Use what you have
Some of my favorite moments in stories are when characters realize they’ve always had access to something they’ve been seeking. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy discovers that she always could have clicked her heels to return home. In It’s A Wonderful Life, George finds that the happiness he’s been desperate for could always have been found in the relationships already present in his life. The answer has been right there — they just haven’t known it yet.
But if the answer lies in a solution that hasn’t already been introduced — if Dorothy gets home because she stumbles on a teleportation pad — the story won’t be nearly as impactful. Not only because it’s empowering to learn that you’ve always held the keys to your desires, but because the most impactful stories use what they have.
From the smallest developments to the biggest revelations, they keep their list of ideas at a minimum. Instead of throwing new notions at the audience, they move the pieces already on the board in unexpected directions. They understand that real magic lies in seeing something we’re already familiar with applied in a new way.
I was reaching for the perfect next step in a screenplay when my dad told me about a fight scene from the 1996 action movie First Strike. Acrobatic stunts build to a tense one-on-four showdown where an A-frame ladder is used in as many ways as possible to fend off encroaching goons. You marvel with delight as it’s swung like a staff, leapt through like a high bar, thrust like a battering ram, and planted over an enemy like a cage. Each movement is surprising and dynamic. And it’s a ladder!
Every element of your story is like the First Strike ladder — sitting there waiting to be flipped and climbed, spun into new versions of itself. If you think laterally and diagonally and upside down, you’ll find that a bookshelf can be a telegraph and a drawing a passageway. Simply coming up with something to add to your story is easy, which makes it boring. Using what you already have in different ways is exciting, innovative, and unique.
A story is an organic whole, and when we say a story is good, we’re saying that it responds alertly to itself. — George Saunders
It’s the idea behind the art of change ringing, where bell ringers continue to shift the order in which a set of bells are pulled to create new expressions from the same instruments. And it’s what enchants the work of the Futurists, who created a new art movement based on the idea of expressing a subject not in a single moment but in all moments that its movement allows.
It’s also a way to get past writer’s block. If I find myself staring at a draft not knowing what I want to do with it, I remind myself not to reach for some nonexistent Perfect Creation but to simply work with what I have. I ask myself, “What am I experiencing now? In my life? In my heart? How can I apply what I already possess in a new way?” And the pages flow.
Stories, like songs, buildings, and the human mind, are recursive. They keep coming back to themselves. The final shape is determined by the foundational shape — otherwise, it’s just a series of shapes. And this is why we love stories. The patterns of rhyme and reason that structure them resonate with us. But they only resonate when they’re contained.
Each time you introduce something new into your story, you’re dipping into a shallow reserve of attention capital to throw another shiny ring into your juggling hands. If you give the audience too much to track, they’ll tap out fast. So don’t. It was never about the rings — only the way you make them move.
written listening to “No Step on Wing” by Nils Frahm
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