Chapter 5: Style and Structure in Writing

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Okay, let's unpack this.

Picture the scene.

You're walking out of a movie theater.

Maybe it's midnight.

The lobby is empty.

The smell of popcorn is, you know, a little stale and your eyes are blinking against those harsh fluorescent lights after sitting in the dark for two and a half hours.

We've all been there.

You turn to your friend.

Your heart is racing.

Maybe you're wiping away a tear and you just blurt out, wow, that was incredible.

The way that car exploded, totally awesome.

Exactly, or maybe you say, I didn't get it.

It was weird.

Right, and that is the immediate visceral reaction.

It is the being at the movies experience.

It's the feeling.

It's raw, it's emotional, and it is completely valid.

Of course, it's why we go.

But here's where it gets really interesting and frankly where it gets really difficult for a lot of people.

I think so too.

There is a massive treacherous canyon between that moment, that wow feeling, and the act of sitting down at a computer to write a serious analytical essay about what you just saw.

It is the difference between consumption and analysis.

And that is exactly what we are diving into today.

We are looking exclusively at chapter five of Timothy Corrigan's A Short Guide to Writing About Film.

And just to be super clear here, this isn't just a grammar lesson.

We aren't here to slap your wrist for using a comma splice or something.

No, no, not at all.

This is much bigger than that.

This is about bridging that gap between the fan and the scholar.

Okay, I like that distinction.

The fan versus the scholar.

And the text itself, it calls this the lure of film's immediacy.

The lure of film's immediacy.

What does that mean exactly?

Because film feels so real, so immediate,

we are tempted to write about it casually.

Like we're just talking to our friends.

Exactly.

We treat it like a conversation we'd have at a bar.

But Corrigan argues that good writing requires a relaxed style, sure.

But it shouldn't be a relaxed mind.

To a relaxed mind.

You need distance.

You need structure.

And to explain this, the chapter opens with this absolutely fantastic metaphor.

It's great.

It involves the French new wave director, François Truffaut.

Ah, okay.

It's from his 1973 film, Day for Night, or L 'Inuit American, if you want to be precise.

Which is a movie about making a movie.

It is, very meta.

Yeah, that is meta.

And there's this specific moment Corrigan highlights,

where Truffaut, who actually plays the director in the film,

explains the reality of the creative process.

Okay.

He compares a film shoot to a stagecoach ride in the Old West.

A stagecoach ride.

I love this visual.

It feels very, I don't know, high stakes.

It is perfect.

Yeah.

He says that when you start, you have this grand conception.

The dream.

The dream.

You envision a beautiful journey across the plains.

You see the destination clearly.

You're thinking about the romance of the trip.

This is gonna be the best trip ever.

Right.

But very quickly, the reality sets in.

The terrain gets rough.

The horses get tired.

The wheels start to wobble.

And by the end, you aren't thinking about the scenery or the grand themes anymore.

You are just hoping to reach the destination without the wheels falling off.

Which is exactly how I feel when I'm writing a paper.

You start with, I am going to change the world with this essay on Citizen Kane.

And by page four, you're just like, please, let me just finish this paragraph without crying.

Precisely.

That is the analogy.

Yeah.

Corrigan applies this directly to writing.

You might have a brilliant idea, a grand conception about a movie.

Yes.

But the nuts and bolts execution,

the grammar, the sentence structure, the paragraph flow, that is the stagecoach ride.

That's the bumpy road.

That's the bumpy road.

And if you don't attend to those mechanics, the wheels fall off and your brilliant idea never arrives at the destination.

It dies in the desert.

It dies in the desert.

So our mission for this deep dive is to be the mechanics for that stagecoach.

I like that.

We are going to walk through this chapter step by step.

We're gonna look at how to prepare so you don't crash, how to choose the right words so your passengers stay interested, how to structure sentences so they aren't boring, and how to polish the final product.

Basically, how to keep the wheels on.

We are effectively transforming the listener from a movie watcher into a film writer.

And we are gonna do it by looking at the specific tools Corrigan provides.

No vague advice today.

No, this is all practical.

We are talking concrete strategies found right in the text.

So let's start at the beginning.

Phase one, preparation and scope.

So important.

The text makes a really big deal about scope.

And honestly, I think this is where most students fail before they even type the first word.

I agree completely.

