One of the stories I worked on(The Visitor, which is not featured in this entry) featured a son who survives a mother murdering her entire family and one of the son's survive. The son confronts the mother in prison years later where she's spending the rest of her life. The first draft featured these letters of correspondence between the mother and son placed between the narrative. Shortly before the story was featured, Ellen informed the class that we were not going to workshop my story until I wrote another draft that took all of these letters out. She flatly told me, "Well, it didn't work."
Needless to say, the next draft went over much better. But there was still something earnest and real that I felt was missing from my work. Here I was, this guy who was older than most of the people in this class, this self-proclaimed Simon Cowell of the group that semester after years of Paula Abdul-esque "This is a great start, but-." I'll never forget the one story I spent ten minutes ripping apart, begging my fellow student to tell me how her protagonist's kiss was with the boyfriend, how the date went, what were they doing during the date, etc. Ellen pretty much concluded the rest of her workshop because she felt that everything was covered through my long, frustrated rant about it.
But at the same time, here I sat: a writer who took criticism well, dished it better than anyone, and I felt like I was being dishonest as a writer. A fraud. Until my last submission as an University of Arkansas undergrad.
The piece that I always consider the best I've submitted to any undergraduate workshop was the story I wrote titled Biohazardous Materials. Without telling Ellen what I wanted to tackle, I shared my concerns with her about people's reactions to the characters I wanted to share and she delightfully told me, "Fuck 'em." And that's exactly what I did.
My story for workshop was submitted a little too late for submission and Ellen told me that she would read over it and call me with any revision that I should make. At 7AM on Monday Morning, I was about to leave work and she called me and told me that my story was "powerful" and one of the best she's read all semester. She made one line suggestion(which I forgot what it was, but I'm sure I made the change) and the story was featured in the workshop.
A lot of people were put off by the story, which featured gay themes and suggestive sexual content, but Ellen allowed me to read my story with no notes, no interruptions. And at the end of the student critiques, she smiled at me and said, "Great work." I felt like what I had been working to achieve as a writer in this program finally paid off. And a lot of it had to do with me becoming uninhibited by what society wants and even by what I want.
I wrote short stories in college with my own wish and desires as to what would happen instead of letting the characters speak to me. Obviously, writing for television is different because you're working with someone else's ideas to make something seem real and organic. But there's a lot to be learned about characterization in scriptwriting from writing and studying narrative fiction.
The subject matter isn't particularly groundbreaking, so don't read this and think, "What the fuck is this kid thinking? There are plenty of stories like this out there." This story, albeit very short, marked personal and professional growth. It allowed me the opportunity to let characters speak for themselves while resisting urges or beliefs that this character should have a different fate than the one intended. It also allowed me to tell a story without someone wondering if all I could do was queer fiction. I just wanted to tell a story that respected the conventions of literature.
I've been lucky to have so many awesome writing instructors that taught me so much about characterization, plot development, and structure. And this story is a tribute to them and to my hard work.
So the next entry in my evolving portfolio: Biohazardous Materials.
