Читать книгу The Way of Story - Catherine Ann Jones - Страница 9

Chapter 1

In the Beginning Was

Story. . .

EINSTEIN WAS WRONG. “The world is made up of stories, not atoms,” as poet Muriel Rukeyser once said. Novelist John Steinbeck in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech remarked that “literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed.” This is no less true today. From Shakespeare to Star Wars, from Dante to le Carre, the way of story is a journey of discovery forged by discipline and craft. Though it is craft that transforms the initial raw inspiration into form, storytelling begins within, and is as much as part of our past as our genetic structure.

Storytelling is not only the root of film, theatre, literature, and culture, but of the life experience itself. The listener maintains touch with his mythic self and the truths there represented. In losing touch with our myths, there may be a danger of losing touch with ourselves. Today, in modern society, there is a fragmentation which separates most of us from our central core or soul. With all our progress, perhaps something has been lost which earlier cultures knew to value: the soul connection.

Story has been the foundation of rituals that empower both individual and collective values since society began. Story provides both identity and standards to live by and is thus essential for our well-being. It serves as a mirror to reflect who we are and what we believe in. What story would you choose to live by? The answer offers a clue to your soul, your deepest self.

For thirty thousand years and in the earliest forms of oral tradition, shamans have tended the soul. The very word, shaman, coming from the Tungus people of Siberia, means excited, moved, raised. He journeys out of body to a realm beyond time and space. The shaman’s soul leaves his body in trance state and travels to the underworld or skyward, returning with a message for the community. In this way, the shaman becomes a bridge between the two worlds of earth and spirit. The shaman is an ear for his community. He discovers where their suffering lies, and speaks to that.

What has this to do with us today? We have been split off from spirit since the Industrial Revolution, and today’s Age of Information is a poor substitute for the callings of spirit. Information is not — nor was it ever— wisdom. Knowledge is more than the mere naming of names, survival more than material sustenance. Man needs connection with the worlds of both matter and spirit in order to find meaning and balance in life. The integration of matter and spirit is the making of soul or wholeness, which gives meaning to life. Soul combines body, spirit, and mind. In olden times, shamans interpreted psychological illness as separation from soul. The shaman’s job then was to retrieve the severed soul and unite it — or return it — to the one possessed or ill.

Is this not what the artist does? Is it possible that today’s artist or writer might fill the gap of the missing shaman? As an actress- playwright in New York and later as a screenwriter in Hollywood, I have often wondered if today’s dramatist is not carrying the forgotten role of shaman.

As the ancient shaman, so often will the writer descend into the depths of himself in order to return with a message. Though he serves the community, he is more often than not marginal — separate from society. Perhaps this marginality may be necessary in order to move freely between the opposite worlds, unrestrained by society. The artist often suffers from this separateness. Consider Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Vincent van Gogh, and Jackson Pollack who all opted for suicide in the end — even though the gifts such artists bring will enrich society long after they are gone.

Surely, the dramatist also provides a bridge between the split worlds of matter and spirit. In my play, On the Edge, when Vita Sackville-West asks Virginia Woolf how she is, this is her reply:

On the edge, I’m afraid. The strain, I think of inhabiting two very different worlds. This afternoon, for instance, when I was on my walk. At first, I felt the wet grass on my feet. . . and perhaps a robin sang. But then, I began to be drawn in. The more it drew me, the less touch I had with the concrete world. I was in another universe entirely. I was in myself. And this world seemed far, far more real than the one I had left.

From the early beginnings of Hollywood a century ago, the movie moguls were interested in one thing: the story. “What’s the story?” Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would ask, “Just tell me the story.” Even today, Hollywood executives decide which story will make it to the screen by hearing the story pitched or told to them, rather than having to read it. Also, for better or worse, Hollywood and television have influenced how plays and novels are written. No longer will the reader patiently read fifty pages while waiting for something to happen. Books are chosen by publishers today with an eye to a possible movie sale. This is one of the reasons why today the principles of screenwriting apply to all forms of narrative writing. So, regardless of whether you’re writing a memoir, mystery, or novel, in the beginning is the Story…

Award–winning actor and writer William H. Macy (Fargo, Seabiscuit) commented in the Los Angeles Times:

They can pretty much do anything they want technically now, but they’re forgetting to write a story. You’ve got to keep in mind that audiences universally want one thing: a good story. And special effects make it better, but they can’t replace story.

