Charlie Kaufman is one of my favourite writers and I recently came across an article on the Guardian website (Kaufman article) where he discusses why he wrote "Being John Malkovich" and also gives a lot of good writing advice. First he talks about writing in your own voice, adding that "the major obstacle to this is your deeply seated belief that 'you' is not interesting". He definitely doesn't mean that you should only write from your own life experiences (if you have ever seen any of his movies it is obvious that he does not), but I think that it is all about finding your own style -- telling a story in your own unique way. I think the hardest part about this is not necessarily even thinking that 'you' is not interesting at all, but that it is not as interesting as those who have written before you, or maybe even at the same time as you. I think its about not just trying to imitate those voices, who you admire or think or superior to you, because then the best you will be is an imitation of something better, whereas if you write as yourself you can be something more.
When he talks about writing "Being John Malkovich" he says, "I had this idea that someone finds a portal into someone's head, and I had another idea that somebody has a story about someone having an affair with a co-worker. And neither one was going anywhere, so I just decided to combine them." I love this idea. I have never done this with any of my story ideas even though I often have ideas that I write down and then am never able to or inspired to really make anything out of them. My favourite stories, especially in films, are usually ones that have synopses that sound at the same time amazing and potentially awful. I think that the possibility of failure is positively correlated to the possibility of creative success; not to say that the more likely you are to fail, the more likely you are to succeed because that makes no sense at all -- but that the story ideas that are more risky, that have more of a chance of failing, also have more potential. If executed properly they can be so much more creatively fulfilled than the safe ideas. Since, combining stories likely increases the possibility of failure, hopefully it can increase the possibility for real success. I will definitely experiment with this because of this idea, but also because Charlie Kaufman suggested it, and I love "Being John Malkovich".
The last main point that he discusses is that "it's very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you're doing it, and that you utilise what is specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can't think about why it should be done this way, then it doesn't need to be done." He states this in relation to a story he tells about a man that he passes jogging in the morning -- a man who says the exact same thing every time they pass, and as a result Charlie's ideas about this man change drastically from 'here's this funny guy' to "I am not jogging at this time anymore because I want to avoid that guy'. It's a great example of a story that cannot be told in all artistic mediums, but the overall idea is more complicated than his story lets on. At the same time, I agree with him. Although stories can be told through poetry, short stories, novels, and films (among others, but I am not going to list them all) and many times a singular story that begins in one format is told in another. Short stories and novels are often made into films. People often say that the stories are better (they often are) but I think this is also partly because the transition ends with a different product. The story cannot be the same, but on film because the medium is so different. Even the short story as a medium is so different from the novel. I usually don't pay much attention to the medium I work in, but I think I should. It's important to answer why a story is in a certain medium. Why is it a short story instead of a poem, what does the medium bring to the story, or allow you to bring to the story? I often think about trying to write my stories as scripts or lengthening them into novellas, or potentially novels, but his words have scared me slightly. They haven't deterred me, but made me think that I need to examine these mediums more and to really understand what changing the medium will add to or detract from these stories. Right now I don't know if I can answer these questions, but the process of trying feels like I am making progress as a person who participates in the act of writing.
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