Rules and Promises You Make To The Reader/Audience: Example Suspiria
My brother (who's in the movie business, lives in L.A., and is an aspiring screenwriter/aspiring director) sends me fun screenwriting and story videos, which are always related movies. Story is story, plot is plot, themes are themes no matter if you are writing a screenplay or a novel. We usually have long conversations about literary devices and how we can improve our writing. I love talking about writing, it's something I truly miss about being a teacher, so I always look forward to discussions with my brother. It's quite hard with the time difference. I'm ten hours in the future here in Helsinki, so when my brother is just waking up my husband is starting his nighttime rituals before bed, and it's usually too cold for me to take the call outside, but we manage. Yay, Whatsapp.
The reason for this post, however, is not to talk about my brother, but to talk about a video he just sent me about what makes or breaks a movie. The video talks about rules and promises that you make to the audience. It highlights movies that keep their promises to the movies that don't and end up just being bad movies. I've known about this writing rule for along time. The podcast, Writing Excuses, has talked about this a lot; and Brandon Sanderson has lectures online that you can watch, which highlights the promises to the reader several times. The same methods are also applies to movies, and screenwriting. This is also probably why the novel 'The Outcast Dead' left me so unsatisfied.
Spoilers ahead!
My brother sending me this video was coincidentally time, because I'd just watched the new remake of Suspiria (2018) the night before and was ranting about the ending to my husband. Trying to figure out what lost me at the end, what about the story made me come back to my reality, I'd lost my suspension of disbelief. The climax of Suspiria broke me from the reality of the movie.
I loved, was invested, and entertained by the film up until the climax. The build, the rising action to the climax, was amazingly interesting. The witches were more flushed out in this movie, than in the original, the world building was phenomenal, the dancing was incredible! Primal, orgasmic, sensual (and how the witches cast their spells). The actresses are also delivered exceptional performances: Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson. I mean they're amazing to watch!
But that isn't the point of this post. The writers of the film broke their promise to the audience. There was maybe one flashback in the film that could have been foreshadowing to the climax of the film, but that was it. The ending wasn't rewarding. And the movie just leaves you unsatisfied. At least that's how I felt. It has the same beats of the original movie, but they're done completely differently, creating a contrasting and divergent film.Though the remake is just as eerie and in some scenes unnerving and hard to watch, the tone of the film is more serious than the original.
The 1977 film Suspiria keeps its promises; its strange, eerie, and unnerving. The bright bold colors, strange architecture, and the music score are super creepy! The score's theme just gets stuck in your mind, and sends shivers down your spine, and is repeated over and over and over again. Such a fun horror movie. The movie gives you the feeling of a nightmare, very fairytale-esque. The entire movie is incredibly over the top. But those are the rules that are established and they don't deviate at all from the story. What are the rules? First: the director, Dario Argento. He already had a reputation for surreal horror, so you know what you where going to get from the get-go. Two: you have the mystery and the investigation. You get an exposition dump, which here is a lot of fun and helps ramp up the climax. Three: Susie, the main character, kills the evil witch! Which is satisfying. Everything blows up, and the dance academy and the witches are destroyed. Hooray! Sorry, I'm bad at spoilers, my friends complain all the time. However, that's not the reason to watch the 1977 movie, you watch it for the visual experience. The narrative kept its promise and the ending is rewarding.
The 2018 film sets up the witches from the beginning, so you already know that they are witches when our main character (Susie) arrives. Instead of the dancers investigating the mysterious things happening at the academy you have an old man. And instead of Susie killing the 'evil' witch, she herself is revealed to be Mother Suspiriorum, which I believes breaks her initial promise. And the remaining witches live happily ever after during the cold war...
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that some of the witches survive and can continue dancing, I guess? But I just wanted more foreshadowing to the rules and promises that were given about Susie's character at the beginning of the movie. More hints that she was in fact this Mother Suspiriorum, and not a runaway Amish girl that really wants to dance.
