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Writing Screenplay – Writing a Saleable Screenplay

Writing screenplay pieces is not something that everyone is capable of. There are many different ways to go about writing a screenplay, but you need to know the basics in order to become successful. Furthermore, it isn’t just about writing a script or learning how to screenwrite so that you can produce a finished product. The goal in this is to ensure that you learn how to write a screenplay that will SELL. It doesn’t matter if your script is the most compelling, grammatically correct and best formatted if you don’t write it to sell.

You have to become a bit of a salesperson when it comes to writing screenplay pieces. You will need to make sure that your script captivates buyers and catches people’s interest so that they want to know more. You can research writing hints and tips to help in the process, but not everything that you find will be useful. You really need to focus on structure development, character development, plot, and developing the subtext of the storyline. When you create these elements properly, you will have no trouble drawing in potential buyers and directors who will want to make your movie or TV show happen.

Writing screenplay pieces is a different process for every person. However, your goal will always be the same: write what sells. It might seem difficult to write about a topic if you aren’t familiar with it, so stay away from uncharted waters. Write what you know, and make it good. Make sure that your writing captivates the audience and cannot be turned away. Of course, you can’t get this opinion from yourself, so you should find an objective audience who can tell you whether you’re on the right path. When you are writing screenplay pieces, you will need to find a script editor and formatting specialist to help make sure that your piece is perfect before you even think about showing it to potential buyers.

Selling a screenplay is a lot of work, but not as much as writing one. Fortunately, if you take writing screenplay pieces seriously, you should have no trouble coming up with a saleable product that will basically sell itself. Read books about screenwriting and the film industry so that you understand what you’re getting into. These resources are new and have only been around for a decade or two, but they can be very helpful in your quest for screenwriting perfection.

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Comedy’s Greatest Wish by Stuart Voytilla

This article posted with permission from The Writers Store. (http://writersstore.com)

Comedy has always taken a supporting role to the more serious Hollywood genres. During this awards season, it’s easy to recognize the year’s great dramas and epics; however, 2003 was a good year for well-written comedy and romantic comedy. And the one upstart film that defied critics, warmed audience hearts, and filled distributor coffers was a comedy about a big fat Greek wedding. If anything, its success proves that during this time of economic uncertainty and global tensions, we need a well-told tale that makes us feel good about ourselves.

But is comedy’s sole purpose to entertain the audience? And is that why it’s hard to respect comedy as a ‘serious’ genre?

_{Why Laughter?}

_{The power of comedy is the effect. How do we know comedy is working? The audience is laughing. But we laugh for many reasons, not solely because we are being entertained. And understanding why we laugh and why we need laughter can help the writer decide what type of comedy to write.}

_{Comedy is not solely entertainment, but it offers a needed escape from the stress and restrictions of our everyday routines. This workaday world often dehumanizes us, forcing us to kowtow to totalitarian bosses and time-crunching gadgets. And through comedy we can laugh at others struggling through that same world. We recognize that we are not alone in this rat race, and thus learn to laugh at ourselves and our situation.}

_{Comedy can give us a needed shot of self-esteem. By laughing at the comic foibles of others, we feel a bit better about ourselves and our own mundane problems. Also, comedy allows us to make light of serious issues that we may be struggling with such as the angst of adolescence or hardship of romance, so that we aren’t the only ones feeling this pain and awkwardness.}

_{Comedy represents the trickster archetype of Hollywood genre. Like the court jester who gets away with criticizing the king and his kingdom, comedy is an effective way to question our society, its institutions, and beliefs. By putting a comic spin on serious issues from war to HMOs, comedy reveals the madness of our world. Comedy makes us think and perhaps sways change.}

_{Comedy can diffuse a difficult situation. An opening joke can ease the tension between speaker and audience. Quick wit and snappy retorts can effectively knock a playground bully down a few inches.}

_{Comedy is a celebration of what it means to be human. It celebrates our everyday joys in life. Traditional theatrical comedy often ended in marriage and celebration, with an invitation to the audience to join the fun and continue the festivities beyond the world of the stage and screen.}

_{Comedy heals us, not just by making us look at the problems of our society. Laughter makes us feel better. A daily dose of guffaws is great for the cardiovascular system. Have you attended a laughter health club lately? No joke, they are out there.}

_{Comedy is pretty powerful for a mere entertainer. But the process of writing comedy deserves respect as well.}

Laughter In The Writing

The comedy film is often seen as two hours packed with funny gags, right? (You may blow a raspberry now, please.) This perception makes writing/ creating/ making the comic film seem easy, effortless -’ and with comedy built around a favorite comedy actor, aren’t most of those funny moments coming from the actor’s improvisation? (Sure, but who’s giving them the situation to inspire their comic wizardry?) Another popular misconception is the notion that ‘comedy writing cannot be taught.’

Comic writers are blessed with their unique comic perspective (i.e., comic goggles through which they see the world). You’re either blessed with the talent or damned without it (some comedy writers would reverse that!) Yes, talent is a big factor. But the fundamentals of making comedy work in feature format can be taught. Much of that foundation is needed for all well-told tales. By opening your eyes to see how comedy works, and nurturing your original comic perspective, soon you’re donning your personalized comic goggles. This may sound easy, but writing comedy is hard, serious writing. These topics would fill a book (yes, shameless plug for my book, I know), but to get you started, let’s focus on one important need that comedy serves our audience: wish fulfillment. Let’s see how wish fulfillment can help us build our comic world.

In this exploration, I’ll use examples from successful comedies nominated for both Oscars and WGA awards for screenwriting: My Big Fat Greek Wedding (nominated for original screenplay), and About a Boy (nominated for best adapted screenplay).

My Big Fat Spoiler Notice: for these analyses I have to reveal some key moments. Both titles are available on DVD/Video, so you may want to watch the movies before reading on.

_{Wish Fulfillment And Worst Fear}

_{Comedy serves an audience’s need for wish fulfillment. It offers journeys of a trickster breaking rules, usurping the establishment, spouting witty comebacks, and often pursuing a reckless course of personal gratification. It can be enjoyed vicariously through the ultimate heroic sacrifice, whether it’s Buster Keaton overcoming fear, fate and everything that our mechanized world can throw in his path to save his train and the girl in The General, or Adam Sandler’s Water Boy becoming a collegiate football star. The comic journey can serve the more gratifying wish-fulfillment needs of getting well-deserved revenge (Nine to Five, or Oceans Eleven, for example).}

_{Successful children’s films continually tap into the target audience’s greatest wishes. Home Alone gave us every kid’s dream at some point in their lives—to have the house all to oneself! The only rules are no rules. In Jimmy Neutron, the parents have left town (wish fulfillment: let’s party all night), but they’ve been abducted by aliens (worst fear: yikes, we’re going to have to save them!).}

_{Why is wish fulfillment so important? It helps feed the audience’s vicarious need for empathy and identification. Watching a character fight for what is most dear to them and struggling against their greatest fears, allows us to better root for them. To dish out laughter, many of comedy’s most deliciously funny moments are seeing how a character is able to get out of a moment of collision between the pursuit of greatest desire and avoidance of worst fear.}

_{But isn’t the pursuit of wish fulfillment simply the character’s goal? And to counter that, wouldn’t the worst fear be the character’s failure to succeed? This pursuit/avoidance dynamic goes deeper than that. In successful comedy, where outlandish, uncomfortable and unexpected situations arise, the hero’s worst fear may not be recognized until pursuit of our greatest wish is tackled. And as goals may change for our characters during the course of the movie, so do their greatest desires. As our story’s hero gets deeper and deeper involved in the story, and the situation becomes more complicated, our worst fear may be well beyond what was initially imagined. Often, our heroes simply need to enter the story’s special world before they realize what is truly their greatest wish ’- and their worst fear.}

_{The pursuit of love or happiness in life can enrich our most identifying comedic premises ’- these are central goals in both My Big Fat Greek Wedding and About a Boy. In MBFGW, Toula Portokalos is conscious of this goal from the outset, and it’s what she will win in the end (and some). In About a Boy, Will’s worst fear of commitment to family becomes his greatest wish by the end of the film, and grants him true happiness.}

_{Let’s see how the collision of wish fulfillment and worst fear plays out in key moments of these contrasting comedies.}

The Pursuit Of The Greatest Wish Can Structure The Entire Story

Suffocated by her Greek heritage and her overbearing father, Toula wants to be happier, prettier, braver. This pursuit structures her entire journey. Her greatest fear is that she’ll live a frumpy eternity working her father’s Greek restaurant.

