Karen Helene Walker: The Voice of Her Muse

I first met Karen Helene Walker in a typically synchronistic fashion: On her way to a meeting of the New Mexico Book Co-op, Karen stumbled on my then-new book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, in an Albuquerque bookstore. She was intrigued but didn't buy a copy. But when she arrived at her meeting, she found herself sitting next to its author (me!); I was there to announce the book's release. Karen bought a copy on the spot and soon became both a client and a friend. 

As Karen recounts in this guest blog post, I worked with her off and on over the years that followed on the book that would become The Wishing Steps. I am honored to have been part of her journey and gratified to be able to introduce her to you today, on the occasion of the release of The Wishing Steps! 

I was minding my own business. Really. We’d just arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland for what would be a two-week exploration of both Scotland and Ireland. Our driver took us to a 2,000-year-old burial site, Balnauran of Clava and I was off by myself, fascinated by the ancient history and culture and imagining what these people might have been like when an unfamiliar voice said, “Tell my story.” There was no one around me. My husband and our guide were way off exploring the cairns (piles of stones).

Now, you have to understand, I’m 66 years old and, until that day, I’d never heard voices that weren’t my own inner ones. This was different. I wasn’t sure what I’d heard or even if I actually did hear anything, so I said, “Sorry, I’m on vacation.”

The voice came back while standing on what was called the wishing steps in a dense forest surrounding Blarney Castle in Ireland. “Tell my story.” This time, I felt a surge of energy at the same time. Hard to ignore, but ignore it I did. “I’m on vacation. Leave me alone.”

But when I returned home, I couldn’t forget or ignore any longer what happened. I began a journey to discover whom the voice belonged to and what story it wanted me to tell. I called my writing coach/editor, Mark David Gerson, and the first words out of my mouth were, “I don’t tell stories. I can’t write fiction. I’m a nonfiction writer.”

I’d tried to write fiction when I went back to university in my fifties. I took every creative writing course the school had to offer and even graduated Summa Cum Laude, but when it came to writing fiction, it just didn’t come naturally, despite my high grades. My mind appears to be quite literal – it doesn’t think in metaphors and similes. I have to work hard at coming up with something that isn’t a cliché. So I was pretty convinced I couldn’t do it.

The first thing Mark David said to me was, “Open your mind and heart to the story and allow it to reveal itself. That’s all that matters. You don’t have to map it out or outline. Just allow it to emerge, one word at a time.”

Later on in the six-year journey I remember him saying, “Creativity is as natural as breathing, and as necessary. Just by writing from that deep place changes you and changes the world.” And when I felt overwhelmed and frightened because I had no clue what to do next, he said, “You’re in the passenger seat – the story is driving.”

Little did I know that in that first session with Mark David back in 2009, when I asked, “What am I to do about this voice?” it would be the start of what became a profoundly healing and deeply moving spiritual journey. I believe the voice that came to me in Scotland was a Goddess. I wasn’t clear at first what story I was to tell, but soon I came to understand that I was to imagine what it might have been like when the Goddess came to the first woman in prehistoric times to share Her wisdom. And then to imagine how that wisdom continued to be shared through the Dark Times of the Middle Ages through to modern times. It also became clear that the story was not meant to be historical fiction. That was a relief. Research is not one of my favorite activities, although I did have to research some for this book.

Allowing the voice of wisdom that came to me in Scotland to come through to tell her story didn’t happen easily. I was kicking and screaming the whole six years it took to yank this story out of me. My debut novel The Wishing Steps is the result.

I think the reason I was called, and I do feel that this was a calling to write this book, is to share how important it is to listen to that voice of wisdom when it comes. So often we are so busy we don’t even hear it. Or we hear it but ignore it because it might be too hard or it might hurt someone we care about. It’s not a coincidence that my memoir, Following the Whispers, was also about listening to our intuition. It seems this is a lesson I must learn in this lifetime because it continues to reveal itself in everything I write. I’m so grateful this voice wouldn’t leave me alone. And as difficult as it may be to follow our inner guidance, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Have you ever heard an inner voice such as this one? If so, did you pay attention? Please share some stories about voices of wisdom in your life in the comments.

