Where the Hell Are You?
For the past few weeks I’ve been kind of obsessed with watching videos from and about the artist, Tom Sachs. It started with a video Van Neistadt made about Tom’s “10 Bullets” zine, which is basically an instruction manual of ten rules for new hires at Tom's studio.
I wrote down a quote from a keynote/Q&A he did for The New York Times where he said, “Part of my job is to live a more interesting life and a more inspiring life for myself.” That’s one of those ideas that I feel like I’ve always kind of known or felt but never quite articulated to myself in such a clear and actionable way.
Many issues ago I talked about how hobbies are portals that can take you into other worlds and introduce you to new people. I talk a lot in this newsletter about my love for exploring, for going off the beaten path, getting out into nature, all that stuff. I understand the necessity of that for my creative process and how having new experiences refills the well and gives me new things to draw from, but I forget that it's a responsibility. When I heard him say that, I thought, “Right, of course. I owe it to myself and my work to live a more interesting life.”
I’m still trying to figure out what that means for me and where I can push the envelope. But making it a responsibility means prioritizing it.
One other thing I learned over the last week or so is that it pays to be open and vocal about your likes, loves, passions, and obsessions. I posted a pic from my trip to Comic Con of something I have loved for over a decade now. Someone at my agency saw it and connected the dots to an opportunity and by the end of last week I found myself in a pretty extraordinary situation that I hadn’t even imagined was a possibility two days before.
My managers recently reminded me to be open and specific about these things in general meetings as well. I tend to stay pretty close to my “lane” or what people know and expect of me, like the grounded, near future sci-fi stuff, the classic Amblin vibe, The Twilight Zone vibe. I forget to say, “But you know what I love and have always wanted to do…” An hour after they gave me that advice I brought one of my favorite movies up in a general and talked about an original idea that plays in a similar sandbox. It sparked a great and hopefully ongoing conversation.
My hope for you this week is that you seek out some interesting and inspiring experiences, and that you are open and vocal about your passions and obsessions.
As always, this newsletter is not a how-to, it’s a “how I’m currently” evolving my own creative process and navigating mystery career. It's free but you're always welcome to support it by "buying me a coffee" at the Ko-fi link at the very bottom.
Thanks, have a great weekend!
Where the Hell Are You?
My new series pitch might be the first one I’ve written that was inspired by a setting.
I’ve mentioned this before but I gravitate toward concepts first. Through the brainstorming process and playing the “what if” game I come up with the characters to explore those ideas. With GODS AND MONSTERS I started with pre-existing public domain characters. I rarely, if ever, start with a location or geographic area.
One of the things that inspired me about this particular location in Appalachia is that it’s so close my hometown of Ironton, Ohio. I was able to draw on what I know for more specificity and that process, in turn, inspired new characters and scenes. This is one of the chief benefits of coming up with at least one idea in a setting that you have a deep knowledge of. There will be a wealth of inspiration to draw from that won’t require you to do a lot of research.
I heard The Duffer Brothers talk about this recently in their Master Class on STRANGER THINGS. Once they settled on a group of kids in a small town there were a bunch of specific settings that naturally bubbled to the surface: the arcade, the mall, Mike’s basement, etc. They said that the scenes with the kids in Season 1 were the easiest to write because they were the characters and locations closest to their own experience. The lab, the doctors, all of that was much more difficult.
Most of the time this process is intuitive but sometimes I have to switch to a more intentional gear. If I think about my hometown for even five minutes I’ll come up with a bunch of very specific settings that would give my story (and script) a deeper level of authenticity. Basically, it means taking time to look around in my mind’s eye and ask, “Where the hell am I?”
The first thing that popped up just now is the cruise line that used to run through downtown on the weekends. You started at Taco Ball on one end, slowly rolled up Third Street until you got to Burger King, turned around and went back the other way until you got to Taco Bell again. The super slow pace gave you time to check everybody out, it gave you time to flirt, talk shit, and blast your music. I don’t know how many kids were down there during the busiest days of the cruise line but in my memory there were hundreds of cars sitting bumper to bumper. I could write a scene there in a heartbeat. The details would take it out of the realm of generality and help me perform that act of telepathy that helps a reader/audience member “see it” as well.
One of the other locations that immediately comes to mind is WIRO, the radio station where I worked, sitting on a hill overlooking the town. From my childhood bedroom window I could see the red call letters and blinking light of the tower. That brought up a memory of the time I was driving up to work during the winter in my 78 Camaro Berlinetta. My car started to slide back down the hill and I panicked, thinking I was going to flip backwards over an embankment, so I cut the wheel hard and landed in a ditch. My grandma had to call a friend of hers with a tow truck to drag me out. My grandma showed up too, shivering in the cold, but thankful I was okay.
