“What is the simple emotional journey?”

Reflections on one of my favorite writing quotes.

Way back in 2013, the Black List hosted its very first feature writers lab. The event was held in Las Vegas. Here is a photo of the lab writers and the screenwriter mentors.

There in the middle in the gray shirt is Billy Ray whose writing credits include Shattered Glass, State of Play, The Hunger Games, Richard Jewel, and the TV series The Last Tycoon and The Comey Rule. Billy was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay Captain Phillips.

I’m not sure where I read this quote of his, but it’s one of my favorites:

“At the top of my computer in big, bold letters, it says, ‘What is the simple emotional journey?’ I look at that all the time.”

I remember this for my own writing. I remind my students of this often. It is an incredibly important observation about the story-crafting process.

No matter how complex a plot … how many characters populate the story universe … what themes we try to explore … which scenes may stand out as potential ‘trailer moments’ … none of it means anything unless the audience has an emotional connection to the material.

But the observation is more than just that because there is that word … simple. We may tend to dismiss the word as meaning simplistic.

I don’t think that’s at all what Billy Ray means. What I take away from that word is:

• Simple as pure. There is a clarity to the emotion at play in the journey.
• Simple as universal. There is a global reach of the emotional journey as a wide-ranging audience can relate to it as an authentic experience.
• Simple as powerful. The fact the character’s emotional journey resonates with the audience gives it the power to impact their psychological state of being.

When a writer connects with the story’s simple emotional journey, that becomes a touchstone for every scene, every storyline, every moment.

And where best to zero in on a story’s simple emotional journey?

I’d say … the Protagonist.

It’s their journey. They exist at the center of the narrative. They are the character who typically goes through the most significant psychological transformation. All the other characters are tied to the Protagonist and their journey.

Joseph Campbell says, “The journey the hero takes is the journey they need to take.”

If we can drill down into the core of the Protagonist’s psyche and discover what their deepest need is — what I call their unconscious goal — that is the path to discovering a story’s simple emotional journey.

Try this. Take an index card. Or a post-it note. And write that observation on it: What is the simple emotional journey? Then put that somewhere in your writer’s desk where it’s clearly in view.

Use that to continually bring yourself back to the emotional life of your story … and the role the Protagonist in that journey.

Here is an interview with Billy Ray:

Twitter: @BillyRay5229.

On Friday, May 19th, I will fly to Los Angeles to participate in my 22nd Black List feature writer lab, this one in association with the Women In Film. I am certain that at some point as we workshop the writers’ scripts, I’ll quote Billy Ray: What is the simple emotional journey?