Karen Helene Walker is a widely published essayist and author of the 2009 memoir, Following the Whispers. When she isn’t writing, you will often find Karen performing in nursing homes and retirement communities as part of the Sugartime or Sophisticated Ladies musical groups, traveling with her husband of 20 years, Gary, or relaxing with a good book at their home in Albuquerque, NM. Be sure to visit Karen's website and blog. (Photo of Karen: KM Photographic)

Get The Wishing Steps Online Today – in Paperback or Ebook 

Only Connect

A Guest Post by Erik Bork

The single most devastating note I could ever hear on one of my scripts (if readers were brutally honest enough to say it), would be, “I didn’t care.” I would go as far as to say that my single biggest job as a writer is to make readers and audiences care: to get them emotionally invested enough in what’s happening in a story to want to keep reading or watching. What this really means is they must care about the character at the center of it – to deeply relate to what they’re going through on a human level, and want to see them solve whatever big problem the story is exploring.

The title of the book Save The Cat! comes from Blake Snyder’s admonition that the “hero” of a story must “save a cat,” – or do something similarly sympathetic – in the first ten pages of a screenplay, so that readers will think this person is worthy of their attention and time. While I agree with that, I would go further: I believe we need to get the reader inside the main character’s perspective on things – inside their skin, almost – so that it feels like what’s happening to that character is happening to them, throughout the story.

The first script I wrote professionally was an episode of the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. The one I chose focused on an individual astronaut with a problem, which seemed like it would keep him from ever flying in the Apollo program. I identified this situation as having good story potential, in comparison to some of the other episodes, which focused on missions which did not necessarily have such a likely potential main character who audiences might get invested in. So far, so good.

But when I wrote the first drafts of the script, I got so caught up in the research, and the responsibility of accurately documenting all the key events of the Apollo mission this episode was focused on, that when I gave the script to another professional screenwriter who was involved in the project, he clearly didn’t care about the story. He was nice enough not to put it that way. What he said was that he thought it needed more of a clear point-of-view.

What that meant was not just that this character needed to be at the center of events – he already was. But the audience needed to experience what he thought, felt and wanted from inside his perspective more. It had to become an emotional journey for them. It’s not enough for them to be somewhat interested in his situation, and the mission he ended up flying on. The real goal is for them to care – to relate to this human being and really want him to achieve the goal this story was focused on.

How does one achieve that? Well, the first point I would make might seem an obvious, but also stifling rule: they should be in virtually every scene. I remember how much I chafed against this idea when my college screenwriting professor first offered it, and how I sought out movie examples with main characters that weren’t in many of the scenes, in order to try to prove him wrong. (I don’t remember how far I got with that, but I don’t think I was a big success.) Of course, you don’t need to be slavish about this, but you might be surprised if you looked at successful movies you have loved, to discover just how many scenes the main character is present in. I would wager that they’re in the vast majority of scenes – and in the ones they’re not, there’s a very clear and important story reason (which probably has a lot to do with them, even though they’re not physically present).

But it’s not just that they’re present. Usually, they should be driving the action of the scene: what they want and are trying to do should be the main thing each scene is about. And it takes all the scenes of a movie for them to finally achieve their goal. That’s how hard and complicated the problem is.

Of course, there are stories which have more than one “main character,” but I think they’re rarer than you might think. A true “ensemble” movie is one in which multiple characters each have their own mini-stories that interweave, as in Crash, The Big Chill or He's Just Not That Into You. But you’ll notice that even in these movies, in any particular scene, we are squarely within the emotional perspective of the “main character” of that storyline. In other words, things aren’t told “objectively,” from above.

In many scripts that I read, that’s exactly what it feels like: we’re looking down on events, and not experiencing them emotionally from inside the main character. We may not even be fully aware of what the main character is thinking, feeling, wanting, or trying to achieve. Or there might not be a clear main character – just a bunch of characters experiencing a story, none of whom we are really inside of.

I recently contributed a “beat sheet” for the Save the Cat website, analyzing The Kids Are All Right. In writing it I discovered that this movie had no one main character, but actually explored all five of the central characters’ points of view on the story they’re all involved in. This is another kind of “ensemble” approach that is rarely used, but can be effective if done right. But again, in every single scene, we’re really focused on a particular character’s emotions as they are experiencing what’s going on. We’re made to feel, intimately, what it’s like to be each of these characters.

I believe emotional connection and resonance is what storytelling is all about (along with entertaining – if we want to find an audience). The best way to achieve this is to give your main character a big, difficult, complicated, important problem with huge stakes for them – which challenges them to go on a “mission” that will take the whole movie to solve. And then, to dramatize that mission from their perspective – to be with them as they attempt to achieve their goals, as they fail, change plans, run up against unintended consequences, and get pressed to their limit, before things finally get resolved. In other words, to get us so invested in their point-of-view, that it becomes our own.

