I watched the Favourite this evening with my partner and… wow. There are few movies that can hold tension largely through conversation. This film is about Queen Anne of England and her aide, Lady Sarah. The deep friendship between the two is put at risk by the arrival of Sarah’s cousin Abagail. I refuse to give away too much except the say that the movie is carried by the conversations between these three women. It is an excellent film that goes too far at times in the heavy handedness, but does a great job first creating a delicious sort of tension and then stretching that throughout the film with highs and lows that give the characters a chance to win–if only for a moment–with deepening losses and challenges to their character.
In other words, this was by the book writing.
Tension is the key to good fiction. You have to have something at stake for the characters overall and smaller steps to that larger stakes which are won and lost throughout. We have to see progress being made towards and away from the goal at every scene and every turn. If you can do that you have a chance to be a really good writer.
Some Thoughts:
- I’m thinking about using the Write the Story book as a template for at least a weekly post that is a 10 minute story. I don’t want to get to the point where the blog is categorized by day. I want the freedom to write anything (or absolutely nothing of value) at any point in time. Except Wednesday… I kinda like the Waiver Wire structure for that day during that season…
- This is a chance to work on some of those skills I wrote about in the blog above…