She asks why relentlessly. Relentlessly. It’s quite inspiring to listen to.

Often she brings up a situation where I didn’t ask why, where I could have gone deeper into a charcater’s past or concrete intentions.

In our call yesterday, we talked about a scene that I had written, where two college boys go talk to the star basketball player even though the player has headphones on and it’s his game. The rest of the cafeteria watches the player out of the corner of their eye, but knows better not to talk to him. She asked, why? For me this was because it’s a game for these boys togo and meet people and socialize. That’s too generic for her. Too generic for humans. She gave the idea of perhaps there’s a girl next to the player, who one of these boys wants to impress. Now, the why is concrete and visual.

She will do ask this why at times when I wouldn’t have ever thought to ask it. Months ago, we were discussing a hypnosis scene. She stressed for a few minutes why is the college even having this hypnosis in the first place. What are their intentions? Did the students wonder why?

For me, I had thought, that’s just what many colleges and high schools do in the midwest. And after asking the question, I thought the event planner likely would think, okay we need some form of entertainment. What did the students enjoy last year and the years before? Okay, let’s do that. But that’s not deep enough for my coach. She’s looking for a deeper motivation like, what do they want the students to take away from this.

It seems best to error on the side of understand and concreteness. So, I can’t stress enough, ask why relentlessly.