So, what makes a good story? The answer covers all genres (types of story such as drama, comedy, mystery, etc.) and can be revealed in one word: character. It is no accident that the best films or novels are character-driven stories.

For instance, Gone with the Wind is not about the Civil War, but about Scarlett O’Hara. The Civil War is merely the venue or backdrop to this great love story. An important point to remember in writing period pieces is that the theme should be universal, that is, as relevant today as when your story takes place. If you wish to write a story about the Civil War, you must write a specific story about specific people. Remember, too, that it is important not to confuse venue with what a story is really about. Your job as author then is to find the story within the story.

It is no accident that many hit films carry the main character in the title. Examples are Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Forrest Gump, Driving Miss Daisy, Braveheart, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, The English Patient, and Erin Brockovich. Character-driven stories allow the readers or audience to identify with one major character who in turn navigates them through the story. So character is vital as the way into the story or plot. (In chapter five, creating character-driven stories will be explored more fully.)

How to choose a story? You’ve probably been told to write what you know about, right? Wrong! George Lucas never traveled to outer space, yet his original story, Star Wars, did rather well. I am often asked by clients and the Way of Story workshop participants, how to choose which story to write. The important guiding line is to choose a story you have a strong emotional connection with. Generally speaking, people go to movies or read in order to feel.

We have today become conditioned, even educated, to think and not to feel. This creates an imbalance both personally and collectively. Consequently, appropriate and inappropriate venues are sought to allow feeling. Reading a book or seeing a movie is an appropriate outlet for this. There is a varied smorgasbord as one can choose a story to feel anger, terror, a sense of power, sexual titillation, romantic love, and so on. Anthony Minghella, director of Oscar winner The English Patient, says, “I want to feel in film.” So know thyself and you will know what to write about. By this, I simply mean, know what moves you. Child abuse? Political or corporate corruption? The triumph of the human spirit in a hopeless situation? Two unlikely lovers? A search for God?

If the writer chooses a story he feels strongly about, that will be felt, in turn, by the reader or audience. Laura Hillenbrand, the author of the book Seabiscuit, suffered several years from chronic fatigue syndrome. She kept on writing and instilled all her feelings of being held down by outer circumstances into the completion of the book. Hence, her own state paralleled the theme of her best- selling book. She had to overcome this condition to complete a book she was struggling to write. She infused the story with her own struggle. The book was called Seabiscuit, a true story of three men living during the Depression in America, and their triumph against great odds. Audiences relate to such a life struggle as much now as then. It is contagious. The book became a best seller and was adapted into a major film that received seven Oscar nominations.

Stories written by formulas rarely move us, and consequently fail. They are too generic, not about specific people. This is why true stories are so popular. Knowing the story is true, that it really happened to someone, means it could happen to you. Also, choosing a story that moves you will provide your point of view (POV), so important in a great story. Your perspective becomes a unique voice, mirroring your personal relationship to the material — in other words, how you feel about your characters, story, and theme. In this way, the philosophy and values of the author are revealed through his or her story — regardless of the subject matter. Though the story need not be the details of the writer’s own life, the emotional investment in the subject or character will be felt to be real. Emotions derived from all we have lived and felt passionate about become a rich well which every good writer will draw from.

For now, just remember that it is the emotional power of your story that will ultimately determine its success. As a story and script consultant, and judge for the Emmys, Oscars, and various film festivals, I have remained unmoved by convoluted plots depicting car crashes, hospitals, and murders, while being deeply moved by Oscar winner Brokeback Mountain, a simple story about two cowboys who form an unusual bond. Why is this? Outer action is not necessarily dramatic action. Dramatic action is what takes place emotionally between people.

It is not what happens in a great story that matters. Rather it is how what happens to your main character affects him and his relationships, and ultimately changes him in some vital way.

