Do you know what really makes me mad?
When you go to a movie, all prepared to pick said movie apart, and there are NO PLOT HOLES!!! What's up with that? I want plot holes people, poor writing, people screaming through the water (because some people forget humans can’t breath hundreds of feet under the ocean). I was truly disappointed.
We took our kids to a movie (I won’t mention which one) and it was good. I mean, the beginning was action packed, the loose ends were all tied up. What is with that?
I wasn’t disappointed at all! Which…is kind of disappointing. j/k
But honestly, there was one thing that came to mind as I was watching "no-plot-hole" movie. You can learn a lot about writing when watching the cinema.
For instance:
Does the movie catch your attention at the beginning?
Do you find your mind wandering in the middle of an “important” scene?
What about the ending, does it leave you feeling, “Oh yeah! AWESOME!” or “Why didn't she just pick up that stick and beat the bad guy with it?" Come on lazy girl! (That one always drives me crazy.)
What about the tension? Does the movie start with little tension and grow as the story continues (You know, do they make their character climb a tree and then start throwing rocks at them? Or do they just throw the rocks in the tree and forget the main character?)
Writing has the exact same elements:
good beginning,
moving middle,
realistic actions
disaster to make the plot great (because no one remembers the fun happy picnic in a story. They remember the picnic when the ants came and ate all the potato chips, which made Little Tommy run over to shoo them away, but instead he tripped and fell over Great Aunt Edna's famous chocolate fudge cake, *gasping for air to keep reading* thus imposing a trip to the hospital where the huge family fight broke out because no one remembered setting Great Aunt Edna's cake on the ground in the first place...That's what the reader will remember--btw, please don't use run on sentences in your writing. They are so hard to read (I'm totally out of breath now).
Okay there you have it. You can learn a lot from the movies and the movie doesn't even have to even be bad.
So what have you learned from the movies lately that can help out a fellow writer?
4 comments:
I love watching movies for pleasure but also love listening to the dialogue. Why did the writer choose that word or phrase? Does it work? How would I have written it? And especially - how do the characters react to what is said? This last one is very important as so often in fiction we focus on the speaker rather than the listener - if it's a conversation then there is more than one person involved!
I think that movies and shows have taught me that I should write in scenes. Each scene has an opening, climax, and conclusion.
CD
I like to pay attention to what I'm feeling when I watch a movie. Is there an emotional response? Does it change me in some way...make me better? Is it too predictable? Are there surprises? Will I take something away from the movie? LG
I think watching a good movie that propels me forward from scene to scene makes me aware of how my writing should be. When I watch a bad movie, I can't help but yawn and wish I could just leave. Makes you get why readers toss a book to the side--it's just a waste of time. Great post! :D
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