Developing Story Ideas Read online

  Figurative language. Search the world of your story for visual elements able to connote abstract ideas (Figure 21–1). Key objects and images can give visible form to what might remain subtextual. Such poetic language includes:

  Symbol—something material that by convention represents an abstract idea (falling sand = time running out)

  Metaphor, or imaginative analogy (shot of traffic cut to medical diagram of blood circulation)

  Simile, which likens one thing to another (politician deflecting complaints cut to water running off duck’s back)

  Emblem, representing things (two snakes entwined with a dagger used to represent medical expertise)

  Paul has allowed excessive time for some sequences. The first gets five minutes—but try closing your eyes and visualizing the boys getting their orders. A static, expositional scene like this might run only a tenth of that time. Commonly a first draft lacks depth and detail, and can only hint at the thematic potential we anticipate.

  Also not yet present is individuality for each of the boys, John and Henry. So little are they differentiated that they could be rolled into one with no great loss. The subsidiary characters they encounter also remain flat characters, in particular Clair. Such lack of dimension is normal enough for a beginning outline.

  Figure 21–1 The worn-out, overloaded vehicles in The Grapes of Wrath (USA, 1940) become metaphors for humankind’s uncertain progress through misfortune (frame from the film).

  Paul could get a lot more mileage from his protagonists by working on their contrasting temperaments, histories, and needs. Imagine that John is married and longs for his wife and baby at home. If Henry were single, he could start out envious, withdrawn, and anxious about ever finding a mate. He could along the way become deeply attracted to Clair, whom we’d make unavailable just to “up the ante” (raise the stakes). Let’s also experiment by giving them mismatched personalities, one man being “can-do” headstrong, and the other cautious to excess. This will charge the space between them so that with every new predicament they madden each other. Because some circumstances require speed of response, and others careful premeditation, each can eventually learn to value the qualities of the other.

  Complications no more remarkable than these will generate issues and conflicts characteristic of men in their formative years and provide the complications needed in Act II. Maturing—the point of this story—means sharing, learning from others, and seeing them as equals even when they are unlike yourself.

  Complications in a dramatic plot are the difficulties, obstacles, and distractions that expose a person’s characteristics under duress. Most of what we learn in life, we learn the hard way, a truth useful to comedy and tragedy alike.

  By developing them, we begin to look not just at them, but through their way of seeing. We see how John sees Henry, and how Henry sees John. Instead of a settled, neutral, omniscient authorial view, we should sink alternately into each man’s present and share his dilemmas and feelings. This would bring us close to all the quandaries, frustrations, and rewards of real living.

  Since we’re making art, not a simulacrum of life, everything must be pared down to what is succinct and fast-moving. The playwright Arthur Miller’s first drafts were said to be more than double their final length, which Miller reached by a long period of editing and compression.

  A subplot is an independent storyline that will eventually intersect with one already existing. It may contrast with the main plot, complement it, or provide more action and complication. Subplots allow:

  Digression. Situations, characters, and other issues can develop outside the main storyline. Because we see the main characters in other relationships, we also see new sides to them.

  Tension. The audience engages with characters and issues that may either become germane, or may prove a “red herring.”

  Parallel storytelling permits:

  Narrative compression. By cutting between ongoing storylines you can pare each to essence.

  Imagination. Multiple storylines invite the audience to exercise judgment, interpretation, and powers of prediction.

  Active participation. Any story generating unanswered questions invites the audience to become active participants, not passive receptacles.

  Short films and short stories usually focus on a single main character, but the novel and the feature film can develop a tapestry of characters and subplots. D. W. Griffith said he learned to weave together concurrent storylines from the novels of Charles Dickens (Figure 21–2). Called parallel storytelling, this sprightly technique lets the storyteller condense time and yet also create comparison, variety, and pace.

  Can we try this here? Presently we see the boys together in nearly every scene, but subplots could separate them and show them in relation to other characters. There could be authorially generated subplots involving subsidiary characters alone. For instance:

  Betsy Ross making her flag intercut with the two young men getting their orders.

  Clair saying goodbye to her husband.

  The announcement of her husband’s death that makes Clair a widow.

  Clair’s life after the young men have left intercut with their journey onward.

  Washington’s troops losing their flag, then carrying on, suffering and flagless.

  Washington’s men shivering as they rip apart their clothing for some unspecified purpose—later revealed to have been the making of their own flag.

  Figure 21–2 D. W. Griffith learned some of the storytelling techniques in Birth of a Nation (1915) from reading Dickens (frame from the film).

  Parallel storytelling helps, but doesn’t overcome, the concentration on the two main characters. So let’s look for advantages: maybe the point of the film should be not allowing us to escape from the heroes’ shared predicament. That might rule out subplots. This, after all, is a road movie, so why not stay with them on the road? Certainly their experiences can be intensified, and more historical research will assuredly bring more possibilities. It could aim to get the period, speech, and political issues so authentic that even a historian could applaud.