This is usually where the wheels fall off first.

A student picks a topic that is just impossible.

It's too big.

Like trying to explain the history of the entire world in five pages.

Or, to use the example from the book, trying to discuss racism in D .W.

Griffith's The Birth of a Nation in a 10 -page paper.

Okay, but that sounds like a good topic.

It's important, it's meaty, it's a seminal film.

It is.

But Corrigan warns that for a short essay, it is simply too large.

Why?

Why is it too large?

Because you will end up generalizing.

You just have too much ground to cover.

So you'll just say obvious things.

You'll say things like racism is bad, or Griffith was prejudiced.

But you won't have space to actually analyze the film.

Uh -huh.

You won't be able to break down the editing techniques, or the lighting, or the narrative structure that creates that racism.

You're talking about the theme, not the filmmaking.

Right.

You'll be skimming the surface of a swimming pool instead of diving in.

Okay, so that's the too big problem.

But he also mentions the too small problem.

Right.

Conversely, you could focus on the furniture used in one specific set of that movie.

I mean, that sounds incredibly boring.

Well, unless you are writing a very specific history of set design, or you can connect that furniture to a larger thematic argument with extreme dexterity, that topic is gonna be trivial.

It gets too small?

It's too small.

It leaves the reader saying, so what?

So you need that Goldilocks zone.

Not too big, not too small.

Just right.

You do.

And finding that zone depends heavily on your audience.

This is a key insight from the chapter.

An informed audience.

I highlighted this part in Neon Yellow, because I think a mistake a lot of us make is assuming the reader knows nothing.

So we spend three pages summarizing the plot.

First he went here, then he did this, then the bad guy came out.

And that is the death of a good film essay.

Corrigan is very clear.

Assume your audience has seen the movie.

They don't need the summary.

You don't need a plot summary.

They need analysis.

As the text says, if the reader has seen the movie, tell them something they didn't see.

Ooh, I love that.

Tell them something they didn't see.

Show them a pattern they missed.

Point out a contradiction they ignored.

That is where the value lies.

I love that framing.

It takes the pressure off retelling the story and puts the focus on interpreting the story.

Exactly.

It shifts you from being a reporter to being a detective.

Right.

I'm finding clues, not just writing a book report.

You are.

Okay, so once you have your scope and you know you aren't just summarizing the plot, you have to organize your thoughts.

And this brings us to the dreaded O word.

The outline.

I can hear people groaning through their headphones right now.

I hate outlines.

They make me feel constricted.

I just want to write and see where it goes.

It's a common complaint.

But let's go back to the true thought analogy.

The stagecoach.

Right.

If you were driving that stagecoach, do you really want to just see where it goes?

You'll drive off a cliff.

You'll drive off a cliff.

Corrigan calls the outline a viewfinder.

A viewfinder, like on a camera?

Exactly.

Think about what a viewfinder does.

It frames the image.

It excludes what isn't necessary and brings the important details into focus.

Okay, I can see that.

An outline does the same thing for your logic.

It helps you spot significant details you might otherwise miss because you didn't know where they fit.

It's the blueprint.

It creates a blueprint.

The source material actually gives us a really incredible example of this.

It's a sample outline by a student named Sharon Conway.

And it's for a paper on the film I'm Not There.

The Todd Haynes film about Bob Dylan.

Right, from 2007.

Now, if you haven't seen this movie, it is wild.

It's not a straightforward film.

Not a normal biopic.

It uses six different actors to play different facets of Bob Dylan.

We've got Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere.

It's experimental.

Which makes it a very difficult film to write about.

If you just tried to free write about this movie, you would get lost in the chaos.

Oh, absolutely.

But look at how Sharon Conway structures her outline.

It's a masterclass in organization.

Let's break it down because I think seeing or hearing how she does it is really helpful.

She starts with a thesis.

A clear one.

And her thesis is specific.

She says,

Okay,

stop there for a second.

That is a heavy hitting sentence.

It's a proper argument.

She isn't just saying this is a movie about Bob Dylan.

She's saying this is a movie that uses Dylan to talk about how identity is a performance.

Exactly.

She elevates the topic.

It's not just about one guy anymore.

And then look at her section two.

She doesn't jump right into the Dylan analysis.

No, which is so smart.

She sets the context.

She talks about the biopic genre.

