COCO (Part 2) - The Power of Vignettes

As we discussed in Part 1 of this podcast, sometimes it only takes one moment to find the structure of your script— the moment where everything comes into clarity and you understand where your movie is really going to live.

For the writers of Coco, that place was the real meaning of Dia de Muertos. The real theme of the story. It was that theme that drove every creative decision they made, every structural turn in their character’s journey.

But that structure didn’t grow from a big idea about Dia de Muertos, even though that big idea helped to guide the writers.

The structure of Coco grew out of a single moment, and a single song: Remember Me.

In fact, it’s from the execution of the very first performance of that song that the whole structure of Coco, and the whole structure, not only of Miguel’s journey, but also of Ernesto’s and Imelda’s and Abuelita’s and Hector’s and every other character’s is formed.

You can think of writing as a process of excavation. It begins by searching for the right place to dig, (which often requires, as we discussed in last week’s podcast, digging in many wrong or seemingly unrelated places).

And once we find that right place to dig, the place where the story really lives, it’s about digging as deeply as possible, right in that same place, so we can fully excavate every bit of beauty that lives there.

 

There’s a great anxiety that often overcomes us as we seek the place where the story really lives— a fear that the script isn’t good enough or the idea isn’t good enough or that our craft isn’t good enough, or our structure isn’t good enough or that we aren’t good enough.

And that anxiety causes us to look outside of ourselves for the answers— trying to find the right plot or the right characters or the right trick ending or the right idea for what the heck is supposed to happen!

And as a result, rather than finding inspiration, we end up finding cliches.

Rather than finding the story that only we could tell, we end up finding the story that everybody else is already telling, rather than finding the characters that already live inside of us, we end up finding the ones we’ve already met in other movies.

Because ultimately, the real answers don’t lie outside of our scripts. They don’t lie in formulas or outlines or plans or plots.

The real answers reside inside. Inside the scenes you’ve already written. Inside the scenes that resonate most truthfully for you.

If you ever feel like you don’t know what needs to happen in your script, the problem is not “out there” it’s “in here.”

If you don’t know where to go, it means you don’t know where you are. It means something is not fully executed, fully true, fully resonant, fully excavated in the pages you’ve already written.

Because once you’ve got that one element of truth, that one thing that you know is right, it will not only show you everything else you need to do, it will also show you exactly how you need to do it.

Which is why it’s so important to be fully present with your characters and yourself as you write each scene of your movie.

Not to be serious with it or forceful with it, or heavens forbid to manipulate it toward the plot point you’ve planned for the future.

Not to get it right in the first draft, but rather to look at the first draft as research— a place to find that crazy little detail (like the fact that a Xolo dog’s tongue tends to loll out the side of his mouth) that eventually is going to bring your scene totally to life.

The goal is not to control the scene, but rather to explore it.

To hold it lightly in your hand and simply observe it. To see, feel and hear everything, searching not for the things you planned but the things that surprise you, the things you didn’t expect to happen, or that cause an unexpected, strong emotional reaction in you— a laugh, a tear, or even a feeling of shame or failure.