storytelling

bushcast / storytelling — View Comments
2
Sep 10

Bushcast Episode 3: Julie Learns How To Survive In Prison

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In this episode of the Bushcast, I recount the time (a few weeks ago) I spent 26 hours at the ER at LAC/USC hospital.

It was amazing how quickly I switched over to prison mentality. It was almost immediate. Helped by a cop threatening to send me to jail on my way there.

It was also amazing how long it took me to tell this story — I cut the video down from 30 minutes to 15. Yeah. I know. I still cut some funny stuff, including me doing a Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s style impression of the Chinese man who processed my paperwork.

So sorry it’s taken me so long to put up the next episode — I actually recorded this a while ago, and it’s just taken me a while to edit it. I’ve been busy, which is good, but it just means I’m not quite as on top of everything as I’d like to be.

Thanks for watching guys. And — I want you to know you mean a lot to me. Whenever I hear from y’all, I’m really bolstered and touched. X Julie

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16
Aug 10

What You Need To Know About Cliche

One of my creative writing professors in college — Joyce Carol Oates — used to draw lines through words, sentences and entire paragraphs of our stories and write above the rejected pieces: “cliche”.

This was very painful.

We wanted nothing more than to please her — we admired her.

I admired her. I wanted her to like me and approve of me and say I was a good writer.

So when she wrote “cliche” on my stories, I found it upsetting.

She told us “a cliche is anything  you’ve ever heard before.”

This definition seemed too harsh, too limiting to us. We protested. Wouldn’t there come a point where you were just writing stuff you hadn’t heard before, to avoid cliche?

Indeed, she told us a reviewer once wrote of her that she writes as if to avoid cliche. Still, we had no excuse to lapse into lazy habits.

Joyce was brisk, fresh, controlled, and she expected the same of us.

I often walked home from her class stirred up. I was either elated because she had praised my work, told me I was a good writer, or despondent because she had marked it all through, dismissed it.

But the power of seeing her strike through those words with her pen — that awful little word cliche that made me feel like I was lazy, average, common — that feeling stayed with me.

Now I’m on high alert for it. I wince when I find it in my own work. Other people have told me I’m too harsh in pointing it out everywhere. But that’s how we get better –

Because it’s an easy test. If I or you or anyone has ever heard or read or seen it before, it’s a cliche. And it doesn’t have to be painful — getting better is liberating. It might tweak your ego a little in the moment, but that’s good. Notching your ego and making your art better makes you bigger, not smaller.

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emotion / storytelling — View Comments
8
Aug 10

Daddy

This was the last time I spoke to my father.

For the longest time, I called him Daddy — like a Southerner, like a child. Not consciously.

I didn’t speak to him for almost a year — until two weeks ago –

I was at home rehearsing my essay for the NPR show State of the Reunion. The producers were coming over to record the piece. I’ve never done radio before, so I was nervous. I’ve been busy, so I didn’t have a lot of time to write it — between anxiety over how to perform it and anxiety over what I had written (are these jokes as sharp as they could be, do they make me seem like a bitch, is it too revealing, could the whole thing be tighter, funnier, more cohesive ….) I was feeling nervous. But also excited — NPR! That’s pretty fucking cool.

Then I got a text from my real dad (I call him my real dad to distinguish him from my stepdad, who was there for me growing up and whom I adore) — whining about how he didn’t know what he did but didn’t I think I had made my point –

Then the NPR producers arrived.

I had to record my essay — which I was already nervous about — with this aching, anxious knot in my stomach in the shape of my father.

The recording went ok — not perfect, but it was fine. I spent the rest of the day dreading the confrontation I knew had to happen. I couldn’t let him just keep interrupting my life like that — it’s like he has a radar for when I’m starting to break free of him, so he can swoop in and suck me back into the tar that is his emotional mess.

I called him. Everything in me didn’t want to. Everything in me has resisted writing this post since this happened almost two weeks ago — but I don’t feel like it would be fair to this blog to write about deciding not to speak to him last year and then not write about speaking to him again. It would feel dishonest.

He was at a restaurant. I told him if this was a bad time, we could talk later. He said no, now that he’s gotten me he wanted to do it then. He stepped outside.

He started — he went off on how he didn’t know what he did but didn’t I think it was wrong to go so long without speaking to your own father, hadn’t I made my point, what point was I trying to make anyway? Hadn’t he been punished enough? That kind of thing. I let him talk.