She lists traditional biopics rely on narrative coherency.

She gives examples.

The Glenn Miller story.

The doors.

That's smart.

She's establishing the baseline, the normal way of doing things.

So she can then show how I'm not there breaks the rules.

It makes her argument about this film so much stronger.

Precisely.

Then section three.

Dylan's life appears as a series of contradictions.

Okay.

She lists his hobo phase, his conversion to Christianity.

She establishes the problem.

Dylan is not one person.

He can't be contained in a traditional story.

And then section four, which seems to be the core of her argument, rather than disguise the contradictions, I'm not there celebrates them.

And here is where the outline gets granular.

She has a point.

How six different actors create different Dylan identities.

Then another point.

How identity is always a performance.

And finally, how the fragmentary narrative structure

reinforces that dynamic.

It flows so logically.

Context, the problem Dylan is complex, the solution, the film structure, the meaning identity is performance.

It's a perfect roadmap.

And notice she uses full sentences in the outline.

Corrigan recommends this.

Why is that so important?

If you just write Dylan's identity as a bullet point,

you might forget what you meant three days later.

I've definitely done that.

But if you write Dylan's identity is shown as a performance,

you have an argument.

You have a claim you can prove.

The text mentions that this outline creates the logic of the essay.

It proves that the argument holds water before you even write the first paragraph.

It saves you from that stage coach crashing moment.

Yeah.

You know the bridge is out ahead of time.

So you can fix the route.

It really emphasizes that writing isn't just putting words down, it's architecture.

It really is.

You have to build the frame before you put up the drywall.

That's a great way to put it.

Okay, so we have a map, we have a plan.

Now we have to actually write the sentences.

The hard part.

We have to put words on the page.

Yeah.

And this leads us to segment two, the right words.

Sound and vocabulary.

This is where I think a lot of people struggle because they try to sound smart.

Oh yeah, the thesaurus comes out.

They think academic writing means big abstract words, but Corrigan emphasizes concrete language.

Yes.

Concreteness is the antidote to vague, fluffy writing.

So what does that mean, concrete?

Film is a visual medium.

It is made of light, shadow, sound, and movement.

If your writing is abstract,

you are failing to capture the subject.

You're describing a dream instead of a reality.

There's a great example here comparing a bad description to a good description of a scene from Werner Herzog's film Fata Morgana.

This is a perfect illustration.

Let's hear the bad one first.

This is what an inexperienced writer might say.

Okay, the bad version.

There was a series of strange shots with crazy dialogue and odd characters.

Wow.

I feel like I've written that sentence a hundred times.

It was weird.

There were strange shots.

It tells you nothing.

It's empty.

Strange, crazy,

odd.

Those are subjective judgments, not descriptions.

They're feelings, not facts.

They're lazy placeholders.

Now listen to the experienced writer, which the text notes is actually the author of the passage, likely Corrigan or a quoted critic, describing the exact same scene.

Okay, the good version.

The strongest sequence may be a catastrophic metaphor of hell on earth.

A catatonic drummer and a tacky female pianist on a tiny stage in a brothel perform a piece they have played a thousand times without any emotion, endlessly off key.

Wow.

Just wow.

The difference is night and day.

Isn't it?

Catatonic drummer, tacky female pianist, tiny stage, played a thousand times without emotion.

I could see that.

I can hear the off key piano.

Exactly.

It revitalizes the image.

It doesn't just say it was strange.

It gives you the concrete details that make it strange.

But bruised it strange.

That is the power of concrete language.

It transports the reader into the film.

So the lesson is,

don't tell me how you felt it was crazy.

Tell me what you saw, a catatonic drummer.

Show, don't just tell.

It's the oldest rule in the book, but it's the most important one.

But it's not just about description.

It's about knowing the difference between similar words.

The text talks about denotation versus connotation.

This is a critical distinction for film students.

Okay, break it down for me.

What's the difference?

Denotation is the dictionary definition.

It's the literal meaning.

Connotation is the baggage a word carries, the associations, the history, the feeling.

Got it.

The classic example given is film versus movie.

Right.

In the dictionary, they denote the same thing, a motion picture, but the connotations are worlds apart.

How so?

Film implies art, intellect, the academy.

It suggests you are taking this seriously.

Movie implies entertainment, popcorn, box office economics.

