Tag Archive - Filmmaking technique

How to Create a Powerful Image System for Your Novel

On Throwback Thursdays, we’re looking at excerpts from past posts on Live Write Thrive. Today’s post comes from How Novelists Can Create Image Systems for their Story. Creating an image system for your novel can enhance the reader’s experience and help to subliminally affect them emotionally.

Last week, we touched on a concept called Image Systems, which is something filmmakers consider when preparing to shoot their movie. Image systems can be made up of many different types of components, and by looking at some movies with powerful image systems, hopefully you will get some ideas of how you can do similarly with your novel. Using an assortment of these “building blocks” can give deeper meaning to your overall story.

In the movie The Sixth Sense, writer/director Shyamalan uses red to link with the supernatural. In every scene in which something “beyond the veil” is shown, you’ll find an object in red: a balloon, a sweater, a tent, and many others. Using a repeated color is probably the most common element in an image system, which makes sense with movies, since they are so visual. Continue Reading…

Turn the Core Idea of Your Novel into an Image System

On Throwback Thursdays, we’re looking at excerpts from past posts on Live Write Thrive. Today’s post comes from Getting to the Core Idea in your Novel.

As we continue on with exploring cinematic secrets that can supercharge your novel, we’re going to focus on something that is crucial to filmmakers, and that is getting a clear vision for the story.

Novelists, just like filmmakers, need to truly understand the story they are trying to tell and what impact or take-home feeling or message they want to leave with their readers. Just coming up with a neat idea for a novel is only the first step, and is no guarantee they will have a terrific book. Continue Reading…

Writing Fiction with a Filmmaker’s Eye

On Throwback Thursdays, we’re looking at excerpts from past posts on Live Write Thrive. Today’s post comes from How Novelists Can Use a Filmmaker’s Eye. Film technique is overlooked by most fiction writers. But it can be so powerful, and readers, used to cinematic storytelling, respond and resonate with such technique.

We’re now going to spend quite a few weeks looking at the purview of filmmakers. Why? Because there is so much more to “shooting” a story than the choice of camera shot.

Filmmakers are also concerned with the design of shots. They are artists with a creative sense of composition, and their aim is to arrange their compositions in ways that will evoke emotional reactions from the viewer. The movie screen is their palette with which they paint visual pictures, and the “colors” on their palette are the various camera shots they choose from to create just the effect they hope to achieve in each segment they shoot. Continue Reading…

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