Where to find a story? There are as many answers to where to find your story as there are stories. Novelist Truman Capote had a spinster aunt who became immortalized in A Christmas Memory, later made into a television movie starring the amazing Geraldine Page. My Southern mother has found her way into at least four of my plays or films, not literally, but as a prototype for various characters. All fiction is autobiography in disguise.

I grew up in New Orleans listening to women’s stories. My grandmother would have her friends over for a quilting bee. They would sit in a circle and work on the same quilt, sewing bits and pieces of material into one enduring whole. At the same time, the women would share bits and pieces of their lives with one another which made of their friendships another kind of quilt. I can remember even now myself at the age of five or six sitting on the staircase just around the corner, unseen, mesmerized by these vibrant Southern voices. Eventually, this led to a family play, The Women of Cedar Creek. Writing an all-female cast depicting three generations of Southern women was my reply to all the plays — usually written by men — with more male roles than female. Though the starting point of the play was the actual feminine members of my own family, I pushed both character and story to extremes, leaving far behind the bare facts of my own family’s history. It is well to remember that good writing is more an impressionist painting than a literal photograph.

One idea for a play came from a secondhand bookstore, the Strand, located on the corner of Twelfth and Broadway in New York City. I was teaching playwriting at The New School University, a few blocks away from the Strand, and would habitually drop by, before or after my class, and browse. One afternoon, I found a slightly tattered copy of a small book, The Letters of Calamity Jane. Soon afterwards, I was invited to Ossabaw Island off the coast of Savannah, Georgia to write. The island was like stepping back into the early nineteenth century. No cars, only fifteen people living on an island the size of Manhattan, wild horses roamed freely, and one lone sheriff was the law on the privately owned island. There I wrote Calamity Jane, set in nineteenth-century America. The play — not the Doris Day version — has now had several productions, beginning in New York, later adapted into Calamity Jane — the musical. Both versions continue to be produced throughout America. Here I used a biographical play to explore the theme of myth and reality of the Old West. What fascinated me was the wide discrepancy between what really happened and the folk tales and dime novels about figures of the Wild West, like Calamity Jane who was an extraordinary woman far ahead of her time, but suffered from abandonment by Wild Bill Hickok and the challenges of alcoholism. Abandoned and left to raise a child alone and work in a man’s world, this story seemed pertinent to life as a woman today.

Sometimes story ideas may arise from what happens to us in our own lives. Yet, even if they don’t, they usually connect with something felt within. My first long play was about Virginia Woolf. I was still acting then and had been cast to play Virginia Woolf in the comedy, An Evening in Bloomsbury by Victoria Sullivan, produced off-Broadway in New York. Naturally I began reading everything I could find by and about Woolf in order to better portray the character. Long after the play closed, however, I was still reading about her. Then one day I just sat down and started writing a drama about her struggle with madness in a world gone mad, i.e. World War II — a story far removed from the life of this baby boomer raised in New Orleans and Texas. (Remember? Not what you know but what you feel strongly about.) I had long been fascinated by the razor’s edge between creative genius and madness: van Gogh, Nijinsky, and Virginia Woolf, to name a few. So this was the theme I chose to explore through her life. Virginia (later titled On the Edge) had the good fortune to be directed by the legendary Harold Clurman (who launched the plays of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams). The play went on to win the National Endowment for the Arts Award, but the real reward was the emotional response from the audience. Here’s one example. After one evening’s performance, an older woman, born in Europe, approached me and was crying. She expressed how grateful she was that I had written of the Kristallnacht incident in my play. Tears filled her eyes as she held my hand tightly, and said simply, “I was there. I was there.”

A surprise came when friends would come up after a performance of the play and remark how it reminded them of me. “It’s so you,” they would say. I was puzzled. Wasn’t this a play about novelist Virginia Woolf? Then slowly I realized that though the facts of the story were quite removed from my own life, the emotional content was in some ways parallel. In other words, the story dealt with themes I felt strongly about — something friends would notice, even if the playwright did not!

