Sometimes I write from the point of view of characters whom I would dislike as people, not as a perverse exercise, but because this cracks the story open and makes me see it in a way I would not see it naturally.
Interpretation
Writing from contrasting perspectives enhances creativity and storytelling depth.
Mary Gaitskill highlights the importance of exploring diverse viewpoints in writing. By adopting the perspectives of characters that one may personally dislike, a writer can unlock new insights and dimensions to the narrative that might otherwise remain undiscovered, ultimately enriching the story's complexity and depth.
In practice
In a writing workshop, one might use this quote to encourage students to explore unconventional character viewpoints.
What is faithfulness, anyway? Can you be unfaithful to your own feelings and faithful to someone else? Is it faithful to lie in bed night after night with someone you love but no longer desire while ardently dreaming of someone else?
A sad person who is so involved with his sadness that he mistakes it for reality will have a hard time seeing himself as anything but sad. For him, the sadness is not a feeling that he experiences - it is him.
What are you thinking?” She asks. -That you are beautiful. That not everyone could see it. I almost became the kind of person who could not.
Sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter of an inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.
To the question, ‘Is the cinema an art?’ my answer is, ‘what does it matter?’... You can make films or you can cultivate a garden. Both have as much claim to being called an art as a poem by Verlaine or a painting by Delacroix… Art is ‘making.’ The art of poetry is the art of making poetry. The art of love is the art of making love... My father never talked to me about art. He could not bear the word.
Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person as a Christian. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be solely a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism.
I went to the zoo one day and saw a chimp playing with a beat-up acoustic guitar in a way I had never seen before. Instead of using the pick the chimp was banging the neck and tapping it with its fingers. I knew the chimp was on to something so I practiced this new technique in my room for hours until I'd perfected it.
As a director you have to be careful you don't over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.
The world around us is in a sea change, and I think the glory of art is that it cannot only survive change, it can lead it
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