Then I talked:

Your not loving me — your abandoning me over and over and over again — your compulsive selfishness — has left me unable to connect with anyone.

I said this between sobs — I was crying so hard I almost vomited –

I struggle — hard — with depression — because of you, because of what you did —

I can’t have relationships. I try and fail — I can barely even have friendships — this started with you –

I can’t afford to have you in my life. The last time we talked, I was calling to tell you I was going to withdraw my 401k, which was my only security in the world — and I really didn’t want to do that. And it was only $9,000 — $6,000 after taxes. I was hoping you would say “don’t do that. I’ll give you the money” which you could have easily done. Instead you gave me this awful speech about you didn’t know why I thought I would ever succeed as a writer — how long would it take before I gave up — how long have I been out here and when would I wake up and realize it wasn’t going to happen and come home — what was it going to take to make me wake up to the wrongness of my choices —

That was already a low, terrible moment for me — and you took it as the chance to kick me while I was down — and while you’ve done that before, in other areas of my life, it was the fact that it was about my career, the most important thing to me, that finally made me realize that I couldn’t afford to let you do that to me anymore. The biggest part of what I do is maintaining the emotional energy and momentum and courage to keep moving forward no matter what, and I cannot afford to have my own father planting doubt in my head —

But the worst part is — you already succeeded. You planted the doubt about who I am, as a person. When I was a child. You changed who I am, as a human being. I can’t separate who I am out from what you did. You warped what I became. I’ve tried, hard — and I continue trying, because I have a lot of hope and faith — but I keep running into the road block that is you.

I went on. But that was the gist of what I said.

He responded — you are 100% right and I am 100% wrong. I was very bitter and very selfish, and you suffered for it. I regret what I did. It’s not that I didn’t love you — I didn’t love you the right way.

He said more, but that was the gist of what he said. You might think that sounds like progress. But my father is a person who says whatever he thinks the other person wants to hear, and he never means any of it. He loves drama, which is why I think he loved to hear me violently sobbing and having this huge confrontation — it satisfied that craving in him. Unable to feel real emotions, he thinks these dramatic upsets means he’s interacting emotionally. He mirrors the people he’s with — so he basically just mirrored back to me what I was saying, in a very dramatic and insincere way. I have enough experience dealing with this man to know not to believe any of it.

I told him I wasn’t sure I could let him back into my life. But that one thing I was sure of — he was absolutely not allowed to criticize me ever again.

He asked if I was prepared to make the same promise — if I was prepared not to criticize him anymore. Caught off guard, I agreed –

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I realize how absurd this is. Routinely in our interactions, he’s pointed out that he has forgiven me, so I should forgive him. I have done nothing to injure him — he has nothing to forgive me for. He injured me, greatly. For someone to commit evil and then to say that you can’t criticize him for it is just so twisted. I’m not going to hold that promise.

Eventually he said he needed to go back to his dinner but he felt a lot better about having talked to me — he just wanted to hear my voice. I hung up leaving things ambiguous about whether we would talk again.

Then I cried, a lot.

I had plans to see Inception with my friend S that night. I cried during Inception, during the father moments.

At the bar at the Arclight, I told S what had happened. I told her “he said ‘it’s not that I didn’t love you — I didn’t love you the right way.’” And I started sobbing — surrounded by strangers at the Arclight bar. S asked the bartender for napkins, and the woman looked embarrassed for me and said she didn’t have any.

S was kind and supported me. I went home and cried more, cried these last two weeks. Cried every time I’ve tried to write this post.

A few days ago I got a letter from my dad saying that he would stay out of my life and that I could solve all my problems if I accepted Jesus as my savior. He never used to be a religious man — until he took up with his 29-year-old Brazilian evangelist maid, who’s now his fiancee. My dad is impressionable, influenced by the people he’s surrounded by, whether they be crooks or evangelists.

Even if my dad does stay out of my life, which is doubtful, he’s in it at the cellular level. I’m having a very difficult time separating who I am from him and how I feel about myself because of him. I don’t know that I’ll ever be free of him. But I’m trying. Hard.

Continue reading →

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19
Jul 10

Bushcast Episode 2: Where You Go When You’ve Been Abducted

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Second episode of the Bushcast y’all. I tell the story of the time my first boyfriend and I got lost in the Southern Appalachians near my hometown — and found this group of two men and a bunch of young boys living in a clearing in the middle of the National Forest.

