What Writers can Learn From “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is one of, if not the, greatest installments in the Spider-Man film franchises and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature to prove it. I could talk for hours about the film. About how it layers motifs atop one another to create a web of deeper meaning behind many interactions, how Peter B. Parker was subtly suicidal, and how he contrasts with Miles to show a divergent range of superheroics.
But I want to talk about writing. There are a few poignant lessons in Spider-Verse that writers can take to their work and come out with better writing. These lessons don’t just apply to fiction either. You can take them wherever you go, so let’s get started.
Learn From Better Writers
When Miles discovers his web-slinging powers, he finds himself a mentor in Peter Parker. Ah, he died. Peter B. Parker more or less works, right? Right. But this is the first lesson: Learn from somebody more experienced so that you don’t have to start from 0.
This isn’t a perfect system. You’ll still need to write and learn by doing but finding material on being a writer is a massive advantage. Medium is flush with these types of articles, and you can also find plenty of books on writing about any topic under the sun. Finding these materials will allow you to grow rapidly.
And who knows. Maybe one day you’ll be the Spider-Man teaching a young kid how to swing — er, write.
Get Up
This one’s hard. Spider-Verse makes it clear that getting back up after getting knocked down is one of Spider-Man’s most important qualities. He got kicked around by his friends and his enemies. This is something like what you’ll experience as a writer.
If you’re going to be a writer, you need to be prepared to get back up after rejection. Sometimes rejection takes the form of a polite email telling you that “it’s good, but not right for us.” I’ve gotten about six of those in the past month or so. Other times rejection is silence emitting from a job posting or application, and other times still it’s the lackluster or nonexistent views on an article you poured your heart into.
Rejection is going to be a constant in this industry. You’re competing with other skilled writers for jobs, spaces in a magazine page, or readers on the Internet. Rejection isn’t all bad, however. It means that you’ve got room to grow, and each rejection letter brings you a little bit closer to that acceptance that’s going to let your words get broadcast across the world. It’ll be hard. It’s not fun. But rejection can only harm your writing career if you don’t get back up.
Take a Leap of Faith
Many people who have seen Spider-Verse agree that the “What’s Up Danger?” scene when Miles comes into his own as Spider-Man is the best scene in the movie. It is. It’s amazing and emotional and heartfelt. It’s the compilation of everything Miles has learned throughout the story into a single, beautiful shot.
It’s also the most important lesson here. The act of writing itself is not enough. It’s easy to fall into the trap of rewriting and rewriting and rewriting until that article is absolutely perfect. But it might never get perfect. Your writing won’t please everybody. Or maybe it is already perfect, or you’ve said everything you want to say exactly how you want to say it and you’re just rearranging one sentence for the tenth time without changing its meaning.
Stop rewriting. Start submitting, publishing, what have you.
It’s a leap of faith in your work and yourself. It can be daunting to send your article out into the wide world of the Internet, but you’ll have to at some point. If you always hold it close to your chest, how will you grow? You’ll only get so far on your own. It might be scary, considering the veritable sea of people who’ll reject your work.
But that’s fine because you’ll get back up.
That’s fine because an editor might reject your work with a few words of advice to get better.
Hell, it might not get rejected. You might get into that Medium publication or have your story featured in a literary magazine. Your article that you were so scared of releasing could go viral and attract hundreds, if not thousands of views.
You won’t know if you’re ready. It’s a leap of faith, but one well worth taking.
