NOS4A2 and How We Create Reality

Maureen Custer shared this with me:

“Do you have a magic spell to return someone to life?” she said.

“No,” the witch said. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t you tell me a story about it?”

“Will that bring them back”

“For us. For a little while. Stories are a different kind of magic.”

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T and I were watching Joe Hill’s “NOS4A2” last night, and there was a scene where one of the characters is arguing with her parents in an outdoor restaurant. Her parents are very disapproving of her life choices. Suddenly, she looks up at a fly-trap hanging from the ceiling. Caught in the glue, a fly weakly twitches a wing.

Tananarive said: “I teach my students about that.”

“About what?”

“You don’t describe every detail in a room. You describe the things that the reader or viewer needs to know, and most specifically, what the CHARACTER is noticing. When she looked at the fly trap, she was thinking ‘my life is hell.’”

I could see that, and of course she was right. Every story is made up of choices, things that we focus our attention on, focus our reader/viewer’s attention on.

These things create emotional change, which the artist choreographs to lead to a crescendo. A true artist can organize this flow of emotions, triggered by words and emotions, like Mozart drawing notes…