The Writer's Toolbox: Get Mad!!!

“We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'
Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!!" -- Howard Beale, Network (1976)

Think of anger as a form of heat and your writing as a delicious dinner. Yes, you could probably pop it in the microwave for 2-3 minutes and get the job done, but that doesn’t quite suit your taste, does it? So you crank up the oven and throw it in for an hour. What comes out is nothing short of scrumptious. The same is true for anger in writing. Yes, Facebook and other social media outlets boast the perfect platform for your three-paragraph rant, but we should know by now that everyone scrolls past these shallow and vapid scribbles. On the other hand, a slow-roasting anger, one that simmers, boils and consumes an entire writing, like Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 masterpiece Network, will leave audiences howling for more.
It is an ancient law that proclaims any writing worth reading holds some truth. And so your anger must be true if it is to be worth reading.

Read the entire article in the October issue of InD'Tale magazine.

Subscriptions are free!

Just sign up on our home page. Once you do, an e-mail validation notice will be sent directly to you. Just open and click the link and you're in - forever!

You will then be able to click on the magazine image on the left hand side of our home page to open the magazine, download and read!  Next month's magazine will be delivered right to your inbox!