© Copyright 1991, 1999 Blake Harris. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Chapter Three
The Screenwriter as Storyteller
What Makes A Good Story?
There is sometimes much confusion over what
makes a good screen story. Indeed, many films have
been made which did poorly at the box office and which
had at the heart of their failure a poor screen story.
A professional writer or screenwriter is
often approached by people with a "great idea for a
movie."
"I've got a great story," someone will say.
"I just need someone to help me put it down the right
way." Or they will say, "I just don't have the time
(or patience) to write it all out." Some excuse or
another.
Usually such people do not have a story--
certainly not a developed one. At best, they generally
have only a vague idea of some of the elements that
make up a good story.
So what is meant by "a story?"
Clayton Hamilton many years ago said: "A
story is a representation of a series of events linked
together by the laws of cause and effect and marching
forward to predestined culmination [climax]--each event
exhibiting imagined characters preforming imagined acts
in an appropriately imagined setting."
This definition of story is very broad and
would apply to a novel, a stage play and even the short
story. For film, this can be refined.
A screenplay story is a series of linked
events to be enacted by actors in appropriate settings
that will show through the medium of film a struggle
between individual human wills motivated by emotion
rather than intellect and expressed in terms of
objective action. It also logically and suspensefully
builds to a climax and resolution.
The bare minimum ingredients of a story are
struggle, suspense and climax. Without struggle, there
is nothing to arouse the interest. Without suspense,
there is nothing to hold it. The greater the
uncertainty of the outcome, the greater the sustained
interest of the audience.
Plotting
Writers usually talk about a story as the
plot. Plotting is a skill that a writer must develop.
The plot of a screenplay is the skeleton upon
which the flesh of various incidents is hung and also
the spirit which animates that flesh.
Many times the beginner will mistake incident
for plot. He will think that if things happen, they
form a story if they all relate to the same group of
characters. This is an error.
An incident is attractive and interesting
only when there is an underlying reason for the
incident. Behind incidents there must be the support
of the plot the same way that the skeleton in the human
body supports the flesh.
A plot is the delineation of the means by
which a definite and predetermined object is gained or
lost. But to be effective it must also involve
struggle, suspense and climax.
Struggle is the clash of determination
against obstruction. If getting or losing the object
of desire is straight forward, there is little in a
plot that will interest anyone. Struggle, whether
successful or not, involves an attempt to overcome
known obstacles.
Through interest in a plot, the individual
incidents that make up the story also become of
interest to an audience.
Suspense is the single most important tool to
maintain and build interest in the struggle. If a
struggle or a series of struggles are so one-sided that
the outcome is of little doubt, then your plot will
fail to hold the audience's attention.
The audience must be in a constant state of
wondering what will happen next. This is all that is
meant by suspense. The audience might also be
wondering how something they already know happens will
unfold--a trickier form of suspense. But this still
boils down to the same thing--making the audience
wonder what will happen next.
A crisis is the peak moment of suspense.
There will usually be a number of crises in a film,
building up to the climax.
The climax is the termination of that
suspense, the point where the object aimed at is
finally won or lost. Anything that follows only wraps
up any loose ends--something that must be done as
quickly as possible. As far as the audience is
concerned, the story is over once the climax is reached
and the outcome is decided.
Do you have a good story for a screenplay?
Well, does it contain struggle and suspense throughout
which builds to a climax? If the answer is no, then
you don't have a good screen story regardless of how
great the characters are and how original some of the
scenes seem to be.
Know Your Story Before You Start
In writing a script, a writer will generally
do a far better job if he knows his story from
beginning to end before he starts actually writing the
script. He should have everything clear in his mind or
"on paper" (in the form of notes, a treatment or
outline). He should be comfortable with the story he
is trying to tell.
Notes would contain any ideas he had for
scenes, dialogue or anything else. But whether he used
each of these scenes, or pieces of scenes, would be a
decision best made only after he had worked out the
whole story.
Writing scenes without knowing what is to
come will generally result in a poorly constructed and
overwritten script.
There will usually be scenes that shouldn't
be there while scenes that should be there will be
missing. A script may start in the wrong place in the
story. If it is original fiction, the main characters
might be wrong. Characters may end up doing things for
plot reasons alone and their actions may not entirely
fit their characters. It is hard to fine-tune or
change a character after you've written 60 pages of
script.
In a screenplay there is little room for
extraneous action or dialogue. Each scene must have a
direct bearing on the plot and a definite relationship
to the other scenes which it supports or from which it
derives its support.
In working out your story (one not based on
an existing story such as a novel or a biography),
there are really two separate steps:
1) The creation or working out of your story
and characters.
2) Working out how best to present that story
in a film.
In practice, a screenwriter working on an
original script will usually bounce back and forth
between these two steps. In this way, a story is
created that will work as a film. (Not all stories are
suited to the rigorous demands of the screenplay.)
In other words, you have to consider what
works in film while working out your story and
characters. And you must constantly adjust story and
characters until these will make a good film.
If you start your writing on Step 2 and you
don't also put attention on creating and refining your
story, you may end up with one of those scripts filled
with car chases and supposedly suspenseful moments of
conflict, yet which leaves the audience walking away
dissatisfied.