Shutter Island — The Guest Posts
This is the 200th post on Storyfix. We launched June 1, 2009, and so far over 2000 of you have signed on for the ride. You are the reason I do this. Thanks for your vote of confidence. Much more to come, too. Last week I posted a call for Guest Posts in response to […]
10) “Shutter Island” – How It All Ends, and What to Make of It
If you’ve enjoyed this series – or not – and would like to contribute a Guest Post to Storyfix on the subject, click HERE. The “winning” entry gets a prize, and everybody who contributes something will see their work published here. Unless it’s off topic. Or, if it’s much longer than 500 words. Please have […]
Call for “Shutter Island” Guest Posts
A StoryFix Contest As a Big Finish to this series, I’m inviting you to submit your thoughts in the form of a blog post about your Shutter Island deconstruction experience… as well as comments on the book and anything else that’s related. If this is your first experience with a deconstruction, or perhaps your initial glimpse of […]
9) “Shutter Island” – Plot Point Two and the Final Act
The latest in a series of posts that deconstructs Dennis Lehane’s “Shutter Island” – both book and movie. If you’d like to review or catch up on previous posts, you’ll find those links at the end of this article. According to the principles of story structure, Part 3 of a well-told story (roughly the third […]
8) “Shutter Island” – The Part 3 Scenes
Welcome to any Problogger.net readers who have come here from my guest post on that site today… and any other first-timers, too. You’ve arrived at a place where serious writers – novelists, screenwriters, memoirists, short story writers and anyone else with an interest in writing, even bloggers – delve deep into the craft of storytelling, […]
7B) “Shutter Island” – The Part 2 Pinch Point and the Mid-Point
The second of two parts on this phase of the deconstruction. The Part 2 Pinch Point Pinch Points are moments in which the story’s primary antagonistic force comes back to center stage. That can take many forms, and it can involve the hero. Or not. It can be a cutaway to approaching danger that the […]
7-A) “Shutter Island” – The Part 2 “Response”
The first of two parts on this part of the deconstruction. Shutter Island gives us one of the most layered and complex opening acts in recent thriller memory, with a First Plot Point that is as understated as it is stealthily ambitious in the way it pivots this story in another direction. In some ways, […]
6) “Shutter Island” – The First Plot Point Cometh
In the 16th scene of Shutter Island, at about the 32 minute mark in the movie, and on the 89th page of the paperback movie reissue of Dennis Lehane’s bestselling novel by the same name, something happens. Something huge. Everything changes because of what happens. And because none of us really understood what this story […]
5) “Shutter Island” – Evaluating the Part 1 Scenes
If you’ve just arrived, you’ve landed in the middle of a multi-part series that deconstructs – some call it eviscerates – Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, and the movie based on it. In yesterday’s post we identified and positioned each of the 15 scenes that comprise the story’s opening act (also known as Part 1 for […]
4) “Shutter Island” – The Opening Act (continued)
Yesterday we took a 10,000 foot view of the opening act of Shutter Island, both the book and the movie. The focus was on the first scene (aboard the ferry taking Teddy and “Chuck” to the island) and how it established a context of deception for all that is to follow. Chuck, of course, is […]