Incidentally, this emotional identification with what you write applies to all genres, both fiction and nonfiction. Sometimes it is easier to express yourself in a story far removed in fact from ourselves. Sounds odd, right? Yet sometimes a character far removed from you in time or even gender can be more like you than a character expressly modeled on yourself. For one thing, the characters in a fictional or biographical story tend to be more three-dimensional because the author has the necessary distance in writing them. Have you ever tried to see all sides of yourself? Yet, even when writing about well-known historical figures like Calamity Jane or Virginia Woolf, I still had to make their journey my own, re-discovering the story through myself.

A truly personal search begins when one realizes that to make the process real, one has no choice but to enter into its rediscovery, step by step, accepting nothing as true until it has become true in one’s own experience. One must start from zero, clear an empty space in oneself, and walk the entire journey of the very first searcher who paved the way.

— Peter Brook, Threads of Time

I first met English director Peter Brook at his Le Bouffe du Nord Theatre in Paris where he invited me for lunch and to sit in on a rehearsal of Carmen. He wanted to discuss India where I had lived for some years studying Hindu philosophy, for his next theatre project was to be an adaptation of the great Hindu epic, Mahabharata. Here was a man touched by a quest, who had courageously broken away from traditional theatre when he was already at the top of his field in England. Brook studied the teachings of Gurdjieff, the Russian- Armenian mystic philosopher (1866-1949), becoming more and more dissatisfied with the emptiness of commercial theatre. He procured an abandoned warehouse in an unfashionable section of Paris and literally created the empty space for a new theatre. So when he produced the well-known story of Carmen, he made it his own by investing in it his vision, values, and feelings. Later on, he did the same with the Mahabharata.

Whether you create an original story or re-create a known one, you still must make it your own. And this requires a personal journey, both inner and outer. The outer journey of research and craft is merely the starting point. The best adaptations are never literal. Find the vision of your story from within, and it will guide you to the end. Invisible helpers will appear to light the way.

Sometimes a story might appear in a dream, as did the Disney family film that I wrote for Dolly Parton, Unlikely Angel. The theme of unconditional love necessary for spiritual growth, told in a simple way, combined a specific, personal value with a universal truth which found a response in the collective. Often the best ideas arise from our own unconscious minds, either waking or in sleep.

One idea for a play came about in the following way. I was walking down Park Avenue in New York when I saw the New York Post headline at a newsstand: “Mother Hurls Baby and Self from Twelfth Story Brownstone.” In a flash, I knew my next play. I didn’t even bother to read the news story but just adopted the premise. I had wanted to write about something I felt strongly about, that is, the superwoman of the eighties who is pushed over the edge. I had not yet found my story, only what I wanted to say.

Women, like myself, who married young, had children, careers — and wanted to do everything perfectly — often faced an inevitable crisis of overwhelm. This tragic news story headline gave me the starting point for a fictional story that could happen to anyone, when pushed to the extreme. What would happen if a superwoman of the eighties, driven to be perfect as wife, mother, and careerist, was pushed over the edge and did something tragic?

Sometimes to make a story work, you must go to extremes. This is why many successful stories involve a murder or catastrophe. Please understand that I am not referring to gratuitous violence here. Just follow the integrity of your story and go to the end of it. The Swedish screenwriter-director, Ingmar Bergman, is a master of pushing a story to its edge. Where most writers would end their story at a certain point, a genius like Bergman begins with the extreme, then pushes the dramatic action even further. This pushing can result in stories of substance and depth, but demands of the writer to write from his heart and guts as well as his mind. The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Scenes from a Marriage, and Saraband are four examples of Bergman’s masterpieces.

The challenge is to discover the meaning for your self in the story you have chosen, and then adopt the necessary form that can be meaningful to others. One might say, first, the passion, and only second is craft necessary to birth an authentic and great story. It is passion in a relationship or marriage that will sustain it for years through thick and thin. Similarly, it is passion in a story that will sustain the writing process through the weeks, months, and sometimes years of completing the work.

How to choose your story then? Simple. Choose the one you feel emotionally connected with.

What does the brain matter compared with the heart?

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs.Dalloway

Never underestimate the power of a great story. Bill Moyers once interviewed producer David Putnam on NPR Radio. Putnam produced Oscar winner Chariots of Fire and The Mission, among other fine films. Putnam remarked that “If movies were what they might be, there’d be no need to go to church.” Such is the mighty impact of story.

