fiction is the lie we use to tell the truth

from script secrets (my emphases) (wait, is that the plural of emphasis?):

"For a script to be good, it needs to be something personal and emotional... but for a script to sell it needs to be something commercial that a couple hundred million people will pay to see. How do you find an idea that's both? What if all of the commercial ideas you come up with you aren't passionate about, and all of the personal ideas you come up with aren't commercial? How can you turn that personal and emotional idea into something with commercial potential?

...for a while it seemed as if everyone I knew betrayed me. I ended up hardening my heart and withholding my trust. I closed myself off from the world. After a couple of years living like this I realized I was miserable. Those walls that prevented me from having my heart broken again or my trust betrayed also prevented me from having any friends or any real relationships. I had to tear down those walls - even if it meant getting hurt again.

This was perfect material for a screenplay - very emotional, and something that most people can identify with on some level. But there were three problems with writing this as a script:

1) Not interesting enough. Gee, my heart got broken and a friend screwed me over - big deal! Who cares? This stuff happens to everyone, so why would six hundred million people worldwide pay to see my version? How would this be entertaining? Let's face it, this story is like listening to some friend tell you about the bad day they had at work... boring!

2) Even though I was over the broken heart and the friend's betrayal, it's still painful subject matter. Would I really want to relive all of that stuff in a script? Would I subconsciously tone it down in order to make it easier (emotionally) for me to write?

3) When all was said and done, the girl who dumped me and the friend who stole my deal weren't the real problem, I was. Hey - people get dumped every day, but how many completely cut themselves off emotionally afterwards? How many people go out of their way *not* to fall in love again, and go out of their way *not* to form friendships? The real story was that I had stopped trusting people... was I brave enough to tell that story? Would I try to sugar coat it, or maybe make it look like my ex-girlfriend was a monster so that my reaction would make more sense? Could I really be honest about my emotions?

Which is why I believe that fiction is the lie we use to tell the truth.

I was going to wear a disguise... find a way to explore all of these painful emotions in a safe environment. So I used the tool of magnification - I took my basic story and blew it up. Magnified it.

...All I did was take an event from my personal life and raise the stakes, intensify the emotions, and change the back stabbers into bloodsuckers. That's how magnification can be used to turn your personal story into a big commercial story. Find the basic emotional conflict in that personal story and magnify everything around it."

interesting.