An encounter at the restaurant with non-Greek Ian gives Toula the courage to ask her father if she can go back to school. With her mother’s help, Gus agrees. Committing to this threshold helps Toula transform herself. She is prettier, more confident, and a deeper wish is also uncovered. Her success at her new job at the travel agency opens the door for love.

But if Toula pursues a relationship with Ian, she’ll need to deal with her greatest fear: Gus’ rejection. His daughter must marry a Greek man, and have Greek babies. So to avoid that worst fear, she keeps her relationship with Ian secret, an impossible task when you have 27 first cousins in your family.

But this relationship is worth fighting for, and Ian confesses his love for Toula. Despite her father’s rejection, they agree to get married. Ian proves his love for Toula, and respect for her father, by agreeing to be baptized in a Greek Orthodox Church.

Indeed the journey ends in marriage, a celebration of Ian and Toula’s love. The fulfillment of their greatest wish brings together their two families in acceptance and happiness. And Toula gains the unexpected gift of her acceptance of her own big, loud Greek family.

_{A Character’s Worst Fear May Become His Greatest Desire By The Journey’s End}

_{In About a Boy, Will (Hugh Grant) consciously pursues a world of childish self-satisfaction in his pursuit of guilt-free passionate flings with single mothers. His greatest fear is long-term commitment in a relationship and its byproduct, children.}

_{He discovers a gold mine of single mothers, the support group SPAT, Single Parents Alone Together. To pursue this greatest wish, Will attends the meetings pretending that he’s a single father of a two-year-old boy. Now his greatest fear is discovery of his deception.}

_{At a SPAT picnic, Will befriends 12-year-old Marcus. In contrast to Will, Marcus’ greatest desire is family, and his worst fear is being alone. When Marcus’ mother attempts suicide (a worst fear never imagined by the boy), Marcus realizes he needs a family of three and pursues Will as a prospective match for Mom. This greatest wish collides head-on with Will’s ‘man is an island’ philosophy.}

_{Marcus discovers that Will was lying about having a son and blackmails Will into being a friend. When Marcus’ mother discovers this ongoing relationship, she makes Marcus the responsibility of Will.}

_{Will agrees to face his worst fear and spend Christmas with Marcus and his family. Overcoming this ordeal, Will earns his reward. At a New Year’s party, Will meets another single mother, Rachel, and he’s smitten (wish fulfillment). But Rachel believes that Marcus is Will’s son. His relationship with Marcus has taught Will to be honest. He confesses his mistake hoping Rachel understands (wish fulfillment), but he loses her (worst fear).}

_{Meanwhile, Marcus has made a friend in school, a girlfriend at that (wish fulfillment). But he finds his mom in tears and fears that she may try to kill herself again. He wants to sing a song for her at the school concert, and asks for Will’s help. Suffering the pain of his break-up, Will refuses Marcus. Will confesses an unimaginable worst fear ’- I’m nobody. Their friendship is destroyed (an additional worst fear unimagined).}

_{Marcus is determined to sing anyway (wish fulfillment), without anyone’s help, even if it is social suicide (worst fear). Will realizes how much Marcus needs him, he races to the concert to stop him (worst fear). Will wants Marcus to bow out, but Marcus defends his gift for his mother and goes on stage alone. Marcus’ (and Will’s) worst fear is realized, the audience hates him. But Will offers back-up, and a resurrection of their greatest wish, friendship.}

_{By overcoming their worst fear, Will and Marcus earn more than they could ever have desired. By next Christmas, they have family, friends, and their respective romances.}

Conclusion

Awareness of your character’s greatest desires and worst fears is only one consideration when building your comedy story. Don’t just give your character a goal, think bigger. Ask what is their greatest desire, and what will they go through to get it. Do they want it enough to face their greatest fear? Maybe their greatest fear is what they really needed all along. Make it difficult for your character, and you’ll be surprised by the comic results. Comedy ain’t easy. Hey, comedy shouldn’t be.

By the way, what is comedy’s greatest wish?

Oscar?

Even bigger.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Stuart Voytilla is a screenwriter, literary consultant, author of the best-selling title ‘Myth and the Movies,’ and co-author of the recently released ‘Writing the Comedy Film.’ Stuart teaches screenwriting and film aesthetics at San Diego State University.

© 2007 The Writers’ Computer Store®, LLC All Rights Reserved.

How The Great Story Does Its Work by James Bonnet

This article posted with permission from The Writers Store. (http://writersstore.com)

The purpose of story, as I see it, is to guide us to our full potential and the nature of story is to conceal that purpose in an enticing sugar coat (the entertainment dimensions) that lures us into the experience. But if the purpose is concealed, then how does it do its work?

The great story ’ by which I mean the great myths, legends, fairy tales, classics, critical and box office successes ’ does its work in several important ways:

First, it stimulates our imaginations by provoking personal fantasies, which lead to the desire for actions in the real world. Then it gives us a taste of what it might be like if we were actually to make one of these passages and accomplish some of these things.

Carl Jung explains it this way—The auditor experiences some of the sensations but is not transformed. Their imaginations are stimulated: they go home and through personal fantasies begin the process of transformation for themselves. All of this happens automatically and the story recipients need not be consciously aware that the story is intentionally trying to influence and guide them.

Having lured us into the adventure by fantasies and a taste, the great story then provides us with a road map, which is to say, it outlines all of the actions and tasks of the hero’s and anti-hero’s journey which we have to accomplish in order to complete one of these passages. Plus, it provides a tool kit for solving all of the problems that have to be solved to accomplish the actions and tasks. The tool kit, of course, is the problem solving story structures of which Aristotle’s classical structure is a significant part.

Every great story will divulge a little more of this truth, and bit by bit each step of the passage is revealed. Again, all of this is going on without the story recipients’ conscious knowledge that it’s happening.

How does it do that? By meaningful connections. If it’s a great story, we will remember it, and, over time, we will make meaningful associations and connections with our real life situations.

The more hidden truth the story contains, the more appealing it will be; the more relevant it will be to our lives and the more likely we are to remember it. We’ll cherish and work with it all of our lives, then we’ll pass it on to our children.

No one story, as I’ve indicated, contains the whole truth. The process is cumulative. Each story contributes a little bit of this vital information. We can be affected by many different stories at the same time. We relate them to our lives when, and if we need them and make the necessary course corrections.

It was more than thirty years from the time I first heard Rumpelstiltskin until I realized that the secrets hidden in that marvelous tale were about the creative process and how the mind is organized. In Rumplestiltskin, and many stories like it, an endangered princess has to perform the impossible task of transforming a pile of straw into gold by morning or she’ll lose her head. Then a miraculous helper, Rumplestiltskin, comes to her rescue and accomplishes the task for her while she sleeps.

Being a writer, I would often fall asleep at night worrying about certain difficult story problems I hadn’t been able to solve during that work day. And just as often, a marvelous solution to those problems would pop into my head as I was waking up the following morning. Naturally, I wondered who or what was solving those problems. Suddenly, one day I made the connection. My God, I exclaimed. It’s Rumpelstiltskin!

The miraculous little helper was a metaphor, a personification in image form of some unconscious problem-solving mechanism. The secret hidden in the marvelous story had something important to reveal about the creative process and how our minds function. Namely, that inside our minds there is an unconscious problem-solving mechanism (a Rumpelstiltskin) that continues to work, and transform our serious problems (the straw) into precious insights (the gold), while our conscious minds are asleep. Another little piece of the puzzle had been revealed. And, finally, the great story guides this whole process with incredible insights and wisdom.

In A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Future is showing Scrooge his own tombstone, the kneeling, pathetic, nearly repentant Scrooge asks him, Are these things that will be or things that may be? The answer to that question, and the point of the whole story, is that these are things that will be, if he does nothing, and things that may be, if he does something about it, if he repents and changes his character. If he changes his character, he will change his future. In other words, at any given moment we have a certain destiny. And, if we’re not content with that destiny, we can do something about it. We can transform our futures by transforming ourselves. If we change who we are, if we awaken our humanity, we can change our destiny. That’s good news.