My early play, Somewhere-in-Between, produced off-Broadway in New York City in the early seventies, is set in a mental institution. One of the six main characters, Sam, is really sane but keeps finding a way to return to the institution. That is, he feigns insanity in order to escape the outer world. Sam confides to the inmates that the outer world is more insane than the mental ward. Sam becomes a bridge “somewhere-in-between” the two worlds.

Jungian analyst Linda Leonard is aware of how we have forgotten to honor our visionaries:

In our culture we have lost our awareness of the importance of oracular knowledge, and we fail to honor or even listen to the Visionaries who mediate visions. We have forgotten to revere the ancient mysteries; we have discarded the rituals that allows the mysteries to unfold and be revealed. In ancient times, the role of priestess (or shaman) was central to human life.

In the film Wolfbride, written for the Finnish Film Foundation in the early nineties, I tell the story of Aalo, a Finnish woman living in the seventeenth century who is a healer. She is marked from birth as a wolfbride and called by the Big One, the great wolf. Aalo, too, is a shape changer, that is, both wolf and human. When Valber, Aalo’s woman servant, draws symbols in the ashes, Aalo asks her what they mean. Valber replies, “It is the divine couple. It represents the divided soul. Dark and light.” Later, here is how Aalo is carried away by the calling of the Big One:

The wolf couple face each other. Aalo looks at the Big One’s eyes and loses herself. She realizes he is more than a mere wolf and is the Dark One himself. His form seems to grow large and shimmer in the moonlight and his eyes shine like two red piercing embers. They approach each other, sniffing.

SOUND of wind through the branches as they leap toward each other and roll upon the ground.

CLOSE on their paws as they transform into human hands.

CAMERA widens to see a naked Aalo with a naked STRANGER rolling on the ground in fierce passion. CLOSE on golden resin slowly oozing from the trunk of a tall pine tree. One drop becomes merged into a second drop. Two naked bodies lie intertwined.

He rises and leaves. Aalo awakes and sits up, watching the Stranger, now in wolf form, gallop away.

Aalo has surrendered to her instinctive self, yet returns to her mortal husband in the village. The villagers, driven by fear and superstition, form an angry mob, then burn her to death. Between 1575 and 1700 in Europe, with the blessings of the Church, over one million women were victims of witch hunts. The cost of splitting ourselves between spirit and matter is costly indeed.

The film story of Wolfbride describes the danger of this split between matter and spirit. Spirit here does not refer to organized religion, often more invested in the power of the institution than the transformational role of spirit. In her remarkable book, Shaman, Joan Halifax writes, “Through creative expression, the human condition is elevated, mythologized, and at last, collectively understood.”

How can you write in such a way as to become a bridge between earth and spirit? How can you heal the split in today’s fractured society? The healing transformation of good writing depends on making it one’s own from within. In other words, what you write is not separate from your deepest self. These are the stories sorely needed today.

Before going further, however, I wish to add a disclaimer. In discussing the craft of writing which I know to be absolutely necessary — even though not everything — I will be laying down rules of story structure and the like in the upcoming chapters. These rules have proved helpful to me and to my students and clients over the years. However — and this is the point — where there are rules, there will be exceptions. Beckettesque Oscar winner Lost in Translation, about two lost souls who meet in a Tokyo four-star hotel, is such an exception.

Creativity knows no boundaries. The seed of your story may come to you in different ways. For instance, playwright Arthur Miller usually begins with a theme, as did Henrik Ibsen. Hence, Miller’s plays are strongly thematic (All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, or The Crucible). Tennessee Williams, on the other hand, usually begins with a character — for example, Amanda in A Glass Menagerie, his most autobiographical play. English playwright Tom Stoppard (Jumpers, Invention of Love) begins with dialogue he hears in his head. To another writer, sometimes the plot may appear whole — then the writer must add the characters and theme. It matters little where you start, as long as you get where you’re going. So there is little point in trying to fit the writing process into some neat formula. There is none. Read this book and others, learn whatever you can, but, in the end, you must find your own way home.

