Hi there, Toi here. I’m new to this group and so excited to share a little bit of my creativity and knowledge with all of you. Aside from being an avid reader of books and comic books, I’m also a bit of a cinephile. To be honest, I appreciate a good story in any format, but that’s a topic for another day.
Since I was a kid, it always seemed like I had movies playing in my head. For a short time, what I saw on TV and the big screen was a filter for how I saw the world. Luckily it didn’t take too long for me to come to grips with reality and see the world for what it really is. Still, there were always movies and TV shows playing in my mind, until one day when a movie started to play in my mind that had no outside source material.
I remember clearly seeing myself as a Lost Boy in Neverland (yes, I know I’m a girl 😉), fighting pirates and playing games with Peter Pan. As I got older, other movies played out in my mind, and soon my head was filled with original characters I’d never met, but who all seemed so familiar. At that point, I wasn’t in these films at all, yet I felt so connected to them. It would be years before all of this made any sense to me, but when it did finally all come together, my life changed.
About ten years ago, I began to have a reoccurring dream. It was unlike any dream I’d had before. For one thing, I could actually remember parts of it. My sleeping dream, for once, played out like so many daydreams had in the past, like a movie. The story was vivid while I slept, but when I woke, I could only grasp bits and pieces. So, I decided to start writing down what I could remember.
After a few weeks, I had this amazing story, that once on paper, played out in my mind like a movie. The star was a gray-skinned solemn man living in isolation, waiting for the day when the light would come. The light of understanding is all this man wanted from life. He was different and knew he didn’t fit into this world and when the light finally came, he transformed into an angel and ascended into heaven as the sound of harps played in the background of a pink sky with yellow rays of light guiding his path.
It was a really great, but also really short film. Having caught the writing bug, I decided to use that story as inspiration for what ended up becoming my first novel, Eternal Curse: Giovanni’s Angel. During the development of my first book, I realized that all the strange, good, and even evil characters I encountered in these cerebral films were, in some way, a part of me. All the stories and movies that played out in my mind were always, in some small way, a reflection of what was going on in my life.
I don’t know if any of my work will ever make it to the big or small screen, but I’m happy for now, just having them play out so perfectly in my mind.
Find Eternal Curse: Giovanni’s Angel here:
Amazon
Want to dive more into the inspiration that brought about the Eternal Curse Series? Try 40 Days and Nights of Eternal Curse (the companion guide):
Amazon
Find out more about me, my work, and my inspiration at the following links:
Amazon |
Goodreads |
The ToiBox of Words |
YouTube | See a list of my other posts
here.
#cursescanbebroken, #dreambig, #booklover, #film, #fan,
COMMENTS
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So happy to be here today sharing, "Movies Playing In My Mind".
Great meeting you, Toi ~ welcome to the gang!
Thank you so much for sharing that Derrick. You are the best!
You're not alone, Toi---I tend to see stories as "interior movies" first, also! A lot of writers probably do. It helps keep those characters and scenes as living entities on the stages of our imagination, I think.
And that can be helpful to your style of expression. We live in a very visually oriented culture. It likely helps to cast our prose in a sensory flow that includes a sort of "streaming hyper-fantasy." We PROJECT that movie in our minds for the delectation of our reading audience. My fiction is often cited as being very "cinematic," and I've always counted that as a compliment.
Don't change a THING about your method, channeled through that mysterious conduit from those Muses---those GODS!---who inspire us as storytellers!
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Thank you for your words. I like how you explain the feeling of seeing my work in my head. Glad to know I'm not alone; glad to know others have this much fun with their writing.
Welcome and congratulations on your first post, Toi! Great job! I get this big time: my ideas play out like little films in my head, and I also get inspired by old movies, like 1930s and 1940s movies. (I shared on Facebook and Pinterest, but had trouble with Google + so I copied and pasted over there.)
I haven't even gotten around to how actual cinematic releases have inspired my work, yet. That may be a series of posts. I will say that I too have an appreciation for old movies.
+Toi Thomas -- Very cool! A number of my past posts about writing and my books, including my current 5-part blog talk about what movies inspired me, and how Alfred Hitchcock was the key to everything. I hope you do a series of posts. I will look forward to hearing about what films inspired you.
I always wished I could take a dream and turn it into a story! Very cool.
It really is. After about 8 years, it happened to me again, but that's WIP. Perhaps I'll write about that experience one day.
Great post Toi! That's how I rite my stories too, seeing it in my mind as a movie before I start writing :)
Welcome, Toi, to a great bunch of authors. We are varied in genre, but we all have the characters who won't keep quiet until we write their stories. It is so nice knowing your writing background. Looking forward to more!
Thank you. I love the variety of this group and am so happy to be here.
I do this; visualize the story or scene in my mind before I write it. It usually needs revision after that, but it's a start. You need clay on the wheel before you can shape it.
Welcome!
I like that, "clay on the wheel". :D
A warm welcome to the club, Toi. A good imagination is a wonderful thing to have, and if you don't dream, how can any dream come true.
Oh my goodness, this is great. I have a movie running in my head too -- especially when I read.
Wow, that's great. I also have snippets of my story running in my head. And when I read, the story runs in my mind like a movie. Yeah, I'm also a very visual person.
Great post!!
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