You do You

“I find that the only way to get through life is to picture myself in an entirely disconnected reality.” - Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine

Scenario

Students are pitching story ideas.

Problem: They are not really stories. They are a series of aimless actions that take us to random places and all with unnamed characters (“I want to keep it open,” says the student).

Student: “And then they open this door and they’re in another world!”
Teacher: (with hyper-focus): “Why? Why are they suddenly in another world? What brought them here? How will they leave?”

You get the idea. Students are pitching a sequence of events. I am trying to wrangle some logic into it, searching for motive.

I am pretty sure I am not the only one having these kinds of conversations at the moment.

Rather than get bogged down, and because I need them to think on their feet (so to speak), I have started offering my students a simple exercise to shift their thinking.

Submarine (2010) Richard Ayoade

I should probably mention that, so far, this has been a thought experiment in conversation form. We watch the scene, create the character and basically note everything that would be done differently. It seems to be enough. There’s a joy in the low stakes of just imagining the scene.

The Challenge- You do You

Take a favourite scene.
Now place yourself in it.

Not “you as an actor” performing a role. Not pretending to be the character. You. As you are. Your characteristics. Your way of moving through this world.

• First, map yourself: ask others how they see you. Compare it to how you see yourself.

• Then, step into the scene. How would you actually respond? What choices would you make - or refuse to make?

• Finally, shift the world. Move the scene into your own context - your school, your street, your culture, make it spaceship adjacent…

When done honestly, the scene cannot stay the same:

• The tone and mood change.

• The motive shifts.

• Dialogue shifts or disappears altogether (they are teenagers after all, “Bruh, I’d stay quiet!”)

• And the setting reframes the conflict.

At some point, it stops being a remake. It becomes a story, even possibly your story, something authentic and unique.

Submarine (2010) Richard Ayoade

Provocations:

To keep them honest, ask:

• What would you never do in this situation?

• What choice would you make that the original character never could?

• How does your language alter the dialogue?

• What truth about your world comes through in the new version?

• When does this stop being a copy and start being an original?

This cognitive shift, asking students to “place themselves” inside a scene they love, can unlock what their own pitches are missing: motive, stakes, and truth. Once they see how different the story becomes when it bends to them, the derivative sequence of events falls away, and they’re left with something they can write - more than that, they are left with something only they can write.

Disclaimer - This only works with willing participants (of course). And when they’re not willing, I end up as the guinea pig, often rewritten into a scene I would never survive…

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