Pump up the Interest: Move the Camera
By Tori Leigh Kelley
Many of us prefer to watch cinematic movies over documentaries. One reason may be the varied use of interesting camera angles. The same could be said in writing. If a writer keeps the camera focused on one object, or one character, the view is not dynamic. By moving the literary camera around to show different angles and details of a scene, an author can maintain reader interest. I went in search of authors who illustrated different ways of moving the camera. Here are some examples.
In Mars One, by Jonathan Mayberry, Tristan is about to be among the first humans sent to Mars. It’s attracted more than a little attention, including religious folks, called Neo-Luddites, who think the plan is ungodly, and want to sabotage it. In this example, we see Herc, Tristan’s buddy, concerned about the Neo-Luddites who have gathered among the large crowd of people anxious for the impending launch.
“I’m just wondering what you’re going to do about them.” He used his bottle to point to the crowd on the other side of the chain-link fence, behind the cops and the wooden sawhorse barricades. The sunlight flashed on hundreds of cameras—cell phone and professional. Broadcast towers rose about the seven news vans parked across the street” (7).
The act of Herc pointing his bottle at the crowd forces the readers’ gaze to what the author wants us to see. It happens without the reader’s awareness. It also removes a dialog tag, because we know Herc is the one speaking as he is the one committing the action of pointing his bottle. The dialog implies tension and concern. The author does not say Herc was worried. Mayberry makes us feel the worry by giving us a front row view out of Herc’s eyes.
Moving the camera can also sneak in details to tell us things about characters and their motivations without overtly saying them. Mayberry does this in a scene where Tristan is still on Earth, and is in his room thinking on his bed. This could have been a boring scene of a character not doing anything, just laying in his bed and thinking. But Mayberry weaves in details that tell us much more than what’s on the page.
“Besides, we’d all need to be able to laugh on Mars, too. All the lights were off in my room and I was sprawled on the bed staring up at the cosmos. Stars and planets swirling across my ceiling.
It was something Mom had rigged up for my twelfth birthday and I never took it down. A little laser projector sat on top of my bookcase and it splashed the image in a continuous loop. It was the stars as seen from Mars, a high-def video capture from one of the rovers. Earth was a tiny white light. The sun was larger, but not much” (63).
The reader’s eye goes to the stars and planets swirling across the ceiling, but what’s more is what this scene tells us about Tristan’s mom. She is creative, clever, capable of making stuff. In fact, she will be the ship’s top engineer. It also shows us how his parents have been grooming him for this trip. Shaping him for years to have an interest in going to Mars. Several times in this book, Tristan mentions how his parents ask him if he truly wants to go. This is a dangerous and serious trip. They will never return. They could die. The dangers are immeasurable. Each and every time, Tristan makes a choice, which he feels is his own. But is it? Given the way his parents have been grooming him his whole life for space travel. We see it very subtly here, in the string of planets and the images of Mars projected onto his ceiling. As if his Mom planted this idea of another interesting place that we could travel to as a family. It forces the reader to pause and consider, is this really Tristan’s choice? As a child growing up in such a space heavy home, how could he possibly have the freedom to even consider another way of life? His parents eat and breathe space, engineering, technology, exploration…a child in this environment would be similar to someone growing up in a particular religion. They would naturally assume it as their own. Their only possible escape or should we say, possible way to even consider another choice, is to step away, like go to college out of state, and have some experiences and experimental adventures of their own, in order to truly have the freedom to choose.
This one tiny scene seems straightforward and yet packs so much more than meets the eye. It’s there, just by moving the camera to Tristan’s ceiling to show us what his mom made for him. On the surface, it seems sweet, like a parent painting a mural in a child’s room. But the content of that image/composition, the way it grooms him for a future chosen by his parents, says so much more.
