Can writers learn from films and TV shows?

[Alwyn]

This thread is inspired by a conversation between Cookiegod and C-Beams on the winner's circle of Tale of the Week 282: The Sculptor's Dream.

Thank you Turkafinwë and Cookiegod.

I agree Cookiegod, brevity and clarity go hand in hand. Just the other night, I watched Blade Runner 2049 for the hundredth time. It occurred to me how every scene was performing a specific function. Between each major plot point, in those calmer moments of the narrative, the story was addressing a precise world building detail or highlighting an important character trait. The writers of the film must have had a very clear vision to be able to tie the plot, setting and characters all together so well. I hope one day I can write a large piece of fiction that achieves this. Must keep practising!

Thanks again.

This got me thinking about how films and TV shows might teach us about creative writing and writing AARs. I wonder if other writers have been inspired by an aspect of a film or TV show - perhaps, the way that the world and the characters are shown, the clarity of the film-makers' vision, or the mood or tone in which the story is told?

[NorseThing]

Of course there is much to learn and television and film is filled with people that get paid to write. I will give this a try by example.

Take an old series such as Batman with Adam West. Every time the episode ends, it ends on a cliff hanger if it is the first episode in the two a week series. I of course hade done this cliff hanger quite often in my AAR writing. For me it gives a bit of the feel on the Saturday mantinee serials such as you can find Serial film - Wikipedia.

Also the writers like to use the medieval style of repetition of the morals every time a character or regular place is mentioned such as stately Wayne manor or the dynamic duo. Getting the readers to identify with your characters can be easier if we take a page out this style of writing. Even the old series of Perry Mason had repetition of a great many of the common aspects every episode. For example, Paul Drake would always enter Perry Mason's office by the back door with a special knock and say "hello beautiful." to Della Street. This not only announces the Paul Drake entrance into the scene just as Cosmo Kramer had a special entrance in Seinfeld, it reinforces that Della Street is beautiful. Nearly every episode also had a telephone call that would be a scene transition when Perry would be called to the phone. If we have a particular character we want to emphasize with a characteristic, give this a try. The Honest Duke, the dark sorcerer, the great and powerful Oz.... You get the idea. So tie some adjectives to your character names and see if this can help establish some stability and identity to your stories. This is very medieval story telling at it's best or perhaps when you learned by rote your early math tables by speaking in unison with the entire class.

[Kilo11]

I don't really think of particular movie and TV elements when writing ever, but one thing that I definitely approach with a more... "interactive" mentality is conversations. I find that it is very easy for writers to make dialogue clunky and awkward, mainly because we are more focused with what we want the conversation to do and with using good expressions than with getting a natural flow going. When I have a more active scene in mind, especially anything with discussion between important characters, I always make an aim to present it in my head as a scene from a movie, to see how the person would react to things, to hear what kinds of words he or she would use. I then try to write up that scene, getting more at the movie script bareness if possible, as that better keeps the clip and flow of the conversation.

[Cookiegod]

Short answer is yes: You can learn a lot from movies and I think I do. Especially since I don't read that much anymore (though I don't watch that many movies either. I need to watch Blade Runner!).

Two youtubevideos that analyse movies that made a great impression on me:

Movies are very distilled compared to books. They have time and money constraints, which is why it's far more common to base scripts on books (=anything meant to be read) than vice versa.
That however makes them very accessible, sometimes too much so. When I went to watch the Star Wars movie Solo (because of old friends, not because I enjoy the franchise) I caught myself analysing the entire movie. It took me ~5 minutes, and I had already figured out who dies in what order, and who would be the traitor. The reason being of course that the major franchise movies are too heavily industrialised and no longer a work of truly creative art. You can take the Nolan movies and you'll see he's an expert at following structures, but doing so intelligently and in a powerful way, unlike the copy-paste pile of nothingness that is Solo.

Westworld revolves heavily around what makes a great story, and they talk about it in depth. Which is why the first season is so fantastic (the 2nd one is bad however, spare yourself and don't watch it!).
In the video above you see an analysis of Anthony Hopkins' acting.
I believe writers can learn a great deal from that.

