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A Lesson in Dramatic Purpose
Deconstructing a manuscript
In his UCLA graduate course in Manuscript Analysis, my mentor and mid-wife to my creativity, the late Michael Gordon, used to say, “What curiosity has been aroused at this juncture? What is it that you need to know?’”
Gordon hounded me, grilled me on the spot until I didn’t know what was up or down. He’d work me to death, forced me to look at life critically, at every detail deconstructing them, tossing them over this way and that to see how all the parts worked to reinforce the meaning of the whole.
I hated him for it.
Hated him for all the sleepless nights and weekly two hundred page plus manuscripts to read and twenty pages or more required written responses single spaced and half in 11 point New York Font all concerning this — the dramatic question.
If I took too long to answer, he would clear his throat from seventy years of smoking and gruffly say:
“See, there isn’t any.”
“Wait,” I’d say.
“No, you waited too long.”
“What? I was thinking.”
“Instinct, Mary! There’s no time to think. It needs to be there banging on the page. It is urgent, Mary. It has burning immediacy. It is something you want to know. You have to…
