Want to Write Better? Watch Movies.

There are few places I rather be than in a movie theater. I can still remember going to double features for 50 cents when I was a little kid visiting my grandparents in Miami Beach. Oh, I loved my Bubbe and Zayde dearly, but it was the movies and candy-covered speckled malted milk balls that were the real summer draw. Decades later I have not changed, although the movies sure aren't two bits anymore, and the candy doesn't taste the same.

So here are three movies with clips that have influenced me to be a better writer.

Single-Minded Message: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. This is one of my favorite movies of all time. I can recite almost every word from the scene where E.T. discovers a telephone and tries to explain that he must phone home. No matter how many adventures he has and how much he loves Elliott, he never ever wavers from his conviction to get home.

That conviction plays well in writing. In a confusing world, we seek clarity. In fact, we yearn for it, just like we yearn -- like E.T. -- for home.

The Power of Music: Ghost. I cannot watch this movie without bawling. Absolutely impossible. And I know it is largely due to the music. The famous clay scene with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze is so intense because of Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers.

Here's how powerful this mix of music and film imagery is for me. Several months after my husband's death, I was at my health club swimming and that song came over the loudspeakers. I instantly became Demi Moore and my late husband, Andy, was Patrick Swayze. I think I scared away all the people -- including the poor children in the kiddies' pool -- with my sobbing. Not pretty. 

As a writer, I understand words appeal to only part of the brain. But when those words create music in my head, a story moves to the next level.

Color: The Wizard of Oz. Okay, if my reference to movie prices did not date me, this next story surely will. I never saw The Wizard of Oz in color until I was at college. We had black and white televisions during most of my growing up years.

Then I sat in a bar at West Virginia University and saw the green of the Emerald City, the red of the Ruby Slippers and the yellow of the Yellow Brick Road. But what really blew me away was that the horse of a different color changed color! And none of this experience was alcohol-induced. It was all about the use of color to delight and surprise.

Color in writing is in the details, the ability of a writer to create a feeling and mood by describing something, not explaining it. It’s the classic writers’ mantra: show don’t tell.