This one’s slower and more contemplative — partly because of the subject matter and partly because I got a migraine halfway through, which you can see in a very creepy way by noticing that my left iris and pupil dilates bigger than the right one. My face also gets puffy and a little red — as the pain presses around my left eye. My trigger is emotional stress. This story must have triggered me.

Not all the episodes will be this slow. I don’t think I even realized how slow I was talking until I went back to watch it — and then saw my eye and my puffy face. You’re getting a little slice of life, people.

So this is the story of a time I got lost — and got haunted — and found my way home by heading down.

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14
Jul 10

World-Building From The Inside Out

Your story’s world is a reflection — a result — of what’s happening inside your characters.

The world doesn’t create the character. The character creates the world around her. You create the world around you.

Like a prism refracting colors or a digital projector — the image starts with the emotional footprint inside your main characters. You project this inner image outside them. That becomes their world.

Here’s how it works: I believe I can be successful, that I deserve success — so I act in ways that confirm that belief. I filter what I see for stories that confirm that belief and fail to see those that don’t. I set up my world in ways that support this belief. I gradually adhere to a system of rules that affirm this belief. Rules like if you don’t hold on to what you’ve got, it may be taken away from you and you don’t deserve success, you earn it. These rules build out and become my world. I don’t even recognize parts of the world that don’t agree. I know I’m in Julie-world because Julie-world is defined by these rules — rules that started inside me and served me at one time, and then, because I gave them power-of-attorney over my life, grew strong like a sentient computer program and jumped outside my head and started governing the world around me. Now, not only do I walk around following these rules in my head — but I insist on seeing the world as if this is how the world operates too. Because Julie-world starts inside me and is projected, reflected out. Julie-world is something I inflict on the world.

Many storytellers will start world-building by asking themselves tons of questions — how does this place work? what are the physical laws, political laws, cultural rules of this period — what does this place look like? –

Start by asking how these characters work — what are their internal physical laws, political laws, cultural rules — these answers will tell you what this place looks like. If your characters are haunted by past lives they can’t shake, their environs will be haunted. They may even have established an elaborate system of rules, laws, customs, moral strictures disallowing the past from sticking around — this started inside them. If your characters are liars, they will inhabit a world of false fronts. If your characters love, they inhabit a world that loves.

Worlds aren’t built top-down (what galaxy is this?), bottom-up (what does a wedding ring look like?) — worlds are built inside out. What don’t you know about yourself, that we can see all around you? What rules are you following unconsciously? These rules limn your world.

You build their world by establishing the rules that govern them.

The world IS the rules. And the rules are a by-product of the emotional life of your main characters — a structure organizing their hopes and fears. Because deep down they think that by following these rules they’ll get what they want.

Worlds are anchored, buoyed inside our main characters’ guts. The more the characters’ guts direct their outer world, the more we feel the piece. The bigger emotional impact. Bigger experience. The more we feel like we live in this world. These are people in our world.

A given character could walk into my house and her world would still be different from my world. Because her world isn’t bound by geography, it’s bound by the rules she feels she’s bound by. They feel they’re bound by.

The world is symptoms helping us diagnose what’s going on inside the character. Eczema doesn’t just exist and then a person finds himself inside it: he produces it. We see the skin rash, and that’s how we know what’s going on inside him. This strange place exists because they do, because they are the way they are and their world can’t be any other way. When they change, their world changes. Often, that’s how we know a character has changed — we see their world change.

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bushcast / storytelling — View Comments
7
Jul 10

Bushcast Ep. 1: The Worst Thing That Can Happen In A Movie Theatre

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Ok gang, I need you to bear with me. This is the first video I’ve ever made (I know, right?). First time I’ve ever edited. My virgin run, if you will.

But I was waiting for something juicy to start the Bushcast with, and tonight a certain anonymous perv gave me my first episode.

I’m warning you — if you have a job, or responsibilities, or you’re not immortal — please do not waste precious seconds of your life on this experiment in giggling and discursive self-indulgence. It’s 5 minutes 26 seconds long, and the last bit turns … experimental. Partly by design and partly because I don’t know how to edit and I messed up.

