Great writing, most writers will tell you, takes long hours of drafting, revising and waiting. What these writers rarely — if ever — talk about is the amount of time and opened web pages devoted to researching words. My lanky, middle-aged screenwriting professor once told his class of horror and sci-fi film fanatics to write what they know. I doubt any of us knew real horror beyond $400 textbooks and mounting student loans. While professorship can be interestingly bizarre and entertaining, he — I was certain--found other things to write about.
Mostly naïve to scripts and screenwriting, we trusted our professor’s advice and by the semester’s end, we had used our mishaps with love and growing up to write films about recovering divorcees and suffering adolescents. In the spirit of writing the familiar, I adapted a short story I had written a few semesters ago into my first screenplay. My protagonist Chandra was much like me, a Guyanese-American trapped between two worlds and trying to outrun a mother who really only belonged to one. I remember writing the mother’s character and thinking of my own. Her hounding was forever the soundtrack to my life and now became the chorus to Chandra’s.
One classmate wrote about a Southern gay cheerleader finding herself for the first time in New York. Our stories weren’t new; but despite their closeness to us, they lacked something that couldn’t be wrung from our experiences alone. The real trouble came in finding the right words for our movie dialogue and actions. Although I scoured my memory for ways to show my character’s realizations, I would still spend hours staring at the blank word document on my computer, the cursor blinking madly-- almost mockingly at me. I had known and felt Chandra’s anger, selfishness and frustrations. But finding the right word for her minute gestures took much longer than envisioning the scene. I had started to question whether words could really express the power behind the almost routine interactions that had held meaning for only my mother and me. I could’ve relied on my writer’s ear for the music in language, but my trust in instinct often neglected the meaning of words.
While stare was a tempting word — forceful and intent in its pronunciation, its first syllable echoing the nostalgia of my screenplay — I couldn’t really say that Chandra, in a taxi on her way to the airport, stared at the trunks of mangrove trees lining the seawall when her eyes were glazing over the boggy land. She didn’t look closely. Her eyes weren’t wide open. Stared would’ve implied that she paid any attention to the trees and their spidery roots when she was really gazing vacantly at any and everything outside, trying to avoid any conversation with her mother.
Before looking up these words, I would’ve guessed that they both meant the same thing. Synonyms like gaze and stare are often like blank maps: their nameless streets stretching across the page in difficult webbing. While English is more than a familiar world to me, I rely on online dictionaries to help me navigate the language’s complex thoroughfare. Merriam-Webster, which came to me well recommended, has become a recent favorite of mine, my go-to etymologist, if you will. I have even downloaded their app on my phone for when I cannot get to a computer but inspiration still stubbornly strikes.
Some may feel that I am a fraud, a pretend writer; but when writing makes me feel like a stranger in his homeland, thesauruses and dictionaries are fluorescent-jacketed guides ushering me to shortcuts and safer routes.
