Film Courage: What's the first writing exercise you give to your students?
Jack Grapes, Artist, Writer, Author, Instructor: They read the first three chapters of the Method
Writing book and they have to write a journal entry in which they write like they talk.
Film Courage: How long is the journal entry?
Jack: It could be 500 pages but for the sake of the class they can only read two pages
because otherwise they could be reading 100 pages and would be there all night.
But I don't say you can’t…write as much as you want in your journal for that day or that week
but for the class limit it to about 500 words which is about two pages so that we can respond
to it which is 500 is a pretty good normal chunk. But just a journal entry just write like you talk
I want to hear your voice if you're not writing like a talk
we will point out those sentences where you had he skillfully said you know adverbs adjectives
all that writerly stuff we'll point it out and we'll we'll try to get you not to do that and
then in anticipation of the next chapter we start identifying transformation lines
and then the following week they have to write a journal entry writing like
you talk but massaging a transformation line and sorry the transformation line again is
I was hiding the birthday cake get rid of the birthday cake what's the story of your life
and the truth of who you are I was hiding I didn't want people to see me I was afraid
they wouldn't like me if they saw who I was they would hate me I'm not a good person I'm a bad boy
well I was hiding ends up I'm a bad boy because I remembered being locked in the closet and
I'm a bad boy that's just that's the bottom story of my life I'm hiding because I don't
want people to see me I don't want people to see me because they'll know who I am if they
see who I am inside they know I'm a bad person and then suddenly it came to me I'm a bad boy
well that's a long way from I was hiding I'm a bad boy and then from I'm a bad boy I'm stuck
which is where you ended up right so that's I'm teaching them how to massage a transformation line
then we do then we do the image moment for two weeks because it's hard
and then we do something called dreaded association which is another two weeks
again too complicated to go into now but it was originally called the association
exercise and when I would assign it to people and they would read it
they would get notes from their mother as to why they were sick and couldn't come to class
because they would dread it so so then I as a joke I called it the dreaded association exercise
and that's what we call it and then of course they do it and they bring it to class and they're
they're just shocked as hell how good it works and what they can do with it and how it can be a very
creative thing and those are the four concepts in the first level right like you talk massage
transformation line image moment and the dreaded association exercise how many of your students
are actually able to write in a journal and not censor themselves and not try to be too writerly
eventually all of them but in the beginning is that something that a lot of them struggle with
many of them don't have a problem with it they they they haven't had enough experience
writing that they know how to be writers the ones that have been writing a lot and who think
of themselves as writers or I'm an actor you know they might have a little difficulty or it
might just be a sentence or two here and there and so we pointed out I talk about the structure
of the sentence and why that's written and not spoken that if you were talking you would have
said it this way or it would go this way or that word would be there so we get into the structure
of the sentence and the difference between speech and how we write for instance here's a sentence
that is absolutely fine you'll see it in in books all the time it begins with a participle phrase
standing by the window I could see it was gonna rain nothing wrong with that sentence
great sentence but we don't talk that way we don't begin sentences with participle phrases
we don't say yeah I came home and standing by the window I could see it was gonna rain that's not
how we structure a sentence when we talk what we say is I was standing by the window and I
could see it was going to rain or when I stood by the window I could see it was going to rain
but never standing by the window comma I could see it was going to rain that's not how we talk
so we get into the structure of sentences how it's not always a word you know because everybody
has different vocabularies so it's not about that it's about the structure of the sentence
how a sentence is structured and once you start to hear that the deep structure of speech as opposed
to the deep structure of a literary construct it doesn't mean it's bad writing it just means
you have to know the difference then if you know the difference you can choose when to do one and
when to the other so maybe at the worst a few people will have one or two of those sentences
somewhere in what they write and we deconstruct it and we talk about it
so basically I'm getting them to be aware of of their writing that is speech-based now it's not
always going to be that level two goes into those four tones that are not like you talk so we're
writers and we can do that too but first we want to like acting we want to have a good foundation
so where you write like you talk once in a while I'll get someone who's been writing a long time
and they're really locked into their style and it's hard for them to shift out of it to because
they think they just think it's natural to throw in those adverbs and adjectives and so forth but
when you they're it's not good writing sometimes
so sometimes even their writing writing is not good writing
but most people take to it pretty well why is it not good writing when when someone's writing
to writerly to to using different terms that we wouldn't use in normal
conversation if you've got a laptop around Google Stephen King adverbs.
