Film has always been a huge love of mine, ever since I first watched Twin Peaks. Ok, sure that was a TV show, but it was created by David Lynch. It was the first time I really started to understand what a film director was and how a director’s work can have its own personality. I felt compelled to watch his films. Which at the age of 15, is quite the eye opener (helloooooo Blue Velvet).
From there I started watching more and reading more. I discovered the greats and the classics. I even started writing films. At some point I had plans to make a film about a scientist who regresses into a murderous animal man. I still have that script, hidden away in a folder of other high school writings.
I went to the film school at a university for two years. I wrote a few things I was proud of, and a few things I wasn’t. I also directed one or two things, but nothing I remember that well. I think my biggest writing fault was becoming so enamored with a tone or an idea, that i forgot to tell a story. It’s something I will have to watch out for going forward.
But film school and I weren’t the best mix. Screenwriting was the only class I enjoyed at the end, so I moved over to English. I expanded what I wrote, but in my heart, I really wanted to write film.
However, once I moved to New York after college, my drinking overtook my writing and any passion or drive dried up. Sure, I would get an idea for a story here and there. But I never wrote them down, and sooner or later they disappeared from my head. Now that I’m sober, I have been trying to find that passion again.
Yesterday I spent my day in a screenwriting class. I am not sure if I learned anything new, per se. We discussed the proper format and structure. We talked about classic films and how the conflict and drama in their stories. At some point, the class was to work on their own stories.
I had this nugget in my head of a story. I started to write it down without much of a clue of where it was going to go. About half way through the class, all of a sudden the story crystallized in my head and on the page. It was that eureka moment that every writer waits for.
I don’t know how to explain how good that felt. To all of a sudden feel like maybe I had a story to tell after all and that maybe I still had some passion hidden inside me. It felt like I was getting back something I had lost.
I have since begun working on the outline of this story, figuring out the twists and the characters. I think its a good solid story and one that I can make into a decent script if I am lucky. It feels good to be writing again.
