Slice of Life: Day 23: Memoir Bullets: 003

Just when I think I have recorded every event fortifying my trajectory of becoming a writer, I think of something else. I should have thought about it earlier because it has future writer scribbled all over it. Well, not really.

I try not to think about anything on my way home from work – a thirty-one-light commute. Thank goodness for audiobooks (currently The Bird Box) and new U2! But March’s Slice of Life always has me thinking about my post for the day. I will be honest; I’m looking forward to April. I’m exhausted. But love the challenge – don’t get me wrong.

Since childhood, I have always appreciated the poetic pulchritude (I never used that word before) in the before and after. The transformation from beginning to end. Growing up, my younger brothers had the same propensity as me for keeping their bedrooms an utter disaster, making a rooftop-ripping tornado look like sticking your head out of a moving car. 

My mom used to call in reinforcements, dragging my poor Aunt Cathy into the mess to help clean. As the greatest older brother ever, I helped my brothers, but we made it fun. We would, using a dolly, lug my dad’s VHS video camera upstairs and make a movie. We had Will Smith and D.J. Jazzy Jeff’s Nightmare on My Street playing in the background for one. Our film, while noticeably absent from AFI’s Top 100, is a classic as far as home videos are concerned. The best part was seeing the mess transition into pristine cleanliness.

It didn’t last long.

In summers during my college years, I pressure-washed and stained decks. I stained a deck with my boss on my first day of work, and I remember telling him how I look for the poetry in things – such as the after when staining a deck. Every stroke of the cedarwood stain was beautiful. 

What does this have to do with writing? Storytelling?

Picture an off-balanced boxer. No trainer and forced to fight in low-lit unofficial rings for a measly forty bucks only to go home to a dilapidated apartment. Now picture him going toe-to-toe with the heavyweight champion of the world…and winning. Can you see him holding his belt high over his head? 

Picture a weak, lanky kid from New Jersey entering his new neighborhood and school in California. Picture the bully-induced nosebleeds and the splotchy purple bruises coloring his face. Next, well, after some unorthodox training, a crane kick to the face makes him the All-Valley Champ.

Picture a farm boy. Unappreciated with dreams and aspirations, he is stuck doing chores for his uncle. Fast forward a little, and that farm boy becomes a Jedi Knight.

Stories, specifically screenplays, need an opening image opposite of the closing image on the final pages. Characters need to change throughout the story. A reader wants to invest in the character but must have a reason.

When writing, you must establish a character’s want and need. Without this, the protagonist has no point. Therefore, the reader/audience has no reason to keep reading or watching.

A want can be a job, a treasure, a relationship or a championship. A need is emotional – self-acceptance, pride or love. These often help attain the want. If your story is done right, the before and after of your character will be memorable.

I find validation in all of this. I’m usually embarrassed by my quirky thoughts. Little did I know finding the beauty in the end result would help me become a better writer.

-rg