Thursday, January 21, 2010

It's theme, stupid


Busy day today.

I thought a lot about my screenplay today. THEME was the answer. I thought and thought and decided that I have been writing about the dichotomy between wanting to protect your culture and wanting to rebel against the status quo. So it's all about rules and a person's willingness to break them.

I needed to add a scene of two people talking for a while, kind of exposition heavy, so I needed something for them to do to serve as a metaphor to get the point across more quickly. If I'm thinking about the theme of breaking rules, it makes sense that they could play a game with a lot of complicated rules. Instant fodder for conversation that reinforces the theme. There's a lot of stuff like that I can do.

It makes complete sense. The movies I love most are the ones with a clear sense of theme, but here I was, well aware I didn't really have one but hoping it didn't matter. Silly Emily. It always matters.

4 comments:

  1. I try to not think about my writing unless I'm on the stairmaster.

    Any other time and it depresses me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe you should think about a sequel.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Theme, theme, theme. We hate that unruly bastard. But it is best to whip him into shape nice and early. Thanks for reinforcing this idea.

    Will now revisit the themes in our newest screenplay, "THE THEME IS THERE IS NO THEME: DEAD MAN'S CHEST".

    nice to meet your blog, btw.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice to meet you too.

    And yeah. Dead Man's Chest is a mess.

    ReplyDelete

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