So if I'm writing a serious paper about the cinematography of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, and I keep calling it a cool movie, I'm subtly undercutting my own tone.

You're sending mixed signals.

You're wearing a clown nose to a dissertation defense.

That's a great image.

Similarly, look at old versus classical.

You can say a film is old just because it came out in 1935.

Right, that's just a fact.

But if you call it classical,

you are invoking a specific style, classical Hollywood cinema, with specific rules of editing and narrative.

You have to be precise.

So your word choice signals your level of knowledge.

Completely.

There's a quote here from Max Sanit, the guy who created the Keystone Cobb.

Oh, the silent slapstick comedies where cops are falling off wagons and getting hit with pies.

That's the one.

He warns against using inappropriate critical language.

He says,

no amount of expensive grammar can explain the simple gag of a cop falling down.

Expensive grammar.

I love that.

It's such a burn.

That's a great phrase.

Don't use hundred dollar words to describe 10 cent actions.

So match your language to the subject.

If you are writing about a slapstick comedy, your language should probably be punchy and energetic.

If you're writing about a slow meditative Tarkovsky film, your language can be more contemplative.

Match the tool to the job.

Which brings us to tone.

The text warns against two extremes.

The jaunty sarcasm of the newspaper reviewer and the pretentious didacticism of the theorist.

It is a balance.

You don't want to sound like you're writing a Yelp review, this movie sucked one star.

But you also don't want to sound like a robot that swallowed a thesaurus.

So find that middle ground.

And there is a specific example regarding the bias against art films.

Yes, the text shows a biased, hostile sentence.

This so -called art film could never appeal to a normal audience.

Oof, so -called.

Normal audience, you can hear the sneer, it's so dismissive.

It's prejudiced, it shuts down discussion.

It's not an argument, it's just an opinion.

So how do you fix it?

Now compare that to a balanced critical version.

The problem with art films is that they may alienate a public used to accessible stories.

That says the same thing, that the film is difficult and people might not like it, but it treats it as an analytical point, not an insult.

Correct, it finds the compromise between a casual voice and a formal one.

It invites the reader to think rather than telling them what to feel.

It acknowledges the difficulty without mocking it.

Okay, so we've got our words, we're being concrete, we're watching our connotations.

Now we need to string them together into sentences.

Segment three, common pitfalls and sentence structure.

Here is where we get into the nitty gritty of editing.

And the first monster we have to slay is repetition.

Oh, this drives me crazy.

When I read a paper and the student uses the word director 50 times in one page, the director did this, then the director did that.

The director wants us to know.

It's hypnotic in a bad way, it's lazy repetition.

It puts you to sleep.

You can easily fix this by using pronouns he or she or using the person's name, but, and this is where it gets nuanced, there is a version of repetition that is actually good.

Wait, really?

Intentional repetition, how does that work?

Yes, the text quotes a passage by the critic Robin Wood, analyzing the director Sam Peckinpah.

Okay, Peckinpah, known for violence.

Specifically the wild bunch and straw dogs, lots of slow motion violence.

And Wood wants to emphasize the conflicting nature of that violence.

So he's trying to make a point with the repetition.

Exactly, looking at the passage, Wood repeats words like energy, ridiculous, artist, and violence over and over again.

Let's hear a bit of it.

He writes,

A great pity that Peckinpah's gentle and arguably finest films have been so overshadowed by this spectacular and explosive violence of the more notorious works.

A violence that is certainly a major component of his artistic personality.

I see, it creates a rhythm, it feels like a drum beat.

It does, it hammers home the point.

He repeats violence to force us to confront it.

He repeats energy to show the appeal.

This isn't lazy, it's rhetorical.

It's using repetition to build an argument.

So the rule is, don't repeat words because you can't think of another one.

Repeat them only if you wanna hammer a nail.

Exactly, if you're gonna do it, do it on purpose.

Now on the flip side of repetition, we have cliches.

These are the weeds of film writing.

The bane of my existence.

Blockbuster, must see, tour de force.

A roller coaster ride, action packed, edge of your seat.

These terms mean nothing.

They're marketing speed.

They belong on a movie poster.

They belong on a movie poster, not an analytical essay.

If you write, this film is a tour de force, you haven't told me anything about the film.

It's just a generic stamp of approval.

A generic stamp, avoid them, be specific.

