A Flash of Creative Insight

At the time, I was writing scripts in the turret of a castle. I had been outside over lunch and I was thinking about my question. It occurred to me, already having a lot of experience in writing, that films (and therefore scripts) contained everything that life contained.

I realized that a film mirrored all the parts of life. And so, if a film or book is a mirror of life, then it must be constructed in the same way life itself is constructed. And the lights came on.

In other words, a story or art form, even if it follows a different set of laws where fantastic things are possible, constitutes its own little universe complete: thus it is constructed in the same way as the real universe in which you and I live.

I had studied a great deal of philosophy, and some years earlier I had learned of something called a “philosophic machine.” This is an arrangement of parts into which you input data and which then enables you to answer and understand things.

This philosophic machine explained the basic parts of life, and so I realized it would also be the key to explaining the basic parts of how to create in any medium. I did not invent the philosophic machine. I only realized here were tools, invented by minds greater than my own, which could be used to unlock the secrets of the artist’s greatest and perhaps most divine ability: the power to create.

Now at this point, there should really have been a crescendo of music or at least a bolt of lightning and the rumble of crash of thunder. I don’t have any of that, and so I apologize for my anticlimactic presentation.

Next: The Artist in You, Chapter 3

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