Geoffrey Mehl Tells How He Wrote Stray Cats
In a memorable Finding Forrester movie scene, William Forrester sits down at a manual typewriter opposite teen prodigy Jamal Wallace, rolls in a sheet of paper and begins to write. Wallace is supposed to do the same, but confesses that he doesn't know where to begin. Forrester mentors him: begin with a sentence, any sentence, and write. "No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think!" Rule #4 in Pixar's famous 22 Rules of Storytelling is (fill in the blanks): "Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___." Put these two powerful concepts together and your imagination can turn a simple idea into an all-consuming tale. In my case, it was escape from the boredom of an hour-long commute. The radio had grown stale, the recorded music old, the ...