Book Review Aim for the Heart by Al Thompkins

Aim for the Heart by Al Thompkins chapter 11 speaks about the “Sound of the Story”. Sound is very important when attempting to convey a story. Thompkins’ opens this chapter stating, “one of the fastest ways to improve your storytelling is to dramatically increase the amount and quality of meaningful sound in your stories.” Sound can often change everything and conveying the right emotion, and attempting to bring about the right feelings in the story. Music has the power to change everything about the story. For example in this chapter, Thompkins’ speaks of a time when a story was told regarding elderly inmates, the purpose of the film was to “raise the question of whether it made any sense to keep these seniors in prison at all. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to open low-security nursing homes for these old men?” Thompkins goes on to explain how he used sound and music in a particular scene with an inmate who had spent many years in prison. He explained that, “the music added a tone of sympathy to the story that the words and pictures did not convey.” He goes on to say that his mother who had been waiting the report called to complain about that particular use of music in that scene. The man had committed two murders but the choice of music caused the viewer to think that they should sympathize with the inmate.

Also, another important element outlined in this chapter was silence. Sound is important to storytelling however, silence is just as important. Thompkins states that, “a pause in the second sentence adds drama. Silence does that, even when it is a tiny pause.” When using pauses in storytelling it creates drama. Filmmakers of horror stories use silence in this way regularly, it usually creates a moment of suspense for the viewer, and it is the same when used during storytelling for several other genres.

In addition, to using silence and the appropriate music to convey emotions in a story, Thompkins briefly discusses elements and methods to capturing powerful sound. One of the things noted is the importance of capturing, “sounds that ‘take you there’ get close to the action.” It is important to get as close to the sound as possible, Ken Speake at KARE-11 quoted that, “naturally occurring sound as the spice that makes the meat and potatoes of the story more palatable, more interesting and more attractive.” Getting closer to the sound will make a story richer because of it.

Thompkins closes the chapter discussing why it is important not to rearrange audio or sound bites. I enjoyed this part of the chapter because a speech by Obama is included. The interesting part of about this section of the chapter is how sound can be rearranged and can often change the message that will be heard by viewers. The example is of a BBC broadcast speech on the evening of the inauguration of President Obama. The interesting part is that BBC used sound bites from his speech and arranged them into one paragraph. Editing his speech changed the message that he was attempting to convey through his original speech.