Tag Archives: workshop

OUT OF OUR MINDS (& onto the page)

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Always wanted to tell stories but are terrified you’ll suck at it? Already writing, but want to explore deeper characters, more evocative description, and more intense action? Interested in translating your performance arts to the page?

OUT OF OUR MINDS (& onto the page) is the perfect workshop to get those creative storytelling juices flowing. Over 6 Saturdays at Toronto’s Sweet Action Theatre, we’ll play with improv games and prompted writing exercises to help you make writing spontaneous and freewheeling. Thinking is overthinking, so we’re going to remove the pressure to get it right by simply playing with whatever comes. No preparation. No homework. No inhibitions.

Just be ready to be silly and open and bring something to write with (e.g., pen & paper, phone, iPad, stone tablet & chisel, semaphore flags).

TO REGISTER: Early-bird pricing of $200 (+ HST) ends June 14 when prices rise to $250 (+HST). Please send an e-transfer to createdbyrcw@gmail.com to reserve your place. Spaces are limited.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Randall C Willis is an award-winning screen and comedy writer and filmmaker, as well as a seasoned science and medicine writer.  He regularly teaches screenwriting at George Brown College and formerly taught at Raindance in Toronto. Through his company So, What’s Your Story?, story specialist and storytelling evangelist Randall helps clients bring life to their visions and breath to their unique voices. He also routinely judges screenplays and films for film festivals across North America.

A perpetual student of the storytelling arts, Randall has 25+ years of training in improv, stand up, puppetry, sketch comedy, and monologues. If Randall has a motto, it’s “You have permission to suck”, which fits nicely with a fully improvised life.

You can also follow Randall’s storytelling thoughts on Instagram and YouTube.

Reading carefully: Tantrum Sex

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So, it would appear that I misread the poster at the community center a couple of weeks ago.

Where I thought I was going attend a couples retreat on Eastern philosophies and practices, I had actually signed up for a weekend workshop on:

Introduction to Tantrum Sex

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Itinerary

09:00 – 10:00:             Blow your own stack!

10:15 – 11:15:             Snappy come backs and other hard-to-reach stains

11:15 – 12:30:             Spermicidal foaming at the mouth

12:30 – 02:00:             Lunch (everybody eats out)

02:00 – 03:00:             Tears as a lubricant…for pretty much everything

03:00 – 04:15:             Tearing a strip off while riding a brass pole

04:30 – 05:30:             Fits…and what to do if it doesn’t

 

(Image is property of owner and is used here without permission…does that make you angry?)

First d(r)aft

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Three days. I have three days to come up with another 10 pages from my latest screenplay for a reading and critique in my screenwriting class. And I have nothing.

Well, that’s not technically true. I have something. I have the architecture of my screenplay written out…I know where I want to go and what steps I need to take, broadly speaking, to get there.

But those are just a series of incomplete sentences that barely fill a page. I need 10 pages of a screenplay. I need narrative (not too much, as is my wont) and dialogue, and yet everything I write right now reads like crap. Absolute, utter drivel.

Welcome to the first draft.

I love to brainstorm and come up with new ideas. Ideas for new screenplays. Ideas for scenes within those screenplays.

Brainstorming is exciting. Everything is possible, so I am at my most creative. Nothing comes off the table, and every idea leads to several others.

I love to plan. I like to arrange those ideas into a semblance of order…it is quite literally the assembly of a puzzle. What if I moved this scene from the first part of Act II to just before the climax? How does that change the story?

But at some point, I have to stop brainstorming and planning. I have to start writing. I have to take those incomplete sentences and turn them into coherent scenes of people interacting with people—directly and indirectly—to accomplish goals and thwart those of others.

And even that description of the process sounds interesting. But then I begin typing and my words take on the feel and smell of two-week old cod.

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If the mom character was any stiffer, you could iron shirts on her. Why not just have the son respond “Oh yeah!” and euthanize all of your creative ambitions?

You want the boat captain to do what? Even the most psychotic of fishermen wouldn’t contemplate that idiotic move! What was your research: old Popeye cartoons?

You suck! You suck! You suck!

Okay. Feel better now? Had your little tantrum. Your little pity party. Ready to move forward? Take a deep breath.

This is your first draft, and it’s gonna suck. That’s what first drafts do. But it’s the first draft that sucks, not you.

The idea is still sound. Story improvements you can’t see right now will arise in the workshopping process. The dialogue can be massaged and the narrative edited…in your second draft. You can move some of the scenes around to enhance the conflict…in your third draft.

The only thing about what you are doing today that is anywhere near a final draft is the name of the screenwriting software. [NOTE TO FINAL DRAFT: Give some thought to changing the name of your software. Too much pressure for some of us to handle.]

You’ll be fine. Your story will be fine.

Just start typing…