One thing that’s nice about developing the story with and actor like Godfrey, is that at times, instead of explaining what he means, he will actually act out what he means. He’ll just seamlessly slip into the character talking about some aspect of a scene, and then start playing the scene as that character.

So we are going to start using this a little more consciously I think.

Where we are now with the script, is we have blocked about about the whole first act, in scenes, and to a large degree in beats within scenes. The beats are by no means solidified yet, but we’ve been making a lot of notes as we go about what each scene needs to contain.

But we are at a point now, at the end of the first act, where we are not entirely sure where the next immediate move is. So I think the next time we meet, we will improvise our way through this last scene in act 1 and see what comes of it.

One thing I really remember from McKee’s STORY, is that characters will always take the minimum, conservative action from his point of view. So we’ve been using this as a guide as well, when we write ourselves into corners we cannot get out of. I’m hoping that our improvisation will help in this regard as well. Because we will have people in the situations, hopefully we will know instantly what behavior is true and what isn’t.

But soon, certain themes began emerging; common themes in all of the threads of the story. So as we started to spot these, we began to realize what this story is really about.

So far, the themes are:

Family

What makes a family? People you are related to biologically, or through marriage, or people you come to surround yourself with? A mixture of both? New York City is one of the classic breeding grounds of the self-made family, the family you gather around you through common interests, hopes, fears. In this story, we see families coming to an end, families being born, families with many members casting off their excess.

We see a common thread of several characters in search of parental figures in particular. And when I was talking to Godfrey about this the other night, I noted that this is a point of interest at the age we are writing this story. I think, because of the New York thing above, but also because for me personally, my parents have long since passed into the realm of real people. I understand them now, as much more like me, just trying to make it through, and doing the best they can. In this story, we see some characters reaching this very point of realization. But the question remains, how will they deal with it? Will some continue to seek out new parental figures to replace the old? Will others realize that this is some natural part of growing up, and there is no need to replace these figures?

Empathy

Another theme I see emerging is Empathy. One of the greatest flaws our main character has, is his inability to discern when to empathize and then not to. I’ll leave it at that for the moment. But this flaw plays a very important role in the story.

Cynics

We’ve heard it said that a cynic is a disappointed idealist. It’s turning out that several of our characters are cynics in their own ways due to some past disappointment.

New York City

Is this a theme? It is certainly working out to be a character. We’ll create a new post about that. But as far as this discussion goes, this story does look at New York and ask if it’s still possible to find weirdness here.