Chapters 3, 4, 5 in Syd Field

Okay, here I divert from Field's kind opinion on Character and Plot Generation. In my opinion, he can't possibly be good at this. I would rather take a shaker of salt in the eye than write a friggin character biography from birth to the Aldermanic Elections. Fuck that. In my opinion the fun and active way of character building is to pay attention to each choice your character makes (sort of like in improv), those choices define who he/she is, all future choices are made with the previous choices as givens. I prefer to write the bold choice (especially in comedy where those choices are often jokes - see Raising Arizona) and then figure out what sort of person would make that choice, action creating character as opposed to a complete character biography before the character has even ventured and opinion or had a problem. Fuck all that. Yawn. Seriously, fucking YAWN! I'd rather find the joke (actions and choices), and then figure out who acts like that, who decides like that, who talks like that?

The thing he does nail, though only in a few sentences as opposed to the pages dedicated to writing a character biography, is that this is only an initial foray into figuring this out, and it will take 60 pages to do it. Then, with your character and traits firmly in mind, you go back and rewrite the sections you wrote while you were still fuzzy on the character. I agree, except that in the realm of character choices, those early choices may be way off as you continue to create the character.

I advocate "sideways" writing; not from beginning to end (fucking YAWN!), but rather jumping back and forth generating plot and character and playing both off each other as each new idea dictates. Does that make sense? Well, I don't have time to make it make sense, but that is the essence of my poorly-imparted certainty.

Syd advocates the biography for one of two reasons: He's so good at teaching structure that he never gave that much thought to how you generate characters and plots and fell back on the old standby, the biography. Or, he believes it works. I think it's the latter because earlier her chalks up creative generation to God-given talent, which is SUPER bullshit.

I really hate the myth that creativity is a God-given talent. I think it was created by self-important people who want the world to think there's something special about them and only them. There is SO nothing special about the most creative among us except that they worked damn hard all the time, for years, to achieve a singular goal, and narrowed their focus so that only the ideas and images that fed into that goal and bolstered their achievement of that goal would make it through, creating a foundation on which they could build and even greater understanding of that goal. Did that make any sense? It's akin to how some claim to "create their own reality." In my world I am a screenwriter, only the ideas that make me a screenwriter make it through, no credence is given to the idea that I might not be, even though that may be absolutely true, but if I continue, for years and years of studying under the assumption that I'm a screenwriter, what will be true? Exactly. God-given? Try me-given.

Now how come all the other Field detractors never say that?