by Gay Degani
Do you receive rejections remarking, “Some strong writing here, but this
isn't a story; there's no arc” or “I like your character, but where's the
conflict?” And have you
thought, “This editor is nuts! A guy's chasing my narrator. She has a gun. She
shoots him. Isn't that enough conflict?”
No,
actually, it isn't. It's “action,” but action is not the same thing as
conflict. Have you ever sat through a movie that goes from one car chase to
another, followed by an explosion, followed by a gun battle, then another
chase, this time through the subways of New York? Unless you are a kinetic energy junky, you're
probably sneaking peeks at your cell phone or dozing. This kind of action is
brought into a story for its own sake.
Conflict, on
the other hand, is choice followed by movement. What?
As writer (Brief Guide to Flash Fiction) and
writing coach Randall Brown points out in his book :
Something
happens (precipitating incident) to create a desire, and that desire creates a
need for action that is thwarted by this and that and this and that until,
finally, there’s resolution.
While some
stories are "linear movement" designed to ramp up adrenaline, good
stories are more complex. They are built around a specific structure that
offers character depth and motivation, actions springing from that motivation,
and emotions created through empathy. How do you create mindful structure for a
story?
* How did I
figure this out? Robert McKee’s classic text, Story.
One of my
favorite movies to illustrate structure in that old reliable action flick (I
know, I didn't say "structure flick"), Die Hard, made back in 1988 when Bruce Willis was moving
from Moonlighting on TV to the Big Screen.
Get
the Die Hard DVD and watch it with a pen and paper and the
timer on your DVD player. You want to be able to stop it when you get behind. Number
the lines on your paper from 1 to maybe 120 or so because that’s about how
many minutes the average movies contains. Maybe skip lines to make sure you can
write big if you get excited. Get ready to start the timer on your phone.
Now record
what happens every minute or so all the way through. This may seem like a
tedious exercise, but it's amazing to see just how carefully the story is constructed.
For the hot-shot movie critics out there who love those ponderous three-hour
think pieces, Die Hard is too "on the nose," but for
learning about structure and character development (and for the simple joy of
watching), it is one of the best.
Here’s how
it goes:
Act 1
starts with a character living his regular life, something happens to turn
his life on its head, and by the beginning of Act 2 (approximately 30
minutes in), the character's life changes 180 degrees from what it once was and
the character sets out to either change his or her life back or to figure out
how to make the best of things. He doesn’t try all that hard in the beginning because
frankly, he can't really believe things could go this wrong. You know that saying? Man plans and God laughs? When you’re the
writer, you are the one to make sure something goes wrong.
About a
quarter way through Act 2 (around 45 pages in), the character has some kind of
epiphany that he's going to have to work a helluva lot harder than he thought.
His simple solution isn't working. He needs a better plan. (Did you hear that
chuckle?)
About
half way through (60 minutes), he realizes who the enemy is (himself, his
best friend, the woman with the man hands) and at the same time,
there is a coming together between the character and his/her main
relationship often including the washing of wounds or standing up sex or both).
In the
second half of Act 2 some new effort is launched, but it doesn't work
(he-he-he) and leads to a dark moment around 75 minutes into the movie.
The character gives up the game as hopeless.
But by
90 minutes, the beginning of Act 3, the character has come up with new energy,
a new plan, a new assault on his problem and works through his conflict until
he either wins or loses.
Notice
as you are jotting down what is happening on your lined paper, about when these
things happen in Die Hard. The timing won't be perfect, but you'll be
shocked to see how close it is.
Look for: Set-ups and pay-offs:
On the plane
McClane talks with the other passenger about being afraid of flying. The
passenger offers a suggestion: After he lands, he should take off his shoes and
grip the carpet with his toes.
Watch for
this to pay-off when he is in the bathroom of the Nakatomi building, and
then later when he's in the elevator and because he’s barefoot, he considers
taking the shoes of the guy he’s just killed, and later when he's being chased
by Hans. This suggestion from the opening sequence, pays off several times in
this movie. THAT's good structure.
