Alfred Hitchcock: The Rules of Visual Storytelling

Because anything Hitch had to say about storytelling is good for writers to know. 

From the page:

"Alfred Hitchcock was perhaps the greatest cinematic storyteller of the 20th century.  His films created a visual language which have influenced virtually every director since.  

"In this video essay I examine how Hitchcock tells the story through his use of the camera to tell stories cinematically.  In particular I focus on his thoughtful use of long shots and close-ups to convey plot and emotion visually.  I take in many of his best films, from Strangers on a Train, through to Vertigo and Psycho, to examine how he uses many of these techniques."

#MotivationalMonday -- Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling

[Link] It's Show Time, Synergy!

by Ellie Raine

"Hey Ellie, what's the one thing you most love about good stories?"

Thanks for asking, Ellie's internal dialogue! That's an easy answer:

Synergy.

Read the full article: http://aizelleraine.wixsite.com/ellieraine/single-post/2016/11/21/Its-Show-Time-Synergy

Writers at the Movies

Which movies have influenced the way you approach storytelling in prose fiction, and specifically how have they influenced your work?

Brant Fowler: Thinking specifically of comic writing, the films are paced and cut tend to inspire me, and sometimes spark ideas for stories of my own. Thinking of cinematic imagery, the movie Drive really stood out to me as there was no wasted scene, and every aspect of the film felt driven (no pun intended) by graphic storytelling, which relates so well to the comics medium.

Bill Craig: All of the old Bond Movies, and the Lethal Weapon movies, and of course all of Bruce Lee's movies.

Amanda Niehaus-Hard: The movie Adaptation provided a pretty good lesson for me, if only on what "story" and "plot" actually means. Robert McKee's quote is incredible, NSFW but incredible.

What is the power of film that it can influence even the written word? Does it have something to do with the axiom that "books are movies in your head" or is it deeper than that?

Bill Craig: If you can visualize while you are writting, that will carry over to the reader and allow them to "see" the action in their heads as well while they read.

Brant Fowler: Going beyond that, even, certain films are so rich in the backgrounds and settings that they influence that part of your writing. I've always been drawn to fantasy, and most actually come from books to begin with. Neverending Story, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Princess Bride... all these world's are so rich and detailed that I sometimes find myself breaking them down into descriptive writing. I guess in a way I'm being influenced by the source material, but it takes  that visual element at times to ignite a new perspective that ultimately feeds my own creativity.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #323 -- What Makes a Good Story?

What do you think makes a good story?

The answer you're probably looking for from me would be this: A good story has memorable characters, an inventive plot, rising action and falling action and some sort of resolution. So there. To me that's a merely good story. For those who are comfortable with for an answer, you can stop reading now and let the rest of us go for something a bit less generic.

For me a good story has all of that, yes, but it also has something to say about the human condition.

It has a theme.

It has some sort of failure and need to be redeemed on either a physical (save the kidnapping victim), emotional (get the lover whose heart you broke all those years ago to forgive you), or spiritual level (to become a better person by escaping the clutches of past failures). Or even if such a redemption fails, it was at least attempted.

It has a conflict that pits imperfect people against other imperfect people in some way that has lasting repercussions.

And perhaps most important to me as a writer, it has what I'll call "The Unattainable Thing." It needs that one thing the protagonist wants desperately but knows he or she will never get. It could be a relationship (as with Rick Ruby and Evelyn). It could be the opportunity to see a lost loved one and say goodbye (Starlord). Or it could be any number of other things, but it needs to be there as a driving force to keep the protagonist going. 

To use a recent example, The Avengers was a good movie. It had memorable characters, and inventive plot about an alien invasion, and lots of action along the story triangle. But aside from "there's the alien, hit it!" it didn't offer too much along the lines of anything deeper than surface tension. The Age of Ultron, on the other hand had all that PLUS the hubris of a man who believed himself to be able to make decisions for the whole world, the question of what makes us human underneath the skin, the idea of putting aside serious harms done to us in order to create a new family, and whether or not two people who know that they are monsters can really ever find happiness as people. So, the second movie, at least in regards to my understanding of what makes a good story, was a great story with deeper ramifications that I will take with me far beyond when the taste of popcorn fades away.

(Then again, I'm a lit major, so your mileage may vary.)

[Link] Pulp Fiction: What’s It All About?

by Paul Bishop

I WAS ASKED the other day to explain what makes pulp storytelling different from other types of fiction. My kneejerk reaction was to claim, it’s hard to define, but I know it when I read it – which does little to answer the question. I’ve since thought a lot about what constitutes the pulp style of storytelling, which engenders both excoriating scorn from critics and fanatical devotion from acolytes.

By now, most readers know the term pulp was coined in reference to the thousands of inexpensive fiction magazines whose heyday spanned the 1920s through the 1950s. Printed on cheap wood pulp paper, the pulps were typically 7 inches by 10 inches in size, 128 pages long, and sported eye grabbing, luridly colored covers, and ragged, untrimmed edges. Today, the original pulps are more often collected for their gaudy covers than for the fluctuating quality of the words in between.

At the height of their popularity there were hundreds of pulp magazine titles gracing the newsstands each week. The demand for stories was as voracious as the pay per word was cheap. To make a living, a writer selling stories to the pulps had to be a word machine, churning out prose for a quarter to a half cent per word. The result of this constant demand was a straightforward, often formulatic, style of writing designed to entertain a vast audience of everyday, hardworking, folks looking for vicarious thrills and chills to escape the humdrum of their daily lives.

The pulps were also a refiner’s fire for many writers who are household names today – Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Louis L’Amour, John D. MacDonald, and others. To these men belonged the battered typewriters and hard drinking tropes, which themselves have become a cliché within the public conscious.

There were also giants of the pulp writing field whose names are not as familiar, but whose characters have gone on to become iconic examples of pop culture – Robert E. Howard’s Conan The Barbarian, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan, Walter B. Gibson’s The Shadow, Lester Dent’s Doc Savage, to name just a few, all started in the pulps. We all know their famous creations, but most would look blank if asked who the creators were.

The downside of the insatiable demand for stories to fill the pages of pulp magazines was it also guaranteed much of what was published was slapdash gruel of little to no lasting impact. It is this explosion of dross that gives pulp dismissing critics a place to hang their clichéd hats. However, the beating heart of the true pulps – the best of the stories and characters born within their pages – has shined for almost a century of popular culture.

Read the full article: http://venturegalleries.com/blog/pulp-fiction-whats/