Today's guest blog is by author (VM) Valentina Giambanco. She has worked on a number of well known and award-winning films such as Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Secrets and Lies as a film editor. She is the author of the Detective Alice Madison series set in Seattle.
I
have always been writing, one way or the other, but when I started writing my
first novel the time spent working and watching stories actually being built in
cutting rooms really came together: from the first word on the page film
editing has informed and shaped the way I write.
Just to give a little context: my first novel,
‘The Gift Of Darkness’, was published
last year and the second, ‘The Dark’,
is coming out this September but before that I worked in film editing for
almost 20 years. As an assistant editor I was involved in tiny no budget
British films, in American studio pictures and anything in between from
romantic comedies to Bollywood romances, from thrillers to dramas.
By
the way, I say I worked in cutting rooms because that’s what they were. I
worked on 35mm and we would cut film with extremely sharp and dangerous blades,
and we’d join the ends with sellotape. Surprisingly,
this was not in the Middle Ages, this was 10 years ago. Now they’re called edit
suites, films are cut digitally and the difference between the two methods could
fill volumes.
As a starting point, I don’t see a novel as a
film and I don’t write as if I was writing a screenplay. However the words you
write and read are meant to create images: when Stieg Larsson described Lisbeth
Salander he did it so that we could see her, in the same way that Agatha
Christie described Poirot so that we could see him.
A novel is made of chapters, paragraphs,
descriptions, actions, dialogue, down to the
From
the practical point of view how did my editing background influence my writing?
Well, let’s look a dialogue scene. You have two characters talking to each
other, they are exchanging information, maybe they are withholding
information. Whatever they are saying to
each other they are interacting in a way that must bring the story forward. If I was looking at it from a film editing
point of view I would ask myself:
-
At which point in
the scene do I want to get in?
-
At which point do I
want to get out?
-
Do I want to start
the scene when the characters meet, before they meet, am I following one of
them to the place where they are meeting?
-
How about starting
right in the middle of the scene and getting out early? I know that they would
be saying goodbye, they would get up and leave but do I need to see that?
That’s the real question and it is just as valid on the page: as a reader what
do you need to see of that dialogue scene?
-
And where do I want
to be in the scene in terms of a character? What are my characters seeing
around them? What are they hearing? How fast are they speaking to each other?
What is the rhythm of their exchange?
These
are all necessary questions if you’re telling a story, whatever your medium.
A
good example of the difference between storytelling in film and on the page is The Shawshank Redemption. Originally it was a novella by Stephen King, ‘Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption’.
I’m going to look at the end of the book
and the end of the film because they are very different but achieve the same
goal. This is a story about the human spirit: what happens when it is crushed
by circumstance, what happens when it rises above violence and aggression. Now, the end of the film looks beautiful:
Morgan Freeman is walking along a beach that stretches into forever, Tim
Robbins is working on his boat, he looks up and he sees his friend. It’s a very
emotional reunion – after all those decades of confinement the sky is huge above
them, the ocean is endless and there is this powerful lift. That final shot – a helicopter shot – of the
two men on the beach is exactly what we need after the hell hole of corruption
and despair that was the prison. Except…that’s not how the book ends. In the
book we never see the friends meet, we don’t see Morgan Freeman on the beach,
we don’t see the sky and the ocean. What we have is an old man – Red, Morgan
Freeman’s character – jumping parole and getting on a bus. And this is what
Stephen King writes:
‘I hope Andy is down there.
I hope I can make it across the border.
I hope to see my friend and shake his
hand.
I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has
been in my dreams.
I hope.’
Two
words. ‘I hope’. In the film you need the sky, the beach, the men embracing,
the blue ocean (which, by the way, was not cheap to shoot if you consider the
crew going to the Virgin Islands doubling for Mexico, the helicopter shot and
everything else).
Stephen
King managed that huge emotional lift with two words. ‘I hope’. King is very skilled, this is about rhythm
and repetition: the first ‘I hope’ sentence is 6 words long, the second is 9,
the third 10, the fourth 14, the last – the most important – 2. As if the whole story is an inverted pyramid
resting on that one notion. ‘I hope’. So,
if we are looking to see how that ending works in film and on paper…on one side
you have this massive shot – white beach, blue skies, blue sea, men embracing.
On the other, two words. And that’s storytelling and the power of what we’re
dealing with here whether on the screen or on the page.
The Gift of Darkness is published in paperback and The Dark in hardback on 25th September.
More information about her books can be found on her website. You can also follow her on Twitter @vm_giambanco
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