[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: How is a story a search for meaning?
Alan Watt, Author/Screenwriter and [Founder of L.A. Writers’ Lab]: When you think of meaning what we’re really talking about is theme. The plot is really the vehicle that carries the meaning and the meaning is sort of like the thing that’s under the surface and it’s the thing that grows and gets clear, it’s almost like the mist is clearing by the time you get to the end of the story.
I think of every story as moving inexorably toward some kind of difficult choice for the protagonist and that’s when the meaning gets revealed Oh this is what it means for Ladybird to become an artist. Do you know what I’m saying? The beginning of the story she’s got this dilemma, she’s got a false belief about what it means to be special and what it means to be special about outward validation. It’s about being perhaps different or weird or having this name that she’s created for herself. By the end of the story she discovers that what it means to be special is to tap into her ordinariness because there’s nobody else like (I think her name is Christine) there’s nobody else like Christine. I don’t think there’s anything braver than writing from your truth.
We all have something that we know to be true due to our own unique set of experiences and I think that sometimes the most terrifying thing to do is for us to just tell our truth on the page. I think sometimes we think it’ll be boring, nobody’s going to care…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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