Believe it or not there’s something similar and equally profound in the movie Back to the Future. Having seen Back to the Future Part II, and having no desire to see Part III, I have concluded that the profundity in Part I got there by accident, but nevertheless, it’s there.

At the beginning of the story, we meet Michael J. Fox and his family. His mother is an alcoholic and his rather pathetic father a serious wimp and a miserable failure. They’re living in a hovel of mediocrity and despair. When Michael J. Fox gets involved in his time machine adventure, he gets entangled in the lives of his parents when they are still in high school, on the very day that they met. And they met in a curious way. His clumsy, painfully shy father was hit by a car in front of his mother’s house while lurking there, trying to catch a glimpse of her. The boy’s mother took him into her house to nurse him back to health and fell in love with him out of pity. When Michael J. Fox arrives a moment before the father, he is hit by the car, and his mother falls in love with him instead.

He now has a very big problem. He has to make his future mother fall out of love with him and in love with his geeky, future father or he isn’t even going to exist. He accomplishes this one evening when his mother is being molested by the town bully in the front seat of a car. Fox goads his father into rescuing her, in the process of which, the father knocks out the bully with a lucky punch and his mother is saved. The mother immediately transfers her love from her future son to her new hero.

Now, that in itself is profound because it says that a love inspired by heroic deeds is stronger than a love brought on by pity. But there’s more. When Fox gets back to the present, everything about the lives of his family has miraculously changed. His mother is no longer an alcoholic, his father is a big success and a real dude, and they’re living in a magnificent, creatively appointed house—all because of that one change in the father’s character.

The important bit of wisdom has to do with the incredible difference one courageous act can make on our lives. Standing up to that bully had an extraordinary and profound effect far into the future. We encounter numerous such challenges and opportunities to show our courage every day. The phone call we’re afraid to make to ask for a date or a job ’- little acts of courage that could be profoundly and irrevocably changing the rest of our lives. That’s also very useful to know.

One final example. In a fairy tale called Aga Baba, a young hero on an important adventure stops to rest at a witch’s house. The witch tries to delay him by asking him some intriguing but difficult questions, like, What is truth?—Does the universe ever end? and so on. The wise young hero looks at her and says, Shut up and get me something to eat.

The wisdom in this story is simple enough: Beware of imponderables when action is necessary. Don’t wile away your days worrying about infinity or other unanswerable questions when you should be out looking for a job.

So there you have three important bits of advice from stories: change yourself and you change your destiny; little acts of courage performed today can have exponential effects on the rest of your life; and beware of imponderables when action is necessary.

And here again it’s cumulative, each story contributing a little bit more of the hidden truth. When you’ve got hundreds such bits of wisdom working for you, all you have to do is get up in the morning and you’ll know exactly what to do and how to do it.

So that’s how the great stories do their work. They stimulate our imaginations and give us little tastes of paradise. These trigger fantasies, which lead us to desires for actions in the real world. Then, as we pursue these goals, the stories guide us through the passages using meaningful connections, each story revealing a little bit more of the truth.

James Bonnet was elected twice to the Board of Directors of the Writer’s Guild of America and has acted in or written more than forty television shows and features. The radical new ideas about story in his book Stealing Fire from the Gods: A Dynamic New Story Model For Writers And Filmmakers are having a major impact on writers in all media. He is the workshop leader of the popular Storymaking Master Class. Currently (Spring 2003) James is directing a feature film for which he wrote the screenplay.

© 2007 The Writers’ Computer Store®, LLC All Rights Reserved.

Finding the Right Writing Partner by Claudia Johnson & Matt Stevens

This article posted with permission from The Writers Store. (http://writersstore.com)

Some of the greatest movies and TV series have been written by script partners, from Billy Wilder’s legendary collaborations with Charles Brackett and I.A.L. Diamond to the Academy Award-winning work of the Coen Brothers. Each year the list of script partners and their successes grows longer. Why? Because collaborative scriptwriting is one of the most productive and successful ways to write.

If you find the right writing partner.

Okay, you may be thinking, but how do I do that?

It’s a question many writers have asked us since we started our collaboration, and a question we’ve asked many collaborative writers. And while there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, there are some strategies that can help, whether you’re looking for a partner to co-write a project or someone to share a writing career.

Partners May be Closer than you Think

Collaboration is such an intimate creative relationship, it’s best to begin looking for a prospective partner among the people you know. You have a greater chance of working successfully together if you’ve worked out the bugs of being together.

‘We knew each other so well, and that’s crucial,’ Andrew Reich says of his collaboration with Ted Cohen, head writers/executive producers of Friends.

So it’s no surprise that most of the teams that we talked to evolved out of close personal relationships ’ friends or family or lovers.

Like Reich & Cohen, Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood; The People vs. Larry Flynt) and Matt Manfredi & Phil Hay (crazy/beautiful) met in college and were best friends before they began writing together.

Fay & Michael Kanin (Teacher’s Pet; The Opposite Sex), Nicholas Kazan & Robin Swicord (Matilda), and Lee & Janet Scott Batchler (Batman Forever) chose each other as spouses before they chose each other as writing partners.

Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau (Adventures of Felix; Jeanne and the Perfect Guy) fell in love before they fell into their collaboration. ‘It was for us, first and foremost, a relationship as lovers,’ they explain.

Then there’s brotherly/sisterly love. That’s not to say other familial combinations aren’t possible (the father-son team of Sherwood & Lloyd Schwartz springs to mind), but the sibling collaboration is far more prevalent ’ the Ephron sisters, and the Wachowski, Farrelly, and Weitz brothers, to name just a few.

But what if you don’t have a partner-worthy friend/spouse/lover/sibling? If you can’t find a collaborator among the people you know, get to know more people. As the group of writers you know expands, so do your chances of finding the right writing partner.

If you’re in college, wake up and smell the collaborations! Enroll in film or screenwriting classes. Or join a drama or comedy group. If you’re not in college, nil desperandum. Take classes anyway. Attend writers’ conferences. Join writers’ organizations. Socialize.

Desperately Seeking Someone

If you still can’t find a collaborator among contacts and colleagues, consider this option:

Writer/director seeks scriptwriting partner. Goal: funny movies that are completely original and totally unlike Hollywood’s endless parade of remakes. Ideally your forte is solid character development. Please contact me. Are we a match? ’ Ad posted on the Internet

Hey, if you can find Mr./Ms. Right with an ad, why not the right writing partner? You can post notices ’ as many do ’ in any number of places on the Internet (see Chapter 2 of Script Partners for a list). You can also place ads in publications such as Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Backstage, Los Angeles Times, Screenwriter Magazine, and Hollywood Scriptwriter (and their online versions as well).

Whatever venue you choose ’ finding the perfect partner among people you know or among perfect strangers ’ it’s essential to find someone with the following qualities that we and the writers we’ve talked to consider crucial to a good partnership:

Similar Sensibilities

We have to be honest ’ we hated each other the first time we met on the faculty of the Florida State University Film School (a long story…). But as we worked together on students’ scripts, we discovered that we had similar sensibilities about what makes a good story.

And perhaps more important, we had the same sense of humor. We cracked up at each other’s jokes. Let’s face it ’ it’s hard to have contempt for someone who laughs at your jokes. Humor studies show that this is one of the most powerful ways to reverse a bad first impression (which is why Matt laughs a lot on first dates). Such is the power of humor in creating human connection. And good collaborations. In fact, the same sense of humor between you and your partner may predict, as nothing else can, a closeness and compatibility in your writing life.

And if you’re looking for a partner to co-write comedy, ‘Say something that you think is funny, and if the other person doesn’t laugh, run do not walk to the next candidate,’ suggests Larry Gelbart (Caesar’s Hour; MAS*H). ‘The same rule applies to a pair of writers who want to do drama, action, whatever, except without the laughs. What do you like? Who do you like? Which movies? Which this? Which that?’

Complementary Strength

‘I think collaborations are much more successful when people have different strengths,’ say Peter Tolan (Analyze This; Analyze That). ‘The best collaborations are when you shore each other’s weaknesses up.’

It’s important to keep this in mind as you search for a partner.

‘You’re looking for someone hopefully with complementary strengths,’ Janet Batchler says, ‘but that means that you have to have an understanding of your own strengths.’

Or to quote the Oracle at Delphi, ‘Know thyself.’