In the Language of Stars by Louise Hawes, we see the technique of moving the camera to add a layer of depth. In this scene, a very famous poet, Rufus Baylor, returns to his hometown after a bunch of kids partied too hard and destroyed his summer cottage. Their punishment is to restore the cottage and attend a poetry class, which the famous bard decides to teach himself. A question throughout the book is, why would someone so accomplished and retired come back to teach a bunch of juvenile delinquents? This scene presents an answer by moving the camera onto an injured bee.
“My poet spotted it first and put one finger by his mouth. “Shhh!” he said. “Look there.”
“We watched the one-winged wonder limping over the metal clasps on the mound of hoops we’d given back. […] Well, most of us watched the bee. But I watched Rufus. And I saw something in his face change. […] It wasn’t just attention he way paying the bee; it was respect.
“There’s a poem in that old fellow,” he told us. “He can’t fly anymore, but it’s not always about the doing.” He looked at the bee, then at us. “Sometimes it’s just about the yearning.”
“He took out his shabby notebook and, propped on his crutches, scribbled in its pages. He didn’t stop writing, didn’t pause to make changes or turn his pencil over to erase. He just kept scrawling while the rest of us held our breath. When he finally looked up from the notebook, it was as if he was lighter, freer. As if he’d put down something he was tired of carrying” (294).
The author could have said, Rufus looked tired. He sighed as he wrote in his notebook. But that wouldn’t have been as deep, as interesting, or as informative. Since Rufus has been teaching the poetry classes, he engages the students in new ways each time. He turns the old into something new. The reader feels this in the movement of the camera. By moving the camera angle to the bee, we see a metaphor unfold. We see a literal bee who is broken, damaged by life. Throughout the book, we see glimpses of how life damaged the poet. He is incredibly old and fragile looking Rufus Baylor is. During his teaching engagement, he breaks his leg. This scene is presented with Rufus on crutches. His broken leg further ties him to the bee with the broken wing. We can feel the tiredness of his body through the camera lens of the injured bee, which directly relates to his broken leg. We also get a sense of his stamina and determination throughout life’s challenges. He didn’t have to teach the class the same day he broke his leg, but he does, revealing another strength of his character.
The act of Rufus writing in his notebook, shows us that even an accomplished poet has more to leave behind, more he wants to put down on the page, more he desires to emote. And that very act of writing is freeing for him, still holds value for him, after his many years. We see it for ourselves in this passage by Hawes, “It was as if he was lighter, freer. As if he’d put down something he was tired of carrying.” We get all this and more just from tipping the camera to focus on a bee in the grass.
Another way to effectively use the Move the Camera technique, is show a scene in the emotion you wish to convey. Hawes presents an example of this in the ways she shows Sarah reuniting with her true friends after she ditched them for a popular boy, who becomes her boyfriend and sways her to hang with his more popular, irreverent friends. It isn’t until the near end of the book that Sarah learns of his true nature, breaks up with him, and returns to her old friends who love her for who she is. But it’s in the word choices and the description that Hawes paints how truly treasured these old friends are.
“Well, most of us were together. Brett and Thea had weekend jobs, but all the rest were at the cove when I rounded the bend and found them, spread out like jewels on the rocks: Alicia in her mango-colored swimsuit Marcia, her tattoos and nose stones making her look exotic” (312).
That beautiful line, “spread out like jewels on the rocks,” shows us how she feels about her friends. She treasures them like jewels. Placing these treasured friends on the rocks, which is out in the open, also shows us that they were there for her all along. It was she who ignored them. It was her choice to leave and to return.
Laurie Halse Anderson is a master at moving the camera. In the Impossible Knife of Memory, Anderson gives many examples of moving the camera which makes her words do double duty. In the example below, the main character is walking home from school.
“My earbuds were in, but I wasn’t playing music. I needed to hear the world but didn’t want the world to know I was listening.
“Fifteen minutes later, the safe little houses turned into strip malls and then a couple of used-car lots and then what they call “downtown” around here. I did a quick scan left and right every couple of steps: abandoned mattress store; house with boarded-up windows; newspapers covering a drunk or drugged or dead homeless body that reeked, but was not a threat. A tire store. Liquor store. Bodega with bars on the windows. Two empty lots with fields of gravel and grass and broken furniture and limp condoms and cigarette butts. Storefront church with a cross outlined in blue neon” (5).
