{"id":5376,"date":"2012-06-19T16:12:32","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T15:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etbscreenwriting.com\/\/?p=5376"},"modified":"2012-06-19T16:12:32","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T15:12:32","slug":"getting-to-the-heart-of-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/etbscreenwriting.com\/getting-to-the-heart-of-the-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting to the Heart of the Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

I talk a lot about the Heart of the Story in my workshops and consulting. The Heart of the Story is the simplest emotional statement distilling the story’s essence.<\/p>\n

At UCLA I always had my students do a poster for their movie. The image and logline was to be the distilled essence of their screenplay. I recently came across a blog post by Edan Leucki<\/a> about another kind of assignment for the same purpose. This assignment was for a rewrite class where writers were stuck.<\/p>\n

Go wild, I said. \u00a0Do whatever it takes, to keep writing this thing.<\/div>\n
Melissa came to class with these\u2026boxes.<\/div>\n
They were cardboard jewelry gift boxes, and there were three of them, one inside the next. The first bore the title of her novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, on its face. The inside of this box contained a smaller box, decorated with a monkey (\u201cBecause\u2026duh,\u201d Melissa said, or something like it), and a piece of paper, which described her book\u2019s premise.<\/div>\n
Inside the monkey box was an even smaller box, this one decorated with a plastic heart. On the inside of the monkey box, Melissa had written a shorter version of the novel description, distilled from the notes on the piece of paper. \u00a0The smallest box \u2014 we all leaned forward to see \u2014 was empty, except Melissa had written the book\u2019s premise on its inside.<\/div>\n
She\u2019d distilled it to a single sentence: \u201cChronicles the life of a woman who was separated from her bipolar mother and placed into foster care at 15.\u201d<\/div>\n
She told us she\u2019d been struggling with how to describe her book to people who asked about it. This project forced her to find the book\u2019s main idea, its essence. \u00a0It ended up thrilling everyone in the room.<\/div>\n
The boxes were funny, and strange, and beautiful, and important. I keep imagining Melissa struggling to write in the margins of the smallest box, and it moves me. Making this project wasn\u2019t novel writing, of course, but it enabled Melissa to return to her book with a fresh perspective. It helped her to keep going. That\u2019s what we\u2019re after, isn\u2019t it?<\/div>\n
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Go wild, I said. \u00a0Do whatever it takes, to keep writing this thing.<\/div>\n
Melissa came to class with these\u2026boxes.<\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n
\"M41\"