There is never one single road to Rome. Imagine someone pitching the film, My Dinner with Andre, at a studio today. The story? Well, these two intellectuals have dinner in New York City. What happens? Well, they just sit at this restaurant and talk and talk and talk. Had My Dinner with Andre not been an independently produced film, I doubt it would have ever been made. The result is glorious, as many exceptions are. Never forget that to write expe- rientially, not cerebrally, is the way of story. You may never know where your story will lead. Yet, if you feel passionately about a story, follow it, and it will take you home. Then, if you work hard enough and the gods smile, you may experience the deep pleasure of reading your own work as if for the first time, wondering where it came from!

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

— Albert Einstein

Inventor George Washington Carver, born a slave and later becoming one of the great chemists of American history, discovered multiple hitherto unknown uses for the common peanut. His words tell us, “Whatever you love opens its secrets to you.” So find what you love.

As an actress and playwright, my passion was for strong character-driven dramas. My first film, The Christmas Wife, starring Jason Robards and Julie Harris, proved an exception to the current Hollywood success formula of sex and violence. No car chases or special effects tempted this writer, only what might take place in an intimate room between two lonely people. Well-meaning friends advised that a simple story of two senior citizens who spend the weekend together, without sex or violence, could never be sold as a Hollywood movie. Fate intervened. It is my belief and personal experience that whenever you follow that inner guide, the world will respond, often magically.

I had just written The Christmas Wife when I was invited to fly to Hollywood to receive the Julie Harris Award for my Texas play, The Women of Cedar Creek. The award was sponsored by the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild, and Ms. Harris — whom I had never before met — would be presenting the award to me at a posh banquet in Beverly Hills. So I packed the new screenplay and flew to Hollywood. At the ceremony, I met the legendary Julie Harris and mentioned that I had just written my first screenplay, and that she would be perfect in the title role. Might she read it? (I just happened to have a copy of the script in my car!) She read the script that very evening and called me the next morning to say that she would love to do it. I had been in Hollywood for twenty- four hours and the only person I knew was Julie Harris.

The next day I flew back to New York and attended a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh on Broadway starring Jason Robards. I had met Jason in the course of my acting days, so, script in hand, I went backstage to greet him and hand him the script. Within a week, Jason called and said that he would love to do the role, and to work with Miss Harris. A few months later, we were filming in Toronto. And, as I had cast the movie, I was given credit as co-producer. In a short time, I was now a produced screenwriter and a producer.

Truly, a Cinderella story of launching a career in Hollywood. The HBO film went on to be nominated for the Cable Ace Awards for Best Movie, Best Writing, Best Actor, and Best Actress. It received over two hundred unanimous rave reviews, confirming to me that people do want something different — even on television! All I did was follow the themes I felt strongly about: loneliness and how it is never possible to recreate the past. That’s all I did … besides sitting down and writing the story, of course.

The hardest part is sitting down. I write this on the board the first day of every class. And then add that there is no guarantee that you will write a great story, book, play or screenplay. But one thing is certain. As Shakespeare’s King Lear says, “Nothing will come of nothing.” You can never write a great story until you sit down and write a story. And this takes a certain amount of courage. In my own experience, I have learned that courage is needed whether writing your very first effort or your fiftieth! Writing is not about overcoming fear, but keeping on in spite of the fear! In fact, fear provides tension, essential in any creative process. So trust the fear. It means you’re in the mix.

The first purpose of writing is to clarify and reveal something in yourself, but the only way to do this is to get it out of yourself. The second purpose of writing is to share it with others, providing a mirror for humanity at large, as a modern day shaman.

First, you must discover meaning for yourself in the story you have chosen and then find the necessary form that can be meaningful for others. Notice, too, that every story you write will be a totally different experience, both in origin and in process. This is why I am dead set against any pat formulas for writing anything. Just create the space within and listen to your story. It will guide you. One story might be served best as a short story or a novel, another as a play or film. Remember though, passion first, then craft. The essence of Art is to use the outer form to convey an inner experience. This sacred thread, your innermost being or Soul, binds you emotionally to what you write, and if given respect, will lead you on to the desired end. Stories written from this center will move mountains — and even create livelihoods. Years ago, when interviewed by the New York Times about my approach to teaching, I was quoted as saying, “We’ve become lopsided living only in our heads. Writing, in order to serve the soul, must integrate outer craft with the inner world of intuition and feeling.”