Also, I recorded this at 2:00 a.m. because it took me two hours just to figure out how to record stuff on my computer. Yeah. The full story was 17 minutes long so just be grateful I figured out enough iMovie to whittle it down to 5 minutes. Astonishing, right? That I could stretch that into 17 minutes.

Enough caveats. I bring you BushCast Episode 1: The Worst Thing That Can Happen In A Movie Theatre.

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drama / emotion / storytelling — View Comments
3
Jun 10

I Don’t Remember Who ‘We’ Were

Freshman year at Princeton, we were going to New York a lot because it was just an hour by train, and because the little shuttle train called the Dinky dropped off about a block through the Junior Slums from our dorm room, it was literally an hour and a half door-to-door, Witherspoon Hall to Penn Station.

I don’t remember who ‘we’ were.

Could have been a few different people on that trip — we were there for different reasons. I was probably doing something impossibly glamorous like visiting a real New York artist’s studio. Somehow we wound up catching different trains home.

Was I supposed to meet them under that sign with the spinning destinations? Was I late and that’s why I was alone in Penn Station in the middle of the night?

I think I had my book bag, like an anchor.

I was 18 and new to New York. I was afraid I would be robbed the minute I dropped my guard — maybe I was already being robbed, pickpocketed, or would, and not even know it. That is the bag I packed with me to New York that night.

All Princeton kids carry book-bags around at all times — jammed full to prove we were working or about to work or capable of working or at least thinking about working all the time. Our work was to think. We thought about big, important stuff. That was our jobs. Your book-bag was your guard against recriminations of the world — you’re not working hard enough. Not enough thoughts.

I didn’t want them to take it from me. I guarded it.

The next train to Princeton wasn’t for another hour.

I made my way into the urine-soaked, fluorescent bathroom. Metal ant-theft purse clasps. Signs warning you to watch your belongings. The scattered contents of a woman’s purse on the floor.

I tried the first stall. Blood all over the toilet steal and broken crack vials scattered on the floor. Pushed open the second door on a shrieking transexual clown. Ran for the handicapped stall — chased by the clown. Slammed the door on his hand as he tried to force it open. Locked the door and backed away from it, terrified. But I still had to pee like a racehorse. Dropped my stuff down, pulled down my pants and squatted over the filthy toilet seat –

A crack vial rolled from beneath the other stall and hit my foot –

The clown shrieked and stretched his hand after it, groping — touching my foot –

Then he squeezed his head and shoulders underneath the partition, going after the crack, smiling up at my naked cunt –

I kicked him and screamed –

I yanked up my pants and pressed myself against the wall. The clown stood on the toilet in the next stall and looked down over the partition, screaming at me to give him his medicine back –

I kicked his crack back over to his stall. I couldn’t hear what he was doing in there. I was afraid he was going to attack me the minute I opened my stall door. I didn’t know whether he had left or not. I waited an interminable amount of time, then I busted the door open and ran out of the bathroom all the way across the length of Penn Station to the retail safety of the magazine shop. Shaking, I flipped through magazines without seeing them. I looked over my shoulder — I thought the clown might still be chasing me. Maybe this was one of those movies where the end-game is destroying the clown by blowing up Penn Station. I flipped through magazines without seeing them for the hour till my train to Princeton. I felt guilty and dumb for being in Penn Station alone in the middle of the night. Was I brazen or a hayseed? I was new to New York. I probably didn’t tell my friends.

I shook all the way till I got on the train, maybe till my dorm room bed. I didn’t want to be robbed. I was 18.

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18
May 10

Mythology

My first T.V. job was writing for a show called “The Dish” on Style and E! — a spin-off of “The Soup” with Joel McHale, a clip show where a host stands in front of a green screen and shows clips of other shows and says jokes about them. Occasionally we did little sketches and trailer re-cuts, and we had characters (played by the writers or production staff) who would come out and do very stupid stuff. It was fun and low-budget, and there was a lot of room to try wacky stuff. Pitch Jerry the Fashion Crab on Monday and on Thursday the prop guy is spray-painting a foam cut-out in the shape of a crab — and the writer wearing it is dizzy from the fumes.

Once during punch-up we wrote a joke about a commercial for a female stand-up urinator — I don’t remember the exact punchline, but the commercial had a line like “I learned it in Europe.” So then we cut out of the commercial on that line, had our host Danielle look like she’s peeing while standing there. Then she said “I learned it from the host of The European Dish.” (Then the window over her shoulder flashed to a mocked-up photo of Danielle with a huge wart and a unibrow, in a gypsy costume, pushing a plough through a rutted field in Transylvania — with the logo of The European Dish superimposed over the whole thing.)