‘I think you have to be remarkably self-aware to say, ‘I can do that and that; I just can’t do that,’’ Tolan says. And in a successful collaboration, partners play to their strengths. ‘They understand how it works, and they’re able to feed it and keep it running.’

Marshall Brickman & Woody Allen (Annie Hall; Manhattan) certainly understood their complementary strengths. ‘I tend to be somewhat more bound by logic than Woody Allen,’ Brickman explains, ‘and I say that as a criticism of me rather than of him. His approach to a problem or material in general is more intuitive than mine. I like to kind of back into things logically; he seems to have a genius for making some kind of intuitive leap which defies logic but solves the problem.’

This complementarity gives each collaboration its unique richness and range of experience, knowledge, and talent to tap.

Plays Well With Others

Even the most compatible, peace-loving partners will argue occasionally as they co-create scripts. And that’s not a bad thing. Disagreement is an integral and invaluable part of the collaborative process.

It’s so crucial that Andrew Reich recommends looking for ‘someone you’ve had arguments with or you know you can settle things with without throwing tantrums. If you’re casual friends, how are you going to deal with each other in an argument?’

This may sound like a minor thing to consider when choosing a partner, but it’s intricate interpersonal stuff that comes from knowing your partner. Your relationship. And yourself.

Peter Tolan can’t argue. He can’t even say, ‘No, that’s not good.’ And he considers this his greatest weakness as a collaborator. ‘You’ve got to be able to say, ‘Here’s why this doesn’t work.’ And you’ve got to hope, too, that the other person is open to hearing that.’ He doesn’t mind when people argue with him (he can take it, but he can’t dish it out); in fact, he admires writing partners like Harold Ramis who argue with grace and wit. ‘We had a very playful collaboration,’ Tolan says.

A Writers You Respect (and vice versa)

Aretha was right. Respect matters most.

We ought to know. We went from zero to sixty on the issue, from contempt to respect. And only when we hit respect, only then, could we write together.

‘That’s the most important thing about a writing partner,’ Ted Elliott (Shrek; Pirates of the Caribbean) says on his Web site. ‘Find a writer you respect, whose abilities you envy ’ and hope he or she feels the same about you. You should both feel like you’re getting the better part of the deal.’

We’ve emphasized the importance of knowing yourself and your prospective partners, but it’s equally important to know their work. If you don’t, read something they’ve written. Request a writing sample and offer one of yours. If you don’t have respect for their writing (or vice versa), run don’t walk to the next candidate.

Just Duet

In the end, collaboration ’ like love, friendship, or film ’ is experiential. No one, not even close friends or spouses or family members, can know if writing together will work until they try it.

Like Andrew Reich & Ted Cohen when they brainstormed their first script.

All of a sudden, Ted said something, and I said, ‘Then we could do this.’ And he said, ‘We could do this and this.’ Funny ideas started flowing, and it just felt like wow, this is really a good idea! And boy is this more fun than I’ve been having sitting by myself trying to write. With Ted it just clicked.’

So choose the most promising partner and see if it clicks when you work together. See if you say, ‘Wow.’ That’s the real acid test. The journey of collaboration begins with one script.

About the Authors

Claudia Johnson & Matt Stevens are the co-authors of ‘Script Partners,’ the marriage manual for collaborators. Claudia is also the author of ‘Stifled Laughter,’ nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the inaugural P.E.N./Newman’s Own First Amendment Award, and the popular film school text, ‘Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect.’ Other awards include the American National Theater and Academy West Award and the Warner Brothers Scriptwriting Award. Matt is a writer/producer who has sold both fiction and documentary projects. He currently writes film reviews for E! Online and contributes to other new media outlets. As a director, his short films have screened at national and international festivals and won numerous awards, including the Student Emmy for best comedy. Two of their co-written scripts were finalists for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.

© 2007 The Writers’ Computer Store®, LLC All Rights Reserved.

Script Partners – Buy Now

by Claudia Johnson & Matt Stevens $18.71 List price: $24.95 Saving: 25%

Beyond Theme: Story’s New Unified Field by James Bonnet

What is the true source of unity in a great story and how is that unity achieved? According to the dictionary, unity is the state of being one. And today it is generally agreed that a story should be about one thing ’ but what is that one thing? Is it the subject, the theme, the central character, the problem, the controlling idea? Or all of the above? And is there really only one source of unity or many different sources working together to create that effect?

After more than 30 years of analyzing patterns in great stories, I have come to the conclusion it’s the latter. In fact, I would say there are at least ten different elements that influence the unity of a great story. And while it’s true that one of those elements will be dominant and become the story’s subject, having these ten elements working together will add significantly to the clarity, meaning and power of your work ’ and the whole will become much greater than the sum of its parts. In this article I will examine four of the ten sources of story unity.

The Value Being Pursued

The first of these unifying forces is the Value Being Pursued. In real life, either as individuals or in concert with others, we are longing for and pursuing certain cherished values, among them: life, health, wealth, justice, democracy, freedom, honor, wisdom, security, love, happiness, wholeness, and equality. At the same time, we are trying to avoid their opposites, scourges like: death, disease, poverty, injustice, tyranny, ignorance, slavery, insecurity, dishonor, unhappiness, alienation and inequality.

These values and scourges played a major role in our evolutionary path and continue to govern our lives. In fact, we are pursuing all of these values more or less simultaneously. And this makes real life appear, on the surface, to be extremely complex and difficult to analyze and understand. For clarity’s sake, story likes to isolate these values, like threads from a complex skein, so that one of these values may be examined in great detail. These isolated components are the stuff that story is made of and the true source of its power.

In the larger frame story of The Iliad, the value being pursued is honor. Everything in that larger whole story is related to that one virtue. It begins with a contest to determine the most beautiful goddess. The contest is rigged and Hera and Athena feel dishonored when Paris chooses Aphrodite over them. Then Menelaus is dishonored when Paris, with the help of Aprhrodite, seduces his wife, Helen, and they run off together to Troy. Then later Achilles feels dishonored when Agamemnon takes away the girl, Briseis, his prize from the sacking of the city of Lyrnessus. And finally Poseidon feels dishonored when Odysseus pulls down his statue during the sacking of Troy. In short, everything in that story is somehow related to the value honor and its scourge dishonor.

The value being pursued in The Silence of the Lambs is justice. In Star Wars, Gladiator, Casablanca, and The Lord of the Rings it’s democracy, or at least some form of representative government. In The Sixth Sense, and Ordinary People it’s health (the mental health of an afflicted young boy). In Jaws and The Pianist it’s life. In The Exorcist it’s freedom. In A Christmas Carol it’s wealth.

In all of these examples, a single value has been isolated and is being examined in great detail. This adds clarity, meaning and power to the story and makes it a unifying force.

The Problem

The second unifying force is The Problem, and this problem is the central event and a prerequisite in all great stories. You have a problem and that problem is resolved. It is, in fact, one of the essential elements of a story, without which, there would be no story. These problems stand between us and the achievement of these value goals. Great stories are there to show us how to solve these Problems.

In Star Wars, the Evil Empire has taken possession of the galaxy. That is the central event of that story. And, if the cherished value being pursued is ever to be achieved, this is the problem that has to be resolved. The problem in Gladiator is very similar ’ a tyrant has usurped the Roman Empire, preventing the restoration of the Republic. That is the central event of the story and the problem that has to be resolved. In The Lord of the Rings, a dark tyrant has designs on Middle Earth.

In all of these stories, a single problem is the central event that prevents the achievement of the value. The story is limited to an examination of that one particular problem, which makes it a unifying force, and adds significantly to the power of its effect. And, if it’s a great story, we will learn a great deal about how this particular problem comes into being and how it can be resolved. And knowing this will give us a working knowledge of both story and life.

Great Shot

The Threat

The third source of unity is The Threat ’ the agents or perpetrators that create the problem. They perform the inciting actions that create the victims that bring about the changes of fortune.

In The Silence of the Lambs, the serial killer is the threat and the act of murder is the inciting action which creates the victims that bring about the change to a state of misfortune, all of which constitutes the problem that now stands between the community and Justice, the value being pursued. In Gladiator it’s the emperor’s son, Commodus, who creates the problem. In The Lord of the Rings it’s the dark lord, Sauron. In Star Wars it’s Darth Vadar and the Evil Emperor.

