Levi Dean_Official Copy of Writer's Voice

Approach - The Methodology

Vaage's narrative techniques + case study television anti-heroines =

Wheel of Techniques for writing anti-heroine

Floyd Gerhardt

Nancy Botwin

Sarah Lindon

• Reference: Dean, Levi. (2019). "Altering Screenwriting Frameworks through Practice-Based Research: A Methodological Approach." New Writing: The International Journal of Creative Practice & Theory.

Anti-Heroine Wheel of Techniques

New narrative techniques added to Vaage's existing framework

Angela

Logline:

When a single mother faces a custody battle with her own sister, in desperation for money, she uses that same sister's piano rental business to smuggle narcotics.

Drafting Characters

The narrative techniques helped removed a set of secondary characters that didn't fit into the new wheel of techniques.

However, there was one character, a young boy named Clarence, that didn't fit into the wheel but I couldn't bring myself to remove.

Why?

Discovering Writer's Voice

The characters Clarence was a projection of myself; a child with a turbulent upbringing.

• Exploring personal beliefs through writing

• A childhood of confusion leads to people entering adulthood unequipped

• Can children like this ever be helped or do they become a lost cause?

• Angela and her surrounding character's embody this discussion

All style & no structure

• Writer's voice is the framing of a building which ensures it remains standing

• Narrative techniques are analogous to the interior design of a house

• One cannot exist successfully without the other

V

Writer's Voice

Writer’s voice is vital in encouraging audience engagement.

Yet it's a 'fuzzy, slippery, hard to define, and nearly impossible to teach' concept. (Sperling & Appleman 2011: 71)

An author’s individuality being reflected by their unique self

VS.

A culturally manufactured set of beliefs and no self can exist in a narrative

OR

Voice is simultaneously social and personal (Prior 2001). 

Voice or Voices

• Historically, the writer has been attributed to having one voice.

• Bakhtin (1981) disputed this:

• The author has 'two speakers at the same time and expresses simultaneously two different intentions' (1981: 324). 

• These voices 'fight it out on the territory of the utterance' (1981: 360). 

Voices Battle it Out

• My child voice - blames Angela, the mother, for not meeting his needs

• My adult voice - whispers that Angela is not to blame and there is wider societal accountability

• Bakhtin - these two voices, child and adult, are engaged in rhetoric to persuade the spectator to form an alliance. 

A Third Voice

• In examining my teleplay, there is a third voice battling for utterance

• Third voice does not resemble any of my own life experiences.

• A voice can still be authentic when a writer merges their mind with another personality

(Elbow, 1981)

• Angela she is an exploration of a life that may have occurred for me - my propensity to ponder a negative future

Culture

Four Walls:

• Local Media
• Revered Celebrities
• Politics

Screenwriter

Family

Education

• Attitudes
• Behavior
• Values

• Achievements
• Experiences
• Shaping confidence
• Shape aspirations

Gender

• Male writer's - education
• Gender beliefs

Four Walls:

Screenwriter

Education

Family

• Negative experience
• Left with no grades

• Unloved
• Unsupported
• Neglected

• Identify cracks of society

• Education for everyone

• Also, need the domestic space to flourish

• Angela represents how abuse and neglect can inhibit a person's growth (third voice).

Saul Goodman

Walter White

Creator: Vince Gilligan

Case Study: Vince Gilligan

• Walter White - gifted man, but unfulfilled career.

• Saul Goodman - Underachiever and brilliance masked by brother.  

Is Gilligan's inner voice exploring what happens when a talent is left unfulfilled?  

How do you explore your writer's voice?

1. Don't just rely on narrative techniques.

2. It is voices not voice.

3. Parrot what others have said (Kallas 2014).

4. Identify gaps - Four Walls.

Beyond all else: Be honest with yourself.