But I wouldn't limit myself to movies. Movies and plays are basically the same, in that they both are based on scripts. If you want to hear a good advice then check on your local theatres, and whenever something with Chekhov comes up, go and watch it! Especially 3 sisters! I cannot stress that enough. Chekhov is really the man to go to if you want psychology.
He's also the man who invented the Chekhov's gun principle, which is basically what C-Beams and I were talking about.
Ironically enough, I can't recall a single instance where a gun is being fired in those plays of him that I watched.

The major problem with many movies is, that they are too much action- (choose any action movie you like) or graphics driven (such as the 3D-remake of Pocahontas that is called Avatar).
Chekhov on the other hand goes ever deeper into character description and story and further and further away from action. He's such a master of his craft that some plays of his have no real action at all and still manage to not only be interesting, but also thought provoking.
And though no one needs to write like him, the bigger challenge compared to writing action, is to write character development, relations and arcs that make sense.

The main reason why brevity is such a good trait in a story, is that it implies clarity. The writer must know what he's doing in order to be brief, and thus he's automatically better at communicating with the reader.
The second being that unnecessary things need to be cut ("kill your darlings" - Faulckner) is nothing more than a smoke bomb, it enhances the story the same way water enhances wine.

Keep in mind that brevity does not mean that you have to strip your story down until it's naked. By brevity I mean that everything needs to serve a purpose, the ultimate purpose being advancing the story.

Many movies do it excellently. You often have scenes where several layers are advanced, often subtly, but effective, at the same time.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

Hi, Cookiegod.

I'm afraid your YouTube links don't work at the moment. It isn't all that straightforward to get this right, so I hope you don't mind me posting about it here - I hope other people might be able to benefit from this information.

At the moment your links look like this:

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-PfEE5kveE[/YOUTUBE]

What you need to do to make them work is to use just the last part of the link - the part after 'v='. So the link above needs to look like this:

[Youtube]p-PfEE5kveE[/YOUTUBE]

Which will give you this result :

[C-Beams]

Many movies do it excellently. You often have scenes where several layers are advanced, often subtly, but effective, at the same time.

Yes, and I think this is what Blade Runner 2049 does particularly well. Take the intro as an example; every scene and all the dialogue has been crafted for world-building, character development and plot. And it's all tightly woven together in a subtle way.

(Blade Runner 2049 intro SPOILERS INCOMING)

First we see the world as 'K' descends in his hover-car. We see what appears to be fields but soon realise they are hydroponic farms, telling us the world has decayed to the point humanity can no longer rely on the natural earth. (World building)

When 'K' the main character lands, he arrives beside the dead tree which will become very important later on. (Plot device set up)

When K speaks his first words he says, 'I hope you don't mind, I was careful not to tread in any dirt.' This immediately informs us of his personality type, kind and considerate. (Character building)

Then there is that pot on the stove that is boiling garlic which K and Morton have a brief conversation on. This conversation about appreciating garlic shows their human-like nature, even though we soon learn they are both robots/replicants. (Plot/Theme, i.e what does it mean to be human.)

So in terms of narrative structure, this opening manages to achieve world building (hydroponic farms), starts K's character development (when K expresses his willingness to be subservient to mankind which he will later rebel from), intro is also intriguing which lures us into the plot (Morton's line just before he effectively commits suicide, '...because you've never seen a miracle') and action to grip the viewer (the fight scene.)

And that fight seen is not only fist throwing for dramatic effect, it tells us more on the characters. For instance, their crashing through that wall shows us their superior strength and their lethality compared to humans. Secondly, after K is taken by surprise he quickly overcomes Morton which shows us his proficiency at killing. (I have heard before, a trick to make characters likeable is to show they are good at what they do.)

All of this takes place in the intro. Like Cookiegod said, excellent films add layers, subtly, to advance the narrative. I'm sure there are even more points that I missed. And bear in mind the whole film achieves this, constantly building further on the world and characters and plot. Just think what it would take to pull off this kind of writing. I feel exhausted just thinking about it.

P.S, thanks Cookiegod for the video links and Caillagh de Bodemloze for showing us how to make them work (I tried myself before with no luck.)

