I'm squirming in my seat. I turned the sound off for the clips. I'm taking copious notes. I'm completely out of my comfort zone in this Horror film screenwriting workshop.
Horror is my least favorite genre. It's not a film style I search out and I have a lot of difficulty watching gore films. So why did I sign up for it? Well, it's part of a month long series of workshop on specific storytelling genres and I thought what the hell - I'll take Horror.
Horror films are not life and death conflicts, they are life and fate worse than death. One of my stories (of the 5 I am currently working on) has the potential to utilize some aspects of the horror genre. How far do I want to do? Just use aspects of horror or go straight down to extreme and make my characters face a fate worse than death? (The real world inspiration story has a bit of horror in it. I imagine the victim, one of whom is still alive and living in Europe, considers her fate a fate worse than death. So I thought, let's just see how this horror genre works and see how far I want to go.)
It's reminded me how fun it is to really get out of your comfort zone. I honestly don't remember the last time I felt out of my comfort zone, because part of my comfort zone is doing/being uncomfortable. But today was beyond that. It was beyond the comfortable uncomfortablenss of my comfort zone.
Sitting there squirming in my chair, watching clips of movies I would never, ever watch (except for Cronenberg, I love Cronenberg) it dawned on me. I was learning something completely new. What was cool, is that it this new knowledge layers perfectly on top of what I already know. So it's a double whammy of supporting my talents and expertise while also being new skills, knowledge and pushing me outside a zone of comfort. It's been a long time since I felt that. It's very invigorating.
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