Becoming a better storyteller by studying 100 movies, 50 screenplays, and 25 books in 2020.

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A high schooler I know decided last year to watch 100 movies in one year, and that sounded like a fun project. But me being me, I decided to get a bit extra with it. My project in 2020 is to become a better storyteller by watching 100 movies, analyzing 50 screenplays, and reading 25 books in 365 days. You can place your bets amongst yourselves as to whether I make it or not. For the record, this site neither supports nor condones games of chance.

Why bother?

I’m a novelist, so why spend so much time watching movies? Setting aside the obvious point that they’re fun, studying storytelling in other mediums (media, if you want to be that way) can teach me how to tell better stories in my own form.

Why read screenplays? In a word, dialogue. Screenplays can teach me about how to write more effective and nuanced dialogue, or that’s the theory.

And finally, books. Any writer who wants to get better at writing needs to read books.

How’s it going down?

Photos by (from left) Jason Dent on Unsplash,  Brooks Leibee on Unsplash, and Ed Robertson on Unsplash

The folks at Vanity Fair and other cinema bigshots implore us to go see films on the big screen, but let’s be honest: if you’re not actually IN those movies and pulling down those salaries, that habit gets unaffordable in a white-hot hurry. I’ve got college tuition to pay for the kid who’s shipping off this year, not to mention the mundane expenses of living. Instead, I’m going to enjoy the fruits of my taxpaying: My local public library has an amazing DVD collection. Between that and the household subscriptions to Netflix and Amazon Prime, I feel confident I can find 100 movies worth watching. Sorry, Scorsese, but for the price of a premium Netflix monthly subscription (cheaper than a single adult ticket to the local multiplex), I can watch as many movies as I can pack into a 720-hour month. I don’t mind popping my own popcorn.

Photo by Charles on Unsplash

Where does one get screenplays? The interwebs of course, and specifically, ScriptSlug. The folks at ScriptSlug are very receptive to follower requests. If they don’t have what I’m looking for, I just ask. They can usually get whatever I’m looking for.

My ratio of books-bought to books-actually-read needs to get flipped. The books for this project are coming from my to-read stack, unless it’s a new release in my genre and I can’t get an ARC (advanced reader copy).

Methodology

Movies

How am I going to pick the 100 movies, 50 screenplays, and 25 books? It’s not hard to find lists of “100 movies you should see before you die” (let’s hope it doesn’t come to that)—IMDB has one, Empire Online has one, TimeOut‘s got a list, etc. Those offer a starting place. I’m also keenly interested in Indiewire’s list of 100 all-time greatest films directed by women. There aren’t enough films directed by women, but that’s a blog post for another day. Suffice it to say that I’m going to lend the women-directed films that are out there my full attention. Starting with these sources plus Vanity Fair, I’m going to follow my fancy. I am open to suggestions, so feel free to comment and I’ll put your recommendation in the hopper.

Screenplays

I expect to pick the screenplays from the movies I watch, because I want to learn how the storytelling on the page varies from the storytelling in the final production (there are always differences). However, I’ll attach a big, fat caveat there and say that if I don’t like a film, I’m not going to read the screenplay, so I may end up reading something not on the watch list. If I stray from the plan, I’ll explain myself.

Books

As a devotee of DIYMFA.com, I believe in reading with purpose. Specifically, I like the idea of reading your four C’s: Competitive titles, Contextual titles, Contemporary books, and Classics. The problem is that new books come out all the time, I have a wide range of reading interests, and I have a crushing backlist of books I’ve bought but haven’t read yet. So my goal is to mix it up this year, reading with intention when I can. I want to read more in my genre, so I’m going to devote half of the 25 to women’s fiction writers (comps and contemporary books, for those keeping score). The other half will be research (contextual) for whatever I’m writing, and whatever is on my shelves or floor stacks that I haven’t cracked open yet.

As I start to do the math, I realize this is going to be a big challenge, probably more so than I appreciate. It’s go big or go home. Or maybe it’s go big but stay home. Whatever. Come along with me and see what I learn.