How to Write a Great Movie
We all know how to write "a movie", but how do you write a great movie? Some of us are very interested in the answer to that question. For many it's enough to work in Hollywood and make a living wage - it's actually pretty amazing if you can do it, and you deserve a lot of props. But some of us, more than anything else, more than even making it big in this business, want to create something as classic, as enduring, as beloved as the movies we love, the movies we grew up with - the movies that made us want to write movies in the first place. Here are some timely tips to help you do just that.
Mine your life for authentic material
Find something true that you have discovered in your life, and include that in a story or write a story around it. A moment of epiphany or realization, when your world changed. This allows you to access true and genuine emotions and transmit them to your audience. It enables you to avoid artifice, to avoid that which is false, and rely only on that which is true in your experience. Truth is the great goal of all writing, and the one thing all classic movies truly have in common. (That is, by the way, what they mean when they say "write what you know" - not the external trappings of your neighborhood, job, etc., but that which is more universal: the emotional reality that you know, and the things that you've learned from your challenges overcome.)
Avoid being clever, unless it serves the story
Excessive trickiness and craft springs from a desire to impress, a desire to be liked, a desire to not be killed. A desire to placate and a desire to please...you know: sucking up. Nobody likes a suckup! Far better to cultivate a solid and Spartan style, and concentrate rather on what is being transmitted, the story elements and the shape and flow of the action. This will serve you in innumerable ways in your career. You can dress a good story up in any clothes, but clothes themselves will not make an ugly story more appealing.
Eschew "originality"
Did I get your attention? Do you know what "eschew" means? I hope so. All writers want to be original, but the trick is to do so using familiar elements. "More of the same, only different" - you may loathe that line, but ask yourself honestly: as a consumer of entertainment, do you really seek out the fringe, the unusual and the weird? Do you truly enjoy the difficult to understand or the complex and tricky? Or do you actually just sort of appreciate those things, but when it comes time to sit down and enjoy yourself in front of a movie, you pick one like Back To The Future which, though original in execution, is made up of lots of very plain and ordinary elements?
Simpler the better
Simple plots like love triangles, redemption stories, achieving difficult goals against great odds - these are the best. Dress them up with some twists and turns and you've got yourself a movie. A simple plot with complex characters is always better than a complex plot with simple characters. And just forget about a complex plot with complex characters - good luck trying to sell it, for one thing, and for another, they just take way too long to write. You could have written three smaller movies in the time you took to write your gigantic 16th Century epic about intrigues in the Russian aristocracy. Take a tip from classic novels - as you'll notice, they all have fairly simple storylines (James Joyce's Ulysses excluded, but between you and me, nobody's ever actually read that book...).
Use your humanism
The definition of "humanism" translates to "deal with that which is relatable to ordinary people". The overriding philosophy of all great movies is humanism: the problems and cares of ordinary mortals, the preservation of human life, the nobility of self-sacrifice, for an ideal or for another, the trials and tribulations of love, the protection of the weak against the depredations of the strong, and so forth. Other more abstract philosophies are often well respected for their craftiness, but they generally don't make for good cinema. In the world of Movie, the human is king.
To read additional articles, go to the article archive: StoryPros Article Archive
We all know how to write "a movie", but how do you write a great movie? Some of us are very interested in the answer to that question. For many it's enough to work in Hollywood and make a living wage - it's actually pretty amazing if you can do it, and you deserve a lot of props. But some of us, more than anything else, more than even making it big in this business, want to create something as classic, as enduring, as beloved as the movies we love, the movies we grew up with - the movies that made us want to write movies in the first place. Here are some timely tips to help you do just that.
Mine your life for authentic material
Find something true that you have discovered in your life, and include that in a story or write a story around it. A moment of epiphany or realization, when your world changed. This allows you to access true and genuine emotions and transmit them to your audience. It enables you to avoid artifice, to avoid that which is false, and rely only on that which is true in your experience. Truth is the great goal of all writing, and the one thing all classic movies truly have in common. (That is, by the way, what they mean when they say "write what you know" - not the external trappings of your neighborhood, job, etc., but that which is more universal: the emotional reality that you know, and the things that you've learned from your challenges overcome.)
Avoid being clever, unless it serves the story
Excessive trickiness and craft springs from a desire to impress, a desire to be liked, a desire to not be killed. A desire to placate and a desire to please...you know: sucking up. Nobody likes a suckup! Far better to cultivate a solid and Spartan style, and concentrate rather on what is being transmitted, the story elements and the shape and flow of the action. This will serve you in innumerable ways in your career. You can dress a good story up in any clothes, but clothes themselves will not make an ugly story more appealing.
Eschew "originality"
Did I get your attention? Do you know what "eschew" means? I hope so. All writers want to be original, but the trick is to do so using familiar elements. "More of the same, only different" - you may loathe that line, but ask yourself honestly: as a consumer of entertainment, do you really seek out the fringe, the unusual and the weird? Do you truly enjoy the difficult to understand or the complex and tricky? Or do you actually just sort of appreciate those things, but when it comes time to sit down and enjoy yourself in front of a movie, you pick one like Back To The Future which, though original in execution, is made up of lots of very plain and ordinary elements?
Simpler the better
Simple plots like love triangles, redemption stories, achieving difficult goals against great odds - these are the best. Dress them up with some twists and turns and you've got yourself a movie. A simple plot with complex characters is always better than a complex plot with simple characters. And just forget about a complex plot with complex characters - good luck trying to sell it, for one thing, and for another, they just take way too long to write. You could have written three smaller movies in the time you took to write your gigantic 16th Century epic about intrigues in the Russian aristocracy. Take a tip from classic novels - as you'll notice, they all have fairly simple storylines (James Joyce's Ulysses excluded, but between you and me, nobody's ever actually read that book...).
Use your humanism
The definition of "humanism" translates to "deal with that which is relatable to ordinary people". The overriding philosophy of all great movies is humanism: the problems and cares of ordinary mortals, the preservation of human life, the nobility of self-sacrifice, for an ideal or for another, the trials and tribulations of love, the protection of the weak against the depredations of the strong, and so forth. Other more abstract philosophies are often well respected for their craftiness, but they generally don't make for good cinema. In the world of Movie, the human is king.
To read additional articles, go to the article archive: StoryPros Article Archive
March 2008 Article
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