You need to think about the rules and your promises that you are giving to your readers/audience if want to be a good writer. Trust that this is what makes a bad/or unsatisfying story... When you don't deliver these through your writing.
Cough cough "The last Jedi"...I mean, honestly, all of the established rules from the previous movies were just thrown out the widow by Rian Johnson and that's why fans went crazy.
The reason for this post, however, is not to talk about my brother, but to talk about a video he just sent me about what makes or breaks a movie. The video talks about rules and promises that you make to the audience. It highlights movies that keep their promises to the movies that don't and end up just being bad movies. I've known about this writing rule for along time. The podcast, Writing Excuses, has talked about this a lot; and Brandon Sanderson has lectures online that you can watch, which highlights the promises to the reader several times. The same methods are also applies to movies, and screenwriting. This is also probably why the novel 'The Outcast Dead' left me so unsatisfied.
Spoilers ahead!
My brother sending me this video was coincidentally time, because I'd just watched the new remake of Suspiria (2018) the night before and was ranting about the ending to my husband. Trying to figure out what lost me at the end, what about the story made me come back to my reality, I'd lost my suspension of disbelief. The climax of Suspiria broke me from the reality of the movie.
I loved, was invested, and entertained by the film up until the climax. The build, the rising action to the climax, was amazingly interesting. The witches were more flushed out in this movie, than in the original, the world building was phenomenal, the dancing was incredible! Primal, orgasmic, sensual (and how the witches cast their spells). The actresses are also delivered exceptional performances: Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson. I mean they're amazing to watch!
But that isn't the point of this post. The writers of the film broke their promise to the audience. There was maybe one flashback in the film that could have been foreshadowing to the climax of the film, but that was it. The ending wasn't rewarding. And the movie just leaves you unsatisfied. At least that's how I felt. It has the same beats of the original movie, but they're done completely differently, creating a contrasting and divergent film.Though the remake is just as eerie and in some scenes unnerving and hard to watch, the tone of the film is more serious than the original.
The 1977 film Suspiria keeps its promises; its strange, eerie, and unnerving. The bright bold colors, strange architecture, and the music score are super creepy! The score's theme just gets stuck in your mind, and sends shivers down your spine, and is repeated over and over and over again. Such a fun horror movie. The movie gives you the feeling of a nightmare, very fairytale-esque. The entire movie is incredibly over the top. But those are the rules that are established and they don't deviate at all from the story. What are the rules? First: the director, Dario Argento. He already had a reputation for surreal horror, so you know what you where going to get from the get-go. Two: you have the mystery and the investigation. You get an exposition dump, which here is a lot of fun and helps ramp up the climax. Three: Susie, the main character, kills the evil witch! Which is satisfying. Everything blows up, and the dance academy and the witches are destroyed. Hooray! Sorry, I'm bad at spoilers, my friends complain all the time. However, that's not the reason to watch the 1977 movie, you watch it for the visual experience. The narrative kept its promise and the ending is rewarding.
The 2018 film sets up the witches from the beginning, so you already know that they are witches when our main character (Susie) arrives. Instead of the dancers investigating the mysterious things happening at the academy you have an old man. And instead of Susie killing the 'evil' witch, she herself is revealed to be Mother Suspiriorum, which I believes breaks her initial promise. And the remaining witches live happily ever after during the cold war...
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that some of the witches survive and can continue dancing, I guess? But I just wanted more foreshadowing to the rules and promises that were given about Susie's character at the beginning of the movie. More hints that she was in fact this Mother Suspiriorum, and not a runaway Amish girl that really wants to dance.
You need to think about the rules and your promises that you are giving to your readers/audience if want to be a good writer. Trust that this is what makes a bad/or unsatisfying story... When you don't deliver these through your writing.
Cough cough "The last Jedi"...I mean, honestly, all of the established rules from the previous movies were just thrown out the widow by Rian Johnson and that's why fans went crazy.
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