Hard chairs, shared desks, and teachers and students who could actually see me; as someone who homeschooled from third grade through high school, I was very uncomfortable in the classroom setting. No more paddleball during the lectures. I was scared and clueless as to how to deal with the anxiety (social and otherwise) coursing through my body as I forged my way through one year of study at conservatory.
My course was Film and New Media, and I knew nothing about either of those things. Almost everything I knew about film came from behind-the-scenes videos from my Star Wars DVDS. And I had no idea what New Media even meant. But I was obsessed with the idea of story and storytelling. I wanted to tell stories like the ones that had filled my childhood with wonder and joy.
Still, the anxiety was crippling as I fought through full days in small classrooms. In the midst of these growing pangs, something my teacher said cut through the noise and cut through my spirit. He said something that rocked my understanding of story and what I wanted to do with it. “The best thing a storyteller can do is ask really great questions, versus feeling compelled to answer all the questions.” David Narona’s voice carried words that resonated with me on a whole different level.
I was cut by that statement, as I saw in my own writing attempts that I only gave answers, which had sucked the life out of my work. Our answers are so narrow compared to the vastness of our questions. I nervously wrote down what my teacher had said. I knew how my writing needed to change.
As the art that I love danced across the screen of my imagination, the power of asking questions manifested itself more clearly. One of my favorite writers, Jon Foreman of Switchfoot, wrote many of the band's most beloved songs from questions proposed by Soren Kierkegaard, an early existentialist philosopher. I thought on the Pixar films of my childhood (and beyond). And while some of them venture to answer questions, I noticed how much humility the answers came with.
I would say that’s the caveat; you can get away with answering a question if you answer it in such a way that it does not have a sense of finality. I think of Christopher Nolan’s latest film Oppenheimer, and how the whole film revolves around one of the biggest questions of the 20th and 21st centuries: what is the morality of the invention and usage of the atomic bomb? Answers (notice the plural “s”) are supplied, but not selected. These artists don’t give the answer, so much as discuss the question.
I think asking questions is so effective because it is the mark of true humility. It’s a state of humility where you ask the viewer to explore a question with you, encouraging them to engage with a story and think about what you’re thinking about. You are not showing the viewer something, rather you’re inviting them to have a discussion with your characters, plots, and worlds.
Interestingly, this idea lines up with recent trends in education. Research shows that the least effective form of teaching is the lecture. The classic idea of sitting in a room hearing a professor talk for an hour is so ineffective because it requires minimal engagement. So why would you make a film which tells the information without inviting the audience to explore? When you go about answering your questions before the viewer has really even considered them for theirself, then you are giving them less room to engage, and therefore driving down interest.
As I mentioned earlier, I have a tendency to offer answers before questions in my scripts. Sometimes in my rewrite I have to edit out my answers and transform them into questions. But rather than continuing to fix my scripts, I am striving to change how I write my rough drafts altogether. I find that writing a script from the perspective of asking a question is far more engaging for me as the writer.
I get to learn and discover and explore within my story, rather than storysplain a fact I think I already know. When I turn on humility, I find myself much more interested in what I am writing because it is an exploration of my honest musings, rather than a translation of fixed ideas.
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