Messy

Let’s face it, sometimes life just stinks. Friends betray us, family walks away and sometimes the boy doesn’t get the girl like Danny Zuko did in the movie Grease.

It’s why some Christian movies feel so unrealistic, life is too perfect—what’s the need for redemption or hope?

Last year I had the opportunity to attend my first Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference. While there I was able to learn the craft from 30 year Hollywood veteran Brian Bird.

I’ll never forget his honest observations,

• Keep your story messy, because life is messy and there is not always a happy ending.
• Characters grow through messy situations.
• Write your characters into a corner

Trials and plot twists cause our characters to grow, just like hardships in our lives can make us or break us. Fairytale endings are rare in real-life. Even Christian marriages rarely end up a happily ever after story; even when it does there are still struggles.

The audience can relate to stories that are messy, because their lives are messy too.

Even in my childhood favorite Star Wars was filled with messy real life struggles. The whole father-son angle hits home for a lot of men, me included. Sometimes fiction can be as real as reality.

Reality?

People can relate more to other messed up people. And when they do, they are pulled into the story. The rise of reality TV over the last decade and a half is proof of this.

According to Statistica.com. viewers like reality TV because.

1. They like the drama.
2. It’s a mindless.
3. It helps them forget the real issues in their lives/the world.

It’s obvious difficult and tough situations on the small screen resonate with audiences. Shouldn’t we keep the narrative in theaters more realistic and possibly more life-changing?

Legendary novelist Ernest Hemingway once noted, “When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people are not characters. A character is a caricature.”

Have you ever found yourself in an unpredictable situation? Welcome to being human, sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. Am I right?

Fight for it!

Audiences are drawn to stories that defy the odds. Okay, I admit I’m a hopeless romantic and often daydream about love stories that don’t make sense, love that endures the hardships to survive. The best romances are messy.  Let’s go back to a movie I mentioned earlier, what man didn’t root for Han Solo getting the girl?

A rough-around-the-collar and rugged rebel who becomes smitten with the gorgeous young princess, not exactly a match made in heaven. But it works, because it’s messy.

I’m sure many of you reading this can think of dozens of movies with unlikely love stories that captured your heart.

In college my favorite was the movie Jerry McGuire. Who can forget when Renée Zellweger’s character says, “You had me at hello.”? Jerry didn’t realize how much he loved his wife until he lost her, now that’s messy.

Martin Johnson survived a severe car accident with a (T.B.I.) Truamatic brain injury which left him legally blind and partially paralyzed on the left side. He is an award-winning Christian screenwriter who has recently finished his first Christian nonfiction book. Martin has spent the last nine years volunteering as an ambassador and promoter for Promise Keepers ministries. While speaking to local men’s ministries he shares his testimony. He explains The Jesus Paradigm and how following Jesus changes what matters most in our lives. Martin lives in a Georgia and connects with readers at Spiritual Perspectives of Da Single Guy and on Twitter at mtjohnson51.