Using Movies to Help Your Writing (Julie)

This may sound crazy, but I just now watched Avatar. I'm not sure why it took me so long, maybe because I kept hearing differing opinions on things about it. Either way, my fiance suggested us watching it for creativity purposes. And so we did.

This isn't a review of the movie, but I can say that it definitely wows in the creativity department. It was amazing how unique the story world was. Of course, it was a movie and movies are all about the visual aspects to feed the imagination.

When writing your own story, you have to put more effort into world building because the reader can't actually "see" it like you can in a movie. It's all about the words you use to paint the image.

But anyway, back to the movie. I found some things not to my liking, like the amount of language, but I really enjoyed the world building. There was so much attention to little details that set the world apart. For some reason, the ears of the aliens (how they moved quite a bit) have stuck with me.

So now, the day after watching it, I'm wondering about my own story:

-have I incorporated those small details that give the characters individual, memorable traits?

-is my story world unique enough to capture the reader's attention and make them visualize it in their minds as if they were watching it on the big screen?

-not only if the imagery is good, but also making sure it isn't overly done? Just like in a movie, there can be too much visually going on and you miss a lot or it just becomes overwhelming. Sometimes in Avatar, it did get a bit too much to look at at one time.

Creating worlds and characters can be a fine line. You can either do too much or too little, so you have to find the right balance of creativity without loosing your audience to sensory or word overload.

Have you seen a movie that has inspired you to rethink about your own writing, or helped you improve your writing?