Improve your writing by watching Twilight
Jun/090
One of my flatmates was watching Twilight tonight. Again. I’d already come downstairs with my netbook for a cup of tea, so I thought “what the heck” and sat down. Of course I only glanced at the screen occasionally because I am a man, and men don’t watch Twilight.
But then the battery on my netbook died, and I did something which I feel shows off my incredible credentials as a modern metrosexual man. Rather than fleeing for the hills like I should have, I put aside my dead netbook and and watched the film.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I enjoyed it. There were scenes that were either touching and/or funny, or just plain visually cool, but the vast majority of the film I found cringe-worthy. But it was interesting, because as I was watching I came to a realisation. I honestly believe that watching the film can help writers improve their craft – especially if they can’t stand the idea of watching it. And here’s why, in three simple points:
If you’re anything like me, the niche that Twilight occupies is squarely outside of your comfort zone. Vampire romance novels have never appealed to me, and the result is that I had absolutely no understanding of the conventions of the genre. Therefore, a lot of what happened was counter-intuitive and I wasn’t able to read the film as easily as I normally would. This made watching the film marginally more entertaining, in a frustrating way.
The buttons that Twilight pushes to appeal to its fan base are pretty obvious. Michael Bay obvious.1 Although I wasn’t familiar with the conventions going in, I had a pretty solid understanding of them going out.
The net effect is that the film is, for lack of a better word, educational. And while I’m not going to analyse it in great detail here, the point is that there exists a genre that I don’t enjoy but which is incredibly popular. And for no better reason than that I don’t enjoy it, I’ve never bothered to to try to understand it. Both I and most people I know would dismiss any stories in the vampire romance genre out of hand simply because they don’t appeal, but that means we’ll never understand why it appeals to other people.
As storytellers, that’s our loss. If you’re like me and avoided Twilight because you can’t stand the idea of a vampire romance chick flick, you’re missing out in a big way. Because not only is Twilight one of the most popular works of its genre, it’s also a pretty good yardstick for understanding how the genre works.
Having a greater understanding of what makes people enjoy stories can’t help but improve your own writing, even if you’re not writing in those genres yourself. Understanding why the elements of a genre work, can only strengthen your writing.
What incredible luck then, to have a film that is so easy to understand that you’ll never have to read or watch another example of the genre if you don’t want to.
So yes, if you’re interested in story-telling, I do recommend watching Twilight. Especially if you don’t want to.
- Well, maybe not Michael Bay obvious. Few things in life are. [↩]
If you thought your home was small…
Jun/090
These tiny houses are amazing, and what’s really surprising to me is how appealing they look. With that little space to work with -- the one in the video, owned by Jay Shafer, is 89 square feet -- there’s no room for non-essentials, and I can see the appeal in skimming off the fat like that.
Of course, even as I form warm thoughts I know that Yutong wouldn’t let it fly. She’d probably be annoyed if I even suggested it. Which, and I’m sure other worse halves will agree with me, is enough to make the thought appealing in and off itself.
But even with such warm recommendations, there is one major drawback to a 89 square foot house. Where the heck I would put my books? I mean, Jay Shafer has some books in the video, but I’d have to decimate my collection to fit it in.
I guess I’m not quite ready to clear off all the non-essentials.
(Damn…)
Via May December.
Free places on college courses
Jun/090
Places at the London College of Communication worth almost £20,000 are being offered for free – and the LLC are keen that youth from Southwark fill the seats.
Three places on the LLC’s postgraduate broadcast journalism course starting in October at Elephant and Castle, worth £6,645 each, are being offered for free thanks to a sponsorship from Bloomberg.
The course director, Martin Shaw, said: “I really want to try to attract young people from Southwark who may have thought they couldn’t afford to pay for a course like this.”
This is the third year such sponsorships have been offered by Bloomberg. Previous recipients are now working at BBC Nottingham, BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours, BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves and BBC2 Newsnight.
The postgraduate broadcast journalism course at LLC has been going for 30 years, and produced journalists like ITV1’s Craig Doyle and Helen Boaden, the director of BBC News.
More details are available on http://www.arts.ac.uk/48871.htm
First published in Southwark News on June 18, 2009.
John Hodgman’s Obama roast
Jun/090
As a confirmed nerd, I really enjoyed John Hodgman’s Obama roast. How many of the references did you know the answer to? I’m ashamed to say that I knew all but two, which is bad no matter how you cut it; either I’m too much of a geek for knowing most of them, or I’m not quite enough geek for missing a couple.
Of course, Hodgman isn’t simply talking about jocks and nerds; he’s using the question of whether Obama is nerd enough as a quite thinly veiled metaphor for people’s expectations of, and reactions to, the Obama presidency. It’s not much of a stretch as far as metaphors go, but I don’t think anyone could have pulled it off quite as well as Hodgman does.
I find it especially interesting to contrast the approach that Hodgman takes in his roast at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner against Stephen Colbert’s infamous roast of Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents Association dinner.
It’s quite obvious from their approaches how each comedian feels about his subject. Colbert mocks, while Hodgman supports. Of course, they both poke fun at the press. Which is a given, really.
Photo by darthdowney.