Why is it powerful?

Don't just tell me it's gripping, tell me how the editing creates tension.

Okay, that makes sense.

Let's talk about economy.

Being concise.

Yes.

Because I think students often try to pad their essays to reach the page count.

We've all been there trying to turn a three page idea into a five page paper.

And it is painful to read.

Being economical means saying precisely what you need to say and cutting the dead wood.

The Touched gives us a before and after example here for the film Swept Away by Lena Wirtmiller.

Let's look at the wordy version.

There are many difficult and demanding scenes in this film by Lena Wirtmiller, Swept Away, which give the movie an operatic quality.

It's so clunky.

There are in this film by, which give the movie, it takes forever to get to the point.

It's passive, it wanders.

It's like a stagecoach with square wheels.

Huh, okay, so how do we fix it?

What's the economic version?

Now look at the revision.

Lena Wirtmiller's Swept Away is a demanding operatic film.

Boom, done.

It says the exact same thing, but with half the words and twice the power.

It's so much more direct.

The text also points out the passive voice trap.

Okay, what's that?

Instead of saying Scott Pilgrim vs.

The World was directed by Edgar Wright, just say Edgar Wright directed Scott Pilgrim vs.

The World.

It puts the actor first, right directed.

It's stronger, it moves.

Active voice is almost always better.

Wordiness hides meaning.

Economy reveals it.

When you strip away the fluff, the idea shines through.

Now what about sentence variety?

Because if every sentence is subject, verb, object, it sounds like a children's book.

Yeah, see spot run.

The camera moved left, the actor spoke loudly, the scene ended.

It's so boring.

That is the simple declarative rut.

It's monotonous.

To escape it, you need to master two concepts, coordination and subordination.

Okay, grammar time.

Let's make this painless.

What is the difference?

Coordination is joining two equal ideas.

Yeah.

Usually with and or but.

Okay, give me an example.

Hollywood aims to entertain and to advertise a way of life.

Two equal points side by side.

Simple enough.

So what's subordination?

Subordination is where the magic happens.

This is where you use words like while, although or because to make one idea support or contrast with another.

So you're showing a relationship between the ideas.

Yes.

This forces you to analyze the relationship between ideas.

There is a brilliant comparison here using Ingmar Bergman's films, The Seventh Seal and Persona.

Right.

Let's look at the subordinated sentence.

While The Seventh Seal dramatizes typical Bergman concerns with theology and social angst, Persona exams of that angst as it relates to images, personalities and the cinema.

That word while does a lot of heavy lifting there.

It does.

It sets up a contrast.

It tells the reader, we are comparing these two things.

As opposed to just listing them?

If you just wrote two separate sentences, The Seventh Seal is about theology, Persona is about images,

you missed the connection.

You missed the new ones.

You're just making a list.

Subordination forces you to connect the dots.

So using better sentence structures actually makes you a better thinker.

That is the core message of this entire chapter.

Writing structure is thinking structure.

If your sentences are simplistic, your thoughts will likely be simplistic.

If your sentences are complex and relational, your thoughts will be too.

Speaking of structure, let's move up a level.

Segment four, paragraphs and structure.

We've done words, we've done sentences, now we need to build the walls of the house.

The paragraph.

It's a unit of thought, usually four or five sentences, and it must be anchored by a topic sentence.

I feel like topic sentence is something we learn in fourth grade and then forget.

We just start writing descriptions instead.

We do.

And we replace the topic sentence with plot summary.

A bad topic sentence is, the movie starts in 1940.

That's just a fact.

It's just a fact.

It's not an argument.

A good topic sentence is an idea.

The opening scene establishes a mood of despair that permeates the rest of the film.

See the difference.

One tells me when, the other tells me what it means.

It makes a claim.

Exactly.

It gives the paragraph a purpose.

The text analyzes a paragraph by Robert Warshow about the Western hero.

It's a classic piece of film criticism.

Let's look at how Warshow builds this paragraph.

He starts with the idea of the hero's repose.

Yes.

The topic sentence sets up the Westerner as a figure of repose and loneliness.

Okay, so that's the claim.

Then, the sentences that follow don't just list facts.

They develop that idea.

He says the loneliness is organic.

It's not just about the landscape.

It's about his incompleteness.

And then he connects it to love.

He is prepared to accept it, but he never asks of it more than it can give.

