Dolphins, Imagination and Writing

This weekend, I took my son to the Clearwater Aquarium, where Dolphin Tale was filmed.  We talked about how radically different the movie was from the real story, and how creative the film crew got with a simple story of a rescued dolphin.

Although I disagree with calling a movie that departs radically from the truth “a movie based on a real story”, I did think it was a best example of how your imagination can transform the simple into the bigger. That’s what writers do, after all. We take the simple and make it something big enough to carry a whole book (or a whole movie). We expand the what ifs to become a battle of good versus evil (which was a major fabricated plot point in the movie version of Winter the Dolphin’s story).

Let your imagination fly this week (and use the exercises from the Members Only section of www.JumpStartWritingInstitute.com) to make and take your story to a new level. Don’t just see the simple tale before you. Make it more. Make it a story that MATTERS. That’s what creates the stories that become novels we share with our friends and movies that we rush to see. Just don’t call it based on a real story when only a whisper of the real story remains

Shirley