Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: 'Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.'
I think of images as an immune system and a transit system.
When you learn about stories in school, you get it backward. You start to think 'Oh, the reason these things are in stories is because a book said I need to put these things in there.' You need a death, as my husband says, and you need a little sidekick with a saying like 'Skivel-dee-doo!'
For horror movies, color is reassuring because, at least in older films, it adds to the fakey-ness.
'What It Is' was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.
Part of a horror movie has to be a bit fakey for me to really enjoy it. The new ones are so realistic that they distract me from the ride through the horror.