The joke killed in taping. We the writers loved this joke and laughed really hard when she did it. But the powers that be killed it in the booth because they didn’t want to seem “xenophobic.” We came up with something else on the floor. But I was sad to see the Host of the European Dish get iced, because building mythology is important.

Whether you’re writing a tiny little clip show on a cable channel somewhere in the upper 300′s or a huge-budget space opera on one of the antenna channels, mythology is what makes your show sticky.

Seeing the Host of the European Dish — or Jerry the Fashion Crab — or any other dumb little one-note characters we did on that show — once is funny. But then if European Danielle comes back — and this time she’s there to talk about the Paris runway shows, say in a tape segment, and then she pees herself again … now you’ve got a bit. But then say every time European Danielle comes back on the show, she drops little tidbits about how she got her gig as Host of the European Dish — maybe she was coyoted by a band of gypsies and she has to pay off her debt to them by hosting this clip show … Then we cut back to Danielle in the studio with fake tears rolling down her cheeks, going “They said there’d be opportunity in America … I didn’t know I was going to be a clip show host ….” You’re building the mythology of this character, populating the world of this clip-show, and creating a narrative myth that gives fans an armature to congregate around. Suddenly they don’t just love watching stupid Real Housewives clips, but they also love when European Danielle comes on, and it seems like no matter how outrageous things in Europe are, they’re gonna be more outrageous back in the home studio . . . . It brings people back. It makes you feel like you’re part of it. Fans know they’re fans by knowing that European Danielle became a clip show host via indentured servitude. Late Night with Conan O’Brien did this so well.

Human beings like stories. Tuning into a clip show is fun, mindless entertainment. But if there’s a chance that a character I recognize from a few weeks back will make a surprise appearance, even just to toss off a stray line that may add to his weird back-story — even if that character is just a foam spray-painted crab played by one of the writers — it’s satisfying. It makes us want to stick around, tune in again, see what happens next. Because what if we find out that European Danielle and Jerry the Fashion Crab know each other — what if European Danielle caught a case of Jerry the Fashion Crabs during her time working the Marseilles docks and now she won’t even look at him in the studio for fear of them being recognized together?

This is pure silliness because that’s what that show is. But the principles are the same, no matter what kind of show you’re writing. If you’re writing a serialized drama, mythology is that much more important. Every time you introduce one character or artifact or motif, and then bring it back — you’ve given it a story that has the potential to impact other stories. Tracing the pattern of these collisions, what impacts what and how that changes what can happen next — who has collided into whom in the past, and what that has produced — it becomes a puzzle for the audience to solve. It pulls them in, putting connections together and being rewarded when connections and histories are revealed. It turns your show sticky, holding onto eyeballs.

Because who wants to watch plot? We want to watch stories. We come back to create myths.

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16
May 10

Audacity

Hesitant, cautious, careful, wondering — no one gives a shit. I can get that anywhere, from anyone. From everyone.

I want to see audacity.

People warn you not to be audacious for fear you’ll get hurt, you’ll look foolish, you’ll hurt them. They speak to their own fear, to the voice that says they must follow the rules. They don’t. You don’t. Rules exist for other people’s convenience, not yours. They’re there to comfort and guide those who don’t know how, or don’t have the balls to create rules of their own.

Somewhere along the way we absorbed limits. This catalogue of stuff I’ve already seen in T.V. and movies is allowable to pitch, on the list. These stories and images and references are on the approved list. This is what we can draw from. We stay within these limits so we won’t be laughed at, so we won’t be challenged. So when we’re in the room and we pitch gay robots and people sneer or laugh we can feel okay about ourselves knowing they already did gay robots on Battlestar or wherever the fuck. So I know I’m not a complete fucking loon.

But you know what, they hired you to be a complete fucking loon. I mean, not completely. You have to understand the map before you veer off it. And if you’ve got a map that’s working, no need to bring in a new map. Especially if you’re working for someone else. But no matter what the map says, you always have the option to grab the wheel and drive off-road. Don’t be safe. Be audacious. That’s what people remember — both people who hire and people who watch. They — we — don’t care about how well you stay within the lines, follow form. That does not interest me at all. What we crave is stuff that thrills us. What thrills us is when you break rules. When you get big and then you fucking explode and take the ship down with you, leaving us feeling real fear and empowerment at once — those were all his options. Now what? That’s what storytelling is.

