writing exercises – Read First Chapter.com

CHANGE THE WAY YOU WATCH MOVIES:

Turning the viewing of a movie into a writing exercise will change the way in which you watch the movie. For your spouse, it won't change anything. Most people love to go into the story not knowing anything. There are some who any hint of a spoiler will ruin the movie for them. You may be one of them now!

However, in order to watch through a writer's eye, you will need to watch not only the unfolding story, but you want to know ahead of time what action will be playing out. This way, you can watch for the subtleties. In other words, you will be on the lookout for foreshadowing and tiny insignificant clues that are being dropped that will wind up being the clue that solves the mystery.

I started to watch movies in this way several months ago and I have to say it didn't ruin my movie watching, it has enhanced it greatly. Knowing what will happen doesn't ruin a movie for me. I have always been that way, but I get so much more out of the movies I watch with this technique, that I will continue to watch in this way.

So how does it work?

WATCHING A MOVIE WITH A PURPOSE:

Find a summary of the movie on Wikipedia. Most movies have a page about them and it gives all the technical information about who wrote the original story, the producer, director, stars, etc. But there is a section entitled PLOT. This is where the plot is laid out for you.

If you are scheduled to watch a horror movie, decide ahead of time what you will look for. It's important to notice how the movies create a spooky atmosphere. Is it done with fog or lighting? Or maybe sounds of footsteps. These will all come in handy if you write horror yourself.

If you are watching a mystery, watch how some clues are planted but made to seem insignificant. This is slight of hand that is required in writing mysteries. Seeing this play out in a movie will give you many ideas on hiding clues in your books.

For any movie, notice how much information is dropped in the beginning to set the stage. Do they show a panorama of famous buildings to let you know you're in New York or Paris? Do they show carts and horses to let you know you are going back into the 1800 or 1900s? Notice how much information is conveyed with just the presence of certain props and locations. Almost every scene is a lesson in itself.

WON'T KNOWING THE PLOT RUIN THINGS?

To be honest, most plots are too long to even remember or put together with one reading. I can usually follow the plotline for about the first four paragraphs. After that, I can't remember who is who but it doesn't matter. As long as you have a gist of an idea of what will take place, it allows you to watch for it.

You can see whether the drama plays out slowly or whether there is a jump scare to introduce a twist in the plot. All of this is what you will feed on as an author. You are getting an up-close look at how the script writer and the director have choreographed the telling of the tale.

WHY I CHOOSE THE OLD MOVIES:

I choose to watch old movies from the 1960s and 1970s because the method of shooting movies was different back then. The directors tended to fill the scene and writing fiction requires you to 'fill the scene' too. In modern movies, although they spend a fortune on sets, you see the set once in a while, but most scenes are one close-up of one star with a quick move to show a close up of another star. It's not as rich for a writer.

EXAMPLE MOVIE: THE GORGON

This is one of the Hammer Film Production movies that I have recently fell in love with. They are old movies from the 1960s but so charming. These are easy to follow as an author and you can learn a lot about adding suspense, atmosphere, how people show fear, methods of showing distrust. These movies are short and shot on or in one set at a time, so there's a lot of action and background for you to pick up hundreds of tips.

You can even watch with a notebook and pen. Jot down the things you see that would be helpful to you in your writing. If you watch mystery movies with police work, you can write down the specific terms for things that come up over and over. For example, the words having to do with arrest warrants or fingerprint evidence, etc.

A WRITING EXERCISE AFTER THE MOVIE:

CAPTURE A SCENE: If you are watching on a computer, pause the movie in the middle of a great scene. Take a screen shot of the scene for later. If you're watching on a TV, pause and take a picture on your phone.

WRITING EXERCISE: Next time you are sitting down to write, pull up the picture and create a scene in your head -- not from the movie, but from your own imagination. Using this setting as inspiration, think of something that is about to happen in the room or what just happened in the room. Be sure to include a description of the room and/or the main elements in the room. This exercise alone will improve your descriptive writing and could even lead to a short story! You never know.

CONCLUSION:

Read the plotline -- at least three quarters of it so you can be on the lookout for all the techniques of storytelling.
Think ahead of all the information you will want to keep watch for. Make either a mental note of all the techniques you see or write them down.
If you watch police procedurals and write them, jot down all the technical names for things so you have them at your fingertips when you are writing your own fiction.
Take a picture of a great setting in the movie for later. Using that scene as inspiration, think up your own small plot for what is going to happen in this room, what could happen, or what just happened. Be sure to describe the setting adding all of the emotions and/or mood elements you saw in the movie.

So that's it. Follow me on social media and let me know if you like this method of watching movies to learn.

