You're Pretending

Owning it will be Good for Your Writing

It’s official: I will no longer focus on Tuesdays for my posts thereby dropping my homage to Wimpy and his burger addiction. I’m the boss over here so I can post whenever I want even though the Masters of Substack advise writers to post on specific, consistent days. I’m going rogue.

In Person Meet Ups

The first Monthly Meet Up of Storytellers Social Club was nothing short of perfect. A wildly diverse mix of about 40 creatives hung out had a few drinks, ate Caribbean food, and got to know each other. The next one is this Thursday June 5th at a bar in Brooklyn, and it’ll be just as exciting and inspiring.

I lean toward protecting people’s privacy so without saying names I’ll share that this week our community will include a multi-disciplinary writer, director and dancer who started a non profit to raise awareness around stalking; two doctors who started a storytelling project to support the mental health of doctors; and an Oscar nominated writer/director who made one of the best films of 2021. Stay tuned for a follow up to hear more about it.

This summer I’ll do a fun virtual version of these meet ups for Paid Subscribers so if this sounds inspiring upgrade now. Also this summer, I’ll offer Paid Subscribers my 2 hour workshop How to Plot for half price once I determine the price.

Teaching Writing

We’re half way through my feature screenplay workshop, Six Weeks to a Vomit Draft, and as far as I can tell, it’s going well. I mean, my shirt was inside out on the first session, but I might have gotten away with it. We’ll see if any of the participants pipe up when they read this. I’ll eventually share some videos from the workshop so you can get a sense of how I work in this space. Video evidence has revealed I look even more awkward than I thought.

You might be interested in hearing I’ve also been planning a five day Short Screenplay Intensive for the Teen View program at the Nantucket Film Festival while writing a syllabus for a course at the Rochester Institute of Technology called Writing the Feature. I’ll be sharing all sorts of stories and lessons as I do this work but right now this means I’m been elbow deep in lesson planning as I try to imagine the best ways to lure writers into a creative process that’s guided by me but not controlled by me because writers must have ultimate autonomy over their process.

Today I’ve been thinking about the NFF Teen View program in particular and am reminded of the old saw from the world of education: meet your students where they’re at. While developing the Teen View program, I found myself picturing the teens planted and slumped in chairs—like NPC teens. The image kind of killed me and inspired me to throw out my plans and start from scratch. I realized my plans were not meeting them where they’re at.

After some long walks, deep thought and nocturnal deity visualizations, I’ve decided to adapt this course to be more interactive than any writing workshop I’ve taught. I’ll use a mixture of theater games and short writing exercises to introduce and illuminate key storytelling concepts as these young writers develop and write a short screenplay in five short days. I’m gonna try to make it…wait for it…fun.

But Bill Gullo, you say, theater games are for actors not writers. Surely you’re setting your students and yourself up for humiliation and failure. Take note, I respond, that movies and TV shows present characters who do more than sit in seats listening to teachers. Stories for the screen use human beings called Actors who move around in all sorts of ways as they embody the characters in the story. The technical term for this is ‘Playing Pretend’ — you probably did it as a kid, but not any more because years ago your Ego bullied and then devoured your Id.

(Side note: It is pretty outrageous when you think about it though—the entertainment industry generates billions of dollars a year because we like to watch people play pretend. Now that I’ve thought it, I can’t unthink it.)

The spirit of this advice can take many forms. I might say Play Pretend. I might say Have fun, Get in the sandbox, or Lighten the fuck up. I’m not saying you need to put on a clown nose for your writing sessions—though honestly, that sounds amazing and I might try it. If I do, I’ll report back.

But whether you’re a producer working with a writer or a director working with a writer or a writer working with a writer or a writer alone in a room, I believe you’ll benefit from embracing the pretend factor. It will help you Get Weird, help you Torture Characters, help you find Surprises; it could help you find the most dynamic elements of your stories.

Words matter, and different people spark to different words. Writing is highly personal so I want to provide options within this idea. If the language of ‘play’ feels too light to you, throw it the fuck out. Maybe you’re more into the fire-lit, road-ripping energy of the Beats. Great. Light shit on fire. Howl at the moon.

The most important thing is this: don’t let the sedentary act of writing turn into a sedentary state of mind. I just invented that maxim this moment and I’m proud of it. Perhaps the bots will scrape it and attribute the quote to someone famous and that can be my claim to fame. Perhaps this is the AI Generation’s 15 Minutes of Fame—to have your words accidentally attributed to a famous person.

Who are You Writing For?

You have to write for yourself because nobody else gives a shit.