Developing Story Ideas Read online

  Approximate time: 16 minutes.

  This delightful Monty Pythonesque comedy fulfills its genre norms. Each genre as we have said—be it farce, comedy noir, screwball comedy, historical fiction, buddy movie, or psychological thriller—comes with a set of audience expectations that the artist may both use and constructively subvert (see sidebar).

  Each genre has its conventions that are useful but confining. These establish a rapport with the audience, but always threaten to make a piece predictable. Anything of excellence will challenge or even subvert the norm, which helps create some of the tension that all stories need.

  Though some sequences run longer than Michael estimates, the whole will still fall short of the intended thirty minutes. So from the point of screen time alone the piece unquestionably needs developing. The situation outlined at the beginning (underlings being sent, one by one, to capture the president) seems too important, too full of potential comedy, to remain buried in the backstory, which by definition we learn about but do not see.

  Maybe the story should start at an earlier stage, when our hero is still an obscure minion in his basement mailroom. From this point onward, it feels as though some story elements are missing. When you get this feeling, you can often uncover hidden potential by comparing it with its closest parallel in myth, legend, or history. Michael’s story is about a kingdom, with the corporation president as its king, and the labyrinthine building is his castle. The king is under siege and his barons are about to depose him. This is a palace revolution in which the leader gets elbowed out of power because of his age, sickness, fatal mistakes, or corruption. Here, the leader loves power too much to step down, and underlings wrangle for a place in the new hierarchy. Sequestered high in the building, the leader is hiding from his inferiors, the body politic has become unstable and anarchic, and all his minions want now is his power for themselves.

  From the viewpoint of folk story, Farrago is the lowly page or kitchen boy. Pressed into service because everyone else has failed, he looks simpleminded, but this appearance is deceptive and suits his purposes. He means to gain advancement in one gargantuan leap, not by inching up some stupid corporate ladder. Is he naïve, or is he opportunistic like the VPs in the lobby, who have cannily sent their underlings out to die in battle? Farrago’s moral ambiguity helps raise the tale’s tension and could be played up further. Starting out as an Everyman, Farrago doesn’t earn the moral capital to triumph, so the longer the story keeps the odds stacked against him, the longer the delayed outcome will generate doubt and dramatic tension.

  Once Farrago glimpses his reward, he rushes forward into the labyrinth with all its traps and fallen fighters. Soon he runs into what every respectable labyrinth contains, a guard like the legendary minotaur. Having passed tests of luck, ingenuity, and persistence, Farrago must now outwit the gatekeeper of the inner sanctum. On passing this test too, he wins information (that the president is really a good person), which he unwisely accepts at face value.

  This is problematical, for it stymies further dramatic tension. Better would be to make him distrust this information in case it leads him into another trap. The other big problem is that the guard “is himself.” If Michael built this reflexive identity into the fabric of the whole piece, it could be an interesting psychological puzzle, but this single occurrence is neither followed up, nor used later, as it could be if Farrago found that the president was himself too, for example. A single use of the device proves inconsistent and misleading, so I recommend dropping it. Instead, maybe the scene should be played so that the dying guard appears to set Farrago up for the final trap.

  Then the guard emerges as a shapeshifter. Initially he is an opponent but he turns out to be a helper in disguise. Conversely, he could seem helpful but really be laying a trap—which would make him a trickster. To sustain tension, Michael could make Farrago assume he is the latter, and then hint that the inner sanctum is a lethal trap. To heighten the tension, Farrago could navigate several dangerous-looking situations along the way, as in the sequence when Dorothy and her friends arrive at the Wizard of Oz’s spooky castle. Finding the president undefended could again be a situation of suspense as we wait for the bolt from the blue.

  When the president claims to be a good person, Farrago should initially disbelieve him. To keep us guessing, Farrago should interrogate the president, perhaps to establish how the stand-off happened or question why the president wouldn’t resign. Like Faust, Farrago might appear to bargain with the devil as he persuades himself that the president is a misunderstood man. Believing this, he would be in worse danger. What do we want for him?

