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Mark David Gerson
a book bubble about
Organic Screenwriting
Self-Help
Author Insight
The Chaos of Creativity
"When people see the nice books with the nice white pages and the nice black writing," Margaret Atwood once wrote, "what they don’t see is the chaos and the complete frenzy and general shambles that the work comes out of." That "complete frenzy and general shambles" is called a first draft, and my early drafts are perfect illustrations of what Atwood was talking about. The first draft of my novel The MoonQuest, for example, ran 400 rambling, repetitive, contradictory and chaotic pages – all crammed into a single, seemingly endless chapter. My early screenplay drafts have been no less messy. Whether I'm writing fiction or nonfiction, a book or a screenplay, my first draft is always a journey of discovery. It's when the story or idea or theme reveals itself to me...if I get out of my own way. It's when the characters start to come to life...if I let them. And it all plays out in the frenzied chaos of that first draft.
Book Excerpt
Organic Screenwriting
First drafts are messy. First drafts are chaotic. First drafts are disordered. First drafts are inconsistent. First drafts are meandering. First drafts are repetitive. First drafts are too long, or too short. That’s why they are first drafts.
First drafts are journeys of discovery. In your first draft, you find out what your story is and what it’s about. You learn who your characters are. You meet up with ideas, beliefs and convictions you never knew you had. You come face-to-face with shadow selves that, more than likely, have long resided hidden within you.
Your first draft is that unplanned drive into the country, that map-free journey alive with synchronicity, serendipity and surprise. Your first draft is where you first taste the magic of the written word and experience the alchemy of creation. Your first draft is where you let the story and its characters reveal to you what and who they are, which may resemble nothing that you expected. Your first draft is your first experience of surrender, where you begin to discover that you don’t own the story, where you begin to discover that the story owns you.
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