Once Upon a Time...

ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, is a form of CBT, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. ACT focuses on the behaviors the client has that he or she wants to change. The therapist helps the client chase the behaviors back to what emotions and thoughts the clients have when they are doing these behaviors (the CBT part). The therapist then helps the clients sit with these emotions and thoughts that cause the negative behaviors. Rather than suppress or avoid them, the client re-experiences these feelings, and learns to separate them from the behavior. Eventually, the client is able to experience these emotions and feelings without turning to their previous behaviors. The client thanks consciousness for giving them this emotion, and moves on from them.

It was only a matter of time before I was going to be hit with a script requirement that will stump me. I've been getting off easy lately: the privilege to be evaluated for the genres I do best. But I'm finally forced to write a genre I have no experience with.

GENRE: Fairy Tale
LOCATION: An Orphanage
OBJECT: Aluminum Foil

The aluminum foil is the obvious red herring. Every challenge has one. They set you up with an obvious premise and environment with two of the limits, then throw in a wrench with the third. The competition gives you a world to tell a story in, but forces you to incorporate something into your story that shouldn't be there: the wrench in the machine. It's not about moving around the wrench, building around it. Finding a way to tell a story in the environment, and throwing in the red herring at the last second. In my experience, it's about incorporating the wrench into the story. Use the wrench to tell a better story. Like ACT does with emotions, thank the judges for the wrench. Show to them you wanted the wrench in your story.

But holy shit can it be hard to do that.

Fairy tales are such a narrow genre. Formulaic to one system. An inherently good main character falls into an adventure against an inherently bad villian. The hero beats the villian, and ends up better than where the main character was. roll credits.

So should I shy from that formula? How many of the other writers are? Is it worth the risk? Does the formula stunt your creativity, and you just want to tell the best story? Or are you doing it because you aren't creative enough to tell a story in the formula?

But I love the challenge.