A guest post by Jared Shipley

How many times have you read a story or seen a movie and thought “That would never happen” or “Nobody would do this” only to find out the writer wrote those events from actual life experience? Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art? Some would argue this is like asking “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” I would not. Because art does imitate life. The key word being IMITATE.

Let’s face it. Everybody, EVERYBODY, thinks that their life would make a great movie, whether they live the life of a summer Hollywood blockbuster, or the quiet, intimate drama of a Bergman film. I mean, that’s why people start writing screenplays in the first place, isn’t it? To say what they can’t say in real life?

The problem is: Life is not Story. Just because you suffered a tragic loss or experienced off-the-chart levels of euphoria does not mean anybody else wants to read about it. Why? Because everyone goes through that stuff. We don’t need to read a screenplay about it.  Stories, on the other hand, people do want to read. I’m butchering an old adage here, but I believe in it: “I write fiction because I want to write the truth.” Stories allow writers to channel those feelings from their real lives and shape them into a sensory experience for the reader, giving a new perspective on those events. Movies are meant to make you FEEL what you feel during a tragic loss or off-the-chart levels of euphoria, not literally put you through them. 

Look at a film like “(500) Days of Summer.” After Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finally spends the night with the girl he loves (Zooey Deschanel), he walks to work the next morning to the tune of Hall & Oates’ “You Make My Dreams Come True”, with an ensemble dance number in the park.  This event obviously only exists in the movies, but you FEEL what Tom feels. It’s IMITATING life. Sooner or later, every guy knows what that feels like and who wouldn’t want to write that experience down? But that is a much more creative way to portray the scene than “Tom walks to work, feeling better than he’s ever felt. On top of the world. He dances down the sidewalk to the tune playing in his headphones.” That may be what was actually happening, but…BOORRRRIIIINNNG.

Ernest Hemingway was an ambulance driver in Italy during World War 1. He was injured and fell in love with his nurse, hence “A Farewell To Arms.” Dostoevsky struggled with questions of existentialism throughout his entire life, particularly during his prison sentence and exile to Siberia, and his work became a library of psychological exploration into questions of faith, God, evil, and the true nature of man. Larry David once weaseled his way into a girl’s apartment so he could switch the tape on her answering machine and destroy his embarrassing message, which became a scene in an episode of “Seinfeld.” But the reason these men are brilliant writers is because they only used their experiences within the context of their stories, not for the sake of simply writing them down because they were tragic, interesting, or funny.

So if you think your life would make a great movie, you’re wrong. But your life does make great INSPIRATION for a movie. It has to. Our own lives are the only source us writers have for material, but it’s life’s THEMES that people really want to read about or see at the theater. Again, those themes apply to everyone (love, loss, regret, redemption, self discovery, blah blah blah), but it’s the writer’s job to express those themes through their STORY. That’s the only way to make it original, the only way to make people listen. If your real life experience fits into the context of your story, by all means, write it. But 99% of the time, it won’t. So make it better. Write what SHOULD HAVE happened. Write what pertains to the theme(s) of your story. Writing is the most therapeutic thing someone can do to express their feelings, in my humble opinion. The problem is, most beginners (including yours truly) write screenplays instead of journals. That’s selfish. You can’t write just to make yourself feel better and expect anyone else to think it’s any good.

Life does not imitate art, but it does inspire it.