A Transformative Experience

(Some thoughts on the middle of things)

Pals,

I started posting to Substack in the middle of the pandemic (which we are really still in the middle of—winter is coming) with the hopes of getting some of my thoughts on teaching and writing together in a central location for a manuscript based on my craft lectures at the Warren Wilson MFA Program, where I have taught for going on 13 years (and thus have a book-length manuscript of thirteen essays to get ready for submission).

But as soon as I made that decision, to really focus on my next book, I started to sell some scripts again and a number of film and television projects went into active (i.e. paid) development work. (Paying the bills has always been my most powerful muse, and it’s hard not to focus on the proverbial birds in one’s hand.) I’ve been collaborating with some amazing artists over the past year (Alissa Nutting! Michael Perry! Justin Vernon! Michael Showalter! Tim Heidecker! Benjamin Percy! Amy Schumer! Alissa Nutting again! And more!) on various ideas and scripts and projects that may never see the light of day. Such is the nature of TV/film work, where you finish something beautiful on the page and then need to convince a major corporation to give you tens of millions of dollars to finish it for an audience.

My nonfiction book has also morphed into something completely unexpected, which I hope to share with the world sometime in the next year, but in the meantime, I have decided to dust off this dormant newsletter into something a bit more casual, a place to hold ideas on the writing life, craft issues, and other preoccupations I have at the present moment, which I may revisit again when it’s time to shape the book. Expect an eclectic grab bag of thoughts, often with typos!

This week, I thought I’d get back into posting by sharing a little thought I had on the middle of things (stories, scripts, novels, essays, even poems) while teaching my Monday night TV writing seminar at Grinnell College this week. I have a great group of students, and a lot of them have wonderful ideas for a pilot, and really strong openings and closings. But the middle of things sometimes feels a bit flat, or soggy, or rushed; since I often have this problem with my own early drafts, I decided to try and formulate a little theory on middles. Maybe not a theory. More like a thought.

In class, we watched the pilot episode of Barry on HBO Max this week, which is a pilot that is brilliant in its simplicity. Normally, I teach that most pilots, especially half-hours, have a false euphoric high (I’m in love! My problems are solved! This new house is perfect!) or a false rock bottom (My baby left me! My problems will kill me! This new house is haunted!) right in the middle. But in class, I wanted to go a little more in depth with how a midpoint, whether it's a high or low point, might work over the course of several scenes or pages or minutes in your own work. I’m talking about pilots here, but I think this can be applied to screenplays, short stories, novels, essays, poems, memoirs, etc.

Usually around a third or a quarter into a pilot script, about 8-12 pages in, we’ve already been introduced to a character who, scene-by-scene, finds themselves under relentless pressure (i.e. “Breaking Bad” or “Dead to Me”), increasing confusion (“Mad Men” or “Atlanta”), or increasing disappointment/grief (“Barry” or “Insecure” or “Reservation Dogs”), and this by around 10-15 minutes into your pilot, this character (or these characters) is under increasing pressure to DO SOMETHING.

So while the set-up shows them being passive, overwhelmed by their situation in life--somewhere around page ten (in a half hour) you want to see the character going from passive to active. This is probably also true about 3-4 pages into a story or 25-50 pages into a novel.

(For example, in my novel Summerlong, the transformative moment—Claire Lowry asking her husband Don the transformative question, “Why are we still married?” as police cars descend on their home happens right around page fifty, by design. Once that question is asked, it not only can’t be answered, but it also can’t be taken back.)

Usually, this new ACTIVE state is disorienting--characters enter a new world. They are challenged. (You can see both Barry and Sally go through this in the pilot of Barry if you tune in around the 8th minute and watch until about minute 16.) In Donna Tartt’s novel, The Secret History, this happens when the narrator, Richard, listens to his best friends confess to murder. The air changes in the room. The floor wavers. Someone down the hall is listening to The Grateful Dead. And then passive, observant, overly pensive, dead broke Richard decides to help his friends cover-up the murder.

This disorientation of the active state usually escalates in a way that they didn’t expect (Barry finds himself in an acting class; Sally is publicly bullied by her acting teacher) so your character(s) are now RATTLED.  If your characters don’t feel somewhat rattled in the middle of your pilot, it’s possible there is not enough at stake for them.

Now, ACTIVE AND RATTLED it's like they're DYING to do something that changes them. (Remember, they'll risk destruction to find liberation in any good pilot—that’s the universal set-up; the present is unbearable. They will die trying to change it if they need to do that.)

This makes them come ALIVE. They experience a transformative moment, a revelatory moment. (Again, Barry is a pilot where you can really see these kinds of moments clearly, just in the simple gestures and facial expressions of the actors.)

This spurs them to have a NEW GOAL at MIDPOINT: Sometimes it's positive (become an actor), but sometimes it's negative (for example, they realize there is a monster (literal or metaphoric) they must face or a ghost (literal or metaphoric) haunting them. 

Either way, the TRANSFORMATIVE moment changes their intentions--giving you a bunch of plot for the second half.

My Warren Wilson MFA lecture in January will be about intentions, so expect some thoughts on intentions coming soon.

And you, pal. Are you stuck in the middle of something? Is life asking you to consider moving from the passive state to an active one. Yes, you will be disoriented. You will be rattled. But you might also be transformed into something you didn’t expect.

Your pal,

DB

p.s. If you have a script or story that feels stuck, try revisiting your middle with these things in mind, and let me know how it works for you!

And if you like this sort of thing,  I am teaching a class on exactly this kind of craft lesson online through Chicago’s great StoryStudio on February 28th.

I’ll also be teaching at the Lighthouse Workshops in Denver this summer, as well as the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

But for now, summer feels a million miles away. It’s very wintry and cold here in Iowa City and I’m eager to get back to LA for a bit next week.