Have you constantly created an alluring future in your story?

Jett Ferrell with thanks to Craig Volk, writer.

The other day when I was searching for a topic to discuss, looking for a quote, and entered Four Pillars of Drama, another article popped up-The Four Pillars of Dramatic Writing ( for novelists too!). I was intrigued from a Peak Performance Living perspective. How might these pillars be applied to daily life?

On an obvious level, there was much that was relevant to me as one who teaches script analysis, does feed back on scripts, and directs. I forwarded it to a few other writer friends for whom I thought it might be of value. I printed it out.

Today the print out is sitting beside the computer beckoning.

Are there nuggets of gold that I might sift out and polish up and share in regard to writing the script of our own life?

The idea has been percolating-let me see if i can pour it into a drinkable cup to offer you.

The proposed pillar: constantly create an alluring future- for the writer means that if you do, the audience is constantly wondering whether the hero will attain that alluring future. The audience has somehow formed an image of the desired outcome. This question leads the audience to root, cheer, boo and hiss anyone who supports or blocks that future from manifesting. Despite the fact that the plot may be predictable, it engages the audience emotionally, because it is the individual nature of the Character that embraces our curiosity. HOW will they do it?

I am certainly not the first person to use script writing as a metaphor for our own life, nor the last. No claims to originality are here. Hearing that said, what is it in us that is our own alluring future? If each aspect of the  story, the audience, the hero and the villain, writer, director, etc. is an aspect of our inner self, then what does this pillar mean and is it a good thing to engage or should we leave this idea to Hollywood formulaic film fantasy?

Images are our common language-intangible forms seen, heard and felt and then given context and translated into meanings by the mind and assigned words to communicate the ….meaning assigned the image? or the image? the meaning assigned by the beholder?

Before the image is translated into English, German, Spanish, or Swahili, the picture conveys something. What ever that something is awakens in our soul a desire to merge or separate further. It is independent of the words that describe it. The words that describe it limit us to perceiving what words can describe-what it is and what it is not and help us develop clear responses to the images. The image is what lingers, it can be described in many languages, with many synonyms.  If we can truly identify, see, feel and know the image, and then if we can convey the image to another so much miscommunication could be prevented.

Within each of us the multitude of archetypal images plays in our psyche. We evolve our personalities by using a combination of these archetypes that ultimately becomes our filter of perception and our primary language for giving context to the images. It even is the eye that sees in a picture what others do not see.

I remember the children’s magazine Highlight- I think was the title-often found in the doctor or dentist’s office. There was a picture with hidden pictures within it-can you find the bumble bee in the bark of the tree? The flashlight in the stem of the plant?  Only when we know of the possibility of the image do we search for it. And the skill to discern the image, and find the image engages aspects of the brain that can be developed.

What is all of this corny blabbing about, ultimately? What is my point, I ask…even if you do not….It has something to do with the idea that we must have images in our own lives that generate questions that lure us to live. Will I live my dream? Will I have enough to pay the rent? How will my character survive the impending disaster?   What if the images of our future are not alluring? How much better might they be if they were alluring?  Can we consciously choose to create alluring images and align our whole being with them. Perhaps we could skip a lot of the steps of wording our dreams or wording our fears, and deeply ask ourselves to experience the images of yourself as hero knowing the plot will unfold in perhaps a predictable way, with you as a most unique creative individual.

I know, i get kinda corny from time to time–its in my Iowa roots.

gotta run—comment if you have an opinion.