On the importance of Originality
I have noticed a disturbing trend in movies recently.
The top five movies of 2014 were:
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. The Hunger Games
3. Captain America
4. The Lego Movie
5. Transformers
Besides The Lego Movie, each one of these films is a big-budget action flick, and there are many more in the full top 50 list. Now, I have nothing against a good action film, but I do have a problem with how a lot of these movies are being made.
This is not a criticism of quality, by the way. There are many movies on the list which are very good, this is more about a certain aspect of these kinds of movies.
Allow me to make a parallel. Action scenes in a movie is like description in a novel. It can add a lot to the piece, but a little bit goes a long way. When action movies are truly great it's because the director salts the action little by little throughout the movie. It does not dominate the entire thing.
Unfortunately this is a lesson that many filmmakers have seemed to forgotten, because most of the action movies coming out now are dominated by their action scenes.
You see, when an action scene happens in a movie, or description happens in a book, nothing is really happening.
Of course, there are things happening, but they are passive things. Either a character is looking at something (and by extension the reader is as well) or the audience is looking at something (most often, explosions).
What I mean is that there is nothing going on in the story during these scenes. There is no character development, no story building.
Some people may go to a movie to see action scenes (I don't, but I'm sure there are people who do) but what they will remember long after the rest of the movie has faded from their minds are the characters and the story. That is, if your movie has characters or a story.
Action scenes really only pack in emotional punch if you care about the characters that are involved in them. And that can't happen unless the filmmakers give you a reason to care about the characters. When you don't care, these scenes just come off as boring exhibitions of special effects.
The problem is that, with the development of computer graphics and other methods, special effects are much more cost-effective and easier to produce than they ever have been. Too many directors use this to their advantage to try and create slick and exciting movies, but they are vapid and without any heart.
But just because a thing is easy to do does not mean it should be done so easily. When reduced to the words on the page many of these scripts are crippled things that have chance of engaging an audience. These movies prop themselves up with mindless action and hand-wave away the fact that the protagonist is a stock character.
So what does this have to do with writing? Well, unfortunately, I've read a lot of books lately that are following the same trend of these movies.
Writers are products of their environment and their books reflect what they have seen and felt. Too many young writers have grown up watching these movies and, falsely, believe this is how to tell a story.
They believe this because these movies are popular. There are numerous reasons for this: some of the movies are actually good and do contain characters and stories, many of these movies are based on previous material (comic books or novels) and the audience has grown attached to the characters based on the work of people other than the director of the movie. And sometimes people just want to see a mindless action flick, and that's okay.
But do you really think that fifty years from now people will talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier? I doubt it. But they will still be talking about The Shawshank Redemption. That movie has very little in the way of action, but it does have interesting characters and a great story. Those are the things that last.
Now I see books that try to ape the action and adventure of the screen. Action in a book is the same as description, it's good in small doses. If you are telling me about every single blade of grass in a field then I am going to get bored. In the same way if every single scene in your book is one fist-fight or enormous explosion or battle scene followed one after the other, then I am going to get bored.
Whether we realize it or not, we don't go to the movies to see big explosions and we don't read books to hear about the good guy beating the crap out of the bad guy.
We seek stories because we want ideas, we want characters. We want to see people who we can relate to, and people who we absolutely hate.
We want ideas about life and love and the nature of existence and our place in society.
One of the best books to come out in recent years is World War Z. If you have not read the novel, you simply must. It is a brilliant piece of fiction.
Now the book contains some action, to be sure, we are, after all, talking about a zombie apocalypse.
However, the book is not wall to wall action. There are a lot of great ideas in the book and a lot of memorable characters. At its heart, World War Z is about global economies and the nature of freedom. About the importance of individuality and the need for community. It is a rich and complex book that is filled with ideas. And it's a hell of a fun read at the same time.
What did Hollywood do with World War Z? They turned it into a mindless action film with cliched dialogue and stock characters. It did nothing to set it apart from any other action film, nor did it really follow the book in any appreciable way. The book is such a vastly different story than the movie that I can't believe they paid the author for the rights to the book. They might as well have titled it something else and no judge in the world would have ruled against the filmmakers. There is simply almost no similiarities between the book and the movie.
So why did they do it? Why did they produce another mindless action film? I believe it's because there are not very many screenwriters left that are capable of telling an epic story. Apparently, there aren't many left that can even ADAPT an epic story.
Screenwriters are dropping the ball left and right in Hollywood, and they are dragging down promising young novelists with them.
So if you're a writer, when you sit down to begin your book don't write what you think will be popular, don't fill your book with action and call it "fast-paced". Write about people; write about ideas. Your audience will thank you for it.
