Skip to main content

Guessing the Plot

One of the recent posts about movies (and the Mild Wife's reactions to watching one of the Lord of the Rings movies for the first time) reminded me that I have a very particular quirk when it comes to watching movies. Basically, I always try to guess the plot.

I'm not entirely sure why I think this is fun, but at the end of the day, I do. I think it may have something to do with my propensity for engineering brain, because plots seem like things that have to fit together in a particular way. So if I can understand what the author/screenwriter is trying to accomplish, I can try to piece together the way the movie might unfold. If you want a happy ending, make sure the knight rescues the princess. If you want a horror film, the princess was actually a demon in disguise and kills the knight at the end.

The other thing that probably leads to this guessing game is the fact that I try my hand at writing every so often. I imagine it's sort of like a chef who goes out to eat at a restaurant: you can, and do, appreciate other people's craft, but you also understand a bit of how it all gets put together. I figure you might be curious about how they cooked the vegetables to give them that texture, or what other ingredients they may have added to the house sauce.

Either way, I usually end up trying to guess at what might happen next in a particular show or movie. I usually keep this to myself because there's a chance I might be right, and other folks don't always appreciate spoilers being thrown their way. The Mild Wife, however, thinks this is pretty amusing, so she will often ask me to guess what I think is going to happen next.

The funniest bit for all of this, though, is that we sometimes watch cheesy romantic comedies (i.e., romcom's) when we stay in. Sure, we appreciate critically acclaimed movies with some thought up in there, but every now and then, we just want something very light-hearted. With these movies, it's actually a little bit easier to guess what's going to happen, because the genre is not exactly known for crazy plot twists. Still, the Mild Wife will play the "guess what happens next?" game with me even for the romcom's.

Like I said, the genre itself makes it a bit easier to guess what's coming next, so I tend to guess correctly more often for these. That has led the Mild Wife to joke that, "I could write romcom's." That's hardly my cup of tea as a writer, so the notion usually makes the Mild Wife and me giggle like mad. I'm not sure I could keep a straight face if I had to write flirting scenes or the declarations of love.

I think I may have to start guessing incorrectly more often.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

All Good Things ...

August 8, 2009. Over twelve years ago, I started blogging with this simple post . I didn't really have a great reason for starting the blog, other than I wanted to try it out. I wanted to try writing and putting it where others could read it. I don't know, it just seemed like a new adventure to try. Along the way, there have been all sorts of posts and all sorts of life events, but through it all, I kept writing. It just became a part of what I do at some point. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to write a blog post, it was a matter of when. The Mild Wife has described it as a "writing practice," and it was one of the reasons why I kept writing. Honestly, it's good practice, and it gives me an opportunity to hone my craft. I'm no professional author, but we all have to write stuff in our everyday lives. Why not give yourself reps to get better at it? However, I think it's time for that practice to change. My weekly anecdotes sure kept me amused...

Where Do I Go?

As the days of COVID-19 are dragging on, we are having to make more adjustments to our usual routines. Some of these changes are so mundane that I haven't mentioned them at all in this blog, while others have lead to some pretty funny anecdotes . That's probably par for the course, since you wouldn't expect a global pandemic to be all giggles. As it turns out, however, not all of the anecdotes happen to us directly. Having to socially distance and remotely do things has actually led to at least one goofy episode that we found out from afar. You see, it was our niece's birthday recently, but we couldn't visit her because of the aforementioned social distancing. So, we figured we'd ship her a present and call her on her birthday. We couldn't be there in person, but we could still wish her well and try to make her feel special on her birthday. Given that shipping times have been erratic the last few months, we ordered the present with plenty of time, and it arr...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...