- The Madlab Post

This guest post is from Rashida of Books, Bass and Beauty who I met during the WordCount Blogathon.

Documentaries are my favorite types of films to watch. There's just something about the reality of them that intrigues me. Anybody can use their imagination to make a good movie. Taking real life and transforming it into a great film, however, is truly amazing to me. As an urban fiction author, I always put some of my real life and experiences in my stories. Watching documentaries helped me learn how to do that. Here are some of my favorite documentaries and how they have made me a better writer, a "docu-writer".

"Very Young Girls"

Everyone's life has a story and it starts when they are just a kid. I learned that from Very Young Girls and I use that in my writing. When creating characters and their back stories, I go all the way back to childhood. I think of the things that have happened to them in their past and how it has made them into the person they currently are. When you go through traumatic experiences and you are forced to grow up at an early age, you carry that with you into adulthood. Thanks to this documentary I now know how to create realistic characters with depth.

"Oh, Saigon"

I stumbled across this documentary on a public access channel one night. The story behind this family hit home immediately. Like Doan, the film maker, I come from a family that is blended and estranged at the same time. Just like hers, my father doesn't visit his family or where he grew up often because of the pain from his past. No matter what race, sex, or religion you are, families are all the same. I keep that in mind in my writing. I have lots of people that read my work that have never had any interest in urban books. What I want is for them to be able feel real emotion and see some of themselves or someone they know in my stories. I do that by being like Doan and putting it all out there for the world to see. I'm not afraid to put my family's history, good or bad, in my writing.

"Backstage"

Backstage is a documentary that goes behind the scenes of the "Hard Knock Life" tour back in 1999. This tour made history because it was the very first all hip hop tour to travel across the country to sold out arenas without any negativity. At that time I was a teenager and the independent hip hop label was still new. Rocafella, Ruff Ryders, and Murder Inc. Records were the front runners of this movement. I love this documentary not only because it's so nostalgic for me, but it was the first time that I saw on film that you can live your dreams and be self-made. Just like hip hop, urban fiction has a bad reputation because of the subject matter. What people don't see are the authors behind those stories. The morals of the stories are overlooked because of the strong language that so many can't seem to get around. So, what Backstage taught me was to stay true to myself and write the stories that come from my heart. No matter who doesn't like what I have to say, I am always Rashida. That's the best and most important thing I've learned thus far!

Rashida is an author and book reviewer of urban/street literature, blogger and lover of hip-hop culture. Become her fan on Facebook or add her on Twitter.

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