  On Receiving Criticism and the Layers of the Writing Process

  Since we are critiquing a writer’s first draft, we would stop here. Paul would listen, make notes, and go away to ponder the ideas behind the suggestions. He would be wise to do absolutely nothing for a few days, and then to incorporate only the ideas left standing in his mind as persuasive and exciting.

  Writers engage mainly in rewriting, one layer at a time. In any new draft, it is wise never to deal with more than the topmost layer of problems. Especially if you overreact to criticism, you can easily dive into a frenzy of wholesale changes and unwittingly forfeit the artistic integrity of your piece. An artist must hold tenaciously to the original idea’s integrity. To help yourself do this, write an updated working hypothesis before any big critical session. This anchors you to a rock when the waves break over you.

  Writing is really about rewriting. Some tips:

  In a new draft, don’t try to fix everything. Fix only the top level of problems.

  Stay with these until you get them right. There will always be subsidiary layers of problems, and eventually your attention will fan out to the finer details.

  Periodically review your working hypothesis, or you won’t realize how your work’s fundamentals have changed.

  Be ready to stop. If you’re making no progress, do something else until you can return with a fresh eye and renewed energy.

  Keep earlier drafts in case you need them. Perfectionism is only a hair’s breadth from obsessive compulsive disorder. Writers unable to stop often mutilate their work.

  An artwork is like a tent: alter just one guy-rope, and the canopy will remain distorted until you have adjusted all the others. A dramatic work is similar, and you adjust it by posing questions and tackling deficiencies, layer by layer, until you come as close as you can to a harmonious whole.

  Why Working in Outline Form Matters


  Working as long as possible in outline forces you to drive your storytelling forward by visual and behavioral means, no matter what medium you intend to work in. Scene outlines exclude dialogue, so the characters must establish themselves by their actions, appearances, and emerging agendas. This emphasis is not peculiar to film, which gained its ascendency during the silent era. Literary works also gain from demonstrative actions and minimal dialogue from their characters. Small wonder that Charles Frazier’s Civil War–period novel Cold Mountain, about a wounded Confederate soldier making a Homeric return to the love of his life, became a film within six years (Figure 21–3), and then an opera.

  Notes

  1Terence, Roman poet c. 195–159 BC.

  2Lucius Seneca (4 BC–AD 65).

  Going Further

  For help expanding your best outlines into their full form, see Part VI Developing as a Writer, in particular Chapter 25 Expanding to the Finished Product. There is much interesting discussion on the Internet about screenwriting, and for more debate and dialogue try www.cyberfilmschool.com/. Use its many links to jump off to related sites.

  Figure 21–3 Charles Frazier’s 1997 novel Cold Mountain was made into a film in 2003 and then an opera in 2015 (frame from the film).

  In the meantime, develop your own work, and rely on your instincts and common sense as long as possible. Then pick your authorities very carefully! Buy no manual without double-checking that you like its tone and scope.

  Here are most of the best-regarded screenwriting books, as well as my book, cowritten with Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, on the whole fiction filmmaking process.

  Most of these screenwriting manuals are classics that have earned their longevity.

  Blacker, Irwin R. Elements of Screenwriting: A Guide for Film and Television Writing. Reissued 1996.

  Egri, Lajos. The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives. 2009 (Originally written in the 1950s for playwrights, but highly regarded by screenwriters too).

  Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. Revised and updated, 2005 (Field was regarded as the screenwriting guru, and his books are bracing, to the point, and Hollywood oriented).

  Horton, Andrew. Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay. 2000 (A manual that bucks the trend toward plot-driven drama and concentrates on character and character issues).

  Hunter, Lew. Lew Hunter’s Screenwriting 434. Perigee, 2004 (Hollywood screenwriting at its most intelligent and purposeful, with an emphasis on enjoying the process of writing).

  Rabiger, Michael and Mick Hurbis-Cherrier. Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics, 5th ed., 2013 (Essentials of the entire fiction filmmaking process, including writing from the viewpoint of actor, director, and screenwriter. Sections of the book—on how actors control the inner lives of their characters, for instance—will be especially relevant. In the three chapters of Part 3: The Director and the Script [pp. 75–114] we elaborate on the qualities and importance of a first-class script).

  Vale, Eugene. Vale’s Technique of Screenwriting. 1998 (Another classic, with an emphasis on screenwriting as an audience-oriented science).

