Today I got to do three things I love: Horseback riding, spending time with friends and watching a great movie. The movie was the Hunger Games. I am a huge fan of the books and the movie met my expectations and more. Usually if I like a book, I find the movie falls flat. Not so with Hunger Games. I laughed, I cried (three times) and re-affirmed my belief that unrequited love is the most romantic kind. Sigh.
As if that was not already enough fun for one day, I capped it all off with the first of six script-writing classes with Vancouver Film School (VFS). Last summer I was introduced to VFS through a summer intensive program on film production. It was a one week whirlwind intended to introduce potential students to VFS programs. The teachers were great and I learned a lot about film.
But even better than the fun educational bits was how much I learned about my writing. While I was at VFS I realized that an idea I had been trying (and failing) to write as a novel was not working as a novel because it was a script. So I ran home and wrote it as a script. It still needs work, but my experience with VFS opened my mind to the different directions my writing could take.
While I was not willing to chuck my day job for film school (I did think about it on a few bad days at work) I jumped at the opportunity to take another intensive so for the next two weekends I will be immersed in script writing and hopefully in polishing the script I wrote after my first intensive. Wish me luck.
Writing Exercise:
Dialogue often drives action in our writing. Description is beautiful and necessary to carry a reader into your world, but dialogue holds a special power to generate tension and get readers into the action. How a character speaks, their choice of words, the length of their statement and what they talk about can tell you a great deal about them and their world. Choose a character you are familiar with and write a scene with only dialogue. Spend thirty minutes showing your readers a world through the words of your character.
If you need further guidance with this exercise consider having your character walk into a room. In that room a dramatic event has taken place…a murder…a love affair, something rather graphic. Resist the urge to describe, but relate the scene to the reader with only the dialogue of your characters.
Happy writing.
composeconceivecreate 