Equally significant in a great story is the fact that this threat will become the source of resistance that opposes the action when someone tries to solve this problem and restore a state of good fortune. This resistance will create the complications, crisis, climax and resolution of the classical structure that occurs whenever a problem-solving action encounters resistance. The problem, change of fortune and components of the classical structure constitute the very essence of story, without which there would be no story.

In The Exorcist the Devil is the threat. He takes possession of a young girl and that is the inciting action which creates the problem that brings about the change of fortune. He is also the main source of resistance that creates the complications, crisis, climax and resolution when the priest tries to solve that problem.

In all of the stories mentioned above, a single threat – be that an individual, a single group or an army – is being isolated and studied in great detail, which again increases the clarity and power of the story and creates another unifying force.

The Anti-Threat

The next force of unity is The Anti-Threat ’ the one who opposes the threat and solves the problem. We usually call the person who has that responsibility the protagonist or the hero ’ the protagonist being the one who initiates the action and the hero being a protagonist who risks or sacrifices himself for the sake of others. And, whereas the threat is the creator of the problem, the anti-threat is the fixer of the problem.

In Gladiator, it’s Maximus (Russell Crowe). His Emperor, his wife and his son have been murdered by the new tyrant, Commodus, who has taken possession of the Empire. To make matters worse, he’s been taken into slavery and forced into a new profession that has an almost zero survival rate. In Star Wars, it’s a neophyte Jedi, Luke Skywalker, facing a vast army of robot-like Nazis. In The Lord of the Rings, it’s Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring.

In all of these examples, a single problem-solving force has been isolated and is being studied in great detail, and another important unifying force has been created. Basically what I’m saying here is if you limit your story to one value, one problem, one threat and one anti-threat, even if that threat and anti-threat are groups working together, and you examine those dimensions in great detail, you will dramatically increase the clarity, meaning and power of your story, and you can make a powerful artistic statement.

When I continue, in future segments, we will explore the remaining six elements.

About the Author:
James Bonnet was elected twice to the Board of Directors of the Writer’s Guild of America and has acted in or written more than 40 television shows and features. The radical new ideas about story in his book “Stealing Fire from the Gods: A Dynamic New Story Model For Writers And Filmmakers” are having a major impact on writers in all media.

© 2007 The Writers’ Computer Store®, LLC All Rights Reserved.

Beyond Theme: Story’s New Unified Field – Part II by James Bonnet

This article posted with permission from The Writers Store. (http://writersstore.com)

In Part I of this series (read Part I here), I began an examination of the true source of unity in a great story and how that unity can be achieved. I introduced you to four of the elements that can influence that unity and add significantly to the clarity, meaning and power of your work. The unifying forces we examined so far are: The Value Being Pursued, which are the cherished values like life, health, wealth and freedom that we pursue in life as goals;the Problem, which is the central event of the story; the Threat, which is the cause of the problem, and the Anti-threat, which is the protagonist or hero that opposes the threat and solves the problem.

The Entity Being Transformed

A fifth source of unity is The Entity Being Transformed. The central character in a story goes through a transformation ’ but in a great story, this transformation is always in the context of the transformation of some larger entity. In real life, that larger entity is governments, religions, unions, businesses, institutions, families or other groups we form to help us pursue these values ’ i.e., we form governments to help us pursue life and liberty, hospitals to fight disease, schools to fight ignorance, armies to protect our freedom, police to prevent injustice, and so on. In story it’s the same.

In Ordinary People and The Exorcist, the larger Entity Being Transformed is a family. In Jaws, it’s an island. In The Sixth Sense and A Christmas Carol, it’s a city. In The Silence of the Lambs, it’s a state. In The Lord of the Rings, it’s Middle Earth. In The Iliad and The Pianist, it’s a country. In Gladiator, it’s the Roman Empire. In Casablanca, it’s the world. In Star Wars, it’s an entire galaxy.

As a unifying force, the selected entity will exclude all the other entities related to the governing value, and limit the story to an examination of that one particular entity. And if it is a great story, which all of these stories are, we will learn a great deal about how that particular entity is organized. Hidden inside these entities are some amazing secrets, not the least of which is a dynamic model of the human psyche. The archetypes, patterns of action and cycles of transformation revealed in story are the same archetypes, patterns and cycles which run through every individual and every group, and are being played out in all of life’s important stages. These are the forces that bring the threat and the anti-threat into being and create the hero’s and the antihero’s journeys.

And because the human group shares these similarities in organization and function with the human psyche, the human group is an excellent metaphor for the human psyche. You can see this important pattern operating in many great stories and successful films. This is the phenomenon I call The Entity Being Transformed.

In Star Wars, the entity being transformed is a galaxy. That galaxy has an archetypal structure (i.e., the forces of good are opposed by the forces of evil and Luke Skywalker is caught in the middle) and it acts as a metaphor of the psyche, which has the same structure. Furthermore, the fate of the galaxy is linked to the destiny of the hero. The ego is part of a greater whole and acts on behalf of the whole psyche, and the fate of the psyche depends on the ego’s success. The hero is part of a greater whole and acts on behalf of the whole entity, and the fate of the entity depends on the hero’s success. By linking the hero and his destiny to the destiny of some group that has this archetypal structure, you create a metaphor of the psyche. And that means a story with extraordinary power.

In Gladiator, the entity that has this archetypal structure is the Roman Empire and the fate of the empire is linked to the destiny of the hero. In The Lord of the Rings, the entity with this archetypal structure is Middle Earth. And the fate of the Middle Earth is linked to the destiny of the hero. The same can be said for all the other stories we’re analyzing. In fact, if you study hundreds of great stories and films, you will see this phenomenon at work. It is one of the more important patterns.

The Hero’s Profession

Another important source of unity is the hero’s Profession, which is the set of conscious skills he or she will use or need to solve the problem. In real life, the specialties of the different professions are all functions of the conscious self, and each of these special functions can be personified as a different hero. Real doctors, lawyers, detectives specialize in the different conscious functions that handle the specialized problems related to their professions. The judge specializes in weighing the facts and making judgments, the artist specializes in his creativity, the doctor in diagnosing and curing illnesses. Whatever career you choose, or whatever problem you are trying to solve, you are specializing in that conscious function. It’s what division of labor is all about, different people specializing in different conscious functions.

It’s the same in story. The detective represents that part of our conscious self that solves mysteries, the investigative reporter the part which seeks out the truth, and so on. Each of these professions requires a different set of conscious skills and expresses a different function of the conscious self.

Russell Crowe in Gladiator, is a Roman general and a gladiator. Achilles is also a warrior. Luke Skywalker is a Jedi. Rick is an ex-freedom fighter. Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense is a child psychologist. Scrooge is a moneylender. Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist is a mother, Max von Sydow is a priest. Roy Scheider in Jaws is a sheriff. Jodi Foster in The Silence of the Lambs is an FBI agent. Frodo, in The Lord of the Rings is an incorruptible youth chosen to destroy the Ring of Power. Each of these professions requires a different set of conscious skills ’ and great stories isolate these special skills and examine them in great detail. This makes it a unifying force, and this can add significantly to the clarity, meaning and power of its effect.

The Principal Action

The next source of unity is the Principal Action. This is the action that has to be taken by the hero to solve the problem and bring about the change of fortune. It is also the action that dominates most stories. As such, it is the central, unifying action that tracks down the serial killer, casts out the Devil, or leads to the destruction of Sauron, Commodus, the shark, and the Evil Empire. It is also the line of action that frees one boy from his suicidal tendencies (Ordinary People) and another boy from his fear of dead people (The Sixth Sense), and the line of action that brings about the transformation of Achilles’ anger, Rick’s disillusionment and Scrooge’s greed.

And this is the only unity that Aristotle described:

“The imitation (of a story) is one when the object imitated is one. So the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action, and the whole of that (one action).”

When a great story isolates a particular principal action, it is isolating the special sequence of actions required to solve the particular problem. This makes it a unifying force, and another factor that can add great clarity, meaning and power to the work.

The Dominant Plot

Another source of unity is the Dominant Plot. The principal action is made up of many other smaller component actions. Each of these separate actions has
either an Emotional, Physical, Mental or Spiritual character. And when you sort out these threads, they become the Plots and Subplots of your story. The dominant action or plot will give the story its genre.

