Linearity
I just watched a good movie earlier. It was a Spanish film called Lucía y el Sexo (Sex and Lucía). I am not one of those people who despise films that are in a foreign language because, god forbid, I have to read the subtitles. If I hear that a movie has a good story to it then I’ll watch it. My wife was about to watch the movie and asked me to join because she thought I might enjoy it. And enjoy it, I did.
Lucía y el Sexo had a nice story; full of emotion and very sexy. The thing that caught my attention was the sequence of the story. The story started off near the end, flashed back to the beginning, then returned to the present, several times briefly, only to return to the past. When it finally caught up to the present it progressed to the end and finished with an unseen glimpse of the past.
I love when writers, be it screenwriters or novelists, play with the linearity of the story they are telling. It keeps you in suspense as to what led to the events that you witnessed in the beginning. It also keeps you guessing about how the events will resolve. Most of my stories are linear. I love a good steady march from beginning to end. But every now and then I come up with a story that just begs to be told in a non-linear fashion. It is fun to walk the line between revealing too much and not enough, while at the same time jumbling the story so the climax, that would be near the middle in a linear story, is now at the end.
Even when I am writing my linear stories, I find myself jumping around within the story as I write. Sometimes I get a scene from the middle of my book in my head and just have to write it down even if I am no where near that part of the story. I have pieces of the end, the middle and the beginning swirling in my head. It is my job to lay out the story in a nice straight line from beginning to end. Some days that is easier said than done. Some days I don’t feel like adding to the pieces without first trying to link them together. Of course, once I get started on the in-between parts the urge to write soon passes and I move on to something else, usually less productive, until the next writing mood comes.
Speaking of the urge to write passing and moving on to something else…
Lucía y el Sexo had a nice story; full of emotion and very sexy. The thing that caught my attention was the sequence of the story. The story started off near the end, flashed back to the beginning, then returned to the present, several times briefly, only to return to the past. When it finally caught up to the present it progressed to the end and finished with an unseen glimpse of the past.
I love when writers, be it screenwriters or novelists, play with the linearity of the story they are telling. It keeps you in suspense as to what led to the events that you witnessed in the beginning. It also keeps you guessing about how the events will resolve. Most of my stories are linear. I love a good steady march from beginning to end. But every now and then I come up with a story that just begs to be told in a non-linear fashion. It is fun to walk the line between revealing too much and not enough, while at the same time jumbling the story so the climax, that would be near the middle in a linear story, is now at the end.
Even when I am writing my linear stories, I find myself jumping around within the story as I write. Sometimes I get a scene from the middle of my book in my head and just have to write it down even if I am no where near that part of the story. I have pieces of the end, the middle and the beginning swirling in my head. It is my job to lay out the story in a nice straight line from beginning to end. Some days that is easier said than done. Some days I don’t feel like adding to the pieces without first trying to link them together. Of course, once I get started on the in-between parts the urge to write soon passes and I move on to something else, usually less productive, until the next writing mood comes.
Speaking of the urge to write passing and moving on to something else…
1 comments:
Hello! And welcome to blogging. Great post, too. I'm looking forward to reading your journey on the road to publication. Blogpost is fairly easy once you get into it. Lots of fun. All the best. :)
Post a Comment