Hello, writers! Many thanks to strawbale for holding down the Write On! fort last week with a long-overdue diary about the least grebe.
I did come back from Canada— twice, in fact. Once on foot in a party that was not all white, and we got interrogated on the US side. Once in a car in a party that was all white, and we did not get interrogated. That’s all I’m going to say about that, because it’s not what we’re here for.
We’re here for the writing, which is one of the ways we fight back.
The redoubtable Mettle Fatigue has been coming up with lots of ideas on how to index Write On!, something I’ve long wanted to do so that the topics that have been covered in the past can be easily accessed by anyone interested. (And also so that we can see what topics haven’t been covered yet.)
This is going to be a big, ongoing project— Write On! is over eight years old and there are more than 400 tagged diaries. So we may be asking for volunteers.
Anyway, watch this space for that.
A couple weeks ago, I was talking about yet another fiction writing book which takes nearly all its examples from the movies instead of from novels. There seem to be a lot of these. (I first noticed it in Orson Scott Card’s how-to books.) Some other folks mentioned that they have also had this problem with books about writing fiction.
Apparenty there are a few of us that don’t much care for movies. And I haven’t seen a movie in years. But it does occur to me, when I think about it, that there are some storytelling do’s-and-don’ts that we can distill from movies ourselves.
Like that bit in Blade Runner where the woman is being questioned to see if she’s a replicant. She’s asked what she would do if someone gave her a calfskin wallet for a gift. She says she’d report them to the police.
Asked what she would do if a child showed her his butterfly collection, including the killing jar, she says, “I take him to a doctor.”
The lesson from this scene is
Do
...hide info-dumps and worldbuilding inside scenes with some dramatic tension.
Another movie I can vaguely remember seeing is Waterworld. The scene opens with the main character peeing into a jar, then pouring the jar into a device that apparently renders the contents into potable water.
Don’t
...open with your protagonist drinking his own urine. There’s worldbuilding, and then there’s grossing out your audience.
There are so many other don’ts in Waterworld, but that one right at the start is, I suspect, largely responsible for the film’s, er, success.
This is a game that any number can play, so have at it:
Tonight’s challenge:
Come up with one example from a movie of a storytelling “Do”, and one example of a storytelling “Don’t.”
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There’s a new writing group in town, started by Clio2. It’s called FreeWriters, and you can find out more here.