Understanding Us

Keepin' it Real

In creating your Characters you need to ensure that they are believable. Their motivations need to make logical sense within their story world. Remember Jimmy McGovern's advice:

So let's start with our world...

What do we all need?

There are the basic needs, the ones that we have to fulfil in order to survive as individuals and as a species:

Water, Food, Protection, Offspring

Once we have achieved a sense of security in being able to regularly provide ourselves, and our off-spring, with these things (usually by interacting and belonging to a society),

we start to WANT other things...

...essentially MORE of the same things,

and BETTER/EASIER ways of getting them.

And then there is another thing that we need to take into account, when looking at our nature;

once we have achieved the basic NEEDS and developed a society or enough of a system to give us the (sense of) security, that affords us the luxury of being able to WANT more/better/easier -

This comes about because we have the TIME to STOP and THINK about what we want,

to consider what other's have,

how they managed to get it and how we might get it for ourselves...

...or, how we might take it from them.

Whichever way you cut it, it ends up being...

Ezekiel 25:17

Lust and greed can lead to jealousy, violence and murder.

So in order to maintain the society or system that we have created to make our lives easier,

and not fall back into the chaos of basic day to day survival,

we create rules for belonging to the community...however, rules need to be enforced.

If logic and consideration won't make people adhere to the rules and get them to manage their basic instincts,

which could harm others in the community,

the community creates a threat to scare people into behaving as they need them to...

TIME & Space...& our Place within it

So society, and it's rules, gives us some space and time, that we wouldn't otherwise have if we had to chase and kill prey and fight each other off whilst trying to consume it ...and that allows us to sit and contemplate...

ONE - What we have and/or want and

TWO - Wonder...'What's it all about?'

"And you may find yourself in a beautiful house

With a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself, well

How did I get here?"

Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime, 1980

We are all trying to figure it (LIFE) out,

it's all one big mystery that we are part of,

an epic serial,

the ultimate VR with full body sensory input,

only interrupted by our need to sleep...and dream.

If we are lucky...

Christopher Anderson

Please listen to photographer, Christopher Anderson's explanation of how he came to an understanding, that his 'art' is a means of...

'explaining the world to myself'

This (LIFE) is real and stories are stories,

with biases and blind-spots but they are all, non-the-less, important

because telling stories is our way of trying to help each other LEARN,

to pass on what the other has learnt,

so that we can add it to our stock of knowledge…to help us all to survive and prosper.

But we don’t learn from being preached at,

we learn from being led towards,

finding our own way through,

and experiencing for ourselves, what this or that feels like, what it means, and what it’s implications are.

So engage your audience in the experience of your characters (empathy) and let them learn with your characters, as they journey through their story world.

And that is why, we write a TREATMENT.

Because it is where we create the DREAM, for others to find their way through.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse