The method elsewhere

First off, my sincere apologies to all my avid readers (I know there are at least two of you…I think) for my long absence. Storyrules will regain momentum in the coming months now that a few larger life issues that cropped up this past season are mostly out of the way. I won’t tell you what these are because privacy is important - especially with the way Google and the government are trying to capture my online essence with its massive feelers and use it for their own greedy purposes - but let’s just say they include ‘buying a condo’, ‘DIY renovation on said condo’ and ‘changing jobs’. Yes, life will continue.

But I must share the following:
Idea City - the blog of marketing/advertising shop GSD&M - wrote about a post by Farming Phronesis which attempts to apply basic principles of the Method to strategic planning. Ah ha, vindication at last. Well, not so much but it is certainly an interesting read. It is actually true then; ideas are never truly unique. They are simply plucked from the cloud of abstraction by curious, watchful travelers of life. Pretentious? You may as well call the thing what it is.

Excerpt:
1) Be your target group. Dress like them, act like them, go where they go, listen what they listen to, eat what they eat, watch what they watch, read what they read…you get my point.

Finding inspiration in art

Its no secret that creators of something from nothing regularly take inspiration and cues from art, among other things. That is why I must share with you the fantastic collection of images from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University Library - The Fantastic in Art & Fiction.

Drawn! recently posted about this and it is an amazing reference.

You’ll find hundreds of rare illustrations and inscriptions of demons, devils, and other fantastic creatures.

Women and Men are more than equal

Women increasingly dominate men in most arenas. This fact gives guys like me an inferiority complex that I overcome in the shameful and immature manner of putting women down. I mean to joke about this topic but my sense of humor is often too dry and jokes come across as reality.

I want to make it entirely clear that I judge people based on who they are intellectually, what their principles are and the actions they take each day. In a past post I conjectured that there should be a male owned and operated advertising agency because the field is overrun with women. It is interesting to me that if we say that a field is overrun with men then there is nothing wrong with that statement but in saying that advertising is overrun by women I am classified as a misogynist almost immediately. I do not think women are in any way less able than men. In fact, I think women are a step up these days in many ways.

Male-owned and operated business

Here is a business idea I don’t mind sharing - a male owned and operated advertising agency. Minority owned businesses are ALL THE RAGE GUYS. So now I will add one more to the mix. Hispanic owned, woman owned, african-american owned - meet man owned.

I love women in more ways than you know. I think they’re smart, creative and generally nice to look at. But too much of a good thing is bad. The field is overrun with estrogen and its enough to turn you into a hermit. Incidentally, check out my post on hermitage for a great place to go if you need it.

We get enough estrogen from our significant others in the morning and at night. We don’t need the hysterics and the drama during the day. Give us a break ladies. All we’re trying to do is change the world. Can’t we do that in peace?

So yes, I will advocate the creation of a male-owned and operated advertising agency. It is a niche worth filling. And imagine the PR…

Thinking is the Writer’s Curse

When we come up with stories, we generally create a tonal landscape first. Basically we define how the story will feel. The environment, characters and interactions use it as a jumping off point. Most of us don’t consciously decide how a story will feel. But whether we choose it consciously or not, the creative landscape is defined before the rules for the story are created.One of the biggest problems at this early stage is the tendency to think too much. We get lost in details that shouldn’t be focused on before there is a solid tonal foundation for each setting. It’s the curse of the creative - the ability to see and consider the possibilities almost as immediately as the idea appears.

Getting bogged down in the details of the creative direction can make us cross it off before it is fleshed out. This is generally a problem because a good direction may not be good until it is given time to develop. In my next post, I’ll try to talk about what the goal should be for storyscaping and one method to find the way there. I did not invent the word ’storyscape’, by the way.

It’s a Rainy Night in Georgia

“In my career I’ve found that ‘thinking outside the box’ works better if I know what’s ‘inside the box.’ In music (as in life) we need to understand our pertinent history - and moving on is so much easier once we know where we’ve been.”

- Starbucks cup
Dave Grusin
Award-winning composer and jazz musician

What a great public service Starbucks does by putting quotes on their cups. I’m not sure whether I agree with what I just wrote but I know that I like that quote.

I love to read. Actually I usually listen to audiobooks (thanks Audible). Some of the best thinking I’ve done has come during or after reading books like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Homer’s Odyssey, Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and or Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. There are timeless ideas here that modern writers often dismiss or even disdain.

I spend time understanding classic pieces because their ideas are time-tested and hold fundamental truths about human nature which are always relevant. Many readers today don’t remember these books, therefore the ideas I adapt from them aren’t stale at all. In fact, I am often recognized as a unique thinker merely for repeating what has already been said. The beauty of great stories is that they never really get old. Shhhh…if you don’t tell, then I won’t either.

Getting in bed with my characters

Empathy plays a major role in method writing. My job as a writer is to first understand the way my characters feel and how they react to circumstances before I write anything. Rather than forcing specific attributes on my characters, I attempt to allow them to take a more natural path in development. Not only can this result in the most perfect combination of attributes for each character, it also ensures that all the pieces for that character fit together in a logical, believable way.

Sense Memory is an exercise in which I choose one specifically defined experience - emotional or physical - to recreate from my own experience. Then I channel the feelings from that experience into the context of my story, scene and character. Here’s how I do it:

1. Choose a scene or character for the exercise. Only one.
2. Identify the problem that the character/scene is facing. You can also focus on a problem with your story arc as a whole.
3. Pick a very specific place, person, or object from your personal life (i.e. extreme cold, bedroom, ex-girlfriend, homeroom…etc)
4. Close your eyes (unless you’re really experienced) and stop thinking about all else except that one experience
5. Recreate the environment - however basic or crazy - one object at a time by asking questions of yourself. For example, what does it smell like, how heavy is it, what is it’s texture?
6. Once you are immersed in the feelings associated with the environment you’ve created and you can’t think of anything but the moment, you channel it into the scene or character we defined at the beginning
7. Allow the environment to morph in your imagination, one object at a time or all at once but don’t lose yourself or the emotions you’ve conjured. Stay connected to the feelings.
8. You are suddenly with the character in its own context. Force yourself to deal with the purpose of the scene and begin writing everything that happens in first person. React as yourself or as you watch the character reacting.

Sense memory is a core tool for the method actor. I’ve adapted the basic theory behind it for writing. If you say blasphemy, I say sure. It helps me write, though.

DISCLAIMER: If you permanently damage your psychological state as a result of this rather care-free exploitation of sense memory, please don’t blame it on storyrules.

The Inaugural Post - Method writing

So it comes to this. There must be 458,269 books on becoming a successful writer (I have no hard data to back that up) by authors with more clout and more salt than the humble amateur behind storyrules. But here we are all the same, thinking about what it means to tell a story and what the best way is to tell it and gain recognition fastest.

Storyrules is not about becoming successful as a writer though. It is a daily exploration of how to uncover a creative direction’s context in order to find an honest story inside of it. This is the basis for Method Writing.

Tonight a dream of passion begins its journey anew. This inaugural post is a salute to stories, to writers, to readers and to that invisible place in space where ideas patiently await discovery. Welcome to the home of method writing. I hope you enjoy it.