"Just tell the story"

"Just tell the story." He said knowingly.
"But -- " I started...
He interrupted by capturing me with those lovely brown eyes of his.
...
You ever had anyone do that to you? Ever had an actor you think is sexy capture you with his eyes? Ever had Bruce Campbell do that to you? It's a pretty amazing experience.


Sorry, felt in need of a writing-related gloat. My insecurities must be playing up today.

The reason I bring it up, is, I think in the last few days I stumbled on to a key bit of wisdom. Something just clicked as I've been plotting a rewrite. It's about the writing process - and the bitch of it is, I have no idea where to start explaining it using words.
Pretty poor show for a wordsmith.

It is to do with getting emotion on to the page during the treatment / outline stage ... or, if you are into cards pinned to a board, then.

And it all links back to "Just tell the story".

SCENE A) informs how we feel about a character, what we know they have just experienced, SCENE B) builds on SCENE A, so you don't have to explain exactly what's going on - because the audience can see the image in SCENE B and make a reasonable guess about what is going on emotionally with the character.

In this instance, in SCENE A someone is tense, scared, has been messing with supernatural powers that they shouldn't have, it all reaches a crisis point ... SCENE B we see them again, in the same location, relaxed, character smiles gently - - and we know they have very likely been possessed. ... But we don't need to show the possession, and we don't need to explain in the action line that the character has been possessed - because we don't want the audience to know for sure, until a bit later in the story when it becomes really obvious that that's what is going on.

Again it's to do with the off screen story. In this case the villain's.

See, I've not explained it very well.

But I have finally grokked it. I knew this stuff before, but I didn't grok it. And now I do.

I wanted to share it with you.

If I can work out how to explain it any better than this, I'll post again later on.