One of my favorite exercises for sharpening my writing skills is this: I watch a bad movie, one that had potential but was really disappointing, and then I try to rewrite it and improve it. It’s a simple exercise, but it has lots of nuances.
For example, recently, Netflix released a movie called Project Adam. It was about… Whelp, there was a guy, and a kid. There were robots. Aliens? The movie was so bad that I can’t even remember the details. In fact, I can’t even remember, broadly, what the movie was about.
As such, I took it and started to rewrite the story. First, I made it a “high abstraction draft.” I wrote with broad strokes what the story would look like if it was good. Then, I wrote several “low level” paragraphs detailing the scenes, dialogue, and descriptions. And, the final result was not too shabby.
This exercise forces you to think in terms of good versus bad choices. Most of fiction is about choice: authors have an infinite assortment of tropes, aesthetic elements, and possible plot twists and endings. The only way they can write a story is by choosing the ones that fits best. It takes a harsh judgment to do so.
Authors who don’t have a good judgment of choices cannot make choices for themselves. If you cannot criticize other people’s works, using technical terms, and using logical arguments, you cannot do the same for your own stories.
In big-budget streaming movies that exist to “fill a quota,” like Project Adam, decisions are rarely done only by the authors of the movie, such as the screenplay writer and the director. Many, if not most choices, are made by producers and investors. And, they’re usually terrible story tellers.
Their choices are based on potential financial gain or avoidance of expenses, like when they choose to “go woke” (I hate this term) to avoid backlash. So, for example, they put a token black character with no personality and no depth just because the original script had a white-only cast.
Producers shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions in a movie. But, regardless, we, as authors, should be able to judge whether a decision as good or bad.
To make this exercise, do the following:
Pick up a movie that had an interesting premise, a cool trailer, and an exciting pitch. Look for that kind of movie that had a neat trailer that hyped the audience before release; then, after the release, everyone found out that the movie was awful.
Watch (this is the hardest part), and make notes on a notebook as you judge the movie.
Consider that every creative choice in the movie was intentional, even if it probably wasn’t. Write down the bad ideas and other flaws that you find. Make sure you find a lot of them.
Take some time to consider: what choices would have been better? What are the possible endings that the premise allows, and which one would be better? How could the stakes be higher, the characters more interesting, and their relationships closer?
Does the tone and aesthetic of the movie fit the story? Should it be presented with a different tone? What about the plot twists? Were they surprising or dull? Could you see them coming?
Write a high abstraction draft retelling the story with the improvements that you came up with. Change the plot twists, change the ending, add elements that rise the stakes, and make characters closer together. Eliminate useless characters. Make sure the ones that remain are interesting and empathetic.
If your draft is improved, turn it into something: a book, a screenplay, anything. Give life to it. Give it dialogues and descriptions. Make sure it’s better than the original.
Doing this work, you’ll find out that your story will be so distinct from the source material that it could be barely called “similar” or “plagiarist.”
After changing all these elements, I bet that even the original pitch and premise will have changed. If this happened, good: shamelessly change the names of characters and other references, and publish it as an original work of art.
That’s how art works. Don’t feel guilty.
I usually don’t do this myself (the publishing part) because I write and publish adventure novels set in the 19th Century. Movies with this genre and setting are extremely rare, and when they show up, they’re awful, or based on original novels, like Treasure Island.
But, if I ever decide to jump to another genre, one that’s more common in cinema, I’ll certainly publish the work after finishing this exercise.
Remember: judgment of art is not a bad thing. And, though art is subjective, what is good or not is objective and clear. There’s a reason why people go to beautiful places, with neat architecture, when they’re on vacation. There’s a reason some movies flop terribly when the audience can’t stand them.
Art may be subjective, but there are general trends that differentiate the good and the bad. If you’re unable to judge each of them, you’ll have a hard time improving your own writing.