In short order: saw Inception (heist movie), then Ant-Man (heist movie as superhero film).
Then ‘Nerdwriter’ on ‘action set pieces’. If you’re in a big Hollywood film, you’re going to have ’em. If you’re a heist film, you’re going to have ’em. If you’re a cop film, you’re going to have ’em. (Ask yourself this: what part of the film is NOT part of, or setting up the action scenes?)
Naturally that got me thinking a bit about constructing genre narratives. And Warren Ellis’ newsletter chimed in the following morning, with an encouraging breakdown on pre-writing and how to deploy a ‘process document’ when creating. (I’m always pre-writing, which is quite useful for me and comics.) Nerdwriter covered the action, W.E. covered the connective tissue between action scenes.
Long story short: I now feel refreshed, like I can strip down and build up just about any genre piece. After all,we often view our lives as narratives: go to school here, get married here, have kids here, retire here. These two analyses were a gentle and welcome reminder: choose your tools, choose your narrative(s).