Running

I have already mentioned jealousy among writers and said there is room for all. I believe in writers helping writers, though individual aims may be quite different. But I believe in offering facts I have learned through living a longer time than young writers. Someone out there may dream of his novel’s becoming a hit movie. Nothing wrong with that, if you don’t keep it in mind all the time you are writing. But I do want to suggest a specific action that Hollywood must like, for it certainly rivets the viewers’ eyes to the screen. That is, have your main character run and run fast—not jog and not run in a ball game—but run for his life, or as if he were doing so. Home viewers don’t go to the kitchen for popcorn when the protagonist is running for his life. So what movies can I name with the main characters running for their lives, for the truth, for the sake of their jobs, or whatever? Or even minor characters?

Three Days of the Condor
Pelican Brief
The Firm
The Murder Room (minor character)
North by Northwest
The Man Who Knew Too Much (minor character)
Perhaps every James Bond film
Even a bit at the beginning of The Sound of Music


If you can add to this list, with titles of really big movies with serious running in them, let me know and I’ll be happy to give you credit on this page.

The idea is not to plan the running in your writing. Let your characters do their own thing. You set up the location where events may happen, and just let your characters show up when they are good and ready. They will likely get into some trouble, if you let them, and someone may then need to run. It wouldn’t hurt if that runner worked out in a gym every day before he ran, but you just discover that after he runs, and so you go back to an early part of your story and add that working-out in the gym. You just didn’t know about it before. The characters are still directing their own story; they just didn’t tell you everything when you first met them.

If the characters do not surprise the author, they will likewise not surprise the reader, and readers like surprises.

♥