Briefly. For those of you interested in learning Method Writing, I’ll try to take you along through this class with me. I’ll write about the very basics, but to get the full effect, I definitely recommend that you take Jack Grapes’ class if you are anywhere within driving distance of Beverly Hills/West Hollywood area. He will give you invaluable tools for your writing of any kind; poetry, prose, screenwriting etc.
The first thing you learn is to ‘Write Like You Talk’ and what a ‘Transformation Line’ is. To do this, you have to sit down everyday and write in a journal until you have at least two written pages or one typed page. You don’t edit or think about what you are writing. You just write as the words roll out of your head. A type of word association writing.
Once you have written your pages, you go back through them and underline every sentence that starts with an ‘I’. Then, you take the “I” and the first word or three that follow that, and you have your Transformation Line. For instance:
I’m hiding the papers in the cupboard.
The word phrase, “I’m hiding” would be your Transformation line. Or even, “I’m hiding the papers. But, “I’m hiding’ would be the best line here because it doesn’t tie you down to ‘the papers’. It allows the mind to travel to the things you are hiding.
Then, you take that line and ‘massage it’. Basically that means to use that line as the beginning of a new journal entry in an effort to dig deep into yourself and reveal a forgotten or suppressed truth. We are looking for self-discovery here. For deep writing of something that is meditative, introspective, and charged with feeling. The writing that follows that Transformation line should find a deeper voice.
What are you hiding?
That could make for some powerful, deep writing. Don’t you think?!
Chava – unedited