  In Michael’s ending, Farrago emerges from the elevator in cahoots with the embattled president. For it to work, Farrago’s options must remain ambiguous all the way until the elevator door opens and the unholy duo reveal themselves as gun-slinging partners. But this seems like a trick ending. What in fact will the partners now do? Will they die in a Bonnie and Clyde shoot-out? The president might, in a plot-point moment, reveal a truly evil face by grabbing the gullible Farrago and using him as a human shield while he escapes into the setting sun.

  But if their partnership is genuine and their motives good, they must somehow outwit the VPs and reinstall a leadership now benevolent and fully descended from the ivory tower. True, a happy ending is expected of broad comedy, but the unresolved nature of this one leaves a nagging question: How can a good man overstay his allotted time and remain admirable? Does he atone or repent, to show he has learned something? He cannot act as though nothing had happened.

  If the employees are to accept the reinstatement of the old order, they will need to exhibit more moral ambiguity throughout. This is difficult when all the obedient, lower-level employees have been killed off, leaving only the middle-management greedies. Kill off all your good guys in battle, and you strain credibility if you make the bad guys go through a conversion. Life is seldom like that, and comedy never.

  Another ending would be for Farrago and the president to contrive an escape and run off into the sunset together to start a new company somewhere else. This is both true to comedy’s happy endings and to villainy in corporate life, but it violates a central assumption of the piece—that the corporation is an enclosed world where struggle is unto death. The genre you choose, the setting in which you play out your morality tale, all set the expectations the characters must navigate.

  In summary, Farrago’s briefing for his heroic journey and his journey from the basement up to the heights and back down to the lobby are viable as they stand. His journey through the labyrinth needs building up, and the dying guard needs to be more ambiguous. The ordeal in the president’s office could use more steps, tension, and uncertainty—particularly as the president later exudes nothing but quiet goodness. And the denouement in the lobby needs reworking.

  My suggestions are only a few of the development possibilities, and it’s important to recognize that they are only my solution. Others would probably suggest different developments. Any critic would however try to raise the stakes for Farrago, giving him more to contest, more obstacles to get past, and more hard choices to make.

  This already represents a lot of development, and might easily expand the story far beyond the allotted thirty minutes.

  Example 2: “Eggs Benedict” (Michelle Arnove)

  Summary. “Eggs Benedict” is a bittersweet comedy about a struggling student, Meg Benedict. Under severe financial difficulties, she goes to a fertility center and donates one of her eggs to the bank in exchange for funds.

  A young couple, Kevin and Mary Donovan, who are having difficulty becoming pregnant, visit the fertility center and opt to go the route of artificial insemination, hence Meg’s egg. Two years later all is well until Mary is tragically killed in a terrible auto accident. Kevin is devastated, but is showered with love and affection by his family and friends who try to help him overcome his deep sorrow. Approximately three years later, Kevin becomes obsessed with thoughts of the semi-biol
ogical mother of his child and sets out to locate her. Through a series of channels, he is led to Meg and finds her single, attractive, and not interested in anything other than her hard-hitting career in journalism. His intentions are not initially romantic, but after he meets up with Meg, he is overcome with attraction and lust. Confused and afraid, he manages to befriend her, but under false pretenses. It is not until after a few encounters that Kevin discloses his real reasons for pursuing Meg—leaving her at first angry and confused, then finally enchanted by Kevin and the baby. The rest is history …

  Meaning/Purpose of the Story. The story’s underlying meaning and purpose suggest, again, destiny and the idea that life and death are cyclical. Although Mary’s death is tragic, the birth of the baby and the eventual meeting of Kevin and Meg are inevitable. While their meeting is not accidental, the events that lead up to it suggest a sort of fate, and this lends an enlightening feeling that “accidents” and the unexpected don’t always mean a truly negative outcome.

