Wrestling an Invisible Bear or Letting a Scene "Unravel"

Clint Eastwood has often said that rather than instructing his actors precisely how they should move and react in a scene, he likes to allow them the opportunity to enter the scene and do what they feel most comfortable doing.  Allowing the scene to "unravel" he'll follow the actor, and let the camera go where it will go.

From the screenwriting side of the canvass I found myself in a similar situation.  It's act 2, everything's coming together, a torrent of material ballooning in my head, waiting to get out, accumulating, building pressure while it waits behind process.  Process tells me to stop.  Calm down.  Review the notes and the structure, make sure you don't miss anything, and for that matter, run through all the notes all the way through the end just to make sure you don't burn past some important details you'll have to kludge back in later.  I go through the notes, and I'm quickly overwhelmed.  There's too much!  How will this detail even fit with that one?  How do I change course in the script so I can fit this in later? 

I get up, pace around, use the bathroom, run down stairs, shuffle through the pantry, come back up.  I put on the Charlie Rose Clint Eastwood interview included on the Mystic River blu-ray.  I watch 2 and a half minutes and turn it off.  I am wrestling an invisible bear.

Finally I click on the Final Draft file and start typing and a leak springs.  It gushes out.  1 page, 2 pages, 4 pages -- the details take care of themselves systematically, because when you're on the ground, in the moment, in the scene -- this ought to follow this, and you ought to try that out here because there's an opportunity there and you should take it.  The structure goes up and the extraneous wood doesn't get used. 

Now this doesn't mean it's all right or perfect, or that notes and proper structuring doesn't have it's place.  After all, the ideas aren't all just waiting on the edge of the plank waiting to jump in the script.  You have to remember them to get them out.  But sometimes when there's so much inside, waiting to get out, the best solution is to find the frayed end of that massive ball of string, and simply start unraveling.

Charles Rhoads