Living, Writing, Acting (and Thriving!) in The GAP

 

This is the outline from my recent podcast episode on this subject. A link to the episode is at the bottom.

·      Definition: an opening or empty space (PB); a break in continuity, like a hiatus (gap year); a wide difference or disparity ("generation gap" or "communication gap"); a mountain pass or a ravine

·      Brené Brown (authenticity): “minding the gap … the space between where we’re actually standing and where we want to be.”

·      Experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and linguist Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, writes that people who acknowledge a “discrepancy between [a] goal and the current state of the world … execute operations that tend to reduce the difference.”

·      What is the gap between where you are and where you want to be? Goals, aspirations, motivation

·      In story terms: Robert McKee calls The Gap the area between expectation and result.

·      “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

·      What do we LACK?

·      The gap signals Discontent; the desire for More (success, money, love, adventure…)

·      Themes. Arcs. Spine. Superobjective. There’s a gap in every dyad, between the extremes, and this is where story lives

·      Quantum physics: Schrodinger’s Cat/wave probabilities/infinite possibilities

·      Wave/particle, etc: dyads

·      Ritual is a means of bridging dyads/liminal or sacred space

·      Incorporating liminal or dream spaces in storytelling is a powerful mechanism for bridging the gap between Ordinary and Nonordinary Reality.

·      Bardo is the Tibetan Buddhist term for the gap, defined as an interval or intermediate state between thoughts, experiences, or lives.

·      Alchemy in the gap is a catalyst for the Ripple Effect

·      More alchemy: Silence or pause as gap: The pause is not nothing (Meisner)

·      Closing the gap as character motivation

·      The inciting incident creates a gap, pushing us into the nonordinary world; from content to discontent; a new goal

·      Why is the gap so story-rich? The disappointment experienced when the outcome is not what we thought it would be or not equal to the time, effort, and money expended (EXPECTATION) can be painful

·      What is the character willing to do to get what they want, or close the gap? [STAKES]

·      What will happen if they do not get it? [Consequences]

·      Closing gaps: Flashback, montage, backstory, origin story…

·      Fill gaps with action/conflict: key for HF. Gap-filling is a reward of telling “true stories”

·      Is there a period in the person’s life that’s unknown? 18 yrs btwn Jesus’s temple ep at 12 and re-emergence at 30

·      Vane 1719 to 1720, between arrest, hanging (ER etc)

·      Vice, Adam McKay: highly stylized storytelling fills gaps in the life of secretive Dick Cheney.

·      The Terror, based on Dan Simmons book (master of filling gaps w/paranormal). Drood’s a brilliant take on the last months of Charles Dickens’s life.

·      Conjuring, Warrens, Blumhouse…

·      Pastiches about SH’s time away after Reichbach Falls

·      Mysteries/thrillers/whodunnits; Escape Rooms

·      Memory gaps: Christopher Nolan’s Memento

·      The gap for the actor

·      The less distance btwn actor and character the better. How?

·      Same for beginning writers

·      The AS IF.

·      An actor offers a unique interpretation (SR/PSH)—amalgamation of writer’s words, the director’s vision, the energy and intent of the other actors (and for a live presentation, the audience), all filtered through the sum total of the actor’s experiences, learning, beliefs, physical traits, voice, POV.

·      AI: the gap between wholly human and wholly synthetic creation