David Ohle on a Cinematic Narrative Approach

David Ohle, in conversation with J.A. Tyler, says, ” My approach is not that different from a film director’s. I call for live action and my characters enter the set, a set already designed and waiting for them to play out their roles. I often cut, rethink, or re-see a given scene many times, until I’m satisfied with it.”

It is this cinematic mode of composition that I, as author, am drawn to–compelled toward–in my own writing. While I never quite envisioned it in exactly the way Ohle states, I have found myself, especially in the composition of my novellas as opposed to my short stories and poetry, wholly, at times, immersed in the spectacle of the visual-cinematic, in being able to actually see the events as action-movements and, much like a screenwriter or director, relaying those events–in the present tense, in the realm of the “we”–to the reader’s imagination.

Moreover, it should come as no secret that Ohle’s work and mode of narrative approach is vastly inspirational to my own aspirations, not in terms of actual thematic content, but in terms of stylistic choice: the immediate, the tension-release, the oddness, the attention to a kind of cinematic movement.

His Boons/The Camp remains a pivotal work in my own development, a work that, years ago, allowed me to imagine myself as the creator of a somewhat similar (stylistically) world and a work that I imagine I will be continually trying to move toward throughout my creative development. It is something to strive for, yeah. We all must have our heroes. Thank you, David Ohle, for your work and for sharing with us your imagination.

David Ohle’s new book, The Blast is currently available through Calamari Press.