I’ve been trying very hard to improve myself as a storyteller and part of it is theme or subtext or what have you. I’m fairly rubbish at subtext. I will eventually see it when I think about the story enough but as a rule, it takes at least a second viewing and a lot of thinking about it before I see it. So needless to say, I’m very bad at putting it into my own stories.
Spielberg's Subtext – Mike Hill from Trojan Horse was a Unicorn on Vimeo.
In Viable Paradise, Uncle Jim (aka James D. Macdonald), talked to us about the quadriga, meaning the four levels of any good story. One of those levels is the numinous level. Numinous, meaning “arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a story that just straight up tells the story but sometimes the failure mode of clever is… well not good. And while I do want to be able to write the numinous into my stories, I also do want to avoid the other end.
The best part about this learning process though; the fact that I’m taking it as an excuse to watch movies.
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