Writing and Film

Stories begin as visions in the mind where characters and action take place on the screen of our imagination. A writer then crafts their vision into the tangible form of a novel to share that story. A fascinating aspect is that the process is reversed when reading, and the book becomes like a film in the mind of the reader.

Both film and fiction tell stories using scenes. In film, each scene is composed of many shots chosen because they increase the significance and or implication of the action – whether it’s dramatic or static action - and film uses varying distances of shot to increase that impact. Long and medium shots, close-up, and extreme close-up are the basic types of shot used in film, and when one shot ends, it is immediately replaced by the next shot. The result is a stream of images that tell a story.

So, how does this apply to fiction?

Here’s an extract from D. H. Lawrence’s short story, Odour of Chrysanthemums.

       

          "The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston with seven full wagons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter. A woman, walking up the railway-line to Underwood, drew back into the hedge held her basket aside, and watched the footplate of the engine advancing. The trucks thumped heavily past, one by one, with slow inevitable movement, as she stood insignificantly trapped between the jolting black wagons and the hedge." 

Looking at the introductory paragraph, a quick analysis shows how Lawrence introduces the setting with a long shot. Transitioning to medium shots, he cuts to the colt and the woman. The next shot, a close-up, shows the woman holding her basket aside. The description of the trucks moving past the woman is an extreme close-up, and in the phrase ‘thumped heavily past, one by one’ Lawrence traps the reader just as much as the space between the train and the hedge traps the woman.

Lawrence also follows the dramatic arc of rising action. The movement of the approaching train is echoed by the colt running, and creates a climax (and contrast) with the woman forced into stillness by the immense noisy train. Further on the paragraph moves into falling action with transitions through medium shots of the countryside, concluding with a long shot of a building silhouetted against the horizon.

Trying this exercise with your own work is interesting and constructive as you may find you favor one particular shot more than others. If you find most of your scenes are, for example, medium shots, then varying those with longer and shorter shots can give the scene more impact, pace, and drama.

  

Writing Update

The final book in my Samsara Trilogy is with my editor, and I'm aiming for a Christmas release. Although, life being what it is, it might well be a New Year publication. So, I'm busy, excited and nervous as I prepare for publication. This book completes the trilogy, and will be my first box set - a milestone I wasn't sure I would ever reach. Yeah!

Today's Haiku
MEMORIES
are you old and grey
my once and youthful lover –
I dream about you

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To all story lovers out there, good reading, and to those of you who write, good writing.

Stay well and best wishes.

Fantasy: why do I write in this genre?

Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;

Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real.

The above quote is from the Chinese classic, Dream of the Red Chamber, and if you look at Wikipedia's list of top selling books of all time, six out of the top eight are fantasy, or have strong fantasy elements, so I'm not alone in being a fan of the genre. But why is fantasy, and I'm using the term loosely as there are many sub-genres, so popular?

I'm taking it as a given that genre delineation is a marketing tool used to direct readers to a particular type of book, because all stories, irrespective of genre, share the same basic requirements: a protagonist, a plot, and a setting.

Human protagonists experience a range of emotions, which enables readers to engage with them, and even those that are not, for example, robots or little furry animals, exhibit some or all of the same feelings. Whether your character is Leopold Bloom, Bilbo Baggins, Scarlett O'Hara or Miss Marples, readers must want to follow their journey, and find out what happens to them. A character's relationships, and their success or failure in this area of life are part of the emotional appeal of a story.

The term plot is used to describe the sequential events that take place within a story, and follows the standard dramatic arc of increasing internal and external tension, climax and resolution. From folk tales and myths to Greek tragedy, through Shakespeare's comedies to modernist novels, you find this convention. The reader's expectations about character and plot are present whether you read or write crime/detective, magic realism, rom-com, fantasy, fan fiction, or the genre known as literary fiction, and if you tick these boxes, you have a chance of satisfying readers.

For me, the setting of a fantasy novel offers a greater opportunity to bend the rules, although sub-genres such as urban fantasy or postcyberpunk, take place in the world as we know it, or use elements of our world with plenty of gritty kitchen sink realism thrown in. We owe a great debt to the myths and folklore of our ancestors, which we are adapting and passing on to the next generation. Tolkien's use of Norse mythology in Lord of the Rings springs to mind.