Know your craft, know the form you’re writing, the genre, make sure we’re rooted and hooked from minute one and then — blow shit up in our faces. Set up our expectations and defy them. Slow down when it’s time to speed up. Throw away jokes, as Jane Espenson says. Go psychological when all convention says it’s time for action. Surprise us. Be brave. Be bold. Shoot your wad — the more you give, the more you’ll get.

As the firemen say — the hotter you are, the faster we’ll come.

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14
May 10

Themes Emerge

Themes exist in our world.

Being awake means noticing when themes emerge.

Some people argue that invoking theme in your work is artificial — theme is a by-product of the story you’re telling, and your audience will see what they want in it.

I argue that watching and tracing the ways in which themes emerge — in stories, out there in the world — is what storytelling is.

This is an anxious time for T.V writers — staffing season, when the network shows hire their writers. This morning a friend let me know that my manager’s client’s show had just gotten picked up, and his agent told him they were desperate for women writers. I asked my manager about it, and she said not true, they’ve already got the women they want. And they’re all lawyers. Even the staff writer they want is a lawyer. The janitor’s a lawyer. The dog is a lawyer. Ok. Got it. I should have gone to law school to be a T.V. writer.

And I’m anxious about other stuff too. I want to be loved.

I know a piece — whether it’s a pilot, a blog post, a joke, whatever — feels like one of mine when it starts dovetailing –

Writing I want to be loved just now brought me close, after roaming on this post for two days –

I went to a teahouse in Koreatown and back to my couch, changed clothes three times. I’ve eaten and eaten — am I getting fatter or is that another feeling I’m dodging, that wants to speak?

I abandon most of these posts. I write far more of them than I publish.

The word “abandoned” is such a fucking cliche. I hate saying it, and I wouldn’t if it weren’t such an accurate word. It’s such a joke now to talk about people with abandonment issues, but how do you explain people who roam, whose thoughts are restless, who can’t or won’t focus until they finally write the words “I want to be loved.” And when you do , a fresh wave rises –

I vowed the other day to be funnier in these posts. They’re getting Czech arthouse dreary. Next thing you know I’m going to have a table of indigent old people sitting around cracking hard-boiled eggs until one of them gets dragged away by the state interrogators.

So the anxiety is not free-floating. It’s specific, and it emerges. It shape-shifts. It takes the form of lawyers getting all the T.V. writer jobs. And it takes the form of my hunger. Of not knowing where my next meal’s coming from, if it’s coming at all. My lack of faith. I don’t know if I’ll have a job, and I don’t know if I’ll be loved. I don’t know when I’ll find out.

Themes emerge. I knew I wanted to write about theme, because I loved what John August said about it here, and blogging is a conversation. But when I started this post, I didn’t know how I was going to write about theme — in what context, with what examples. You start, you have an idea in mind, you find places in your story to bounce that idea around. Your story becomes an echo chamber, and you carve out more and more interesting folds in the walls. The tracing of the bounce becomes your theme.

In the story here, I wanted to write about theme, I wanted to make it immediate and personal and emotional. So that narrowed the frame greatly, because what’s going on today? Anxiety. But I could have told any number of stories about anxiety and staffing season, anxiety and love — it becomes a story about theme when you draw the parallel between them, waiting, the hunger for them both, the jar of sunflower seed butter I won’t stop eating — a jar that never fills my hunger. The way I can’t stop touching my belly. What connects T.V.-writing-lawyers to the touching of my belly.

The joke I wrote on Twitter last week about douchey guys who try to worm their way in by reassuring you about your body — and I’m like, reassure me about my career, jerk-off. This joke hits deep with me, where stuff hurts.

Hey, I put a joke on here — and proved I’m completely incapable of being funny here. This must be my ponderous, serious space, like when Americans go to Europe and feel we have to prove ourselves. This is my Europe. God help you all.

For theme to emerge, give it a space, a context, two adjoining contexts, and then pop your idea inside like a pinball. Watch it bounce around. What emerges will be a tracing that’s dense, provocative, layered. This is your theme.

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