What Can Bruce Lee Teach Us About Screenwriting?
When I started my screenwriting adventures, if someone had said to me that I needed a 'process' I would have laughed in their face and muttered about process being anti-creative.
I'd had some success early in my 'career'. Two producers had vied to option my first feature script. Since I'd written that screenplay in a very idiosyncratic way, I assumed -in my arrogance- that 1. I knew a thing or two about the craft and 2. I didn't need a process. Those views lasted precisely until I attempted to write my second screenplay... then quickly evaporated.
But what is the process and how much process do we need to get the screenwriting project off the ground? Simple answers; there is no single universal and absolute process. How much process you need is unique to your learning style and cognitive predispositions.
As a right brain thinker, the answers are; as simple a process as is viable and as little process as is necessary. Right-brainers are intuitive, they get the big picture, they're creative and imaginative. If the process is overly complex and extensive I feel limited and inhibited to the extent that I don't want to play. Right-brainers need the space to explore and experiment and play.
God knows I don't want to create another schism between people, there's enough of those already. Some of my best friends are left-brain thinkers! But it is worth figuring out what you are to determine how you best learn and develop your craft.
The secondary industry of screenwriting; teachers, gurus and narrative consultants is dominated by left-brain thinking, and of course that makes perfect sense. Left-brain thinking is logical and analytical, perfect for creating coherent paradigms, systems and sequential schemas for other left-brainers.
As a consequence of that we see ever more technical processing and processes entering the craft of screenwriting. That's fine if you're predominantly a left-brainer, but it can leave right-brainers bored or worse alienated by a lot of the prevailing discussions around the craft.
I regularly see posts saying that a stand-out script needs X or Y, and indeed a stand-out script might need that... but it might not.
It occurs to me that those of us who do some story consultancy, script development, or teach the craft are at risk of dismantling the watch only to realise that its function is so much more than the sum of its parts; the ghost in the machine. We can lose that wonder in an ever finer layer of technical granularity and miss the point entirely.
I am in love with the ineffable and less concerned with the things I think I understand with every day that passes. Knowledge only takes us so far, the good stuff happens when we leap into the abyss.
"Don't think; feel. It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all the heavenly glory". Bruce Lee
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