Letters from the Editor: On what writers can learn from '1917,' the morality of ripping books in half, and more

Why Writers Should Watch the Film 1917 Right Now 
A Lesson in Building Scenes That Grip Your Readers

Courtesy of Universal Pictures

*If you have this on your watchlist, don't worry! We're talking purely craft today.*
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If you've been struggling with bringing a sense of immediacy to your writing, I've got just the movie for you. 
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I'll keep it really bare bones here: 1917 is a movie about two young soldiers in World War I tasked with delivering a message that could save a lot of lives. Director Sam Mendes made a decision to make the film appear like one continuous take so that it felt like more of a real-time thriller. (It isn't actually a single take, but the illusion is pretty spot on.) The camera follows just one or two characters at a time and in every moment you're either seeing what the character is seeing; you're seeing the character close-up; or you're seeing the character as an element in the larger landscape. Every moment, you feel like you're alongside them on their journey through the trenches.

What Mendes does expertly in 1917 is choreograph "a dance between the camera and the characters and the landscapes, all three of which are moving all the time." He layers shifts in perspectives in a way that gives you a sense of constant momentum and of both the objective and subjective scope of the story. You see how big the situation feels to the character; how small they are in comparison to the landscape; how the characters' actions make an impact on the greater narrative. And it's all just subtle shifts in perspective! You'll notice Mendes never lingers too long on one point of view before moving on to the next, and that every shift maintains a connection between the perspectives it serves as a transition for so it has a naturally fluid progression.

When you're writing a novel, you get to play director, cinematographer, and camera. You have complete control over what your readers see, and every piece of information you include or leave out will change how they experience the story you're telling. You are the narrative lens, and for your story to be as effective as possible, your reader needs to live through it with your character more often than they're a removed observer. I highly recommend watching 1917 for some notes on how to bring exactly this kind of immediacy and intimacy into the scenes you're writing.

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