Yesterday I had an interesting (read: agonising) experience after doing a rather too-intense workout and came to realise that I needed to respect the boundaries of my body and came to a momentary sense of oneness encapsulating my entire being wherein I stopped being so hard on myself and just chilled. because otherwise I would have a little panic attack thing due to blood being concentrated awkwardly in areas of my body.
One such effect of this was how it made me think about this draft. This afternoon I’m right back to perfectionist mode, but I’m wondering if that’s appropriate.
It’s like the realisation that I came to about what I wanted to happen in the story versus the reality of writing those scenes in regards to how the characters reacted – I was having one of those moments the other day, but for me rather than my characters. it was something that I felt would be cool if I did put it in the story and pulled it off – but not necessary to include. it’s what I’d call a ‘flavour moment’, something that could work, certainly, but one that doesn’t have to.
and again, being a first draft I want to take advantage of the opportunity to just play around and explore everything that I can, but I am coming to feel that a lot of the stuff that I want to include is actually just playing around, rather than storytelling. which is good to learn, certainly.
I think it’s the difference between ‘story’ and ‘drama’ (yes, there is an actual reason for this post’s title); drama is important to push a story forward and make it interesting, but only in combination with meaningful events in the story. on its own – well, it’s just drama, and that’s something that I know I certainly get very sick of very fast in real life, and bores me while reading/watching something for entertainment purposes: drama for the sake of drama, without any real story. it’s the reason I stopped watching TV about five years ago and never really came back to it, because that seemed to be the direction in which all TV shows were going – dramatic padding over meaningful drama that adds to the story.
the particular scene I’m working with right now does have a little to do with the story, but again, it’s not necessary – it’s just that I’ve found a way to incorporate it, and decided to do so. this scene does not need to exist as far as making the story a good one is concerned, but it can. possibly. because I feel like I’m wasting time by writing it, and again, it makes me wish I was doing a full re-write right about now. and also possibly switching to an episodic format, because it’s much easier to cut big projects into segments, mini-goals, whatever, in order to get a clearer focus on each important aspect. plus you can theme episodes. not that you can’t theme chapters, but the mental framework is already there if you call it an ‘episode’, so I may as well go with what makes sense …
Yeah. drafting is very educational, I’ll say that. and again, with the emotional upheaval that was last night’s exercise routine trying to pick up right where I left off after a month of not doing any how smart am I, I theorise that prioritising what’s important, rather than what’s possible, is the way to go.
then again, now that I’m not freaking out, there’s no reason not to experiment a bit. but for this scene at least, I think I know what the test results are already.
Vevacha 