From the course: Creating a Short Film: 02 Writing

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Writing the truth

Writing the truth

From the course: Creating a Short Film: 02 Writing

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Writing the truth

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- One of the most common adages in writing circles is to tell the truth, which might seem a little odd in the world of fiction. I mean, by definition, you're writing an original story, you're inventing it, and therefore it's not true. But that's not what this saying is referring to. Telling the truth speaks to the motivations behind character behavior. Basically, main characters do and say the things that they would actually do and say. The obvious and most common bad example of this that I have seen is a lot of movies and TV shows start with this conversation with two characters in a room, and one of them will say stuff, something with all this information loaded in it, like "Oh, so tell me, sister, how is life now "that you've been divorced for three years "and have recently moved out here from the country "to the big city looking for love?" So, that would be an example of a dishonest character behavior, because that's not how people really talk. They don't load their words with all…

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