  Shopping List of Sequences

  1 INT. MEG’S APARTMENT: Meg is preoccupied with worries. She locates articles from magazines describing fertility clinics and egg donation—7 minutes.

  2 EXT. FERTILITY CLINIC: Meg hesitates entering the clinic—2 minutes.

  3 INT. CLINIC: As Meg is leaving, she passes Kevin and Mary in lobby, however neither party sees the other—2 minutes.

  “TWO YEARS LATER”

   4 MARY LEAVES HOUSE—1 minute.

   5 MARY’S CAR ACCIDENT—1 minute.

   6 INT. KEVIN AND MARY’S HOME: Kevin is in mourning—2 minutes.

   7 INT. MEG’S OFFICE: Meg gets phone call regarding a tip on a great story—2 minutes.

   8 EXT. OUTDOOR CAFE: Meg meets Kevin—3 minutes.

   9 EXT. MONTAGES: Kevin and Meg walk the city, have dinner, take a drive together—6 minutes.

  10 INT. KEVIN’S HOME: Kevin writes a letter to Meg—2 minutes.

  11 EXT. MEG’S FRONT DOOR: Kevin arrives and Meg greets him with affection—2 minutes.

  Approximate time: 30 minutes.

  Here’s another comedy. Its materials however are quite sketchy, especially the sequence list, where Michelle leaves out the all-important baby material. Nevertheless, the writing is promising, and comes, I think, from the heartfelt comments she makes on the story’s underlying philosophy, for which comedy does make an excellent vehicle. Life, she says, is cyclical and Fate exacts a rough justice: what is taken away in one place will be given back in another.

  Michelle calls her comedy bittersweet, and does so advisedly, for quite early she kills off one of her main characters. This may be problematic, since it looks as though the author is resorting to coincidence to crank up the pressure on her central character. Since this is not black comedy, there is also a genre problem. A death in a romantic comedy is risky, though not unknown. In a Seinfeld episode, George manages inadvertently to kill his fiancée, and the audience finds it hilarious. Their laughter, however, probably depends on loyalties and expectations built up over the length of the series.

  Could Michelle’s story arrive at the same consequences by less extreme means? If Mary were flighty from the beginning, she might return to an earlier love and leave Kevin holding the baby meant to save their marriage. By making her exit a character issue rather than one of mortality, Michelle could avoid an awkward transition. Now Kevin can compensate for Mary’s abdication by seeking a replacement mother, a test he must pass with credit if we are to continue liking him. But if Mary were to die, then we’d want him to go through all the Kubler-Ross stages of loss to show he was a decent human being. This is far from funny stuff, and would hold up the story’s central purpose—which is to get a father searching for his child’s biological mother. So, I think we can confidently suggest that Mary abscond rather than expire.

  The rest of the movie has no insuperable difficulties since it’s really a variation on the chase, with the quarry having the upper hand and the hunter having to use charm, ingenuity, and the secret weapon of their baby as bait.

  Central to the story is putting Meg’s concept of herself as an independent-minded feminist under test by confronting her with the primal lure of motherhood. Before she fully knows what has hit her, she must decide between head and heart, between career and motherhood. The catch? That she cannot have her child unless she accepts its father and her role as the mother in a family.

  Now we know where the story wants to go, we can divide it up and speculate about what else it needs:

  Act I

  The first phase builds pressures on the main characters and reveals their characters through showing how they act under duress. Meg needs to survive economically in order to achieve her promising career. We know it matters because she has done something extreme—selling a part of her body and lineage. Kevin and Mary need a child, but if Mary leaves, Kevin is left as a single dad. The primal need for a mate drives him to seek the child’s biological mother.

