Film Courage: Where does the creation of a great story begin?
Guido Segal, Screenwriter, Journalist, Film Critic, Instructor: I feel like every creative has
a different source of inspiration or motivation. Maybe it's a feeling, maybe it's an image,
maybe it's a memory, maybe all of them combined.
To me there's usually an image and that image is going to guide me along the way
when I feel lost in the story. I go back to that and that image usually contains
at least one emotion that I don't fully understand but I will explore that through the story.
I would say an image or a series of images that contain in them the whole story
and it's the most mysterious thing because I can't fully explain it.
Suddenly I'll be talking to someone or I'll be reading something or listening to music
to a song or and some or or someone will tell me a story like the other day I bought this doll and
I gave it to my daughter and suddenly I hear this and there's there are coordinates there
that make me resonate and I know that because I keep thinking about it so if after a couple of
days I keep thinking about it and I'm talking about original stories no it's very different
if you get a commission like please write this story right if it's an original thing if I keep
thinking about it and especially if I can tie to that other elements that I'm interested in
you start building a world right and I know for example when Hitchcock did North By Northwest
there was no story originally he had a a series of scenes he wanted to shoot
and then he brought brought in Ernest Lehman who's one of the best writers ever and then they came up
with a story to tie those scenes together but what he knew at first is he had these images
a guy hanging from Mount Rushmore right so a guy shoots someone at the un building
and that's perfectly okay of course he's Hitchcock he knew everything but
and then you tie those scenes together and you have a story I like what Howard Suber
who taught at UCLA for 50 years what he calls by association which is when you bring together
two elements that wouldn't necessarily coexist but when you do something new comes out right so
and this happens in life all the time so for example I mean if you're shooting underwater
and you introduce I don't know there's a fireplace down there I'm being extreme it
doesn't belong there but what that triggers is a series of connections mental connections
right where suddenly you have to make that work check up the dis and theater all the time right
introducing an element that doesn't belong and that that can set the story in motion
so going back to your original question I think it's images that have an emotional backbone and I
have to figure out what that means to me and then the story will very slowly with patients come out
and one thing i'd like to say about that is you have got to be very careful because
you have got to be patient with it and also don't let it drag you have got to find a certain balance
because sometimes you just want to rush it you're like I want to know what the story is
and you'll have a lot of good ideas but they're not necessarily clicking so sometimes I'll do
a very quick outline and then I go back to it and realize this stays this has to go this is
not really honest this is me trying to get out of of this situation quick enough to move on
it's a very organic process of discovery you don't always have the luxury of time
I'm saying ideally if you do you want to find a balance between taking your time
and not wasting time is that normal to become lost with your story I mean if you feel enough of a
pull toward it whether it's about you personally or a character that you really have fondness for
new writers would would you tell them that you will feel lost writing your story oh absolutely
I mean I wish someone had told me that you get lost you get lost I mean I get lost very often
and you get lost mostly not not because you don't know what you want mostly because of expectations
so sometimes you have an intuition and that intuition says something but you want to
make it so much better and so original and that you keep pushing and suddenly you have doubts
and you have to try to go back to that original impulse right and again the more time you spend
with it the the the more chances you'll get of figuring it out but this is the trick to me
see to me that the most difficult thing is not the writing itself it's figuring out what you
want to write the heavy lifting to me is coming up with a story on the characters and the beats
once I have all that writing is just a joy
so the writing itself is not that that complicated it's knowing what I have to
write once I have that the story all mapped out and the characters and I'm confident
because that gives me confidence and once once I'm confident I can actually play with it
it's a joy but it's not easy no I mean it's not easy but it's like playing a sport only every time
you you go out there you have to learn the rules again once the rules okay what the options you
have right and and and you come up certain place you come up in a spur of the moment certain place
you have practiced before what I'm saying is that it's not that it's easy it's just what I'm
confident it's because I've done my homework and when I've when I've got that in my head
then I could improvise a little bit so I know the scene starts here and ends here can I add a little
flare here that without extending myself too much yes I can actually that little flare might have
a narrative purpose right I'll give you a small example for example I was writing this scene and
then where this character is trying to impress this woman is trying to impress an older woman
who she sees as a mentor right and they're at this older woman's house and the older woman says
let's go upstairs I want to show you something but please would you mind taking your shoes off
and I thought what if she has a broken sock her sock is torn right and it's so embarrassing and at
first I thought that's amazing and then I thought well what is it does it fit into the story or am I
but I realize it's such a character trait and it's such it's there's a narrative purpose if
you're trying to impress someone you'll be very embarrassed so not only did it stay it made the
scene well you didn't get a pedicure that week and your your yeah your feet look horrible anything
that makes you look other than what you want to be perceived as right for you maybe her husband will
say like it's not a big deal honey and she'll be like yes it is a big deal it might be right some
people it would be yeah well she think of me I'm like well probably she thought you were amazing
until she saw your foot so that's you have got to but that only comes out once your world and
your characters sure sure and the relationships right I could see that being a real thing I mean
because you go to people's homes all the time oh do you mind taking off your shoes
oh no no problem and then you go oh that's right and then you're thinking oh no yeah
are they gonna think how didn't I think of this in advance and that makes the character real.
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