How Films & TV Series Can Inspire Your Writing Craft
A few weeks ago, I found myself incredibly lost during my attempt to write a short story for a tight deadline, a story for an anthology that combined horror with the erotic, genres I wasn’t sure I’d be good at exploring. There were piles of beloved collections of short stories and novels on my desk, and I had been browsing through them for hours, agonising over a line or even a word that would help me overcome the block I was experiencing. At some point, I became nervous and the words on all those pages started to look indecipherable, so I decided it was time to take a break from my books and watch something instead, something that I appreciated and was similar in theme to what I was aiming to write.
So, I returned to a beloved show of mine, Penny Dreadful. I watched it for the first time ever last year, having held off since its launch in 2014 mostly due to a fear of being disappointed by a possible lack of accuracy in how certain characters, already well-known and iconic ones from classic Gothic novels, would be portrayed. For those who haven’t seen it, Penny Dreadful is a dark, macabre, and mysterious thriller revolving around names such as Dorian Gray, Dracula, Dr Frankenstein and his monster, but also around new characters, including the lovely and deeply troubled Vanessa Ives. The characters in this story are haunted and followed not just by evil forces lurking in the most frightening parts of Victorian London, but also by past mistakes and terrible memories.
Rewatching a few scenes from certain episodes of Penny Dreadful I considered most impactful, not only helped me balance my racing thoughts about my story but also assisted me in writing it. The setting, the dialogues, the way the storyline was imbued with grotesque, dark, and erotic elements, the way the characters were shaped, all opened my eyes to the possibilities for my own tale. The sophistication and rawness of a story like that was the sign I needed to tackle my inhibitions as a writer.
This wasn’t the first time I’ve found space to gather my thoughts in visual storytelling, though that’s not the reason I chose to watch a beloved show; in fact, my main reason was the wish to find inspiration in movement, in sound, in visuals. I believe certain films and series can be incredibly powerful forms of art, and, since there is so much writing below their visual surface, I think they can carry extraordinary lessons on how to create captivating storytelling. As a writer, what I find the most compelling in watching a story unfolding before my eyes is the way it feels almost tangible. Most of the things I tend to watch revolve around the same themes and moods I’ve always been drawn to—surrealism, folklore, paganism, the weird, and the otherworld that manifests in ‘real’ spaces with the purpose of changing, of dominating—so experiencing these from the safety of my own home is wonderful, and always fills me with the potential to express myself in new ways.
What can writers utilise in their craft from films and TV shows? Perhaps the answer isn’t as simple as I thought when I started writing this article, but as writers, we are, even when not aware, highly observant, and whatever we surround ourselves with will eventually find its way into our unconscious and later onto the blank pages we so much dread yet wish to fill up with words. For that to happen though, we must nurture our creative side and learn how to access it rather than waiting for it to express itself in the form of sudden moments of literary epiphany. To return to the question at the beginning of this paragraph, when visuals give us the opportunity to experience stories, conversations, reactions, sounds, colours, architecture, music, art, and a wide range of emotions on screen, we store a great deal of beautifully detailed information in our imagination whose effect on us could be invaluable.
In an interview for bloodmilk, the sculptor Christina Bothwell says, when asked how she overcomes the artists’ block, ‘Every time I find myself unable to work (because the act of making art has lost its magnetics), I remind myself that during that time of inactivity my work is still growing... like, what happens when an egg incubates. The egg sits there and it looks as if nothing is happening for weeks and weeks, but then the egg hatches and there is a brand new chick! In other words, a lot is still happening beneath the surface!’
If you too find yourself lost and struggling with a new story (or with the process of rewriting an old one), I hope Bothwell’s advice will inspire you. ‘What usually works for me in terms of overcoming blocks, is to do something different to stimulate my creativity.’ It certainly worked for me last time and has many times before.