Look for how
exposition is handled: On the plane, in the taxi, between McClane's wife and
her boss, when McClane gets to the Nakatomi building and looks his wife up on
the list of employees. Then consider set-ups and pay-offs again. How is
information given to the viewer in these scenes?
Look for character development:
The
characters in this piece are well defined and consistent in their traits. We
get to know them quickly with a building of clues, and their motivation and
subsequent behavior help to hold the structure together when the twists are
thrown in. There is suspense without confusion.
Look for how setting is used:
Think about
the airplane, the limo, and the high rise Century City building. Then think
about how this movement evolves and what happens in the building and how each
of these places has its own twists and turns.
Look at the pacing:
This is an
action film. It unfolds remarkably fast,
but with the right amount of time spent on relationships, on personal reflection,
on what the characters WANT so the movie has meaning. And it does. It's about
loyalty, determination, married love, brotherhood, evil....
Okay enough.
Now if you decide to do this experiment—this jotting-down-of-what's-happening
thing—here’s some of what you should discover.
By the first
three or so minutes you know who McClane is, what his problem is, and how he
thinks he's going to solve it. Notice he HAS a problem and a goal: to find out
what the hell is going on between he and his wife. That isn't the PLOT of the
movie, it's a subplot, but it shows this is going to be more than one action
scene after another. There is an human element, an emotional element, and these
are the elements that makes this movie relatable and gives some universal
meaning.
About thirty
minutes in you notice that everything has changed 180 degrees from what it was
at beginning of the movie (this is about where ACT 1 ends). The building is
taken over and the story problem isn't just about McClane and his wife, but
it's about surviving the "terrorist" attack. The conflict between
these two characters is now accompanied by another larger conflict.
Act 2 comes
next from running from around 30 minutes to about 90 minutes into the film. In
that time, the major action is McClane fighting the bad guys.
The first
part of Act 2 is all about everyone reacting to the take over. Characters on both side of the “battle” are
introduced by their reactions to the circumstances. We see the gentle and wise reaction of the
boss, the arrogance of a co-worker, and McClane’s wife’s smarts, as well seeing
the hero trying to first get the police's attention because he assumes, of
course, that is the most logical thing to do. It’s their job to solve the problem. He has to
just survive and create enough chaos to keep the bad guys busy until the cops
save the day.
But in the
middle of the movie—around 60 minutes in—we see that McClane isn't going to get
any help. As a matter of fact, he's now perceived as one of the bad guys. The
stakes are ramped up. There is no help coming. He's got to do it himself. However,
if I'm remembering correctly, this is about the time John McClane's wife begins
to feel more kindly toward her estranged husband. She knows his capacity to
fight and survive. At this point, we see
both the enemy for who they are and a kind of realization of love and
admiration McClane and his wife have for each other.
And then, at
about 90 minutes when Act 3 begins, John McClane makes his final assault to
save his wife and everyone else who has survived. And he manages to do that in
true action hero form.
The end? The
enemy is defeated and he regains his wife.
Okay.
Formula. Over the top. Right? Yeah, but it's a learning tool too. Knowing why
this movie works has helped me to have answers to story problems whenever I get
stuck. What does the formula say at this point? Do I want to do that? If yes, make
it a unique action with unique details. Lift it from stereotype. If I want to
break the formula, I try to make sure that what does happen, has the same kind of emotional effect or performs a
similar purpose.
I didn't
make this up. I don’t know that I would have thought of it, but understanding
why good movies are good movies helps
me to figure out what my next scene should be, what purpose I should fulfill.
If this idea
has appeal, consider reading one of the books I mentioned earlier.
I can't
remember all the movies I did this with, but it is amazing to see how close movies
THAT WORK stick to these structural elements.
Movies I
logged:
Overboard
Witness
Terminator
Suspicion (wrong ending really but I still love
it)
Outrageous Fortune
Trading Places
Charade
Happy movie
watching!
* There are
many good books out there (Robert McKee's Story which
is based on Aristotle’s classic Poetics
and The Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the
Creative Interpretation of Human Motives by Lajos Egri and for a quick understanding,
there's always Syd Field's Sreenplay)
to help writers learn the ins and outs of structure as well as the
disagreements about rules, formulae, and art.
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