A dramaturge's take on The Writers' Studio Novel and Script First Draft Process - Interview with Nick Lathouris

Nick Lathouris is a dramaturge, who has worked with scripts and actors for over thirty years and is now working on scripts with Kennedy Miller, the company that created Babe, Mad Max and Lorenzo's Oil.

He recently completed The Novel and Script First Draft Course with The Writers' Studio and it is extremely interesting to hear his take on the relationship between the writing process and the craft of acting. George Miller, from Kennedy Miller, believes the two are closely linked.

Nick Lathouris: When working with actors, you have to work backwards to find the engineering at the heart of the work so that you can have a sense of how an individual scene plays out and to work out what the action of a scene is. If a scene does not fit in with the overall design it does not work.

Roland Fishman: Each scene has to link into the structure of the whole and at the same time you have to connect with the emotional truth of the scene.

NL: Exactly, you have to have the freedom within the structure to find the dramatic truth of a scene. To do this you have to go into each scene not knowing the outcome. You know the action, not the outcome. This is what produces the magic in performance.

RF: Like with writing, in order to access the power of your imagination, you have to learn to live with the wisdom of uncertainty.

NL: Yes, going with the 'feeling of not knowing.' That is what I loved about doing the first draft course. You use the structure to jump off into the unknown, knowing the structure will 'contain' you. The structure gives you the security to let go and explore the unknown and be authentically connected to the truth of the moment of the scene.

What I love most is that emotional truth is an improvisation. Emotional truth reveals itself to you by following the process. The structure, the container, and the act of writing itself, the contained, give you the means for finding that truth. And invariably it is a surprise. If not, it will be a cliché or a contrivance.

RF: And we want to avoid clichés like the plague.

NL: We do.

RF: And how did the structure help you find the emotional truth of your story?

NL: The structure puts the blowtorch on the character in the story, focusing the action, and heightening emotion. Structure enables us to build a story in an organic and dramatic way.

It has to be a fluid act of discovery where you discover the possibilities of the story in the process of writing it.

Same as in acting, what you discover during the process ends up being much more powerful than what you thought you had in the first place. Like in acting, writing is an act of discovery like an archaeological dig where you use words and thoughts to discover deep truths about life and the human condition, which is why the process is very exciting and never ending. It is a constant revaluation of what it is to be human. And this is not always a comfortable process. In fact it inevitably involves a certain discomfort. If it's comfortable it's probably too safe.

RF: And to do this you have to be prepared to live on the edge?

NL: Yes, I feel that I'm learning to ride the wave of imagination, or unconscious thought. With my mind, and with structure, I can dare to skate along the face of the wave, where previously I could barely stay on it.

RF: You've learnt to work with the wave rather than fight it?

NL: Indeed, and that's a very good feeling. Very exciting. It's liberating. One of the really nice things about having a process to follow is that as I write I have the feeling I don't know where I'm going, but I also feel that it will be all right and that I am heading in the right direction. But you have to have structure in any creative process in order to bring out the meaning. It provides the context.

RF: Like playing tennis with a net. As opposed to hitting a ball against a tree.

NL: In Unlocking Creativity I learnt to catch selective waves. In the First Draft course I learnt that every wave, created by the structure, had to be respected and ridden. And after a clumsy start, I am learning through the experience of writing every day, to ride them as they lead me to a discovery of the story I want to tell."

RF: I've got a poem for you by GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

Come to the edge, he said.

They said, We are afraid.

Come to the edge, he said.

They came.

He pushed them…and they flew.

NL: That's fantastic. That's exactly what it is like. That describes the feeling of letting go and trusting the process. If you jump you're never disappointed. The imagination always comes to the party.

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