Thinking like a storyteller.

There's an episode of the Simpsons in which Homer is charged by Marge with finding a suitable suitor for her sister Selma.  So . . . it gets to the point that Homer's "mission" is all that's on his mind. He interprets everything he encounters in light of that mission. So when he encounters Principal Skinner, a template comes up in his brain: name: Principal Skinner. Positives: Uses big words. Negatives: Possible Homer Sexual. I find that something akin to Homer's situation has become the case for myself. That is, I interpret everything I encounter in terms of Story Theory. What's the conflict here? What's the inciting incident? What are this character's motivations? So . . . as you can imagine I can seem somewhat detached at times. Oh well. My point in bringing this up is this affliction is particularly pronounced when I see movies. (Another writer's example of this phenomenon can be seen in a recent edition of Storyfix.) I often see movies with my pal, Mark Monlux, illustrator extraordinaré.  Last year, we saw Suckerpunch. My son, Matthew tagged along. Below, you will see Mark's comic for Suckerpunch. (You see, he produces a regular strip called The Comic Critic. You should subscribe.) I have appended his strip from Suckerpunch below. (The whole point of this post was for Mark, who is sitting at my elbow, to teach me how to do a blog post with links and attachments.)