Storyteller Disconnect? BAD.

I swear I'm going to start posting in the morning. Eventually.

So as I've been trying to revise my script today (Where the Wild Berries Grow, check out my community arts company's blog for more on that), and it's just been an incredibly slow process all summer. The biggest challenges I faced last year, sure, I know how to deal with now, but I just have new challenges this year. I have literally had almost no constructive feedback all summer, and have thus been totally alone in writing this time around.

So I've been disconnecting myself with the characters and the story so I can give myself unbiased feedback. This is a whole new problem though, as I've discovered. All writers, actors, storytellers, etc. beware: disconnecting from your characters and story is dangerous and definitely not advised. What happens is as follows:

1. I'm not motivated to develop the story and characters to learn more. By disconnecting, I don't feel the usual urge to know every detail about everyone and everything in the story.
2. And that means the story and characters come out flat.
3. Flat stories don't motivate me to learn more about the story.
4. Oh, look, it's a never ending cycle.

Take my word for it: don't try to create a story while disconnected to it. Connect! Being a writer (or any storyteller) requires you to become insane. You must live within the world that your character(s) live(s) in, or else you won't be able to tell the story the way it deserves to be told. People are much more interested in first-hand accounts than someone who heard from someone who heard from someone whose cousin heard from their neighbour who-- you get the picture.

So I started reconnecting with my characters today. Amazingly, I can suddenly write again. Sort of. I'm kind of trying to avoid insane-writer status, but I'm getting lost in their world again, and I doubt I'll be able to avoid insane-writer status for much longer. But two weeks of being an insane writer? I think I can manage to be insane for two weeks so I can get this script performance worthy.

Insanity, here I come.