My Head Disappeared

The screenwriting class is… well, my head disappeared for awhile, then it re-appeared. Meaning that my first attempt at writing an action-idea for a screenplay tanked. It was a lame idea anyway and never grew legs for me.

So I began to panic after the instructor said that everyone in the class handed in a situation rather than an action-idea.

That’s when my head disappeared. So I did a search for “action idea” and found this: How to Watch a Movie Like Aristotle

What’s the action idea?

(From Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters by Michael Tierno)

Aristotle teaches us to think of ACTION as the IDEA of the story. In fact, he says that action is more important than people; that is, characters. Aristotle is fanatical about the need for our stories to be about action, about action that is larger than life itself and greater than the persons who partake in it. Think about all the people who say they’re going to do a million things, but in the end, you judge them by what they actually accomplish. That’s why we screenwriters build a dramatic story on a single action. The hero in a dramatic story is whoever (sic) takes the lead in the action.

Did this help you to understand? No? It didn’t help me either. Now a log-line is a one-sentence summary of your script; the high concept is a term used to refer to a succinctly stated premise describing the overall idea of production in just a few sentences or less. But an action- idea contains within it a succinct description of the script’s beginning, middle, and end. I did not know that. In other words, the action-idea summarizes the entire story in a few sentences, emphasizing what happens, that is, the action.

Let me tell you, writing an action-idea isn’t as easy as it looks.

The entire class has to re-write our action-ideas, due on Tuesday (day after tomorrow). So I’ve been pacing the floor, lying awake nights, whining to everyone I know that will listen that I don’t know what my protagonist wants. And until I know what my protagonist wants, I don’t have a story. My first attempt at an action-idea sucked, as I wrote earlier. Finally I ditched it, buried it, gave it a funeral. I decided to try again.

I frantically dug through newspapers, the phone book, the cobwebs of my pathetic brain, and even watched a bunch of films to zone out and give myself a rest, hoping that something would surface.

Then this morning I grabbed a stack of my decrepit journals and settled down on the toilet (well, what do you read on the toilet, huh?) to pore through the pages, ready to sit there until I fell in looking for something I might recognize as an idea. You might be pleased to learn that I opened the first page of the first journal and there it was! My idea! One that I’d tried to hammer into a short story last year but it went nowhere. That’s it! Eureka! Woot!

Okay, so the idea descended from heaven like the second coming of something in a big hurry to go forth and procreate. I rushed to the computer to get it down before I lost it. Beginning to end. Then I told it to my better half who is also my critic and editor. He listened politely and said yes, he liked it. No he didn’t completely. Certain aspects didn’t ring true. He held me accountable. He’s good.

Okay, back to the screen. I hammered out the rough edges. Took me all afternoon, but I finally think I’ve got it down. I poured it out to him again. This time he said he thought it would work.

Now all I have to do is to write the action-idea, and I’m good. My head’s re-appeared. At least for the time being. I mean, the best writers don’t go with their first, second, or even tenth ideas. I’m really free falling here…