It's getting deeper.

It is.

And finally, the concluding sense of the paragraph wraps it all up.

He defends his honor not for profit, but because he finds it impossible to explain.

There's no point in being against these things.

Wow.

The paragraph moves from the visual repose to the emotional loneliness, to the philosophical honor.

It is a complete thought.

It's like a mini -essay all on its own.

Exactly.

And to get from one of these mini -essays to the next, you need transitions.

The glue between paragraphs.

Yes.

Words like, however,

by contrast, in terms of furthermore.

They seem like small words, but they're doing a lot of work.

They are guideposts for the reader.

The text gives an example of a transition between a paragraph about Hollywood and a paragraph about technology.

How does it connect them?

It uses the phrase, nevertheless, Hollywood was able to capitalize on the new technology.

That word, nevertheless, signals a shift.

It says, despite what I just said, here is the counterpoint.

Right.

Without it, the jump would feel random.

Without that word, the reader hits a speed bump.

They don't know how the two ideas connect.

Let's talk about the two most important paragraphs in the essay.

The intro and the conclusion.

The lead and the exit.

The first impression and the final word.

The text references Annie Hall.

Alvi Singer refuses to go into a movie two minutes late because he's missed the setup.

I've got to see the picture from the opening credits, he says.

He knows first impressions matter.

Your introductory paragraph is your opening credits.

And if it's boring?

The reader checks out.

So a weak intro is.

This essay will discuss Disney and Capra.

Boring.

It sounds like a legal contract.

It puts the reader to sleep.

So what's a strong intro?

The text gives an example about the making of cultural myths.

Right.

This is so much better.

It frames the discussion around a debate in the 1930s.

So it sets a scene.

It sets the stage.

In the late 1930s, public discussion about Hollywood changed.

It talks about judges and reformers worrying about movies.

Then it positions Walt Disney and Frank Capra, not just as directors, but as people who possessed the power to create the nation's myths and dreams.

That is epic.

It makes me want to read.

It tells me this isn't just about two guys.

It's about the soul of America in the 30s.

Exactly.

It moves from the general, the historical context to the specific Disney and Capra.

That is the funnel shape of a good intro.

Start broad, then narrow down to your thesis.

I love that.

The funnel.

Okay, now the conclusion, the landing, the text warns against the thus I have shown summary.

Please never write in conclusion, I have proven my points.

We know, we just read it.

It's redundant.

A good conclusion restates the thesis, but then pushes it further.

It opens a door.

It gives the reader something to think about on their way out.

There are two great examples here.

One is by Tom Gunning on the silent film, A Trip to the Moon.

Gunning doesn't just say the movie was about a trip to the moon.

Which would be a terrible conclusion.

Awful.

He connects the acrobatic stunts of the moon people to the human desire to conquer the unknown.

He talks about the high spirits that marked early cinema.

He connects the film to the feeling of the era.

He contextualizes it.

He gives it a bigger meaning.

And then there's the analysis of Leni Riefenstahl.

Ah, yes.

This is the one I wanted to get to.

Riefenstahl obviously is a controversial figure, the filmmaker for the Nazis.

It's a remarkably difficult subject to handle.

And the student writer here handles the conclusion brilliantly.

How so?

They acknowledge the beauty of her work, a world of crystal grottos, but they don't stop there.

They don't just say she was a talented filmmaker.

Right.

They pivot.

They say that while the images are beautiful, we cannot forget the myths that infused Triumph of the Will with its terrifying power.

It balances aesthetics with moral critique.

The conclusion isn't just she was a Nazi or she was a great artist.

It's both.

It is.

She was a great artist whose art created the terrifying legend that enclosed her.

It leaves the reader with a complex thought to mull over.

It doesn't just close the book.

It opens a philosophical door.

That's what a successful conclusion does.

Yes.

It's confident.

It trusts the reader to handle nuance.

Okay, we have written the paper.

We have a great intro, solid body paragraphs with concrete language and a killer conclusion.

Are we done?

Not even close.

Segment five, the final polish.

The first draft is the final draft.

Is the biggest lie students tell themselves.

Oh, absolutely.

It's the lie that leads to B's instead of As.

I'm guilty of this.

You finished typing at 2 a .m., hit print and go to bed.

You're just done with it.