The top five movies of 2014 were:
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. The Hunger Games
3. Captain America
4. The Lego Movie
5. Transformers
Besides The Lego Movie, each one of these films is a big-budget action flick, and there are many more in the full top 50 list. Now, I have nothing against a good action film, but I do have a problem with how a lot of these movies are being made.
This is not a criticism of quality, by the way. There are many movies on the list which are very good, this is more about a certain aspect of these kinds of movies.
Allow me to make a parallel. Action scenes in a movie is like description in a novel. It can add a lot to the piece, but a little bit goes a long way. When action movies are truly great it's because the director salts the action little by little throughout the movie. It does not dominate the entire thing.
Unfortunately this is a lesson that many filmmakers have seemed to forgotten, because most of the action movies coming out now are dominated by their action scenes.
You see, when an action scene happens in a movie, or description happens in a book, nothing is really happening.
Of course, there are things happening, but they are passive things. Either a character is looking at something (and by extension the reader is as well) or the audience is looking at something (most often, explosions).
What I mean is that there is nothing going on in the story during these scenes. There is no character development, no story building.
Some people may go to a movie to see action scenes (I don't, but I'm sure there are people who do) but what they will remember long after the rest of the movie has faded from their minds are the characters and the story. That is, if your movie has characters or a story.
Action scenes really only pack in emotional punch if you care about the characters that are involved in them. And that can't happen unless the filmmakers give you a reason to care about the characters. When you don't care, these scenes just come off as boring exhibitions of special effects.
The problem is that, with the development of computer graphics and other methods, special effects are much more cost-effective and easier to produce than they ever have been. Too many directors use this to their advantage to try and create slick and exciting movies, but they are vapid and without any heart.
But just because a thing is easy to do does not mean it should be done so easily. When reduced to the words on the page many of these scripts are crippled things that have chance of engaging an audience. These movies prop themselves up with mindless action and hand-wave away the fact that the protagonist is a stock character.
So what does this have to do with writing? Well, unfortunately, I've read a lot of books lately that are following the same trend of these movies.
Writers are products of their environment and their books reflect what they have seen and felt. Too many young writers have grown up watching these movies and, falsely, believe this is how to tell a story.
They believe this because these movies are popular. There are numerous reasons for this: some of the movies are actually good and do contain characters and stories, many of these movies are based on previous material (comic books or novels) and the audience has grown attached to the characters based on the work of people other than the director of the movie. And sometimes people just want to see a mindless action flick, and that's okay.
But do you really think that fifty years from now people will talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier? I doubt it. But they will still be talking about The Shawshank Redemption. That movie has very little in the way of action, but it does have interesting characters and a great story. Those are the things that last.
Now I see books that try to ape the action and adventure of the screen. Action in a book is the same as description, it's good in small doses. If you are telling me about every single blade of grass in a field then I am going to get bored. In the same way if every single scene in your book is one fist-fight or enormous explosion or battle scene followed one after the other, then I am going to get bored.
Whether we realize it or not, we don't go to the movies to see big explosions and we don't read books to hear about the good guy beating the crap out of the bad guy.
We seek stories because we want ideas, we want characters. We want to see people who we can relate to, and people who we absolutely hate.
We want ideas about life and love and the nature of existence and our place in society.
One of the best books to come out in recent years is World War Z. If you have not read the novel, you simply must. It is a brilliant piece of fiction.
Now the book contains some action, to be sure, we are, after all, talking about a zombie apocalypse.
However, the book is not wall to wall action. There are a lot of great ideas in the book and a lot of memorable characters. At its heart, World War Z is about global economies and the nature of freedom. About the importance of individuality and the need for community. It is a rich and complex book that is filled with ideas. And it's a hell of a fun read at the same time.
What did Hollywood do with World War Z? They turned it into a mindless action film with cliched dialogue and stock characters. It did nothing to set it apart from any other action film, nor did it really follow the book in any appreciable way. The book is such a vastly different story than the movie that I can't believe they paid the author for the rights to the book. They might as well have titled it something else and no judge in the world would have ruled against the filmmakers. There is simply almost no similiarities between the book and the movie.
So why did they do it? Why did they produce another mindless action film? I believe it's because there are not very many screenwriters left that are capable of telling an epic story. Apparently, there aren't many left that can even ADAPT an epic story.
Screenwriters are dropping the ball left and right in Hollywood, and they are dragging down promising young novelists with them.
So if you're a writer, when you sit down to begin your book don't write what you think will be popular, don't fill your book with action and call it "fast-paced". Write about people; write about ideas. Your audience will thank you for it.
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