Happy Friday!
So excited about our 7th issue of Your Friday Funnys!
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you! But Valentine’s Day is not always happy. It creates pressure on relationships to celebrate appropriately. And if you don’t have anybody to be valentines with, it could increase your loneliness exponentially. My practical advice is that if you’re single and a little sad, treat yourself as if you were your own valentine, and buy yourself a nice dinner, and a small gift. If you’re the social type, find a few friends to hang out with.
From a writing perspective, Valentine’s Day is emotionally loaded, and so provides excellent opportunities to create conflict in stories.
Here’s an exercise that will help you connect your own feelings about Valentine’s Day to those of your character, which reveal some of that conflict.
1. Set a timer for 10 minutes.
2. Close your eyes, and take three long slow breaths in and out.
3. Ask yourself for a mental image of what Valentine’s Day means to you. Something will flash in your mind. Grab it and write it down.
When I did this exercise, I remembered a Valentines dinner with an ex. It was letter perfect, like something out of a movie and I realized I no longer cared about him. Whenever I pass that restaurant, I still remember the experience.
4. Write down what you see and remember.
5. Allow yourself to feel the feelings.
6. Reset the timer.
7. Write a scene using the characters in your current script in which two or more of them share a Valentine’s Day experience. For example, if your story is a war story, write a scene where the characters are trying to reach their loved ones on Valentine’s Day and the communication systems are not working well.
To recap, please watch the Friday Funnies and subscribe. Do the Valentine’s Day exercise to find more about yourself and your character, and practice working from a personal experience and then transforming it into a scene in your latest movie or TV script.
Here’s to your successful writing,
Professor Marilyn Horowitz
