Fictional

I’ve been writing a lot of short fiction lately. While we’ve read a million books on how to write screenplays, and worked a lot of drafts into one form or another, the fact remains that a good story is a good story. Some stories are right for certain mediums, and some are better for others.

Screenplays are not, in my opinion, the medium for ideas. They are the medium for experiences. I don’t like movies that try to make me think — not because I don’t like to think, but because movies that try to make you think usually have an agenda about how you should think. They are trying to teach you something.

Unless an audience comes to us and asks to be taught, who the hell are we to assign ourselves as teachers? What makes me think that a member of the audience who believes differently than me will change their mind because I manipulate them with images and sound?

Which is not to say that films can’t raise issues and deal with themes — but films should let you experience something and draw your own conclusions from it. I don’t like films that try to make me think — I like films that make me think. The films that do leave things open. They don’t tie off every plot line neatly, they don’t sacrifice ambiguity for resolution. They let people maintain some of their human failings.

Short fiction, on the other hand, is a great medium for ideas. It’s a medium of questions. One story I wrote recently started with the question “What if foot binding hadn’t been outlawed in China, and in fact had caught in as a fashion craze in the US?” Is it so unrealistic, thinking about other things women do in the name of beauty? What about things men do in the name of chastity and controlling women?

In a short story, I was able to deal with that issue in a way that was actually very concrete and based on action, but would have been totally unsuitable for the screen.

So how do you know which medium to express an idea in? I always base it on the first flash I have. Do I see a scene, or do I see a question? If it’s the former, then it’s a screenplay idea. If it’s the latter, it’s a literary idea. I capture the idea in my little notebook and then when I’m digging for things to write, see if it sparks me.

Or, as is sometimes the case, see if I can stop thinking about it. If I can’t, time to get writing.