Back in March I did a workshop for Stage 32 where I talked about some of the basic questions you can ask yourself when you’re building the world of your sci-fi story. But really you can adapt those same worldbuilding techniques to any setting you’re writing about to maximize its potential. Going at it with some intention may spark new ideas for scenes and/or characters. Here are three simple questions that come to mind:
What is the geography of your world?
Are family units similar to our world? Are there unorthodox arrangements?
Is there religion? Are there rituals or rites of passage?
Applying those same questions to my hometown, off the top of my head:
Geography:
Ironton is situated between the hills on one side of town and the Ohio River on the other. There are creeks that run off the river and trestles that support train tracks over those creeks. In the summer, my friends and I would dodge the trains in order to jump off the trestle like a diving board. I remember watching barges float up and down the river. My dad worked on one while I was a kid, my cousin worked on one for years. Sometimes those workers are on the water for thirty days on and thirty days off. That can cause a strain on the best of relationships.
Family Units:
In terms of family units, more and more you see kids being raised by their grandparents, for any number of reasons. It’s also not uncommon to see family members living together for long periods of time, moving in together after the death of a loved one, or a divorce. There’s a lot to mine there for characters and stories. What about a character who works on a barge, a single father or mother who has to leave their kid with their grandma for a month at a time? The grandma does her best but the kid’s getting into trouble, jumping off the trestle and getting in fights in the cruise line during the summer.
My immediate instinct is to dig into the drama between the parent and kid over the parent being away so much. But a few seconds later I think the more interesting story is about the grandma. What if this kid goes missing or falls in with a bad influence or gets into some really dangerous situation and the grandma has to set it right before the parent gets home?
Religion:
I’ve talked a bit about growing up in a Christian household but there are a bunch of new ideas for settings and characters that come to mind. I spent years going to vacation Bible school, making arts and crafts, playing kickball, eating snacks, and learning about Jesus. I’ve been to a few tent revivals in the summer where the sweat just poured off of you and you got eaten alive by mosquitos. I think about seeing both of my grannies dressed up in their Sunday best, their hair made up, carrying their Bibles on their arm.
It's funny how the whole “creativity is drawing connections between things” works. I'm just typing my stream-of-consciousness, I haven’t planned on any of these things connecting but I just had that memory of my grandma. Now I’m thinking of the grandma in the story, the kid getting into trouble, and her getting them out of it before the parent gets home.
It connects me to another memory that you are never going to believe even though it’s absolutely true. For years my Granny Carol worked in a gun store owned by her brother-in-law. I can’t tell you how many times I stopped in to borrow money or her car keys. I’d find her standing behind the counter, showing somebody a pistol or selling boxes of ammo. I haven’t thought about that shop in a long time. But after a few short minutes of brainstorming about that setting I came up with the tiniest seed of a story about a gun-dealing, Bible-toting granny who may not be able to save her grandkid’s soul but she’s sure as hell going to try save their life.
Those personal touches add a lot of the stuff that makes my scripts uniquely “me.”
I’m gonna go on a weird tangent but stick with me for a couple of paragraphs.
Chris Bianco is the Michael Jordan of pizza and right now he’s in the middle of opening a restaurant in downtown LA. I’ve been four times in the past month and a half. Yes, the pizza is amazing, but I’m also going a lot right now because I love seeing HIM there, in his element, getting the place up on its feet. It’s one of the things I love the most about living in a city like this, the opportunity to see people who are masters of their particular art or craft at work.
I went down a rabbit hole of watching videos of him recently and he talked about how, when he opened his first pizza place in Phoenix, it was important to bring part of where he came from along with him. The things that make Chris “CHRIS” lend an authenticity and set him apart from all the other great pizza makers out there. Those personal touches extend to his late father doing the artwork for his cans of tomatoes. A number of his father’s paintings grace the walls of this new location in LA. The average diner may never know that… but they WILL because that same level of care and attention to detail is also what makes the pizza so great.
As I’m starting to think about specific scenes for both of these new series and where they take place I’m going deeper on the location and specific settings. How can I mine them for more specificity? What have we never seen before? Am I settling for a generic "bar" when there’s something way more interesting? How can I use these locations to say something about the character or act as a visual metaphor for some underlying idea?
If you want to give someone directions on where to find you (or, perform an act of telepathy with the reader/audience) it helps to start by asking, “Where the hell am I?”
Tom Sachs
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