VISITING MORTIANA

Julie turned the TV on and I said, “Oh, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. It’s one of those film that, no matter where you start watching it, you’ll probably keep watching it.”

Then I wondered, “Why is that?”

It’s because everything is so well framed and set up. Not a shot is wasted, and we become fascinated by that without realising it.

Take the scene where we meet Maggie Smith as Mortiana.

The Sherriff of Nottingham visits her room. She casts rune-stones and predicts the future. Her prediction would need to be the same, regardless of how the scene was written. But, around that, we have Nottingham entering the room, saying, “You called Ma’am?”. She ignores him, goes straight to casting the runes, then reads her prediction (which ties the two of them to a grim future).

In the film, though...

· Nottingham dances/falls down the dark, smoky, torch-lit stairs. He’s been drinking.

· He opens the door, thrusts his head in, then emphatically closes it behind him, speaking to urgency and secrecy.

· He calls for Mortiana. The “Mort” prefix in a name means “death”.

· He doesn’t just enter the room. He walks a narrow, wobbly, plank over some smoking liquid. There’s a rat there. He kicks a frog off the wood. He spins around to look where he stepped, as if in disgust, before walking on.

· Mortiana appears through laser-lit smoke, shocking Nottingham.

· He say’s “You called ma’am?” (or, is it “Mam”?)

· She ignores him. She passes an egg from hand to hand.

· She picks up a silver plate, shaking a snake off of it.

· She then places the plate on the floor, having to move a frog out the way first.

· She opens the egg with one fingernail grown to a talon.

· What comes out of the egg is no sort of yolk. It’s blood. She spills it onto the plate.

· He bites his nails.

· She drops rune-stones into the blood.

· Despite the fact that the stones don’t move, she makes a show of tipping the plate from side to side.

· She reads their fortune.

· We see that she has one white eye.

· They embrace as she tells him who to kill.

All in under two minutes.

How you “decorate” a scene will make a big difference. It might be that you choose to use a sparse, minimalist, style. At the other extreme, some writers will bore their readers with too much detail. The action should always drive the story and too much set-decoration might drag it down. But, if you put those details in quickly, and interestingly, you can captivate a reader in the same way as a film can captivate a viewer.

Finding the balance is a matter of practice.

Look at your scenes. Are they basic? Are they florid? Should they always be that way? Once you know what it is you are doing, then you can choose!