I've been working on a new script based on what I've been reading in Syd Field's book 'Screenplay', which is an excellent book on writing in general, for the way it lays out the elements of a good script without talking too much about the specifics.
The general idea here is that once you have the characters, the major plot points and are able to encapsulate your story in a very short description, the story/screenplay writes itself.
The most helpful exercise in the book is where he advises you to write out the histories of your characters before the story begins, so that you can know how to better write for them. It makes the story you want to tell richer if you understand who these people are before you put them together... I had always had difficulties with characterization but this exercise helped me a LOT.
Anyways, what you would do is think of how these people developed through roughly each decade of their lives, so you would start at 0-10, then 10-20, then 20-30, etc. It's kind of a convenient, nicely structured way of looking at things because each of these decades helps to move the character forward into the next, and informs how they will deal with each stage of their lives.
Anyways, I started doing that and I came up with this character that made me think about just how much it is possible for a person to change over the course of their life, the catalysts that bring those changes about, and also how quickly or slowly these changes can happen. I realized that I truly do believe that even if you dig yourself into a hole over the course of a decade, you can have a single really good year with lots of catalysts and end up digging yourself out of it completely.
One of the most annoying, frustrating things about some people on this forum is that they're usually stagnant... it's the same bullshit over and over and over, and even through a handful of minor victories, they never win or move forward, and what's more they're constantly pushing themselves back into their comfort zones through cynicism and anger and volatility and fear. But really, they just haven't found their catalysts... or they haven't taken a real look at themselves/confronted themselves/called themselves out on their own bullshit.
I think that people see falling in love as a major catalyst, and I think that's true... there is this great film by the director of Take Shelter and Mud called Shotgun Stories, where a man is a louse for the first part of his life and fathers three children he doesn't even bother to properly name, and then leaves his wife completely cleans up his life and fathers three more children who are given everything and love him as an upstanding provider who has led them to success. I think the overall impression we're left with is that there was a perfect convergence of forces in his life and finding a better woman is probably a major part of that.
I know it's just a movie, but I love the idea of being able to massively reform your own existence like that... it seems plausible from a narrative standpoint, and it's inspiring to imagine that someone could have that kind of drive. In some ways, it's something that I always thought would happen to me but didn't... and maybe that made me more passive than I should have been.
Also, looking at character development in terms of decades makes you realize that changes happens slowly as well as quickly. Young people are impatient and seem unhappy with anything but great, spontaneous changes that reform their entire consciousness in the blink of an eye-- like falling in love or getting a job or the buzz they get when they first start working out-- and while those things help, it's the little steps in the right direction that have the greatest effect... it's not immediate, it happens over time... it's the not giving up that makes it work.
So yeah, not sure what I'm getting at, exactly... just that it's a good book and writing up the backstories has made me think about life in a more structured, cinematic way... and given me a grasp of how things snowball or don't snowball or grow or die or whatever.