You can tell which is which by how the action ends. Mental story actions end in solutions or enigmas and are called mysteries. The Silence of the Lambs is a mystery, a sophisticated whodunit. Ordinary People is a psychological mystery. The dominant plots asks the question: why is the young boy suicidal? Emotional story actions end in separation or reunion and are called love stories. Casablanca is a love story. It ends with the separation of the lovers. Physical story actions end in victory or defeat and are called war stories. Jaws, Gladiator, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings are war stories. They end in victory. Spiritual story actions end in transcendence or descendence and are called franscendental. The Exorcist, The Iliad, The Sixth Sense, A Christmas Carol and The Pianist end in the elevation of the central character to a higher plane.

When a great story isolates the plots and subplots, it separates the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical dimensions into separate threads so they can be examined in great detail. This makes it a unifying force which can add even more meaning and power to your work.

When I continue, in Part III, we will explore the remaining unifying forces.

About the Author:
James Bonnet was twice elected to the Board of Directors of the Writer’s Guild of America and has acted in or written more than 40 television shows and features. The radical new ideas about story in his book “Stealing Fire from the Gods: A Dynamic New Story Model For Writers And Filmmakers” are having a major impact on writers in all media.

© 2007 The Writers’ Computer Store®, LLC All Rights Reserved.

The Power And Importance Of Human Connection To A Great Screenplay by Claudia Johnson

This article posted with permission from The Writers Store. (http://writersstore.com)

For years I gently browbeat my students. ‘Dig deeper,’ I said. ‘The best stories are about the human heart.’

I wasn’t quite sure what I meant. I knew I didn’t mean that old Hollywood saw ’ throw in some love interest! I meant something closer to Samson Raphaelson’s remark about Shakespeare in The Human Nature of Playwriting, ‘[He] is not a realistic writer but he is overwhelmingly real because he reports the hearts of human beings.’ I was teaching dramatic technique: first, playwriting in the English Department at Florida State, then screenwriting when the Film School began. I was rounding up the usual suspects ’ conflict, crisis, and climax ’ but I had this nagging sensation that these overlooked something important in stories. I couldn’t figure out what it was, so I hoped, if sufficiently coaxed, my students could.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Drama

Derived from the Greek dran ’ ‘to do’ ’ drama means someone strives. Will meets obstacle, and this creates conflict. For two hundred years, perhaps more, we have talked about dramatic stories this way. George Bernard Shaw defined drama as ‘the conflict between man’s will and his environment.’ Across the channel, Ferdinand Brunetiere said it was ‘the will of man in conflict.’ And so it has gone, like a roll call, each person casting a vote for drama’s conventional wisdom.

‘Since the early nineteenth century the ‘conflict theory’ of drama has dominated dramatic criticism and, to a considerable degree, the practice of playwrights,’ Eric Bentley says in Concepts in Dramatic Theory. ‘It is a central assumption of most Twentieth-century dramatic theory.’ In film, where the budgets (and insecurities) run wilder and the flops are more catastrophic, the rule of the game is more rigid.

‘The basis of all drama is conflict,’ Syd Field says in almost every one of his books. ‘Without conflict there is no action; without action there is no character; without character there is no story. And without story there is no screenplay.’

Most screenwriting books ’ about long or short screenplays ’ say essentially the same thing, though in Screenwriting Tricks of the Trade, William Froug is the most emphatic: ‘Without conflict, you might as well pack it in ‘
you are in the wrong field of endeavor. Without conflict, your reader will fall asleep and you will never have to think about having an audience. The ballgame is over.’

Conflict has shaped the way that we think about drama and the way that we think to shape it. In Writing Great Screenplays for Film and TV, Dona Cooper offers a new improved metaphor for the screenplay: a roller coaster. It’s a rollicking image, more energetic and imaginative than most I have found in screenwriting books, but the author’s graphic depiction ’ action that rises and rises and rises then falls ’ is merely a remake of a nineteenth century model, Freitag’s Pyramid (conflict, crisis, and resolution), which keeps cropping up in all kinds of books about writing, including former editions of Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction. But Janet ’ a friend and colleague ’ was increasingly uncomfortable, too, with this conflict-bound way of seeing the story. Other writers, most of them women, were also uneasy.

But Ursula LeGuin came closest to articulating what I was feeling: ‘People are cross-grained, aggressive, and full of trouble, the storytellers tell us; people fight themselves and one another, and their stories are full of their struggles. But to say that that is the story is to use one aspect of existence, conflict, to subsume all other aspects, many of which it does not include and does not comprehend. Romeo and Juliet is the story of the conflict between two families, and its plot involves the conflict of two individuals within those families. Is that all it involves? Isn’t Romeo and Juliet about something else, and isn’t it the something else that makes the otherwise trivial tale of a feud into a tragedy?’

Conflict was not incorrect; it was incomplete. It didn’t get to the heart of the matter, to that level of story that engages most deeply. It was half the story, but I couldn’t figure out what the other half was.

Ruby & Me

In January 1994, taking a shower, I saw it: the other half of the story. (I don’t know what it is about showers and baths that are conducive to insight, but the fact is well documented: Einstein reportedly claimed his greatest ideas occurred in the shower, and everyone knows about Archimedes. I’m a Pisces so I like to think it’s the water, but it’s more than likely the break from our work. ‘These insights tend to come suddenly and, characteristically, not when sitting at a desk working,’ Fritjof Capra writes in the Tao of Physics, ‘but when relaxing, in the bath, during a walk in the woods, on the beach.’)

I’d taken a break from researching a documentary film about the most famous murder in Florida, the trial of Ruby McCollum, an African-American woman in my small town of Live Oak convicted of shooting and killing the town’s Great White Hope, Senator-elect Leroy Adams, her doctor and, allegedly, lover. When she fired the gun ’ if she, in fact, did it ’ her life also came to an end: every major connection was severed; her husband died the next day of heart failure; she was separated from her children, other family, and friends for more than twenty years.

Immersed in Ruby’s story, I wondered why it engaged me so deeply. She and I had nothing in common except for our gender and the small North Florida town where we lived. The surface events of her story were the stuff of soap opera ’ wealth, corruption, infidelity, murder ’ and this had no connection to my quiet life. There was something deeper at work. Mulling over what it might be, I saw that it was connection itself. Underlying the conflict of Ruby’s story, underlying the events of her life and mine ’ underlying any good story, fictitious or true ’ is a deeper pattern of change, a pattern of connection and disconnection. The conflict and surface events are like waves, but underneath is an emotional tide ’ the ebb and flow of human connection. It’s just as essential to story as conflict but it has been essentially overlooked.

I’m no Einstein and I didn’t run naked trailing bathwater into the street but I did shout ‘Eureka, I’ve found it!’ I did. For the first time, I saw drama whole. Here was its deepest humanity, structure, and emotional rhythm; the ‘something else’ LeGuin knew was missing.

Everything seemed to fall into place. I understood the emotional power of plays in a way that I hadn’t before: What keeps Romeo and Juliet from being an ‘otherwise trivial tale of a feud’ is the underlying pattern of connection and disconnection, not just between the two star-crossed lovers, but between them and those others who make up their web of connections: nurse, parents, Mercutio, Tybalt, Friar Lawrence, the Prince. What keeps Death of a Salesman from being a trivial tale of a failed businessman is Willy’s tragic pattern of connection and disconnection with others, especially Biff. I saw tragedy and comedy in a new light: comedy ends in connection, tragedy in disconnection. ‘The tragic side of tragedy,’ to borrow Aristotle’s phrase, is more than the hero’s fall from position and power.

‘Those who have had the misfortune to do or undergo fearful things,’ are, in the end, disconnected. We may pity the fallen because we fear falling but we fear it less, perhaps, than we fear disconnection. Even death, the ultimate disconnection, is less fearsome for some than life without connection.

‘Ha! banishment,’ Romeo cries. ‘Be merciful, say ‘death,’/For exile hath more terror in his look, /Much more, than death. Do not say ‘banishment.’ ‘

Connection is human sustenance, the substance of story. Its gain and loss provides the emotional power, as Aristotle implies in The Poetics: ‘Let us determine, then, which kinds of happening are felt by the spectator to be fearful, and which pitiable. Now such acts are necessarily the work of persons who are near and dear (close blood kin) to one another, or enemies, or neither. But when an enemy attacks an enemy there is nothing pathetic about either the intention or the deed, except in the actual pain suffered by the victim; nor when the act is done by ‘neutrals’; but when the tragic acts come within the limits of close blood relationship, as when brother kills or intends to kill brother or do something else of that kind to him, or son to father or mother to son or son to mother ’ those are the situations one should look for.’

