Connecticut | Film Festival & Event Profiles | Maine | Massachusetts | New England | New Hampshire | New York | Reports | Rhode Island | Screenwriting | Vermont
With a Little Help from… Stowe Story Labs
A first-hand account of the Stowe Story Labs Sidewalk Narrative Lab by NewEnglandFilm.com Founder Michele Meek.
Written by Michele Meek | Posted by: NewEnglandFilm.com
It’s hard to prioritize creative work in our lives. It’s often a labor of love offering little prospect of sustained fame or fortune—or even a living wage for that matter. So like many people, my creative work has often taken a backseat to my professional and entrepreneurial work—until the Stowe Story Labs Sidewalk Narrative Lab.
It’s easy to criticize a lousy screenplay. More difficult is crafting a strong story—writing without reiterating the same old tropes and characters, but instead offering something unique, moments that are surprising and even groundbreaking. Making a good script great requires revision—and sometimes it can be tough to know where to start when you’re in a room by yourself.
I remember in a writing class during my M.F.A. program, one student answered a criticism to his screenplay with, “Right, but what I meant was…” Right then I realized the absurdity—we won’t always be there to explain what we meant by our work. Eventually it must speak for itself.
Michele Meek, Founder of NewEnglandFilm.com, at TEDx Providence, 10/13/2018 at the Vets Memorial Auditorium in Providence, Rhode Island.
Over the past several decades, I’ve written and published articles and books and produced and directed short films. As a film journalist and the founder of NewEnglandFilm.com, I’ve also had the opportunity to talk with many writers/directors about why and how they create their stories. I deeply believe stories matter. Narratives change how we see the world and how we see each other; they transform how we think and even how we act.
It’s hard to prioritize creative work in our lives. It’s often a labor of love offering little prospect of sustained fame or fortune—or even a living wage for that matter. So like many people, my creative work has often taken a backseat to my professional and entrepreneurial work. However, recently, I have begun to look for ways to move my creative work to the top of my to do list. Participating in the Stowe Story Labs Sidewalk Narrative Lab provided just that opportunity.
This August, I attended the Labs for Crusin’, a feature-length romantic comedy co-written with my mom (yes, you read that right). It tells story of the couple Sam (a high-strung lawyer on the partner track) and Nate (her dreamer boyfriend) who, for different reasons, both ditch their own wedding and instead bolt to their honeymoon cruise as an escape. They both breathe a sigh of relief when the ship departs, but soon the cruise becomes the setting for classic rom-com antics—awkward interactions, new romances, and family members who show up abruptly at ports. In pitches, I often describe the film as a cross between classic rom coms like The Philadelphia Story and more contemporary raunch comedies like Trainwreck.
As my mom reminds me, there are not enough representations of older women in films with romantic and sexual interests, and so it’s not only Sam and Nate’s story but also Sam’s mom Sheila’s and her grandmother Marietta’s. And because of my own interest in resisting heteronormative ideals, Sam’s journey leads her down a path where she questions her own sexuality and realizes the instability of all relationships.
I am certainly familiar with key concepts about story structure, themes, and character since I teach Screenwriting. Even so, it is darn hard to write a script that feels ready—one that feels it represents what you meant to say.
I knew that participating in the Stowe Story Labs would help us bring our story and writing to the next level. Over the course of the four-day workshop, we had the opportunity to pitch the script numerous times to industry mentors. What better way to hone your story than to think about how you can describe it succinctly in a way that grabs the listener’s attention? I discovered through these pitch sessions that I not only became more comfortable talking about my story, but I was also finetuning what this script was really about.
In addition to these pitches, the Labs offered lessons on story and subtext as well as panels on topics that directly connected to where I was at with my story and career—including Writing Diverse Characters and Transitioning from Emerging to Established in Film & TV.
Stowe Story Labs also offer what writers need perhaps most of all—a community. The Labs establishes groups of peers who offer feedback on each other’s completed scripts. In our group, we shared our scripts, offered thoughts, asked questions, and brainstormed ideas. It’s not surprising that these groups often persist beyond the Labs themselves—sharing your creative work is always personal and the mutual experience of the Labs presents an ideal launching off point for a group that can support each other even after the Labs conclude. David Rocchio, the founder of the Labs, said the goal is to give “meaningful feedback in a supportive environment.” That is just what we needed to push our work forward.
The Labs gave us both the motivation and the direction to take our script to the next level, particularly since two studios reached out to us to read the full script afterwards. Of course, a screenplay is not really done until it’s made into a movie—and so revision continues even after we’ve begun sharing it. Still, I know after the Labs I got that much closer to not needing to say when I send it off, “What I meant was…”
For more information about Stowe Story Labs visit https://www.stowestorylabs.org/ and for more information about Michele Meek visit http://michelemeek.com/. All New England writers, producers, and directors can apply for a NewEnglandFilm.com Fellowship which covers attendance to the Labs.
