Monday, December 19, 2011

Simple, but not easy

I just turned in the first draft of a script I've been commissioned to write for the University of Toronto's internationally trained lawyer's program.  It will be a drama that's used for teaching purposes.  Hopefully, it will help lawyers in the program be better prepared for what they will face in the Canadian legal workplace.

I love turning in drafts because it means I get paid.  But it also means I have written.  I hate writing, love having written.

Perhaps hate is too strong a word, but writing is hard.  I keep trying to explain to my scriptwriting students that it isn't cut and dried or an exact science.  However, what you have to do is actually simple.  Keep an audience engaged for the length of the story.  And there are certain storytelling principles that were first defined by Aristotle that have not been disproved since that you can use to make your story effective.  So, it is simple.

Simple, but not easy.

Kind of like e=mc squared.  It's a simple formula, but to understand it really takes some knowledge and to apply it takes even more knowledge.

Simple, but not easy.  I think that applies to pretty much anything done well.
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