Story and Music & Lyrics reviews
Mar. 4th, 2008 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearStory, by Robert McKee, is an excellent book all about screenwriting. In contradiction to the sorts of books that are called "Write a novel/screenplay in 30 days", McKee advocates comprehensive study of the craft, lots and lots of research, and generally says that screenwriting is damn hard work. Whilst this makes the book extremely interesting, very informative, and intelligently written, it also pointed out to me why I will never be as good or prolific a writer as I could be - I'm just not prepared to put the effort in. Generally speaking, I find research very tedious and I prefer the writing I do to be fun, so I'm happy keeping it as a hobby I dabble in, rather than attempting to hone my craft.
The other consequences of reading Story are that I have a lot more films on my DVD rental list now, and I briefly started viewing films in a different way.
As I was coming towards the end of the book, I watched Music and Lyrics, and my immediate thoughts were these:
The exposition at the start was very stilted, there weren't enough turning points in the plot, the forces of antagonism weren't strong enough to engage interest in the characters, and there was very little exploration of the negation of the negation. However, once I'd slapped myself upside the head and stopped being pretentious, I decided that it was actually quite fun, and certainly an inoffensive way to spend a couple of hours. The biggest drawback was the fact that by far the best bit was the spoof 80s pop video that ran over the credits, so everything after that was downhill. Still, enjoyable enough.
The other consequences of reading Story are that I have a lot more films on my DVD rental list now, and I briefly started viewing films in a different way.
As I was coming towards the end of the book, I watched Music and Lyrics, and my immediate thoughts were these:
The exposition at the start was very stilted, there weren't enough turning points in the plot, the forces of antagonism weren't strong enough to engage interest in the characters, and there was very little exploration of the negation of the negation. However, once I'd slapped myself upside the head and stopped being pretentious, I decided that it was actually quite fun, and certainly an inoffensive way to spend a couple of hours. The biggest drawback was the fact that by far the best bit was the spoof 80s pop video that ran over the credits, so everything after that was downhill. Still, enjoyable enough.
