Keep them guessing
A build up of mind bending events and recent horrific images, have sent us all ricocheting between the agonizingly slow pace of Bela Tarr’s Man From London, and the heart warming high energy of a 1950’s MGM musical! Is it just me? Or have we all been on a roller coaster? Fortunately, like it or not, each day we make a fresh start with a stream of possibilities that we can hold on to, reject, or morph into something else. That’s the part I like…the morphing into something else. As storytellers, what seems to be, is only the starting point.
Photo credit: Fran Hare
The first thing we do as screenwriters, is NOT write, but see and hear. Images, sounds, yes… a string of words, a headline, a bird call, the thunder of Air Force One. If we sit at our computer or yellow pad, and free our mind’s eye to shape the news feed of the day, we can come up with an abundance of ideas. Every story is its own universe, has its own life, its own pulse. The story is young in the SET UP, in peak condition in the BUILD, and matures to its full force, in its PAY OFF. When we have material worthy of creating a screenplay, we write and write, until, we hear the music. Like a composer, we meter out the highs and lows, the adagios, the allegros, the andantes, the crescendos. Waves of possibilities, of emotions, of logic, propelling your film, your audience, to a resolution.
If there is one take away from the events of the last year and the more recent few months, and days, it is that as screenwriters, we sharpen our ability to write stories that are unpredictable. That keep the audience guessing… until the end.
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