Day Seven - Stumbles are Necessary

So already one work week in and I hit a stumbling block. Despite getting no sleep the night before (thank you, Loyal Canine Companion), I managed to write to my inciting incident. Good, right? No. Not so good. It turned up on page 6. Page six is way too early. I haven't had enough time to establish my main character for anyone to care that she's received a call to action, a life-changing opportunity, a major kink in her plan. What did I do wrong?

I had no idea. I was tired and cranky and really unhappy that my perfect outline had let me down so early on in the process. (And, there's the point that I'm blogging about my process and therefore on the brink of totally humiliating myself.)

I didn't panic, binge drink or even hit the donut shop. (Five years ago you would have found me in Winchells, drinking from a paper bag and talking to myself along with the other sweat-wearing writers often mistaken for homeless in Santa Monica.)

This time around I went back to the bag of tricks I keep tucked in my right hand drawer. Squeezed in on top of the pile (I am really disorganized in places guests don't open) I found my tonal comparisons.

Tonal comparison breakdowns are a trick I learned about at UCLA. I believe it was from the Werb/Colleary class. I can't be sure, because I never got into the Two Mike's class, but a friend let me in on their basket of cool tools just the same. That said, a tonal comparison is where you write down every beat of several films that remind you in some way of your project. It shows you the structure and pace. It's also handy to refer back to whenever you get lost. And man was I lost. On page six.

Thanks to my tonal guide posts (I usually do two per project) I realized that my ducks were already in a row. I simply hadn't gotten to my inciting incident yet. What I thought was the inciting incident was just an example of demonstrating issues/problems. It did not change the direction of the story. It was not the incident. I had to keep writing.

My actual inciting incident was a few scenes down the outline. Once I recognized the inciting incident for what it was - it was obvious. It even contained the old classic "a letter arrives" albeit it arrived via digital age technology.

Here's the point: Even though I have now done this twenty times, I still run into unforeseen issues. You might spend a day flat on your face or wallowing in doubt. You might find yourself at Winchells once and a while. It's okay. Have a jelly donut for me. Eventually you will embrace these stumbling blocks as opportunities. They are invitations to think harder about your characters and your story. Hopefully, you'll emerge on the other side on both feet and charging ahead at full speed. This is still the vomit draft, after all.

Happy stumbling.