I understood, too, that connection and disconnection provided the emotional power of the films I had seen, even the best of the hard-boiled genres. The Fugitive ’ warmed-over TV show that it was ’ engages more deeply than most films in its genre because of the grudging but growing connection between the fugitive Kimble and Federal Marshall Gerard, the deeper emotional journey from Gerard’s ‘I don’t care,’ (a line Tommy Lee Jones rehearsed for days) to his closing line, ‘I care. Don’t tell anyone.’ This unlikely connection is the heart of the story, its pattern of meaning. It fills the emotional void created by Kimble’s wife’s brutal murder. In story as in life, human nature abhors an emotional vacuum.

I went to see Janet. She said, ‘This is big.’ She pulled books from her shelves that touched on connection: Lewis Hyde’s The Gift and Jean Baker Miller’s Toward A New Psychology of Women and Carol Gilligan’s In A Different Voice. She opened Hyde’s book and showed me a passage from Pablo Neruda, a memory about a connection he made when he was a child, an exchange of small gifts ’ a pine cone and a faded toy sheep ’ with a boy about his own age, a stranger he did not see again: ‘That exchange brought home to me for the first time a precious idea: that all humanity is somehow together. This is the great lesson I learned in my childhood, in the backyard of a lonely house. Maybe it was nothing but a game two boys played who didn’t know each other and wanted to pass to the other some good things of life. Yet maybe this small and mysterious exchange of gifts remained inside me also, deep and indestructible, giving my poetry light.’

This, I think, is the heart of it all: there are moments of change in our lives and stories that are not comprehended by conflict. These moments of change are connections, human exchanges, however fleeting or small ’ a faded sheep for a pine cone ’ or, as Stephen Jay Gould says in Counters and Cable Cars, ‘people taking care of each other in small ways of enduring significance.’ Large or small, they are like gifts; they create ties between us.

Janet asked if she could mention my insight in her new edition of Writing Fiction: ‘I’m indebted to dramatist Claudia Johnson for this further ’ and, it seems to me, crucial ’ insight about [LeGuin’s]’something else’: whereas the hierarchical or ‘vertical’ nature of narrative, the power struggle, has long been acknowledged, there also appears in all narrative a ‘horizontal’ pattern of connection and disconnection between characters which is the main source of its emotional effect. In discussing human behavior, psychologists speak in terms of ‘tower’ and ‘network’ patterns, the need to climb and the need for community, the need to win out over others and the need to belong to others; and these two drives also drive fiction.’

As a writer who has worked in four genres ’ plays, fiction, screenplays, and, most recently, memoir ’ I suspect these two drives drive most stories (I’ll leave it to others to explore the exceptions). In Metaphors of Interrelatedness: Toward a Systems Theory of Psychology, Linda Olds acknowledges our ‘vertical strivings for power, achievement, knowledge, and accomplishment,’ but she adds: ‘We no longer inhabit a universe capable of being represented vertically alone; the embeddedness of us all in an intricately interrelating dance of energy and space-time, of connection and change, has become the inescapable heritage of our time. We must reach out for horizontal metaphors which speak the language of embrace and interconnection, rather than striving and rising above.’

The film Red does this with its powerful opening image of telephone cables carrying the young model’s call at breathtaking speeds across land, under water, and across land again. One of the most compelling films that I’ve seen, it is a story told with almost no conflict, a film, finally, about connection itself. So, for that matter, is Lost In Translation.

But most stories have both. Rooted in the same Latin prefix (con – together), conflict (from the Latin confligere ’ to clash or strike together) and connection (from the Latin connectere ’ to bind or tie together) are complementary forces. The physicist Niels Bohr introduced the concept of ‘complementarity,’ but as Capra points out in The Tao of Physics, it goes back 2,500 years: ‘The Chinese sages represented this complementarity of opposites by the archetypal poles of yin and yang and saw their dynamic interplay as the essence of all natural phenomena and all human situations.’ Connection and conflict are also dynamic and interrelated. They are woven together like strands of deoxyribonucleic acid, the double helix of drama.

A Model Of Wholeness

Like the newly pregnant woman who never noticed pregnant women before but now sees them wherever she goes, I noticed connection wherever I looked. I saw its ebb and flow in the novels I read. Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years is a series of emotional movements of connecting and disconnecting and reconnecting as Delia drifts from her family, builds a new life, and returns to her own.

I saw connection and disconnection in films that I screened, even the wild-assed rides in Pulp Fiction: ‘Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife,’ ‘The Gold Watch,’ and ‘The Bonnie Situation.’ For all the vintage Tarantino violence and conflict, marvelous connections occur in each of the stories. In Apollo 13, I noticed how painstakingly the story establishes Jim Lovell’s web of connections ’ wife, children, colleagues ’ and how these become the real stake in the film, as important as survival itself, the reason survival matters to him at all.

Like Forster’s once cryptic epigram, ‘Only connect,’ this made a new kind of sense. Eight months after my insight, on tour with my book, Stifled Laughter, I heard a lecture by Betty Friedan. It was an interesting update of Abraham Maslow who ranked connection (belonging) just below survival in his well-known hierarchy of needs. Friedan cited research that shows connection is no less a need. ‘Connectedness,’ as she calls it in The Fountain of Age, ‘has a direct effect on mortality.’ Epidemiological studies across the country show that men and women without significant human connection are twice as likely to die. Widowers, disconnected from their central and often their only significant connection, are ‘40 percent more likely to die in the first six months after their spouse’s death than other men their age.’

That women live longer than men is well known. The conventional wisdom says that men die younger because of too much striving and competition, but Friedan and others show it is also caused by too little connection. New studies on the male midlife crisis have linked men’s psychological pain to the realization that they have (like dramatic theorists) neglected connection. This lack of ‘closeness, relatedness, and intimacy,’ Friedan says, contributes directly to men’s shorter lives. To survive, men and women alike must have ‘purpose and intimacy,’ what Tolstoy called ‘work and love,’ goals to strive for and what Friedan bluntly calls it ‘the life-and-death importance of connectedness.’

I connect, therefore I am.

We cannot live by conflict alone; neither can a good screenplay. The best screenwriters understand this intuitively, but the rest of us will be better screenwriters if we think about both halves of the story ’ conflict and connection ’ when we think about the stories we’re telling. In this way, we’ll ‘facilitate new ways of seeing’ the story and work with ‘a model of wholeness,’ to borrow two phrases from Linda Olds. Most important, we’ll open the aperture wider, to use a film metaphor, and give our stories more light.

[Adapted from the Introduction of Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect]

About the Author:
Claudia Johnson was the first recipient of the PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her memoir STIFLED LAUGHTER, which recounts her five-year-long fight against censorship. Other awards include the American National Theater and Academy West Award and the Warner Brothers Scriptwriting Award. She is author of the popular film school text, ‘Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect’ and co-author of “Script Partners” with Matt Stevens. Claudia shares two homes with her family in Live Oak and Tallahassee, Florida.

© 2007 The Writers’ Computer Store®, LLC All Rights Reserved.

Beyond Theme: Story’s New Unified Field – Part III by James Bonnet

This article posted with permission from The Writers Store. (http://writersstore.com)

In the first two parts of this series I began an examination of the true source of unity in a great story and how that unity can be achieved. I introduced you to eight of the elements that can influence that unity and add significantly to the clarity, meaning, and power of your work.

The unifying forces we examined so far are: (1) The Value Being Pursued, which are the cherished values like justice, health, wealth and freedom that we pursue in real life and story as goals; (2) The Problem, which is the central event of the story, and the thing that has to be overcome to achieve that value goal; (3) The Threat, which is the cause of the problem; (4) The Anti-threat, which is the protagonist or hero that opposes the threat and solves the problem; (5) The Entity Being Transformed, which is the larger context effected by the actions of the story; (6) The Hero’s Profession, which is the set of conscious skills the hero will need to solve the problem; (7) The Principal Action , which is the action that has to be taken by the hero to solve the problem; and finally, (8) The Dominant Plot , which is the dominant action of the principal action. It is this action that gives the story it’s genre.

