Can having a scene that’s too good cause a script or a book to fail? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But it’s true. For a clue as to why, here’s a quote from brilliant illustrator Quentin Blake, from an interview in Artists & Illustrators magazine. He’s talking about illustrating books, but I think you’ll see how it applies to scripts and books as well:
“When you’re doing a sequence of illustrations, which you often are, students often found it hard to think of the drawings as a sequence. They would work terribly hard at one, which may help that drawing but wouldn’t help the sequence. The result might be eight drawings that looked like eight separate book covers but didn’t relate to each other. So you need to think about the sequence in the book and the sequence in your work.”
I’ve seen the same thing happen with writing: individual scenes are great, but the writer has not taken the time to consider how they will work together--after all, a movie is a continuous process (as is reading a novel). One key thing to think about is the emotional impact of going from one scene to the next. Do you want the switch to cause a jolt of surprise? Or do you want a sequence of scenes to create and deepen one mood? Or do you want the next scene to cause the audience to re-think what they just saw or read in the previous scene?
To really get the hang of this, watch a film that you love and watch it again, or re-read one of your favorite novels, this time paying attention to how the scenes affect each other.
(For more tips on writing, check out my two websites: www.yourwritingcoach.com and www.timetowrite.com. You can also subscribe to my Brainstorm e-bulletin on creativity & productivity by email request to [email protected])
