We are sparked by a vision that is both within our grasp and somewhere just beyond our full knowing.
We are fueled by embers of drama, romance, mystery, horror, fantasy, comedy, and adventure and further propelled by the promise of something wonderful. Our curiosity leads us through the greatest and worst of human behavior, the struggles of everyday relationships, and the mountainous climb toward spiritual and moral integrity.  We step into the frame of our imaginations and get lost in a unique realm of reality. Our main characters are deeply flawed yet deeply inspired to keep moving forward--and so are we. In spite of a seemingly endless road of trials, they persevere. Time and again, these warriors of living rise and fall, as though nothing can stop them--not even death. We focus on these courageous and determined "people" not just because they provide us with interesting tales to tell, but because we are deeply motivated to share "their" unique and insightful narratives with others. Outwardly, our aim is to inform and entertain; inwardly, we strive to elevate the global perspective. Both knowingly and unknowingly, we use these tales as a gateway to honor individuality and separation, while fostering oneness and unity. Assuredly, we delight in highlighting the inspiring traits of uniqueness if only to subtly promote our common needs for love, affirmation, connection to others, and a sense of purpose.  From study and experience, we observe that all of these common needs can be great redeemers and awful reducers of the human spirit. We recognize that the many facets of familiar and unfamiliar relations have the raw potential to help navigate our way through the most destructive of storms and through the highest of highs from which we drop.  It's a wonder we don't all write country songs...Or, maybe we do. Alas, we screenwriters don't just write from what we know and see and experience. We also write from things we cannot see, things we are scarcely aware of, things that are caged in the deepest, darkest layers of our psyche. Childhood traumas, bitter failures, unrelenting grief, awful heartbreak, and soul-worn battles are just a few of our prisoners, and we're not so inclined to set them free. For some, this unwitting holding is like a self-imposed punishment with little relief. For writers and other artists, this untrodden cavern is where we find our deepest reasons for telling a particular story and the revelation that we are being "pushed" by something unrealized, unfinished, or painfully disassembled. Something that yearns to be healed. Wishfully, our subconscious is ever-trying to resolve or remedy situations that were less than ideal, though there is an enlightened part of us that sees that all this painful stuff isn't all bad. How could it be? We have struggled and suffered, yet we are still here, and still determined, like our characters, to keep those pages turning. Nonetheless, a reckoning is in order. We must venture into that untrodden cavern to determine which of our longest-stinging woes is fueling our stories and harboring an ugly or painful truth. If the deep sting stems from parent abandonment, for example, the truth we may need to admit to ourselves is that we had a parent that loved themselves more than us. Ouch. This is a layer of hurt that is not easy to reconcile to ourselves, let alone share with others--for a real chance to be released.
Life can be hard, and trying, and then it can get really difficult. Somewhere along the way, in the midst of our coping and surviving, we bury and alter those painful truth--not dead and buried, but suppressed in a way that is nearly impossible to contain. It impacts our daily lives and relationships and how we see and respond to the world around us. It steers our stories in seemingly relevant tangents, where we may think we are writing about an unlikely romance only to discover, dozens of pages later, that our story is actually about someone who is stuck in their own emotional seepage. Bottom line, we screenwriters must find the courage to unearth and embrace life's hardest truths if we are ever to tell a masterful story. Mastery in storytelling, I believe, begins with the profound understanding that we are all in this game of life together--to learn, practice, and evolve--for our individual and collective well-being. Just as happens in life, our characters must also struggle and suffer and persevere, as many times as it takes for them to truly succeed in learning the lessons they are meant to learn. Hence, our characters cannot fully learn or embrace any lesson we have not yet fully learned or embraced. When we write our hearts out, we are writing from the heart of a painful truth, from a deep passion for our subject matter, and from a universal truth or message that reaches the collective heart. In screenwriting, we must also reference the time-honored Story principles of those who have pioneered the roads before us and have honed the simplest and cleverest tools for stacking the story blocks within every Plot, Scene, and Act. With reverence, we study and practice with the highest regard for our audiences, as this greatly enhances our evolution toward masterful Story and Character Development.
                                                                        --T. Bear (September 2025)