And the next morning you realize you spelled the director's name wrong or you left a sentence half finished.

The text emphasizes the cooling off period.

You need distance.

You do.

You need to step away so you can read it like a stranger.

Why is that so important?

When you read it immediately after writing,

your brain fills in the gaps.

You don't see what's on the page.

You see what you intended to write.

That's so true.

Your brain auto -corrects your own mistakes.

It does.

You need to distinguish between revising and proofreading.

They are not the same thing.

Okay, what's the difference?

Revising is the big stuff.

Revising is structural.

It's checking your thesis.

It's moving paragraphs around.

It's asking, does this argument make sense?

It's the architecture.

It's using a sledgehammer.

Proofreading is the small stuff.

Spelling, commas, italics.

It's using tweezers.

And you can't use the tweezers until the sledgehammer work is done.

You can't.

There's no point fixing commas in a paragraph you're gonna delete.

The chapter ends with a checklist for writing an effective essay.

It's 11 points.

I wanna do rapid fire run through of these.

I'll read the step.

You give me the why.

Let's do it.

Step one,

prepared for a movie.

Ask questions before you watch.

Know what you're looking for.

Don't go in blind.

If you're studying lighting, watch the lights.

Step two, learn to look carefully.

Note taking.

Annotate unusual details during the film.

Memory is unreliable.

If something catches your eye, write it down immediately.

You will forget it later.

Step three, let your questions lead you to a manageable topic.

Scope.

Don't do the meaning of Citizen Kane's childhood.

Be specific.

Find your Goldilocks zone.

Step four, viewfinder.

Watch the movie again after you have your topic.

You will see things you missed the first time because now you are focused.

You're looking through the viewfinder.

Step five, keep clarifying your argument.

Use concrete evidence.

Don't just assert.

Prove.

Use specific scenes to back up your points.

Step six, sketch out the organization.

Outline.

The blueprint.

Use full sentences for headers to test your logic.

If the headers flow, the essay will flow.

Step seven, begin to write writer's block.

The hardest part.

If you're stuck, just write something.

Imagine you are explaining the topic to a friend.

That's great advice.

Hey, did you notice how the lighting changed in that scene?

Write that down.

Lower the stakes.

Step eight, writing is a discovery process.

Be willing to change your thesis.

If the evidence leads you somewhere else, follow it.

Don't force the movie to fit your preconceived notion.

The essay can teach you something.

Step nine,

regularly save and back up all your writing.

Self -explanatory.

There's no pain like losing a 10 -page paper because your laptop crashed.

Save it in the cloud.

Save it on a USB.

Just save it.

Please, everyone, listen to this one.

Step 10, revise.

Always revise.

Print it out.

Hard copies reveal errors that screens hide.

Your eyes skim over pixels.

They catch mistakes on paper.

Step 11, final polish.

Margins, footnotes, plagiarism rules.

The boring stuff that, if you get it wrong, can tank your grade.

Don't trip at the finish line.

And there we have it.

The full roadmap from start to finish.

It's a journey.

It's a process.

It really brings us back to that true -for -odd -day -for -night analogy.

You're the stagecoach.

When you start, it's just a movie.

It's a dream.

But by the time you've gone through this checklist, the outlining, the word choice, the sentence structure, the revision,

you have built something real.

You have.

And, more importantly,

you have learned to see.

That's the key, isn't it?

That's the whole point.

It is.

Writing isn't just about communicating what you know.

It's about finding out what you know.

It clarifies your own thoughts.

Exactly.

As Corrigan suggests, regarding that I'm not saying it,

their outline, the act of structuring your thoughts,

reveals the logic of the film itself.

You understand the movie better because you wrestled with the sentences.

You aren't just a passenger on the stagecoach anymore.

You're driving it.

Exactly.

You are in control of the journey.

Well, this has been a massive deep dive into the art of film writing.

I know I'm gonna watch my next movie with a slightly more critical eye and maybe a notepad.

As you should.

It makes it more fun, I think.

It does.

A huge thank you from the Last Minute Lecture team for tuning in.

Now, here's a final thought for you to chew on.

If writing structures are thinking, how does the structure of a tweet or a text message change the way we think about movies compared to an essay?

Are we losing the ability to see coordination and subordination in film because we don't use it in our daily writing?

That's a good question.

Something to think about.

See you next time.