A more tricky aspect of genre writing is the framework created by established books which generates limitations. Fairies, elves, and space explorers are generally good, whereas trolls, goblins, and aliens are the standard baddies (except E.T. of course). On the other hand, you could have fun playing with these accepted norms, and feature a teenage troll worried about his complexion, although I'm sure the robot who constantly cracks bad jokes has been done. It's a delicate balance for genre writers to follow these conventions and yet introduce something new and original. If a writer is successful in doing so, their contribution is added to the cannon for later writers to follow.

As a reader and a writer, it's the otherness of fantasy that is its greatest appeal to me, and because the genre is generous, it can include romance, mystery, and be a thrilling tale of suspense on as epic or small a scale as the writer wishes. Sometimes the further we travel in our imagination away from the external world perceived by our senses, the more understanding we gain.

Writing Update:
In January I'll start outlining book three of my urban fantasy trilogy, Samsara, (Books One and Two are available), and until then, I'm editing a science-fiction/fantasy nanowrimo novel. Some years ago, I wrote a fantasy novel, and digging the manuscript out from the depths of a drawer, and reworking it is on the to do list. Although I've written in other genres, I keep returning to fantasy and my first love—sci-fi.

I was very happy to be interviewed earlier this month by the fantasy author, Kellie Steele, and you can find the interview on her website, as well as information about her debut novel, White Ghost and the Poison Arrow.

Useful Links:
http://kellie-steele.weebly.com/blog/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_genres

Today's haiku:

snow lies on the ground

one red apple left hanging -

blackbird finds a feast.

Join me on Twitter at: @teagankearney

Thanks for visiting my blog, and please do leave a comment.

To all story lovers out there, good reading, and to those of you who write, good writing. 

THE DRAMATIC ARC

Structure is inherent in everything around us - think of our own lives, or of anything living on this planet (including the planet itself) and you’ll have a beginning, a middle and an end. Starting with myths and legends, down through folk tales, Greek tragedies and comedies and up to the modern novel, you’ll find the same structure exists. 

Stories have:
       a beginning (introduces setting, character & conflict)
       a middle (escalation of conflict leading to climax)
       an end (conflict resolution)
For example, in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men the beginning shows Lennie and George arriving at a new farm for work; the middle where they settle down and make friends - with Lenny’s friendship culminating in disaster; and a tragic ending where George has to kill Lenny to save him from a worse fate.

There are of course many novels where the dramatic action is dealt with differently. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway is a less obviously plot driven story, and the dramatic action, focusing on one day in Mrs. Dalloway’s life, is more subtle and internal. Woolf, as a Modernist writer, approaches time as a flow of successive events, where the meaning of a moment can only be realized in relation to that moment. She deftly demonstrates that dramatic arcs need not pivot around a grand sweeping event. The action can be small – yet its effect on a character can result in significant changes. 

Structure in a novel is the edifice on which you hang your story; it's something which is necessary, but should remain hidden in the background.

 

Writing Update.

I’ve been coasting along this week, editing a chapter every two days. At least I was until

I followed a link in a newsletter I subscribe to by Joanna Penn, and read a post by Russell Blake. I believe there is no one way to write – whatever works for you is the only rule anybody should follow – but when I read Blake had written twenty-two thrillers in thirty months, selling around 45,000 books in the last year or so, I had one of those, boy, I’d better knuckle down and work harder and faster moments. Every now and then, I realize I have to up my game if I want to achieve my goals. We'll see.

I probably should take the marketing aspect of writing more seriously than I've done so far. And with this end in mind, I’m working out how to make my Blogpress website look the way I want, as I'd like to reach more people. But I’m not holding my breath as this may take some time to come to fruition...

Today’s Haiku

COFFEE

I love that first hit

that jolt of caffeine – liquid

electricity

Useful Links

A great website full of helpful info for writers considering the self-publishing route. http://www.TheCreativePenn.com

A read of this post gives you an idea of what can be done!

http://russellblake.com/how-to-sell-loads-of-books/

Join me on Twitter at: teagankearney@modhaiku

To all story lovers out there, good reading, and to those of you who write, good writing.