Reminds me also of Betty Edwards’ “Drawing On the Right Side Of The Brain”

ie Most people – when learning to draw, without realizing it – they `abstract’ what they see, into an idea, then: try and draw that idea/abstraction…

(ie An Artist, to Self: Ok, I am now going to draw, “the nose”… and they see a nose but then imagine a nose symbol and they draw that, rather than: draw the `actual lines of light & shade’ that are in front of their very eyes, ie the person’s nose…)

So Betty suggests, turning `the image’ (eg a photo – of a person, or a chair) upside down and just draw `the lines’… then turn it back the right way when done – and suddenly its an amazingly truthful observation of: the actual `lines and angles’ they are trying to capture (obviously you don’t do this forever – but it trains the mind to stop interpreting what they see into ideas/symbols – and just simply see the light and shade and the lines before them, and draw THAT… not “the idea of what they see”…)

Anyway, you know all this, as it’s exactly what you’ve illustrated above – very well :)

Also reminds me of `The Mike Leigh Method’: he generally gets his actors to pick a person they know very well, and combine it with another person that they know very well… then gets them to improvise around a basic storyline – as if they were that character… they workshop the story with all the actors involved doing this – then rehearse it/rework it loads – and end up with remarkable character pieces on film.

But yeah, a screenwriter (or playwright) kind of has to do all that, in their head!
You’ve really explained something so well that is rarely talked about.
(ie That’s what wrong with a lot of scripts, they have the imagined `idea of dramatic moments’, but not “real” dramatic moments…)

Anyway, love this article… all rings very true :)

Cheers,

JT Velikovsky
High ROI Film/Story/Screenplay Consultant
https://storyality.wordpress.com/