Telling a story with a limited number of characters (and often a limited number of locations) presents some specific challenges for a writer: How to hold the audience’s attention. How to keep things visually interesting. How to create compelling characters that you want to spend as much time with as possible.
What does it look like when it works?
Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat features nine people in a small boat on the open ocean. Sydney from Cinema Cities pieces together highlights to show what keeps the film suspenseful, and what makes it distinct from other war films made during WWII. Sven Mikulec collects interview snippets and pre-production sketches to go deeper into the conversation about how Lifeboat works.
Harry’s Moving Media shows the flow of My Dinner With Andre’s conversation, and the ways that a film focused mainly on two characters at a restaurant table maintains its engagement with the audience.
Dean Kyte takes a deep dive into the construction of two-hander Sleuth, how it relates to Harold Pinter’s other writing, and how it crafts a series of games between the two leads that keeps the audience guessing about who’s actually winning.
Sebastian from Musings of a Middle-Aged Geek digs into the details of Gravity, and picks out several of the ways that fudging some of the science lead to a stronger narrative about isolation and recovering from trauma.
Michael at Lessons From the Screenplay looks at how information is parceled out in Ex Machina in a way that allows the audience to play along with its confidence game between the three leads.
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WGA Strike. SAG-AFTRA Strike.
There are no current strikes happening in the film and television industry.
IATSE’s contract with the AMPTP ends in July of 2024.
⏱️ Get your Write Sprint on!
Each week we post a comment thread for writers to meet up, cheer each other on, and put some words on the page with a Write Sprint.
What’s a Write Sprint?
John wrote up an explanation, but here’s the short version: Set a timer for 60 minutes, close down all distractions, and do nothing but write until that timer goes off.
Sometimes that’s all it takes to get some momentum going with your writing: You set aside this time for writing and nothing else, so you’d better use it!
Shout out to Aimee Link and Elyse Moretti Forbes for sprinting with us last week!
📖 These scripts are certified bops
This week’s Featured Friday scripts in Weekend Read have a song in their heart! It’s time for musicals! You’ll find Sing Street, Encanto, tick, tick…BOOM! and more in the Discover tab.
Still haven’t tried Weekend Read 2? Download the free trial from the App Store to check out our app for reading, listening to, and taking notes on scripts while on the go.
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Dan Stone shares a story about John Steinbeck creating a forbidden temptation around a locked bookshelf to convince his children to read the books inside.
What else is inneresting?
Susie Dumont looks at examples of co-op bookstores to consider if this employee-centered model might be a model for sustainable independent booksellers.
Sarah Zhang explains things you might not understand about nasal congestion, like the role your armpits play in regulating your nostrils.
Did you know that Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, Hiroshima Mon Amour) once planned his first English language film to be a collaboration with Stan Lee?
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art, or Bluesky @ccsont.bsky.social