  Part V

  Creating Collaboratively

  This part offers two experiments in collaborative authorship, a road less traveled than writing solo. In the latter, the characters and their world often suffer because they all emerge from the sensibility of a single individual. Much durable art has in fact come about by other means. For thousands of years people created stories, plays, and epic poetry collectively, without designated writers or directors. Greek mythology, Norse sagas, and Arthurian legends were all the work of many hands, and the results retain their power today, exercising a powerful influence in all aspects of our culture. Today’s equivalent of collaborative writing can be seen in “devised theatre,” which is reexploring the grassroots compositional methods. Here is what one participant found:

  Without a playwright, our ensemble faced the seemingly impossible task of creating a play from scratch with only a theme to guide us—and that theme is … missed connections…. For me, Missed Connections began with an audition and a series of improvisations…. We found ourselves sifting through hours of material. And finally, we have cobbled together an 80-minute show that asks the question: If you had one chance to be the person you always wanted to be, what would you do? The theme drove us, the company learned to communicate and compromise, and we created something exciting.1

  Making films is a collaboration of specialists, but some directors have gone further by making exceptional use of their cast in the writing and conceptual processes. The assignments that follow offer two experiments in which you become a catalyst and editor rather than a conventional writer. These experiments seem to point toward theatre or cinema as their outcome, but the method can be used for memoir, fiction, and nonfiction too.

  22 Catalyzing Drama

  Today, vibrant cinema like Richard Linklater’s Oscar-winning Boyhood (USA, 2014) is emerging from actor-centered generative methods rather than from the traditional screenwriter working alone. To chronicle a Texan boy growing up into a young man, Linklater shot at intervals over twelve years, using the same cast in improvised scenes. In the film, people age visibly and develop in mind, behavior, and relationship as well as physically. Most touching is the unfolding relationship between mother and son, for which Patricia Arquette received an Academy Award.

  Actor-centered fiction film goes back many decades. Ingmar Bergman, who knew his actors well from directing them in the Swedish National Theatre, gave them a prominent place in the generative process when he took up filmmaking. Beginning from an idea or conviction, he would develop his questions, memories, and dreams into an annotated short story. This he gave to his actors as a spur to extended discussions and invention. From the actors drawing on their own lives and issues, characters and relationships came to life with the eerie intensity of lived experience. Then, to balance and focus the underlying metaphysics, Bergman would use his notes of the generated material and dialogue to write a full screenplay, one his players could wholeheartedly perform.

  In the 1950s, the New York actor/director John Cassavetes, disaffected with the artificiality of Hollywood fiction, turned to improvising. Most originally, he believed that human character is not fixed, intrinsic, and waiting only to be revealed. Rather, it is something pliable and nascent that we negotiate into being through our emotional relationship with others.

  At a time when drugs, alcohol, and psychiatry were prominent forces in New York life, Cassavetes sought to capture human truth through the extremes of confession and conflict. Using the new, highly portable film equipment developed for documentary, he made sprawling, intense, fractious works like Shadows (1959) and Faces (1968). Later, with a full film unit he made films like A Woman under the Influence (1974). Like all his works, it teems with raucous, passionate energy and is notable for moments of striking human revelation.

  See Cassavetes at work on YouTube directing his cast with charm, authority, and unyielding pressure in the documentary A Constant Forge.2

  Assignments

  The following two assignments approach scene generation differently, each aiming to lift the lid of Pandora’s box for your interest. In the first, the director/writer moves from a thematic idea to a scene developed with the actors.

  Assignment 22–1: From a Theme to a Scene Improvised with Actors

  This assignment, in the spirit of Bergman and Cassavetes’s compositional methods, makes use of the kind of ideas, memories, dreams, marks, and themes that you have been writing about in Part II, “The Roots of Invention.”

  Step 1: Take a powerful “mark” left on you by your experience, which you can divulge or keep private, and use it to generate a theme that you could apply in different ways (Examples: “the need to break out of a sense of imprisonment” or “beggars can’t be choosers”).

  Step 2: Work with two classmates assigned to you as potential actors, and des
cribe the kind of scene you’d like them to portray. Ask them to relate similar experiences, and develop ideas for a four-minute scene incorporating the best and most relevant of your actors’ suggestions and associations.

  Step 3: Pitch the contents of your proposed scene, then briefly describe its evolutionary process with your actors.

  Assignment 22–2: From Actor-Generated Characters to a Scene with a Theme

  Here the history, personality, and creativity of the cast helps the director/writer to shape a character-driven story. The director asks actors about powerful characters they have known, then helps build the individual characteristics that, put together, create a clash of personalities.

  Step 1: The director is assigned (or chooses) two classmates as actors, makes initial notes on characters they might play, ways they might differ, and issues over which they might clash.

  Step 2: The director now interviews each actor separately, and asks for: Descriptions of three or four strong, influential characters in the actor’s life

  Ideas about each character’s main “problem” and agenda in life

  What the actor would concentrate on, were he/she playing that character

  Step 3: The director devises a situation and scene after choosing the most promising character and their issues from each player. Together, actors and director/writer devise a scene of conflict that can be funny, sad, angry, or carry any other emotional connotation.