Skip to main content

Story Walls

If I had to pin down exactly what I want a reader to gain from one of my stories or plays or the-film-that-is-causing-me-nightmares I would say it is to be eneveloped in a story completely and utterly.

Phil Spector's Wall of Sound but for words and stories and moving pictures that grab your heart and brain in unison and shake them until you forget, just for a 10 second panic, who you actually are.

Charlie Brooker recently had a three part TV mini-series on Channel 4, Black mirror, and one of the episodes (15 Million Merits) had a song playing throughout it.  Irma Thomas's 'Anyone who Knows What Love Is' is apparently a little known track from an album in 1963 and it does exactly what I want my work to do to someone... 

From the opening burst of backing vocals to the strange twist on a note at the end of the chorus (I'm so technical it's untrue).  It has you hooked.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Friday

This week has been hard. It seems to have just been one long downward spiral which should've meant I woke up this morning feeling beyond hope.  Especially after the 4am nightmare where I drowned and then woke up in a hot sweat. But I woke up a lot more cheerful than I have been all week.  It's freezing cold and the 2 mile walk to the office from Charing Cross was painful but I got in and have found myself smiling all day.  Smiling when a client meeting was cancelled even though I got here early to do a lot of printing for it.  Still smiling after I can't book any rooms for a few more meetings I've scheduled for my boss this afternoon.  And I'll hopefully still be smiling at 17:28 when something urgent happens as it has a habit of doing last thing on a Friday. This weekend I will be trying hard not to stress out about how many words I've written (0) or how many weeks I have left until the film from hell is to be pitched again (38) or when it has to be compl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beat Sheets

Yesterday I sat at my Grandma's kitchen table for five hours.  Out of those that time, one hour was spent staring out of her back door at squirrels and wood pigeons in the garden.  Another thirty minutes was spent with the neighbour's cat, Teddy, who decided to investigate the kitchen and my legs and the very warm boiler I was working next to. In the remaining three and a half hours I managed to write about seven pages which translates to roughly seven minutes on screen. That takes me to seventeen pages total and I have to hand in one hundred and ten pages by June.  I ideally want to have completed a first draft by March (yeah right) and then I'd have a few months to edit and wrestle with it. At the moment I'm preoccupied with several beats I need to try and hit or at least aim for in terms of Act I, Act II, Mid point, Act III, climax and a resolution (or not if I want to puzzle an audience). I've got my story laid out and I'm happy with the structure but ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lullabies

It's been almost a year since I've written anything.  I handed in my completed script last June and graduated from my Masters in September. In the end I was really happy with it and had planned to make 2012 the year I became less professional EA and more full time writer. The event I didn't foresee was that the day I handed in my script was the evening I decided to take a pregnancy test and The Man and I discovered we were going to be parents in 9 months time. Which brings us to today.  More technically it takes us to tomorrow when I'm due to become a Mummy. I don't know why I haven't wanted to write anything in so long.  Maybe the film sapped it all out of me.  Maybe I've used this pregnancy as one big excuse to avoid thinking too hard. All I know is that when The Little One decides to arrive I'll be ready with lots of stories.  Tales of how the stars dangle in the sky and why the moon smiles down on Brighton pier.  Or how The Cat goes dancing e...
Post a Comment
Read more