THIS IS AN EXERCISE IN IMPROVING YOUR NOVEL WRITING BY WATCHING OLDER MOVIES:

gorgon-picture — Screen Shot from "The Gorgon"

I've been doing this exercise for about six months now and it has turned into my favorite way to experience movies. This allows me to experience the movie as a normal viewer but also watch it with an author's third eye.

I choose to watch mostly movies from the 1960s to the late 1970s for a few reasons that I'll go into below:

OLD MOVIES VS. NEWER MOVIES:

FIRST: Classical Hollywood Style: The old classic Hollywood style focused on clear storytelling, three-act structures, and a focus on character development. The writers and directors infused their work with a fresh perspective, but there was a reliable style to the storytelling. I believe this style is easier to learn from as a new author.

SECOND: The Pace of the movie. Modern films tend to have a faster pace, driven by shorter attention spans and the need to engage audiences immediately and constantly. It's common to see the camera move back and forth shooting so fast you can't keep up. As a writer, there's nothing to learn with this.

THIRD: Classic films relied more on dialogue, staging and backdrops to tell the story. This is the richness that I find most helpful to see and learn from as an author. Modern storytelling is worried about the 3-second attention span. Older movies assumed the audience was grown up and could sit still and pay attention for a few minutes without intense stimulation.

FOURTH: The older movies were 'agenda free'. There wasn't any heavy-hand pushing politics or debauchery at every turn. In my humble opinion, this ruins even the best of movies.

FIFTH: Newer movies have upgraded post production technology and CGI, so they are now focused on movie effects, jump scares and gore shocks. Although many of you may enjoy this type of thing, it really doesn't have much to teach a new author.

SIXTH: Even though the costumers and set designers have come so far and their work is breathtaking, the gorgeous backdrops seem to be shown one or twice and the rest of the scenes are filled with quick close-up shots to showcase the facial acting. Whereas, in the older movies, the directors would set up a whole room, have the actors roam through the room while acting. They were constantly doing things, picking up a cigarette, or stoking a fire -- action that you can learn from. This is the type of action that keeps fiction dialogue from being boring. These small movements keep the scene real in the readers' minds.

SEVENTH: There's nothing more irritating than the movies that were made with hand-held cameras and watching it is the equivalent of being on an unattended rollercoaster ride. There is a chaotic feel to the entire movie. This was unthinkable in old Hollywood. Again, you may like this type of film to watch and just enjoy, but there's nothing to be gained as an author from it.

WHICH MOVIES SHOULD I WATCH?

Everyone has to find their own subgenres whether it be old gothic movies or old mystery movies. But a good place to start is at Wikipedia. Below are two links to the 1960s and 1970s in film. Movies made in these years would fall into the categories I mentioned above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s_in_film
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_in_film

SO HOW DOES LEARNING FROM MOVIES AS A WRITER WORK?

It requires you to know ahead of time what will happen. If you are the type that hates to know what will happen first, then watch the movie first to enjoy it as a viewer. Then you can go onto the next section where I talk about the process:

Look up the movie on Wikipedia. Most movies have a full pages with all the information about who wrote it, produced it, directed it and starred in it. It also has a section called Plot. Read the Plot before watching the movie.

Knowing the plot ahead of time doesn't ruin the movie for me because it allows me to watch the movie as a viewer but to also watch for how the writer and director choose to dramatize the action of the plot. You will learn how they do foreshadowing, how they create red herrings, how they hide the true culprit.

You will also learn about tropes. For example. I've been watching Hammer Horror movies from the 1960s and they all have gothic settings. Every gothic movie has the carriage and horses. They all have the castles and fog. THey all have the candelabras. These are the tropes that readers and watchers want. Some tropes never get old.

As the plot unfolds, you can see how it all comes together and how they placed and showcased the final clue or the comeuppance or the final chase, etc. I find this so helpful in seeing the story elements handled by the script writers and the directors.

paragraphs describing this WHILE describing an imaginary character interacting in this setting.

TAKE THE EXPERIENCE ONE STEP FURTHER:

If you are watching the movie on a computer, take a screen shot of a scene and then set up an imaginary happenstance that occurs in this setting. Describe the setting in words, attempting to capture the essence of what you saw on film. Doing this a few times will help you get better and better in describing backgrounds and scene settings.

This type of experience can even lead to an actual short story. Just think up what type of problem could go wrong in this setting and take it from there.

10 Minute Exercise - Watch the first ten minutes of any movie or TV show to see how much background and personality info is dumped just by the background, music and setting. Every movie or show assumes viewers are starting out in the dark. There is always a lot of good ideas in the first 10 minutes of a movie on how to convey information from background and props without dialogue or info dumping.

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WRITING EXERCISE YOU CAN DO WITH A SPOUSE