📙 #315 - Your story? In this economy?

It's time to start writing something new.

Great! Yes, great... Just one question: How do you choose what to write?

From the Scriptnotes book, there's one possible criteria to narrow things down:

You should only write the thing you desperately wish you could watch. It needs to be something you would drag your friends to see.

This isn't asking you to think about strangers, quadrants, or "the average moviegoer/television viewer." If anything, this framing is decidedly anti-trend.

But how does a writer know, down in the core of their being, what's the thing that's missing that they could make happen? Paraphrasing Ron Swanson, do you know what you're about?

Ian Rogers addresses the old head complaint that "There's no good music anymore" with an exercise that explains what it means to have personal taste. Pick a year that you think had really good music, then look at the Billboard Hot 100 chart from that year. What are the artists and songs you were thinking about that aren't represented?

This is part of the conversation about what stories feel ripe for you to pick, but it's not just about what makes you specific. How do you know what resonates most strongly with your frequency?

Sarah Stumböck wants to remind creative people that "Authenticity is not purity. It's honesty." Among the exercises she suggests to help there's a Taste Audit, where you look to artists you admire and attempt to see what connects them (and what that says about who you are). Similarly, Austin Kleon frames an exercise as researching your creative genealogy—finding the influences of those who influence you.

Tracy Durnell demonstrates a version of this, looking at some recent science-fiction works and tracing their ancestors.

Have you found an idea that's ready for you? John and Craig join Aline Brosh McKenna in Scriptnotes episode 417 to talk about managing partially-formed ideas and not over-investing before you can see the story clearly:

John: It’s a garden that you have to tend, because if you don’t pay attention it can wither and die. Sometimes it’s best that it wither and die! Things can also overgrow and just become too crazy. I’ll try not to put something down in print and fix it in one form too early, because I know it’s still growing and combining with different ideas.

Let's end with this directive, which you may wish to imagine in the original French for added emphasis:

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.

– Robert Bresson

That "perhaps" is doing a lot of work. It's a safety valve for the overthinker. It doesn't ask you to confirm you're the only person to have this idea, or that it must be the definitive work to fill this gap in the narrative tapestry.

It's asking what you notice that other people might miss, and how you will help them to see it.

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In case you missed it...

In the most clicked link from our last issue, Mason Currey curates a collection of quotes from Nobel Prize winning author Anne Carson on a variety of topics, including how we’re all misquoting Descartes.

What else is Inneresting?

• Miles Klee argues that the internet is dying, and that we should help push it over the cliff so we can build something better to replace it.
• Lex Friedman looks at the midterm election, and why it has AI privateers thinking they'll have better luck building data centers in space.
• Benji from The Daily Magician explains the probable secret behind Houdini’s milk can escapes, and how the showmanship before the trick primed the audience to buy into the illusion.

And that’s what’s inneresting this week!

Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team. 

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