I think I've learned a lot about storytelling from haikus. They are essentially very tiny stories into themselves.
I think that a good story should be a series of
moments. A moment being defined as a coupling of action/perception that then produces an emotional response.
We experience the world through our five senses. We see, hear, taste, touch, smell. Followed by these experiences, is usually a feeling. We feel happy, sad, angry, disgusted, scared, surprised, and the infinite variations therein.
A good haiku captures a single moment. In three lines, it sets up a scene, sometimes a very elaborate one, and triggers a feeling in the reader. The brevity of it makes its all the more powerful. Each important moment of a film should have the same punch.
Of course, a film can't be just a series of moments. That's real life. The moments of a good story should all be connected in a meaningful way that creates one big emotional response at the end.
Anyways, so I wanted to share some of my favorite English haikus with you, so you know what the heck I'm talking about.
These are excerpts from
The Haiku Anthology
. It's a FANTASTIC book. These are only a very very small sampling of the amazing haikus that are in this book.
(When you read them, try to be aware of the feeling that the poem brings up ... )
I stop to listen;
the cricket
has done the same
---Arizona Zipper
first snow ...
the children's hangers
clatter in the closet
---Michael Dylan Welch
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