For clarity’s sake, story likes to isolate these dimensions, like threads from a complex skein, so that these dimensions may be examined in great detail. These isolated components are the stuff that story is made of and the true source of its unity and power.

The Dominant Trait

The next source of unity is The Dominant Trait. The dominant trait is a dominant character trait or quality which the character personifies. Every truly great character has a dominant trait that has been isolated and taken to the quintessential.

Achilles’ dominant trait in The Iliad is anger. Rick’s dominant trait in Casablanca is neutrality. Ebenezer Scrooge’s dominant quality in A Christmas Carol is greed. They are quintessential personifications of these qualities, and that is the secret of their success. And that is the key to making your characters truly memorable and even merchandisable. You isolate their dominant traits and take them to the quintessential.

When a great story isolates the dominant trait, it isolates that particular emotion or quality and this makes it a unifying force, and like all of the other unifying forces, it can add significantly to the clarity, meaning, and power of its effect.

The dominant trait should, of course, be in the context of a full human being. If you just play the dominant trait and leave out the rest, you will create a stereotype or a clich’.

The Inauthentic State

Another important source of unity is the hero’s Inauthentic State. The authentic or inauthentic state is the state the hero is in at the beginning of the story. Is he or she ready for the adventure or does some personal handicap or shortcoming have to be worked out or overcome first? When the characters are in an inauthentic state, it has to be resolved before they can solve the problem.
Frodo, despite his youth, seems psychologically completely prepared. So do Harry Potter and Indiana Jones. They are in an authentic state. Rick in Casablanca, on the other hand, is in an inauthentic state. He is a disillusioned patriot and lover. The young boy in The Sixth Sense is paralyzed by fear. Bruce Willis is dead. Russell Crowe in Gladiator is a slave. Scrooge is a miser. Jodi Foster in The Silence of the Lambs is haunted by bleating lambs. And, if I can bring in a few ringers to better make this point – Paul Newman in Verdict is an ambulance chaser and an alcoholic. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman is a prostitute. The beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is an enchanted prince. Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man is autistic. Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love has lost his muse. Pinocchio is a puppet.

Psychologically, these metaphors are incredibly valid, indicating the stultified condition of our conscious selves. Compared to what we could be, we are all like ambulance chasers, drunkards, and prostitutes. We are all like Robert DeNiro in Awakenings, or the paralyzed hero in Princess Bride. We are all like little boys and princes that have been turned into puppets, frogs and beasts or were left Home Alone.

The mind easily accepts all of these inauthentic states as metaphors of our present condition and identifies with them. Then the great stories show us how to become real people again; how to resolve these inauthentic states and become who we were really meant to be. And going from where we are to where we could be is like going from a puppet to a real boy, or a frog to a prince. But in order to do that, we have to get involved in the problem and become part of the solution. The clear message of story is: if you want to reach your full potential, then you have to get involved. You have to link your destiny to the fate of some entity that’s threatened. You have to live and act like a hero and do what a hero does.

When a great story isolates an inauthentic state, it is isolating a particular shortcoming that has to be overcome and looking at it in great detail. This makes it a unifying force and will add another dimension to the clarity, meaning, and power of the work.

The Marvelous Element

The final unifying force is the Marvelous Element is the thing without which the hero cannot accomplish the task. Psychologically, these elements are the building blocks of consciousness, the energies without which higher states of being cannot be achieved. They consists of the vast, unconscious spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical powers that are waiting to be awakened and released – all things which are difficult to realize but without which the problems cannot be overcome, the tasks cannot be accomplished and the transformations cannot be made.

In great stories, we see these extraordinary powers and great potentials expressed as real things or as fabulous treasures, supernatural powers, secret formulas, magic potions, ultimate weapons, magic objects or fantastic places like Camelot, Shangri-La, or a heavenly paradise. In The Lord of the Rings, the marvelous element is the ring of power. In The Iliad, it’s the Trojan Horse. In Gladiator, it’s the love of the crowd. In The Silence of the Lambs, it’s the profile of the serial killer. In The Sixth Sense, it’s the tape revealing the true mission of the dead people. In Casablanca, it’s the letters of transit. In Ordinary People, it’s the secret behind the young boy’s suicidal tendencies. In A Christmas Carol, it’s Scrooge’s money. In The Pianist, it’s Adrien Brody’s musical genius, which persuades the Nazi officer to let him hide in the attic.

Joseph Campbell calls these special powers and objects the ‘ultimate boon.’ Alfred Hitchcock called them the ‘McGuffin’ ’ the thing everybody wants. I call them the marvelous or terrible elements. In the hands of the hero, they are Excalibur or the Holy Grail. In the hands of the self-destructive antihero, they become voodoo dolls, Svengali’s hypnotism or Dracula’s addictive fangs. Or they become death stars or doomsday machines – the scourges of mankind.

When a great story isolates one of these marvelous or terrible elements, it is isolating and exploring a metaphor of potential consciousness and this makes it a unifying force that can add more clarity, meaning, and power to the experience.

These are the 11 elements that create unity in a great story: The Value Being Pursued, The Problem, The Threat, The Anti-Threat, The Entity Being Transformed, The Hero’s Profession, The Principal Action, The Dominant Plot, The Dominant Trait, The Inauthentic State, and The Marvelous Element.

The Subject

One of these elements will be dominant and that dominant element will become The Subject of the story ’ what people will say the story is about. And if that subject is explored in depth, which it is in all of these examples, it will become an ultimate source of unity ’ and an ultimate source of clarity, meaning, and power.

The ultimate source of unity in The Iliad (soon to be a major motion picture called Troy, starring Brad Pitt) is Achilles’ anger, his dominant trait. More than anything else, the story is about Achilles’ anger. The Iliad is, in fact, everything you ever wanted to know about anger ’ how it is created, it’s destructive power, how it is transferred and ultimately resolved. It is this clarity and singleness of purpose that has kept this story alive and relevant for over 3000 years. Anger is anger. If you isolated that one element and described it perfectly 3000 years ago, that description would be relevant today. And this is where the story gets its enormous power, from its singleness of purpose. What is more, all of the other unities support that dominant unity. They link the story to the larger whole and reveal its place in the larger scheme. And the same can be said for all the other stories we’ve been analyzing, each of which has a different dominant unity.

The ultimate source of unity in The Lord of the Rings is the marvelous element, the Ring of Power. Everyone in that story has their ‘will to power’ tested by that ring. In The Exorcist, it’s the problem, demonic possession. In Jaws, it’s the threat, the shark. In Star Wars, it’s the hero, Luke Skywalker, the anti-threat. In The Pianist, it’s survival, the value being pursued. In Gladiator, it’s the hero’s new profession, gladiator. In Casablanca, it’s the love story, which is the dominant plot. In A Christmas Carol, it’s Scrooge’s greed, his dominant trait. In The Sixth Sense, it’s the boy’s fear, another dominant trait. In The Silence of the Lambs, it’s also the marvelous element ’ a profile of the serial killer.

Each one of these stories is a puzzle piece that contributes more information to the larger picture ’ which, as I indicated in Part II, is nothing less than a dynamic model of the human psyche. And, basically, what I’m saying here is if you reveal one of these puzzle pieces in your stories and explore that puzzle piece in great detail, you will not only increase the power of your story and make a powerful artistic statement, you will be exploring those dimensions in yourself and using the creative process to bring forth the truth about those dimensions, which are locked inside you and waiting to be released.

A knowledge of story and the act of storymaking are essential links in a creative process that can reconnect us to our lost or forgotten inner selves. An understanding of story leads inevitably to an understanding of these dormant inner states and to a perception of the path, which can lead us back to who we were really meant to be. In short, a vast, unrealized potential exists within us which a knowledge of story and storymaking can help to make real.

About the Author:
James Bonnet, founder of the Storymaking Masterclass workshops, was elected twice to the Board of Directors of the Writer’s Guild of America and has acted in or written more than forty television shows and features. The radical new ideas about story in his book, “Stealing Fire from the Gods: A Dynamic New Story Model For Writers And Filmmakers,” and his seminar, “Storymaking: The Master Class,” are having a major impact on writers in all media.

© 2007 The Writers’ Computer Store®, LLC All Rights Reserved.

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