Monday, January 10, 2011

Writing From The Headlines

As most of you know, I am currently working on a screenplay. However, what you may not have realized is that I thought I had a fairly original idea, a clearly fictional commentary on the racial conflict currently underway in this country. Then Sunday happened.

Writing from the headlines is something I have always tried to avoid. Shows like Law and Order and CSI have been very successful from the strategy. Yet, I believe that the technique ultimately limits the breath of a work, and restricts it's ability gracefully age as a peace of art. Yet, real life happens, and then less than 12 hours after I finished a very terrible first draft, I found myself not having written the future, but instead, a very odd variation of it.

Will I alter my plot and rewrite the certain scenes due to recent events? Of course not. Will I be more aware about how my themes and motifs relate to greater world events? Of course.

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