This scrap of legal was so important to me that it’s been on my wall for 20 years. Click on it for a closer look.
My Rosetta Stone
Starting out, I had no idea how to make a character come alive on the page. I tried to read the hot book at the time, Lagos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing, which was the book you were supposed to swear by, if you wanted to write fiction, plays, or screenplays, but I couldn’t connect with it. There was something leaden in the style that put me off (he had written it in Hungarian and had it translated) but even so, I felt a touch of shame–everyone worshipped this book. Was there something wrong with me?
I came across a book on character by Dwight Swain, an amiable sort of guy, I imagined, who taught writing out in Oklahoma somewhere. His mind wasn’t as fine tuned as Egri’s and he wasn’t very deep, but it was HIS voice, and he was professional in his approach (which was aimed at screenwriters). I have to say Swain was my way into character–or at least the first door that opened.
One day I began to think for myself, and this document is proof of it. Putting out what I knew from Swain and Egri (and I must have read more Egri than I recall) I came up with a 3rd way–mine–a personal approach to character that worked for me, in terms that I both understand and resonated with. It’s not much to look at, but when I look at it, I see The Rosetta Stone!
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