Some years are better than others for movies. In 1941, for example, both Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon were nominated for best picture. For many years, the former was ranked as the best motion picture of all time, displaced to second place in 2012 by Hitchcockâs masterpiece Vertigo. Maltese Falcon doesnât have quite the same august ranking, but it was one of the first twenty-five films to be included in the Library of Congress's National Film Archive.
The interesting thing is which film actually won the Academy Award in 1941. It was a John Ford film, How Green Was My Valley. What? Youâve never heard of it? Thereâs a reason for that. Itâs almost unwatchable by todayâs standards. It starts with a tedious voice-over that drones on for what feels like forever, telling the story instead of showing it. To be fair, Citizen Kane also starts with a voice-over, but at least itâs dramatic and linked to arresting video. That Fordâs film beat out two genuine masterpieces for best picture shows that the Academy was even more brain-dead than usual that year.
The point is that the old maxim âshow, donât tellâ ought to come naturally to a visual medium like movies, but sometimes even talented artists like Ford forget it. If you want to create a compelling narrative, show it, donât tell it. Avoid the info-dump. So, thatâs one thing we fiction writers can learn from movies.
Besides avoiding the fictional equivalent of a voice-over info-dump, what else can we learn from movies? Well, quite a lot, actually.
Consider, for example, the âfirst person shot.â This is actually three shots, in sequence. The first shows a character looking at something. This establishes the point of view. The second shot shows something happening. The third shot returns to the character, and shows the reaction. What can the fiction author learn from this technique?
Well, suppose you wanted to convey the following information:
Jane and Jack are fighting. Jack is drunk, and Jane is afraid of him. Jane watches Jack slam the door as he leaves the room. Sheâs worried he might come back.
Itâs easy to visualize this scene and to describe it. You could even describe they way it would look in a movie. But a description is like a voice-over. In writing a similar scene for a story, what you should do is replicate the underlying principles of the first person shot. These are
1 establish the point of view;
2 Show the action;
3 Show the reaction.
Indeed, one could make a convincing case that fiction consists of repeating this sequence over and over: scene, action, reaction. The notion that the pairing âscene/sequelâ is a unit of fiction is predicated on this idea.
Thus, in response to the above scenario you might write something like this:
Jane's husband Jack towered over her, weaving and wheezing, his face contorted with rage. The stench of his beer breath roiled her stomach, and a trickle of vomit burned the back of her throat. She took a step back and bumped into the kitchen counter. Her fingers jittered over the cool surface and found the butcher knife. Jack slapped it away, and it clattered to the floor.
âPlease,â she whimpered. âPlease donât hurt me.â The tremble in her voice filled her with self-loathing.
He snorted, turned on his heel, and staggered out of the house. The screen door slammed with bang after him.
Janeâs knees turned to jelly and she slid to the floor. She shivered and clutched at herself. Dread forced her to look at the door. She knew heâd be back. She picked up the butcher knife and clenched it with both hands.
Okay, I probably went overboard on this little scene. This is by no means perfectâI spent all of five minutes writing it--but I wanted to make some points. The subjective verb "towered" in the first sentence helps to establish Jane's point of view. The next sentence leaves no doubt when we have Jane not just smelling the beer breath, but have it âroil her stomach.â a sensation only Jane can feel. This further makes the beer breath an active element of the scene. Later, vomit burns the back of her throat, again something only she can feel, reinforcing her point of view.
We see they are fighting through the ensuing action. We learn she's afraid when she retreats and her fingers "jittter" across the counter. After he leaves, she reacts to what just happened by sliding to the floor, clutching herself, and shivering. Finally, dread âforcesâ her to look at the door, with the foreboding that Jack will be back. When she picks up the butcher knife, her fear is made concrete. Note the use of active verbs: roiled, burned, towered, jittered, slapped, clattered, shivered, clutched, forced, clenched.
Notice, too, instead of saying her voice trembled, the tremble âfills her with self-loathing,â turning the tremble into an active part of the scene and revealing a bit about her character. A talented actor could probably convey this emotion, but since weâre using Jane as the point-of-view character, we can access her interior feelings, including self-loathing. The same is true of âdread forcing herâ to look. These are short-cuts, to be sure, and point to ways the scene might be improved. But this little scene follows the scene/action/reaction model mentioned above.
There are other ways writers can learn from watching movies. For example, watch how actors portray emotions. Take notes. Using what you learn can make your characters more authentic. Observe how lighting, set design, costumes, and even music contribute to the emotional tone of the scene.
On a bigger scale, pay attention to how movies create tension, the engine that propels your story. Each character will have goals, stakes, and obstacles. Pay attention to how these interact and contribute to tension. Pay attention to the arc for each characterâhow do they change over the course of the movie? Pay attention to the plotâlearn the turning points in the three-act structure and look for them in movies. Storytelling, character development, and plot are all things that movies and the written word have in common.
Still, there is a fundamental difference between experiencing a movie and reading fiction. In a movie, the camera is the eye of the audience. It provides the point of view and continuity, even in first person shots. It's the launchpad for all the other elements of the story, since the camera is the vehicle that reveals what's happening. In written fiction, the story's narrator provides the point of view. The narrator provides the information on the page, and the narrator's voice is the launchpad for the story. Point of view, whether via the camera or the words on the page, is the author's most fundamental tool in pulling the reader into the fictional world.
The basic idea is to put the readers inside the fictional world, experiencing it in their imaginations. This is true both for cinema and the written word. Remember, your audience doesn't want to read your diary. They want to experience your fictional world holistically, the same way they experience the real world. Don't give them an essay on France in 1815; give them Les Miserable.
In movies, this translates to a cinematic dream in which the visual action, the music, the words the actors speak, the soundtrack, the acting itself, come together to create the entire experience. In fiction, all we have is words in a row on the page. Our job is to induce a fictional dream, using all the elements of craft we know, and inspire the readers to be our collaborators in imagining our fictional world. The principle is the same, but the specific how-to is different.
Thereâs a lot of overlap between movies and fiction. The details of the craft differ, but not the basic principles, as the âfirst person shotâ shows. Most importantly, remember to show, not tell!!
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For Authors: September 23, 2020 Issue [#10374]
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