Oscar mania

I mentioned before I'm a long-time Oscar fan, so my newest poll asks you to cast your favorite Best Actor/Actress nominees as vampires (and you can pick more than one). I know--it's a bit goofy, and there's no need for statistical significance, unlike last week's poll. Speaking of which, The Vampire's Wife came in with a large 37% lead. Second place went to A Vampire in Suburbia (22%) and third went to Suburbia after Dark (20%). The other three options received 5% or less of the votes. Like I said, I'll hang onto these results and let my agent know about them. We've been going back and forth between the top two titles.

Back to this week's poll--the results of which I will not be forwarding to my agent. :-) For as long as I can remember, movies have influenced my imagination just as much as books have. When I was a kid, I remember falling asleep at night by inventing movies in my head, opening and closing credits and all. Maybe I was meant to be a screenwriter or a director; I don't know. But when I became a little older, around nine or so, I started putting those "movies" down on paper in the form of novels.

Originally, I wanted to be an actress, and one of my college majors, in addition to English, was drama. While I ended up not pursuing an acting career, the lessons I learned about character development are tools I apply to my writing. The old actor's cliche, "What's my motivation?" can be used when you're trying to develop a character. What do your characters want in each scene? What do they want in the big picture? If there's nothing they desire, we can't get behind them as readers and root for them. Also, if you're watching a movie, take notice about what people are doing while they're talking. There aren't too many scenes where people stand facing each other, arms to their sides, while they're conversing. It's sometimes the little movements they're doing while they're speaking that tell us more about their emotions than their words.

Gotta run, but that's my writing advice for the week--don't necessarily discount movies for lessons about writing. You definitely need to read, read, read to learn writing techniques that work, but the cinema can be a valuable tool, as well.