I just watched the movie, Amelia, based on a couple books about Amelia Earhart's life. It was beautiful, but boring. I was stunned. How could you make one of the most dynamic female characters in recent history boring.
Answer: every time there was conflict in her life, the moviemakers/storytellers didn't get into it. They quickly wrapped it up and walked on to the next event in her life.
This woman had a complicated life — a marriage to a giant publisher, an affair, having to sell products she disliked to finance her flying, fighting to get recognized in a male world, the competition from other females, not to mention her own obsession with flying that ultimately killed her. Instead of living any of those events with her, I felt those those moments were presented as a stunning laundry list. Unfortunately, that's a history lesson, not great story telling.
A Time to Kill
Then, last night, I'm watching a rerun on TV last night of A Time To Kill, a 1996 movie based on the John Grisham book. Immediately, I thought, the Amelia folks should have had Grisham give them a few story pointers. Say what you will about the man, but this guy can pour on the conflict. Within less than an hour:
• a child is raped and left for dead
• the father murders the guys who did and is on trial.
• a young attorney who takes on the case partly due to guilt (he suspected the murder)
• an experienced attorney is ready to blow our young attorney out of the water for his career
• the KKK jump in, which causes some marital struggles for our young attorney when they start trying to blow up his house with wife and child inside
• we find out young attorney has no money and trying to case with no resources
• we find out experienced attorney has lots of resources
• the NAACP is trying to replace our young attorney too
• beautiful research attorney steps in who is brilliant by a temptation for our young attorney
. . . And this is all within an hour! Holy smokes!
Looking for Tension
I'm always looking for ways to increase the conflict and suspense in my stories. I'll be honest, I'm not mean enough to my characters and don't put them the tough scenes. Maybe that's because I like my characters and it's hard to beat up on them.But after watching Amelia Earhart and a Time to Kill back to back, it's time to start getting tougher, because the alternative is to put the audience to sleep.
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5 comments:
From what I've seen there is one of two extremes- putting the audience to sleep or loading 'too much' action/suspense into something.
There are some good examples of finding the right balance (A Time to Kill is a great example).
An example of decent balancing is "Top Gun" I was rewatching it this weekend and was really amazed by everything they pack into that movie. (I'm also kind of amazed by the cheap 1986 rate to rent a fighter).
I was watching another movie (blanking the name going to have to look it up) and it was so over the top on suspense that it actually bored me to sleep "Oh look...its plot twist XYZ".
That's a great point — there are cliche' plots as much as cliche' characters. Both are boring. I remember (while back now) seeing The Big Easy and Bull Durham and being blow away. I wanted to write JUST like that. Still working at it. :-)
Yeah there are some types of movies that seem to stray heavily toward cliche' plots. The best example off the top of my head is the general 'romance' movie(and let me make the disclaimer- I use them because I absolutely love them. They are brain candy because you know they will *always* have a happy/sappy/good feeling ending, and I unequivocally love them)- you have a guy & a girl, some sort of conflict (in movies it seems to head toward two of the cliche's of romance- either secrets in the past or ex-whatever shows up to cause conflict), a short break up in which they consider the 'issue' and then the resolution.
That being said, even movies like that can totally rock. For example- "The Notebook" makes me bawl *every* time I see it. (though than again so does Top Gun. Yes I'm odd, I get this.)
I want to connect to the characters. Even if I hate them or think there a real jerk, it's still a connection. What'z happened to building amazing characters with personality? I want them to speak to me even if they're just standing there in a scene.
I totally agree. Show us the good, bad and the ugly. :-)
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