[Turkafinwë]

In short, I believe so yes! I believe we can learn from everything we see or do to improve us as a writer, amongst other things in life . Experiences whether lived through your life, someone else's life, a book, a tv show or movie, a game, music, literally everything can inspire us to write a certain thing or give us new ideas. Movies and tv-shows have the advantage that it is visual and in that way they can inprint ideas in people their minds that can take a visual shape. Written work can have the same effect but it is harder to get that visual representation of it inside people their heads, for most people I presume it is more difficult. You need an imaginative mind for written work to take shape in the mind whereas a movie you get the picture firsthand whether you like it or not. That is the disadvantage of the visual form of media. Written work is interpretted differently by everyone no matter how detailed your description is. But I digress (you'll see I do this quite often in discussions to the annoyance of many )

Yes we can learn from films and tv-shows. From observing these shows or films we can learn on how to write more lively for it is as Kilo says, we are sometimes so focused on where the conversation needs to go that we forget about the conversation itself. But not only conversations need to be written more "alive" but also the passive parts of the story can be improved and come "alive" by looking at films or tv-shows with rich descriptions of your surroundings, culture and general worldbuilding. What a show can achieve with one shot a writer needs a page or 2 to convey to it's audience the same message. It's from these differences, between both mediums, that we can learn the most from. I believe a good story is one you can see unfold before your eyes like a movie, if I can see it happen before me I will be most engaged in the story. That said it is not the most descriptive story that wins this medal. There needs to be a subtle balance between descriptions and story. Take Tolkien for instance, he could write 2 full pages to describe a piece of wall and by the half of page 1 I knew there was a wall and needed no further explanation, the image was set. It's great for worldbuilding to know its entire history but it is too much for that inner image. I think some movie scripts can be very helpful to find this balance of saying enough but not too much because they usually say in a couple of sentences how a scene should look. Flesh those sentences or even couple of words in a more narrative sense and BOOM you have a "scene" within your story, figuratively speaking.

Other than that there are a thousand and one things we can obtain and learn from these forms of media. The possibilities are endless and I would need to research it for a lifetime to find them all.

Well these are the ramblings of a young, "old" man and I hope it's worth something to someone

[C-Beams]

Take Tolkien for instance, he could write 2 full pages to describe a ...

An interesting point regarding Tolkein I once heard, is that his lengthy descriptions were deliberate in order to reflect the ponderous pace of his character's epic journey. The Hobbit is a much faster paced story, so the long descriptions that slow down the Lord of the Rings must have been intentional, rather than just his writing style.

What a show can achieve with one shot a writer needs a page or 2 to convey to it's audience the same message.

I think where watching films is most helpful, is with the larger needs of a story. Such as plot structure, as you can watch a film in a couple of hours and see how whole plot is structured with its hook, acts, climax, etc. When it comes to descriptions, reading other books will of course be most helpful for that.

In fact a problem I had recently was with that Starship Trooper short story I wrote. I found that trying to describe all the details that I visually saw in the film really bogged down my prose and in the end I cut much of the descriptions out. I should actually read the book the film was based on to see how the writer wrote their descriptions.

*heads of to Amazon*

[Kilo11]

In fact a problem I had recently was with that Starship Trooper short story I wrote. I found that trying to describe all the details that I visually saw in the film really bogged down my prose and in the end I cut much of the descriptions out. I should actually read the book the film was based on to see how the writer wrote their descriptions.

*heads of to Amazon*

This is slightly off the topic of the OP, but you most certainly should get Starship Troopers (if you're referring to the Heinlein book). I read it ages ago but remember being very impressed with a number of things, as it deals a lot with ideas of what is it to be a soldier, to be at war, and also what interplanetary war might look like. Very little like the movie, and in all the right ways (don't get me wrong, the movie is fun, just not really a beacon of rich material).

[Swaeft]

I always visualize what characters would be doing and saying as if they were in a movie when writing a conversational section in AARs, so yes, I do believe they can help! Tone, atmosphere, and lighting all help set the mood as well. However, there is a drawback to this, if you immerse yourself too fully into how you visualize your writing to be, you will end up spending way more words on describing a scene than necessary, resulting in a long, drawn out piece that can be very draggy. I myself am guilty of that.