At the Climax, Some Things Really Are Best Left Unsaid.

My blog looks so boring today after visiting this one. http://www.trouthammer.com.

I found it by following a link from someone's Twitter feed. The post called it out as adorable. Guess I was in need of adorable. Turns out, it was a blogger named Jim's marriage proposal to his girlfriend Julie.You can check it out on the web here. Hang on in there... through the yakking... (!) to the video at the end. It's, well... adorable. 

At first, I admit I hung in there just to see if Julie's reaction was natural or contrived. I mean, surely Jim wouldn't post this uber-private moment without his future wife knowing it in advance? Would he?

As a screenwriter and movie lover, I'm accustomed to exploring the lives of my characters. Characters are people too, after all; BUT...  characters live in my head. Not in Brooklyn! Watching Julie's eyes move across words I had already seen... knowing that I knew something she didn't... felt weird and voyeuristic, even a bit creepy. By then, I was too riveted to look away. One, I'm an unabashed sucker for love stories. And two, like most audience members, I hate to be left hanging. I wanted to see Julie say yes. 

When the climactic moment arrived, I did look away. Even though the kiss happened off screen, that moment was too private, if not for them, for me. I clicked off the video. Only then did I notice the filmmaker's name: Babb. Jim Babb. 

ooooooooo weeeee uuuuuuuuu...

It's a small, small world.

As I skipped around the rest of his blog, I discovered that Jim is a man of his word. It's one thing to perform a white boy rap for your school chums. To post it on a billboard to the world is quite another. It proves that Jim has taken his lady love's advice to heart: He's perfectly willing to laugh at himself... and allow the rest of us to do the same. No wonder Jim wants to spend his life with Julie. Maybe that's the fun of it all.    

The Bottom Line: When constructing the climax, give the audience exactly what they need to see. Nothing they don't. Some blanks the audience are perfectly happy to fill in for themselves. It pays to be brave enough to let them.