{"id":11717,"date":"2014-10-21T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T08:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/?p=11717"},"modified":"2014-10-20T16:45:44","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T23:45:44","slug":"theme-organizing-principle-love-revising-jackie-blain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/21\/theme-organizing-principle-love-revising-jackie-blain\/","title":{"rendered":"Theme -> Organizing Principle -> \u201cI love revising!\u201d By Jackie Blain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Revising<\/a>Join me as we welcome back columnist\u00a0Jackie Blain as she shares with us “Theme -> Organizing Principle -> \u201cI love revising!\u201d\u00a0Enjoy!<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Who actually enjoys revising? Hands up.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thought so\u2026<\/p>\n

I know, I know. You\u2019ve heard all the clich\u00e9s like \u2018writing is revising.\u2019 And you try to embrace it.<\/p>\n

But it all seems overwhelming, right?<\/strong> A mountain of first draft pages can be enough to make a writer completely abandon all that work. It\u2019s tempting\u2026 oh so very tempting\u2026 to let your latest piece become a \u201ctrunk\u201d project, as in \u201cI\u2019m throwing it in a trunk and hoping the trunk spontaneously catches fire someday.\u201d<\/p>\n

I created my fair share of trunk manuscripts\u2026 until I finally figured out a way to embrace the revision process. My Diagnosis Murder<\/em><\/a> colleagues still shudder whenever someone mentions \u201cthe godforsaken Food Fight script\u201d about which the less said the better.<\/p>\n

But my friend and colleague, and WGA-nominated writer, Shari Goodhartz mentioned the power of theme to me one day over coffee.<\/strong> She figures out the theme of her script, writes it on a notecard, and looks at it before she writes each scene. If the scene doesn\u2019t comment on the theme, she changes the scene. It\u2019s a strategy that obviously works for her.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I never know what I\u2019m writing until I get a draft finished and my writing friends tell me what it is. I once wrote a screenplay that I thought was about finding a place to fit in, but it turned out to be about what it means to be heroic \u2013 who knew?<\/p>\n

Happily, however, Shari got me thinking about theme as an organizing principle, and I came up with this exercise that I still use:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Grab some paper or a blank screen.<\/li>\n
  2. Finish this prompt: \u201cMy story is about\u2026\u201d without saying anything about character or plot. That\u2019s right. You heard me. \u201cMy story is about\u2026\u201d without using a character name or anything about the plot.<\/li>\n
  3. Next, finish this<\/em> prompt: \u201cI know my story is about\u2026 because\u2026\u201d and now<\/em> you get to talk about character and plot. Something made you finish that first prompt the way you did. What was it? What are the specifics?<\/li>\n
  4. What happened? Was your first answer about where you wanted<\/em> to start when you first envisioned your piece? Or have the characters and the actions \u201chijacked\u201d your piece and made it about something else? Did you just find out something about your story that you had been either ignoring or pretending wasn\u2019t there because it didn\u2019t go with your initial idea? What would happen if you embraced that \u201csomething\u201d?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Guess what?<\/strong> You\u2019ve just discovered the organizing principle<\/em> <\/strong>(aka theme<\/em>) of your piece! That one idea that everything hangs off, the one true through-line, spine, raison d\u2019etre<\/em>. And you can now use that organizing principle\/theme to revise:<\/p>\n