He's got an essay on it adverbs it's what amateurs do it's bad writing so don't take my word for
it Stephen King who's a good writer by the way excessive use of adverbs is the mark of an amateur
Elmore Leonard he had an article in the New York Times review of books
which was all about the 10 things that bad writers do the first one was excessive use of adverbs
and often adjectives I mean you have to have adjectives sometime but you got to be careful
it was so well received that his publisher made it a book now how do you make a book out of one page
article in the New York Times reviewer book books I’ll tell you you have illustrations on every page
you have type that's very big and the paper is about as thick as a two by four and then you get
a book and it's sold really well and number one is excessive use of adverbs and adjectives so
you know this is not something that I made up while I was living in a cave
every every professional writer will tell you that you can you can spot an amateur when they overuse
adverbs and often even the adjectives so who am I to argue with Stephen King and Elmore Leonard
it's bad writing now there's other things that may not be bad writing but it's not how you talk
so that's a different thing I want people to know the difference so that they can control
when they're writing what effect they're going to create he mumbled he averred
he implied he he shrugged you know I don't care if you live or die he shrugged so instead of saying
a word that has to do with uttering it's it's a physical action I mean writers do that bad writers
do that all the time and you know I feel like sometimes I gotta go quit it quit it so keep it
simple well that's a different issue oh okay you can say complicated things but you say it like you
talk I'm not saying you can't write complicated sentences okay okay it's just a question of is
that speech or is that a literary construct that came when people started to write the difference
one of the problems a lot of people have with Marcel Proust is his fancy language
if you read him fast you realize he's writing like he talks
there's a great deal of eloquence in there but if you read it fast you realize oh he's talking
and the elegance that you think you're seeing is often just long sentences
some sentences are half a page but he's talking you had asked me about another book
books I’ve read so another one that I read during the pandemic where
it was on the libby app for the library was My Salinger Year [Author Joanna Rakoff - 2015] so
it was about a woman who worked at a publisher in I think the 90’s and her job was to respond to JD
Salinger fans and it's so great and they made a film and it has Margaret Qualley in it and right
sounds funny to see it yeah but but she wanted to take care in responding to these fans because
they were so emotional and they were so invested in Holden Caulfield and she found that a lot of
them didn't want to hear what she had to say they wanted to just have this image of what
that character was and what the book meant and she had to help them
character creates plot and voice creates character Salinger never wrote another book in that voice
if you read Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
it's a completely different style and voice if you read some of his short stories like Uncle
Wiggily in Connecticut or The Laughing Man it's not Holden Caulfield at all it's not that style
that that was holden's voice it's unique and it's what makes his character so unique the voice
you get the voice you get the character you get the character the plot will take care of itself
yeah in fact they became very angry she was trying to help them yeah and they didn't want help
they wanted to be angry and they wanted to be with Holden they wanted to be with Holden yeah it was
really fascinating book yeah I'm looking forward to seeing the films wait the challenger years yeah
no My Salinger Year and it's based on this woman in New York City in the 90’s yeah it's
really no I don't think they're ever going to make a movie of Catcher in the Rye until when
his book goes in the public domain or something because he won't allow that he's dead now but
I think he has explicit instructions it's not to be sold to the movies yeah he had very rigid rules
I believe it sounds like he was a nice man the way she described him in the book I don't know his
urban legend might have been different but he he treated her well and so she just had very little
interaction at the publishing house right but it was fascinating and just you know those things
are kind of really not important whether the writer is a nice man or not writers can be
sons of a witches you know we may not realize it but it really doesn't matter what matters is the
world they create I don't care what J.D. Salinger was like I love Holden I love Holden interesting
and so he created something that was real for me and that's that's all you can ask an author to do
a writer should reach the reader it's not just about making themselves feel good or looking good
to their peers it's about reaching the reader it's all of that I mean you do want to impress your
peers I mean we're human we want other writers you know our peers to appreciate what we've done
obviously I want people to like my poetry but it means a lot to me if
another poet who I admire really thinks my poetry is good okay and I do want to reach my readers
but at the same time I want to satisfy myself if what I did a writer
sculpture painter makes me happy and I met the challenge then I'll move on
at some point you can't really go by what people think of your work you you have to do it because
it's your calling it's what you have to do but who wouldn't want someone to like their work
but is there a certain point where an author an artist becomes so controversial that it stops
being about their work and now it's just the legend of the artist the mystique around them
the reputation whether it's true or not okay and if that's true what what are
we gonna do about that and that's what I'm asking yeah what should someone do if their
their work is transcended to that point what's look everything is going to happen under the sun
you know there's nothing I mean I can't pontificate and say well it
should be this way or it should be that way or it shouldn't be this way it shouldn't be that way
you know it's going to happen and sometime it's out of the writer's control things
happen that they didn't expect or they didn't want and sometimes they want that they they act
a certain way and it becomes a legend about how they are and they cultivate that legend
you know I mean writers are people and you know people are crazy not every crazy person writes a
novel but some of us do that's it doesn't make a saying just because we can write a novel.
What do you like about this video?