ERIK BORK is best known for his Emmy-winning work as a writer-producer on HBO’s miniseries Band of Brothers and From the Earth to the Moon. He has sold pitches, written pilots and worked on staff of primetime drama series, and written screenplays on assignment for Universal Pictures, HBO and others. He also was recently rated “Cream of the Crop” in Creative Screenwriting’s “The Best Script Analysts and Consultants.” Contact him through his website at flyingwrestler.com, where this article first appeared.

Mastering Your Character's Voice

A Guest Post by Chris Soth









"Every profession is a conspiracy against the layman."  
~ George Bernard Shaw

What did old GBS mean when he said this? Well, everybody who does a job, especially a specialized and high-paying job, is at great pains to keep their trade secrets to themselves, lest the secrets become widely known and the entire profession is demystified to the point that...anyone can do it. Then the initiated have just lost a good thing.  

Lots of people do this. In many professions. I used to work as a professional magician and, man, there's a conspiracy. If you've ever performed a magic trick for an audience you will definitely be thinking "I can't believe they're buyin' this." For about the first dozen times.  

But the conspiracy issue, especially the one going on among screenwriters, is the stuff of another newsletter.

Why do I bring this up now?

Last week, I put together a quick list of things that might influence a character's "Voice"...their own unique way of speaking, which sets them apart from all other characters in the script, and from speakers of their own language as well.  While I'm sure it's not complete, here it is again:

What will have an influence on a character's use of language?

1. Their job.

2. Their socioeconomic status and educational background.

3. Their cultural and ethnic background.

4. Any other languages they may speak and whether English (I'm assuming most of us are writing in English....) is their first language.

5. Who they're talking to in this specific scene...and what they're talking about.

Let's look at just that first one: Their job.

What's one of the fastest ways for a professional conspiracy to wall out the layman?  Create its own language. A specialized lingo. It's  own...jargon: the specialized or technical language of a trade, profession, or similar group.

No quicker way to make us outsiders feel dumb than to start speaking your own language that they don't speak -- and no faster way to make us outsiders think that the speaker is smart, inside and in the know…smarter than we are.  

Plumbers...see Volume 14 of the Kinsley Manual (email me if you know what I'm referencing). Doctors: "amytropic lateral sclerosis." Computer technicians: "54 gigs and skuzzy drive"...ok, I'm making most of these up.

Do you think screenwriters don't have their own jargon? Drop the phrase "slug line" at a party of non-writers or film people and see what happens...

I wrote something set on a moon base once...now we don't have people who live on moon bases just yet, so I either had to make up the language I figured they'd speak, or have them speak plain old Earth-bound English.

But since I've always loved the space program, it didn't seem like too far a stretch that the first moon settlers would have come out of that program --

-- and that comes out of aviation. And those aviation characters are a bunch of can-do, rugged individuals whose very speech pattern, slang and word choice bespeak great bravery and derring-do.

So, I reread The Right Stuff, and every other book I could get on the space program, especially the moon missions.  

And boy, did I find a rich world of jargon. "A-OK" comes from the space program. "You are go for launch." And even "blast-off" and "splash down."  And the world is rife with cool acronyms too: EVA, SST and a bunch of others where I also don't know what they stand for...

...my point is, I had found my way into these characters and their world that was rich, colorful and fun for me to write as well. And that quickly set them up as cool and heroic...at least for me.  

So, if it wasn't obvious...every screenplay takes place in its own world, and every world has its own language. You may co-opt it from our world to a degree, especially where the worlds overlap, as I did in the example above. But be sure to craft it to be specifically the world of your movie – ie, in the screenplay above, I had to ask myself: "Moon dwellers were probably astronauts/aviators at one time and that influenced how they talk...but then what happened to their language?"   

One caution...and one tip...

Some professions have a jargon so dense that only the initiated speak it –- and understand it. It really is a foreign language...in that it contains words we don't understand. You run the risk of losing your audience here, just as much as if you were showing them an unsubtitled film in a language they don't speak or understand. You can't do that...and yet, maybe, you can't have the character speak in layman's terms, he just wouldn't...what do you do?

Have a translator character repeat the line right after – get credit for the rich language and teach your audience to use it themselves.  For example:

     ASTRONAUT ONE
Houston, we are go for extra-orbital
lunar injection!

     ASTRONAUT TWO
WE'RE GOIN' TO THE MOON!

Or have the characters translate for themselves-– if they're speaking to a layperson. So, walk the line between specialized language and everyday language – a tricky balance, but worth while in the end!

Chris Soth is a USC screenwriting MFA with two produced credits and 28 screenplays to his name, and the founder of www.MillionDollarScreenwriting.com. He teaches his own "Mini-Movie Method" based on USC screenwriting techniques and runs a screenwriting mentorship program at www.ScreenplayByPhone.com.