage is ourselves.
In The Big Leap (great book by the way), Guy Hendricks suggests to develop a harmonious relationship with time, and ‘to stop thinking that the master is time and that we are the slaves.’ He also advises us to stop complaining about time or the lack of it.
The reason is simple. If you complain about something, you focus on it. And what you focus on, expands. The more you complain about time, the less time you get.
Our society values immediate results. The word ‘productivity’ is on every lip. Even kids are scheduled to death from the age of two (swimming lessons, play dates…). As if the rule was the more you do, the more you’re worth (which is BS by the way).
Unfortunately, people have a negative emotion towards boredom. Nevertheless, boredom is good. It makes you think. Thinking is great. People don’t have enough time to think.
Moreover, teaching boredom to kids means that they have to be creative. As a child I was left on my own all the time (I was a latchkey kid). I escaped my loneliness by reading and writing stories (of course the internet wasn’t around at that time). As a result, I very rarely bored.
However, often, kids or/and partners, when they see you at home, they think you’re available on Demand like Netflix.
So the first thing to do is to set boundaries. Except that with kids, the time limit has to be shorter.
They cannot understand the concept of ‘do not disturb me between 10am to 2pm’.
Instead you have to talk in their language. ‘Mummy has something to do for work for the duration of two videos of DanTDM or Tiana (or whatever they’re into).
Once understood, work as fast as you can because they know how long a video is.
Put all your focus on that task. It’s not about being productive but about being efficient.
Then give them a reward – spend some time with them.
And repeat.
Vishen Lakiani, the CEO of Mindvalley, says that we always overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in three.
It’s also true for the parents at home who often overestimates what he/she can do during the day with kids.
These days, there is an obsession to think big whereas, I suggest doing the opposite. Think small. Accumulate mini tasks. As a teacher, I always give my students mini-tasks and I tell them ‘I give you 5 minutes’. Their first reaction is always ‘Oh wait but we can’t do that in 5 minutes!’ but once they realize they actually can, they’re very pleased with themselves. Don’t underestimate what you can accomplish in 5, 10 or 15 minutes.
Having less time to work doesn’t mean that you won’t be efficient. Instead you’re going to learn to work twice faster. Your brain will actually be more productive than a person at work all day.
Add some mindfulness or meditation to your day and you’ll get superpowers. After all, as Guy Hendricks points it out, ‘Business is ultimately a spiritual path’.
Kids are smart. They understand everything, even if they’re young.
I always tell my kids what I have to do, why I’ve got to do it and by when. They understand deadlines, because they have them at school. Once they know, they’re less likely to disturb you.
But there is something even better…
Get them involved; see if they can help you with small tasks. Kids love participating. They don’t feel left out and they enjoy being your little assistant.
On Sundays, look at your week ahead. Make a list of your duties as a parent and a list of your working goals.
Look at your week and once you realistically block the time for the school runs, dinner time, the food shopping, cleaning and all the boring stuff… see how many hours you have to accomplish your work.
Schedule your tasks and your objectives. It’s crucial to prioritize at this point, you won’t be able to do it all.
Try to plan your meals for the week so you’re not wandering in the supermarket like a fly around a lamp shade.
Don’t work at night to catch up with work, you’ll end up cranky and tired the following day.
Plan what you’re going to wear too. It’s not because you work from home that you have to be sloppy. Wearing smart clothes will set your mood for the week. You mean business, don’t you?
Instead of scheduling each hour of your day, create blocks of time.
Most people are more productive between 10am and 2pm. if it’s your case, schedule your heavy lifting task during that time. Do the easy bits after or before that time.
Here is the secret though: you don’t have to finish a task during that time slot. If it needs more work, work on it the following day on the same time slot.
Sometimes you will have an overflowing inbox of people asking you to do things for them (for free). Learning to say no is hard but necessary.
I used to say ‘yes’ all the time, too scared to miss an opportunity even if it wasn’t paid. I ended up reading novels or scripts from strangers and giving notes which represented hours of my time for nothing as a result apart from feeling exhausted.
Now before doing any work, I send my fees. Do that and I promise you, you’ll get rid of all the time wasters in no time and have respectful clients instead.
As my friend Jade Dee (Poet, screenwriter, and publisher) wrote in a poem:
‘Never waste a moment of time. It slips away so fast. The worst disrespect a person can do to you is wasting your time. Money you can earn back, but time is gone forever.’’ –Jade Dee
Apart from the occasional meeting, my evenings are for my kids. Period. That’s my rule. I even switch off my phone quite early at night, so I can stay fully present. We either watch a film or play a board game, but it’s our time. They need it, I need it.
I don’t know if you have noticed but I didn’t advise you to delegate. Do you know why? Because often the parent working from home has no one to delegate. (If you do, you’re very lucky, please do delegate).
Unfortunately, I know too many people where the partner undermines their partner’s work because they’re working from home. Therefore, the person working from home will still have to do the cleaning, the shopping and the school runs AND their work of course. It often ends up in burn out though. See previous post: https://pilotlightwriting.com/how-to-recover-from-burnout/
As for single parents, they can’t shout at their kids: ‘Hey today we’re not eating because I’ve got work to do’. Whether they feel like it or not, they have to do all the duties (from DIY, to cleaning, cooking and school runs) and their work too.
To regenerate and keep healthy, it’s important to block time for yourself too. Otherwise, you’re going to end up stressed out and unproductive at your job anyway. Resting is not doing nothing. Resting is the only way your body and brain recover.
When your kids see you working from home, they understand what can of job you do and they put a face on your colleagues, and as a result, they feel closer to you.
Kids are also great to help you to stay in touch with new trends, new technologies, and life in general. You learn from them as much as they learn from you.
In a Japanese interview he gave in 1976, Steven Spielberg said: ‘the man who has time to spend time with his kids and his family is a very rich man’. Yes, he may haven been doing his dream job but he didn’t have time to spend time with his kids. for him, it was a big price to pay.
So consider yourself rich.
Kids need to see you are there for them, that you’re bringing them safety and love.
Looking after your children is the most difficult job on earth and definitely the most underrated.
However, you have the future generation in your hands. The generation who is going to build a better world and society. Children are magical beings, they’re our only hope. You’re doing great, I’m telling you.
Image by Rudy & Peter Skitterians at Pixabay All types of characters are necessary to make a story interesting. The more diverse, the better. Today the light is on the Unfiltered Character. The Unfiltered Character Unfiltered characters are often direct and surprise us by their …