One of Larry Brody and TVWriter™’s favorite writers (and, for that matter, human beings) returns to this site after being away far too long with an insider tip into attracting and holding your audience. A must-read if ever there was one.
by Hank Isaac
There is a body language to everything. Sure, it has different names depending on what you’re talking about, but it’s essentially all “body language.”
Which means: Writing has a body language.
One of my teachers and mentors early in my writing “career” was the late legendary Stewart Stern. At the end of every class we would all beg him to tell us stories about the golden age of screenwriting and what it was like to exist among what remains the most incredible film and TV stars of all time. You know, the ones current actors try to replace but never will.
He often balked at the idea, saying he was feeling like some old uncle who kept telling the kids the same old stories, over and over. And we said, yes, that’s it exactly. We want to hear those same old stories over and over again.
So one evening my wife who was picking me up after class and I said if Stewart stayed behind to share some more stories, we’d drive him home after.
So he did and we did.
On the way to his home, I shared my frustration with screenwriting and trying to get producers, agents, managers… anyone, really, to be interested in my work. This one wanted to make my character older. That one wanted to make her a him. The other wanted to change the time, place,… whatever.
As we pulled up to Stewart’s house and were in the process of getting out of the car, I said to him that it was all too much. Caring about my characters and their stories was too hard – I’ll just write the stuff and not really care anymore.
He looked at me across the top of the car with a look I will never forget. He never said a word but made me feel as if I’d just slaughtered his grandchildren.
We said our good-nights and my wife and I drove home.
But with that simple momentary look from Stewart I realized possibly the most important lesson about writing: You have to make it personal. You have to care. You have to risk having your heart broken.
I’m trying to get a story about a young WWII Resistance fighter in Poland in front of an audience and though I was born a couple of years after that catastrophe, I knew tons of people who were involved in it.
My dad was in the O.S.S. during the war. The organization has a different three-letter name these days. When I would ask him about his experiences, he always answered in code. Now I don’t mean he let out little chirps of dots and dashes. I mean the truth was always carefully concealed in his replies. Concealed in a way that if he needed to, he could shout out the answer in a crowded room and no one would know what he was talking about except the intended recipient.
It took decades for me to finally understand his answers. To understand the “code.”
My sculpture teacher in design school was a thirteen-year-old boy when his homeland – Poland – was invaded by the Nazis. Turns out he was in the Polish Resistance. At thirteen. He isn’t tall. He isn’t strong. He’s as far from aggressive as anyone can get. And yet he risked his life every single day.
He never liked to speak about that period in his life. He had just come to the U.S. when he was hired to teach in 1967. But when he did share something, it was as if he was embarrassed that he had to do the things he found himself doing twenty-five years before.
The stories he shared were very personal. The stories my dad shared were very personal. The stories Stewart shared were very personal.
If we only write stuff we think is cool, we need to reflect on the likelihood that the personal stuff is usually not “cool.”
In one of the TV series I want to develop, my main character is a twelve-year-old girl from a wealthy family. Her main goal is to take her horse over a high jump she’s never been able to make. She ends up in the Resistance in her native Poland but never waivers from her goal – which strangely enough is not defeating the Nazis. It’s clearing the top of the fence. It’s been her goal since she first sat atop a horse at age six.
And yeah, metaphors a-plenty.
We live in increasingly distressing times. Most young folks today only know about global war from books. So my own make-it-personal quest in writing is to overlay my stories and characters with how I view the world – a view built from decades of experiences and connections to people – and my concern about not wanting to have wasted my entire life on a species doomed to destruction.
It doesn’t get more personal than that.
Hank Isaac is an award-winning indie film writer/producer/director who collects awards as easily as dogs collect fleas. TVWriter™ is always happy to see his unique contributions.