Here’s a visualization exercise that can begin to tap hidden resources. And never forget that your most valuable resource is yourself. If you are a professional writer already, I ask you to do the following exercises as though you have never written anything before today. Approach the blank page as if for the first time. You might choose to play some sacred or soothing music as you do the following exercise. This exercise serves as an invocation and ritual to summon the Muse.

EXERCISE: SOUL DIALOGUE

Close your eyes. Trust the space made sacred by our intention. Now take three deep breaths. Inhale and exhale. As you exhale, take the thought “I release all fear of this inner journey.” Repeat this thought on the next two exhalations. Breathe in … breathe out. “I release all fear of this inner journey.” And so, the journey begins.

I’d like you to visualize a long path which stretches before you. It may be a place known to you or it may be a new terrain. It may pass through a dark wood or across high mountains. At some point, you see before you an ancient iron gate. The gate is locked and vines cover it. You reach deep into your pocket and find a key. The key is large and rather heavy. Place the key into the lock, turning it in a complete circle so that the gate swings open. Now take another deep breath, releasing any residue of fear, and walk through the open gate.

You find yourself now in a garden. It might be an English garden or perhaps a Japanese Zen garden with stone lanterns and tranquil pools of water with white lotus and gentle koi fish. Or any garden of your choice. See it. The flowers are in bloom. The smells intoxicate, causing you to smile. Just ahead lies a house which you recognize as the house of your dreams. You know this house for it is your very Self. Take a moment and visualize your house.

The door is locked but you hold in your hand the key. Visualize the key to your house and, taking a deep breath, open the door. Enter now and stand for a moment, taking in the profound feeling that you have come Home. Then slowly yet with purpose, walk to your favorite room. Perhaps a paneled study lined with books of favorite authors. A fireplace glows providing warmth. Now walk to a large desk which overlooks the garden, and sit. After a moment, open the center drawer and take out paper and pen. See the pen that you will write with. Now look carefully at the virgin white page and honor it. Soon it will be time to write your first Soul Dialogue.

But first, I’d like you to visualize your Soul. It might be a bird or a butterfly or an animal. Or a jewel or some other precious object. What would be a metaphor for your Soul, your innermost being? See it. Experience it.

Now begin the dialogue. Visualize looking at your Soul in whatever form it has chosen. Then ask it, your Soul, this simple question: What do you want?

This will not be the only or final answer for all time, simply the one Soul gives you today, that is now, this very moment.

For the next five minutes — without undue thinking — open your eyes and begin the exercise, the Soul dialogue. Simply write the question, “What do you want?” Then taking all the time you need, listen for Soul’s reply and write it down. Write it all down. There is no right answer. There is only your answer. Please begin now.

EXERCISE: THE EMPTY SCREEN

Take a blank piece of paper and draw a large rectangle on the page. It should look like a blank movie screen before the movie starts. Place this on the wall near where you write.

Now simply watch the blank screen and see what images and story appear. Use very little effort here — just passively observe what comes up from your own unconscious mind. It may be no more than a passing image — say a white gull dipping over an ocean. Follow the bird. See what unfolds.

EXERCISE: WHAT IF . . .

Write the words “what if” followed by one or two sentences. This is the premise of a story. An example: What if a young man finds out who his father really is. Write three separate what if premises for three possible story situations.

Anyone is capable of finding a story. The plain fact is not everyone will invest the time and passion to write it down. A writer is one who writes, so make writing a priority for at least part of each day.

In the next few chapters, I will focus on the craft of story. Though craft is, of course, necessary in creating a good story, please remember that it is only a tool allowing the writer to give expression to something much deeper, something uniquely his. Craft, in order to serve the vision, will become the bridge between earth and spirit so urgently needed today.

As Amagatzu, the founder of the innovative Japanese dancedrama called Butoh, once said:

The Soul is the important thing.

Form will follow.

The aim of Butoh is to reach the essence of feeling. That is your aim, too.