  Act II

  Now Kevin’s problem is clear, the film can turn the tables of gender by making him the compulsive nest builder. Kevin must attempt to corral Meg, and Meg must resist mightily. That’s the satisfaction of this piece. Though its outcome is probably inevitable, the author must keep us and Kevin guessing as long as possible. How? Maybe Meg is a promising journalist following the best story of her career. Maybe Kevin first hides their baby in the mistaken idea that it will alienate her, when in fact it’s his best argument. Maybe Meg, in writing up her story, declares feminist principles or ideas that make Kevin’s plans seem hopeless.

  At all costs, the story must maintain the duel between their conflicting needs; ideally it should escalate all the way to the movie’s major crisis point—where Meg realizes that Kevin’s delightful baby is actually hers too.

  Every story has its own needs and identity. You must give birth to a story before you can know it and see where it wants to go. Advance by trying a lot of “What if …” ideas. Serving your tale and doing its bidding is the author’s private delight.

  To raise the stakes, maybe the story Meg is pursuing is about surrogate parenthood, and by an irony her journalism uncovers that the baby of the man so relentlessly following her is actually her own. This offers deliciously serpentine plot possibilities, and a turning point at which the baby’s charm seduces Meg and compels her into making an about-turn.

  Plot is the mold that shapes its contents. Plot episodes form a chain of cause and effect that forces the characters into antagonistic struggles. Making every scene follow inevitably from the last takes much ingenuity.

  Act III

  If Mary were absent rather than dead, another irony becomes possible: after Meg and Kevin have come together, Mary could return, only to discover she has forfeited her place as Kevin’s wife. The final question might then be, can Kevin and Meg be large-hearted enough to accommodate her late desire to see the child that the three of them made? Now you have a truly modern romance.

  Willpower is the powerhouse of drama, no matter whether comedy, tragedy, or fantasy. Most characters have to struggle with whatever bars them from getting what they think they want.

  On Comedy

  Be aware of how point of view is handled in the stories you encounter. Michelle’s tale anticipates the assignment in our next chapter by having two POV characters, neither of whom predominates.

  Know your characters and their worlds. Fiction fails when writer, director, or actors engage only superficially with the main characters. Knowing them means you delve tirelessly into their every aspect and issue. Do this thoroughly, and it really shows.

  To use your characters’ full potential, you have to explore them exhaustively, which takes persistent, dedicated work. Comedy needs this, especially when character-driven. Your characters need heightened risks and dangers so they can struggle meaningfully for what they believe or need. When their struggles are interesting and compelling, someone will change and develop in a significant way.
Laughter from your audience is the reward currency for getting this right.

  Story development is the task of adjusting each element—character, motive, situation, escalation, crisis, and resolution—in relation to the others. Only then will each sequence maintain its tension and resolve into the next, and the next. It takes many drafts before demanding readers agree that the piece is optimal. The most demanding of all forms is comedy.

  Every story, no matter what genre or form of representation it takes, builds to its climax through maintaining a tension between individual and moral forces. A developed story is one in which the characters and their identity, motives, and actions exist within a balance of pressures that all feel right, all feel inevitable in relation to each other. Without this balance, the audience knows the central situation cannot hold up. If Kevin ever sees that courting Meg is a losing proposition, for instance, the story is dead in the water.

  Though life is full of the far-fetched, coincidental, and inexplicable, art must work hard to use these factors yet remain credible. Comedy is the hardest taskmaster of all, since there is so little margin for error or inequity. This makes writing it fascinating, exacting, and fulfilling.

  As your piece begins to make sense throughout, you feel the thrill of doing a demanding job well.

  Pacing

  As a genre, comedy moves faster than real life because we expect the characters to be larger than life, funnier, more inventive, and quicker witted. An oversupply of the comedic insures against the inevitable fluctuations of quality, but you don’t necessarily want to make your audience drink from a firehose. Thus, if you direct a comedy, you are wise to shoot it in such a way that you have much control over pacing during editing. You also cover yourself by trying out a fine cut on a variety of audiences. Where you must speed or slow the pace is critical in movie making. In the theatre, actors can sense the audience’s response time and alter their pacing accordingly.