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1. #Life flashing before your eyes experience how to#
2. #Life flashing before your eyes experience movie#

You just want to give that sense of a succession of thoughts or actions compressed in a period of time. There is no right way to do a montage sequence in a novel. Or you could play out his actions, with one line for each image, compiling item after item until it fills the page, noting how the sun starts coming up by the time he’s done. All these moments could flash through his mind as he scans his stacks of papers and notes. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT – NYC OFFICES – DAYĬan you think how you might translate this montage into a novel’s scene? Instead of writing pages and pages showing everything Jerry did hour after hour until the sun came up, you could have Jerry, bleary-eyed but running on high-octane paranoia, looking around his bedroom before heading out to mail his meager five newsletters to his subscribers. He starts across the street, then stops, looks back with dread. Jerry drops the newsletters into a mailbox.

Jerry slaps the labels on the newsletters. The handdrawn logo: lips whispering into an ear. He hand-cranks copies off an old drum mimeograph. Jerry types the text of an article, crosses out mistakes. The first connection: the dates of six Space Shuttle launches and six earthquakes all coinciding. Jerry flips through 100s of cards on big Rolodexes as he cross-references data. Specifically: “Industrialist Ernest Hariman Drowns.” He enters raw data on 3×5 cards: space shuttle launched, base closings, escape from mental hospital and especially the obituaries. Does the same with the San Francisco Chronicle, Le Monde, Time, the Economist and Popular Mechanics. Jerry scans a New York Times spread on a drafting table. On the wall, an American flag alongside a poster of John Lennon reading: “Assassinated 12/8/80.” In this very early scene, the screenwriter is able to pack in a lot of information by utilizing this camera shot.Ĭarrying a bowl of tapioca, Jerry enters. Of course, as the plot unfolds, we realize why Jerry is so messed up. Mel Gibson plays this role exceptionally well, demonstrating the manic, erratic behavior that makes the viewer wonder just how nuts Jerry really is. In just a short bit of time and with just a few key montage images, we get a very good picture of this paranoid man named Jerry.

#Life flashing before your eyes experience movie#

Take a look at this short excerpt from the movie The Conspiracy Theory written in 1996 by Brian Helgeland. So whether you want to fast-forward time in your novel or flip through the memories of the past, using a montage technique may serve your story best. What about a mother whose child has been kidnapped, as we saw in the novel Predator in an earlier post? Can you picture a montage of thoughts going through her head-the worst possible thoughts she doesn’t want to consider? Your character can envision all the possibilities of an action.

And they don’t have to be memories they can be “what ifs.” Thoughts of what might happen if I make this choice. Your characters can and should think the way humans normally do, and often we experience a montage of memories. What happens when you run into someone you haven’t seen in ten years? What if that person was your first love-or your violent ex-spouse? Memories Appear Often to Us as Montages Think how many things often flash through your mind when reminded of an important time or person in your life.

#Life flashing before your eyes experience how to#

Then there was the time she starred in the sixth-grade musical, and learned how to drive a car (wasn’t that a near-disaster!), and then high school graduation, her senior prom, her first date. Then she might recall her first baby steps, then holding her hand as she walked her to her first day at kindergarten. Whatever this character is feeling at this key moment in her life in the story can be heightened by the use of a montage scene, which is what we began looking at in last week’s post.Īs the daughter begins her long walk toward her anxious husband-to-be, she may think back to her daughter as an infant. Maybe she’s suffering from empty nest syndrome. Perhaps she’s regretted the way she raised her, feeling she’s been a failure as a mother. All the years she spent raising her daughter have brought them both to this moment. This is a key moment in this mother’s life. Has it ever happened to you-had your life flash before your eyes? What about one of your characters in your novel-has it happened to her? Think about a character in a story-let’s say a mother sitting in church waiting for her daughter to come down the aisle in her beautiful white wedding gown.