So, if you saw my Facebook status, you know that I watched a movie last night. On a weeknight. Decadence!
It's true that I watched the movie in part as a reward to myself for doing so much writing this week. I also watched it because my husband wasn't home, and I wanted diversion.
I watch movies for another purpose, though. They trigger my sensory imagination for my writing.
Contemporary movies are no good to me for this purpose. It has to be a period piece set between 1820 and 1900. I take that back. I can probably allow some eighteenth-century movies as well, if they take place after 1780 or so.
Contemporary writers are able to constantly gather ideas and materials as they move through everyday life. It's not the same for historical writers--at least not for this one. Only very rarely does our culture provide us with anyone who even remotely resembles the characters who populate historical fiction. Most people don't live their lives based on firm abstract principles anymore--or, if they do, it's not cool to be obvious about it. Virtues skulk around the edges of our society, peeping surreptitiously through the curtains of postmodern ordinariness.
Social custom has changed so drastically that there are few twenty-first century situations that can be transplanted back into the nineteenth century. (Now that I've said that, I challenge myself and you to think of a very contemporary situation and how it could be rewritten in the Victorian period. No fair going medieval. It has to be nineteenth-century to count. If I think of one, I'll post it in the comments section. It would be ideal if I could include text messaging, individualism gone mad, and consumerism.)
Back to the point of this post. If you're writing a period piece, don't hesitate to watch movie after movie set in the time period in question. It will help you when you need to visualize your own settings and the way your characters behave. When your imagined scene becomes almost as vivid to you as a hallucination, it's a LOT easier to write well.
Just be prepared for a spousal backlash at some point. Eventually, they will jump up and down on your latest historical DVD and demand to watch Death Spree III.
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8 comments:
I love this sentence: "Virtues skulk around the edges of our society, peeping surreptitiously through the curtains of postmodern ordinariness." True AND lovely to read!
Rosslyn, I cannot TELL you had badly I needed the smile I got from "Death Spree III". When I watch my Pride and Prejudice three part DVDs, my husband starts calling me "Lady Gwen" and announcing things with a really, really bad English accent. LOL
His outlet tends to be a funny movie though, but he'd still take Death Spree III over some of my movies any day. :)
Rosslyn -- haven't been here for awhile -- you've got some great recent posts! Hope you're well. I love your idea of movies of 19th century stories. Two of my favorites (a little different from yours, maybe?) are Gods and Generals, and Gettysburg. I've heard they were made with intense attention to detail, and the courtesy and unabashed talk of God and family are beautiful.
It's much easier to transpose a nineteenth-century situation into the twenty-first century. Take the friendship of Catherine Morland and superficial, wealth-seeking Isabella in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. Letters exchanged between the two bear all the hallmarks of text messages: high melodrama lurking between the lines, a sentimental ethos, etc. Also, as in postmodern written communication, in the letters, the more lasting medium of the conversation serves, finally, as evidence of Isabella's inconsistency of character. What works about mapping nineteenth-century literature onto the present day is that the morally charged view of the author helps to give present-day behavior a traditional moral framework, whereas our social programming tends us to view behavior merely in terms of acceptable contemporary etiquette and conventions. I believe that nineteenth-century authors like Austen were uniquely gifted in holding nineteenth century characters and their behavior up to the light of their supposed principles. Isabella would have been a perfectly nice young lady in the eyes of most of her social equals.
I totally watch movies for inspiration. I love to analyze their fight scenes (I have plenty of those in my WIPs) and look at all the details of it.
:-)
Ooo - that's a great idea for writing good fights.
My favorite 19th century movie (or was it early 20th?I think it was 19th)...by far....."A room with a view".....seriously, sriously gorgeous....everything about it.....I may have to rent it again, I haven't seen it in years....I could possibly get some great image inspiration for photography from it....speaking of...when do we get to do YOUR historical pics with the fam?
Rosslyn, I was so inspired (and tickled) by the thought of "Death Spree III" that I included it in a poll on my blog. =)
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