Instead of Anderson saying, I live in a rundown neighborhood, she takes us on a walkthrough. We learn not only the physical environment but the emotional one. “…newspapers covering a drunk or drugged or dead homeless body that reeked, but was not a threat.” It is a broken place, shown by the “broken furniture and limp condoms” and it is also, impossibly, a place where one might find hope, evidenced by the “Storefront church with a cross outlined in blue neon.”
We are also privy to Hayley’s emotional state, that she is wary and vigilant. “My earbuds were in, but I wasn’t playing music. I needed to hear the world but didn’t want the world to know I was listening.” This passage is written as though Hayley wants to seem cool and aloof, but is truly poised like a cat, ready to strike if necessary. It characterizes her as someone who thinks ahead and isn’t afraid of rising to face danger if necessary. It also shows that she doesn’t go searching for danger or calling attention to herself as those earbuds in her ears put out a message of nonchalance. This passage shows Hayley as anything but. Hayley is immediately understood and sympathetic by this passage alone, by us getting to know how she lives, where she lives, and how she chooses to deal with it.
The next example moves the reader into the depth of this novel’s subject matter, and also what has caused our main character to need the above state of hypervigilance.
“Spock went to the door, tail wagging. A few moments later, the door opened. Dad smiled when he saw me, grin lopsided, eyes not quite focused. Drunk. When I asked him where he’d been, he called me his sweet girl. He sat down next to me on the couch, leaned his head back, and passed out.
“I checked his face and hands; there were no scrapes or cuts to show he’d been in a fight. I threw on a jacket and my sneakers and went out to the truck. No marks on the bumpers, no new scratches in the paint. I opened the door and found empty Budweiser cans in the foot well and an extra hundred and fifteen miles on the odometer” (73).
The camera begins on Spock and creates hope. We all associate tail wagging with happiness. But then the record scratches, if you will, and in comes a drunk dad. The camera moves to scanning the father’s body for injury. This action shows that Hayley is his caretaker, setting up the dysfunctional dynamic of a parentified child. The camera moves further, outside to his truck. “No marks on the bumpers, no new scratches in the paint. I opened the door and found empty Budweiser cans in the foot well and an extra hundred and fifteen miles on the odometer.” The fact that Hayley does this, implies her dad is regularly drunk and has regular trips under the influence. She knows to check in these specific areas. She is detail-oriented and pays attention. “No marks on the bumpers, no new scratches in the paint.”
This scene further builds our empathy for Hayley and the sad state of her father, that would have been totally dark, had it not been for the happy dog. I wonder if the dog was put in on purpose, to lighten a deeply disturbing scene. And also to make Hayley less alone. Even though she is very alone indeed when it comes to humans. She is surrounded at school by freaks and zombies, as she claims in her opener, and then we follow her home to this not so very Merry Christmas. It’s all quite sad and depressing. But, because Hayley has attitude, agency, and determination, the reader joins her, and seeks to understand, and dares to hope.
Moving the camera is a technique writers can use to increase reader interest. It is a way to sneakily weave in deeper layers of detailed information. When done well, the technique is invisible to readers. It can remove dialog tags by adding a more meaningful action and layer of depth to a character’s dialog. Moving the camera reduces boring pronouns by beefing up a story with clear and powerful visuals that help readers better understand a character. And when a reader understands a character, they care about them in the same way they care about real people from their real life. That is the most powerful depth of empathy a writer can hope to create.
Works Cited
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Impossible Knife of Memory. Speak, an Imprint of Penguin Group
(USA), 2014.
Hawes, Louise. The Language of Stars. First ed., Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2016.
Mayberry, Jonathan. Mars One. First ed., Simon and Schuster BFYR, 2017.
