Storytelling -- the character's skills: how a part-time job helped a student get hired by Disney

While I was studying screenwriting/playwrighting and writing fiction at USC, creating believable characters was challenging. 

An early breakthrough came when a student in one of my classes wrote a scene that the professor wasn't satisfied with. He suggested that the she give one of the characters something to do in the scene that was unrelated to the dialogue -- he said that it was called the "actor's business."

About the same time, a man in his mid-30s stopped by the office where I worked to drop off an ad. He wanted to rent a room near the hospital several nights a week so he could study for his boards.

He was dressed in a physician's lab coat and was on a break from his work as a radiology resident.

Though the hospital seal, his department and his name were embroidered on the jacket, something didn't feel right to me. He didn't have the "look" of a physician who had spent endless hours studying. He had the build and demeanor of someone who had spent many hours doing physical labor.

We later became friends, and I asked how he'd entered medicine.

He laughed and said that he had been working as a painter. One day he watched as an older worker placed sparkle on a wall; he completed the task quickly, efficiently and with much skill. For a moment he was envious and then he was depressed. He thought, "I could work for 25 years and I'd match his skill. Is that what I want to do?"

He applied to medical school and was interviewed by a panel of physicians. "They were serious and intimidating," he recalled. "One of them asked why I wanted to go into medicine. I replied that it was because I didn't want to work outside for the rest of my life. The interviewer laughed and said that that was the most honest answer they'd heard all day."

When I asked him how it had been possible for him to switch from painting to medicine so easily, he said that while he was in school his father had always insisted that he take the hardest science and math courses that offered. Skills are learned over time. Including unique skills characters have developed helps make them fascinating.

Finally, as promised, the story about how becoming skilled in a field different from her course of study helped a student win her dream job -- working at Disneyland.

While I worked as a director of marketing and PR, student workers reported to me. I’d post notices all over campus requesting federal work study eligible students, and each time one student would apply and would work in the marketing/PR office until they graduated. They often were not familiar with many of the software programs; they were sometimes scared they would “break” the programs. I’d give them a template and ask them to have fun with it, moving things around, cutting and pasting and asking questions. 

When I gave them an assignment I’d explain the strategy behind it; this saved time because they could then make quite a few decisions themselves which kept projects on time and on track. 

It was so much fun teaching them about PR and media relations. In fact, one student enjoyed it so much that she considered changing from nursing to PR as a profession. An old boss dropped by the office and when he learned this he told her, “Don’t do it! It’s hard work and you will earn much more money as a nurse!”

Awhile ago I noticed perfect photo captions one of the past student workers posted on Facebook. I wrote on her wall, joking that she wrote the best photo captions because of her training in marketing and PR. She immediately wrote back. She said that after having worked as an ER nurse following graduation she applied for a job as a nurse at Disneyland. While the competition was fierce, she learned that she was offered the job over all of the other candidates because of her PR/communication/media relations experience/skill.

Fascinating!

The next post will be about pacing. 
The reality -- This scene and/or sequence is boring. A solution -- what changes can I make to the story so it will make my heart beat faster?

Making characters live and breathe—everyone's got skillz

Even after having taken several graduate writing classes, I struggled with creating real characters. All of the dialogue sounded the same. The writing I did at work was much easier—writing about dentists, students and housekeepers. It was fascinating interviewing and writing about young patients and families who wanted to share their stories.

But creating characters who have never lived or who have lived but who I'd never met seemed unattainable.

One evening at USC I was waiting for feedback from Irvin Kershner about a few pages I'd written about my father's mother. During a break he took me into the hallway. He was holding the pages I'd written, and he was so angry I remember the pages shaking in his hand as he tore into me. "This boy, his mother, his father. They are like no one whoever lived, or who will ever live. You've need to show that and if you can't, you don't have anything. And right now you don't have anything."

The semester would be over in a few days, I was working full-time, and I was certain I'd fail. Even worse, I was afraid I would disappoint him. Every day I woke up before my alarm and rewrote the story. I passed the class and the resulting first-draft screenplay was a finalist in a screenwriting competition.

Another breakthrough came more recently, when the electricity was out in my bathroom and hallway. I'd been stung by a wasp near the fuse box, and the area had become overgrown with mint. My fearless sister visited and became frustrated at the lack of lighting. She found a pole that can be used to prop doors closed, and went out onto the back deck. It was too short to reach the fuse box and so she glanced at it, pulled out a pin, lengthened it and reset the circuit breaker. All of this took less than a minute.

I thought about the pole and how I would've struggled with it, trying to figure out how the pin worked, probably pinching my fingers and then I realized, even within the same family people have unique skills. Sister is a physical therapist and works with walkers, canes, crutches every day. She could've adjusted the aluminum pole blindfolded.

As Kersh often told me, the dialogue is often the least important thing in a scene. "Always listen," he'd say. "Observe. Watch people. People who do this are better writers." He loved doing this himself.

I remember bringing chocolate chip cookies to work. A friend took a bite and told me, "you got skillz." It was the highest compliment he could give.

Notice talents / skills people have. It's what makes every person unique. The skills they have are often why they love what they're doing, or why they hate what they've chosen.

As I write, I consider what skills each character has. As they show their skills they become real, they begin to breath. They show emotion. And I can work with that.