Research

Memory:

Ask; what do I know from personal experiences that touches on my characters lives?

~ Lets say your character is afraid. How does fear feels! Let the memory take you back
when you felt fear. Vividly describe these fright filled hours. Explore your past, relive it
and then write it down to form writing knowledge. Now with the bile of fear in your
belly, write an honest, one of a kind scene.

Imagination:

Ask; what would it be like to live my characters life hour by hour, day by day?

~In vivid detail sketch how your characters shop, make love, pray.
Scene that may never find their way into your story. But draw you into imagine world
until its dja vu, while memory gives us large chunk of life, imagination takes fragments,
silvers of dream and chips of experience that seem unrelated. Then seeks their hidden
connections and merges then into a whole. Having found these links and envisioned the
scene, write them down.

Facts:

~Lets say you are writing on families. You research the facts.
1. Everything life has taught you would be powerfully confirmed. What youve
experienced in your domestic life is comparable in certain respects Analogous
to all others. As you express emotions you feel are yours and yours alone, each
member of the audience will recognize them as his and his alone.
2. The knowledge of the nature of family will expand globally to an infinite circle.
You will be struck by powerful insights and reach a valuable understanding.

These researches are often followed by: characters springing to life on their own free-
will, make choices and take actions that create turning points that twist, build and turn
again.

Biographical, psychological, physical, political and historical research is essential but

pointless if it does not lead to the creation of events.
Research provides materials but its no substitute for creativity.

A story is a design of events that carries us to a meaningful climax.

Example:
Imagine writing a Pyscho thriller
You begin perhaps with a what if
What would happen if a psychiatrist violated her professional ethics and began an affair
with her patient? Intrigued, you wonder, who is this doctor? Patient? Perhaps hes a
soldier, shell-shocked, catatonic. Why does she fall for him? You analyze and explore
until growing knowledge leads to wild speculation; Suppose she falls when her
treatment seems to work a miracle, under hypnosis his wide-eyed paralysis melts away
to reveal a beautiful, almost angelic personality.

That turn seems to sweet to be true, so you on a hunt on the other direction. In your
studies you come across a term/concept successful schizophrenia; some psychotics
process such extreme intelligence and willpower that they can easily hide their madness
from everyone around them/. Could your doctor be in loved with a madman she thinks
she cured?

~ Creation and investigation go back and forth, making demands on each other until
the story shakes itself out, complete and alive.

Once you have exhausted your ideas, ask yourself;

which scene is truest to your characters?
Truest to your world?
Has never been on the screen before?