One Medium To Rule Them All

Images, sounds, words. These are but means to stimulate the one medium where a story actually happens: the audience's imagination.

Always an audience of one, preferably resonant with others.

When I write with the reader in mind, my writing is better. When I write to impress myself, my writing is rotten. The stuff I like to read inspires open eye daydreams. The stuff that puts me asleep doesn't even know I'm there.

Would a screenplay follow this rubric? In a strange way, yes. People who make movies desire ample allowance for their own contribution. They want to play the movie in their heads as they read the rigidly formatted page. The strict confinements of the screenplay layout make this possible by granting subliminal liberty. The words are caged so the imagination can roam.

Can a lesson be drawn from this special case, that writers of novels or short stories might apply? I hope so.

In the high drama of movie making the screenplay writer is cast as semen donor. Everybody else gets to gestate and raise the baby but the semen donor's job is finished before the first take.

The screenplay writer finally makes a sale and then everything in the screenplay gets changed by the people who can't come up with a story of their own. Their changes might make the movie better at the cost of making the story different. I'd like a more intimate relationship with the story consumer. I'd like to link up directly with readers, and let them make the movie in their imagination.

This is why I'm intrigued by what screenplays can accomplish, even as I resist their fatal attraction. There is something inherently fascist about movies, their power to evoke the masses by circumventing circumspection. The screenplay is the enabler, the Mien Kampf that leads to The Triumph of the Will. I think all movies, even the well intentioned, flirt with an evil more profound than mere morality. I think movies marshall the imaginations of movie makers in order to control the imagination of the audience.

Hyperbole, but it tattoos the point indelibly.

Let's rewind the movie making process back to the beginning, to that first kiss on the lips between the screenplay and the prospective director, leading to seduction and consummation and a lasting desire to further pursue a relationship. How can a novel or short story achieve the same effect?

Writing a novel in screenplay format would seem a gimmick, and reading the screenplay format is an acquired skill. Besides, the essence of its effectiveness is not the format itself, nor the requisite structure of stories told with screenplays. Rather, a screenplay works with its intended audience because bare bones storytelling allows the reader to supply flesh and blood.

I aspire as a fiction writer to use words evocatively. The reader's imagination is rich with references and associations, with conventions and confusions, with desires and fears. Words are but a means for calling these players to the stage. Words are fingers strumming the heart strings and mind strings in the key of each reader's idiosyncrasies. The one medium to rule them all is the reader's own imagination.

I don't want the audience to suspend disbelief as they submit to a prefabricated imagination. I want the audience to empower the grand theater of their own minds, bringing my stories to life.