Narrative Focus

Narrative, narrative, narrative... what a wonderful thing. Aside from dialogue I think one might find narrative a very important entity within a piece of written work. How else might one transport one's eyes, and thusly their grey matter from point A to point B in a coherent manner without having to consider who said what and why?

Ah, it be narrative. Shame that I often have so much trouble with it. In the Figurative Language post, we saw that there is a right way to construct a sentence as part of the narrative structure, but we didn't consider what we can do with the narrative, and there lies the rub.

You see, I was reading a book t'other day and I came across an h'epiphany regarding the very different ways in which narrative may be constructed, and I don't mean first person present tense and all that fandangleness. No, pay attention.

So much of my prose can be confusing to the reader, but worse still it is confusing because I have failed to consider what elements I can focus my narrator's attention on, and thusly the reader's. How so, I hear you say?

I've tried to distill a concept for narrative choices, and it may be wrong, or not entirely complete, but this is an experimental blog and thus the mind that creates it hasn't yet had its premises inspected and signed off by the building commission.

Reflection - narrator / character reflects on the past / present / future

And for many, for Father, for me now, the risk of missing a catch through fear of foul weather is too great. If you aren’t out there catching, you’re not paying your way.

This is the living; what it is to live from hand to mouth.

Action - physical movement, physiological movement / reaction, interaction with others / object

And if I pause in my work to watch the motion, my body braced against the open-air cabin as I cast the last clove hitch between the port railing and my stash of pot traps, it looks as if he’s master of all the sea.

Intention - decision / impetus / drive to perform an act

He was my only companion for the journey, his head cocked to one side or the other, eyeing the bait I worked between my fingers. I regarded him but gave him nothing, promising instead the spoils if he stayed with me. There he lingered on my promise.

Observation - senses, dialogue delivery

Father’s lineage has bestowed me with his waxy, chiselled features, a sailor’s skin rigged to withstand the constant saltwash. I have his strong hands and the same sturdy disposition surges through my bones against the sea’s heave-ho.

Perception - like observation but subjective

He could manage all that and more, winching, knotting, securing from port to starboard; all the while grinning windward as only true sailors can. Alone, I barely had time to secure myself. I’m certain to this day that he’d made a pact with the sea. In return for having a storm’s forewarning he’d commit himself to her deep bosom one day, as if I’d been right all these years and Mother had meant nothing to him.

Wish / Need - future reflection

That first time alone, my entire catch scuppered by the dirtiest of squalls, I prayed. Whilst I’d had none of my father’s nous, I hoped I’d been blessed with some of his luck.

Feeling - how the character feels generally or their observation towards a situation / object / person (with feeling)

In the roar, the swoosh and the whoop of the squall I could hear nothing else; not the bilge pump I hoped was still running, nor my own screams of despair.

Relating - reflection vs feeling / observation towards a situation / object / person

He has a herring gull’s determination: fixed and stoic and calculating. It’s the same expression worn off ship by my father, whether skulking about the house, swigging whiskey from his favoured tin mug, or flipping mackerel in a skillet.

Resolving - intention vs feeling / observation towards a situation / object / person

On my maiden voyage, the first I made in the wake of his death, lying ahull was the only option. In my eagerness to get underway and my anxiety to honour his memory I failed to prepare.

All examples are from a short story of mine.

Structural Discussion

I was invited back to my old writers' group on Friday to talk to them about what I've been doing at NAW. As part of my screenplay module I've been developing a 10 page document for the analysis and commentary of the plot and structure, so I duplicated the first 8 pages (the last two relate to Dramatica's Deep Theory, and only a few people won't lose their minds when confronted with such horrific chaos) and took them along to help the discussion.

It went quite well, considering there were only 6 out of a possible 12, 3 were from the poets group, 1 was a librarian, 1 left early (as he always does), and 1 failed to even feign contempt that I deigned to talk at them about my wonderful new toys - pah!

I will be uploading the analysis document onto my website (check the links on the right) as soon as everything's done and handed in at UCE (it will include the two pages on Dramatica too).

Anyhoo, yes, it went well, and after 40 minutes I'd managed to loosely cover Field's 3 Act Structure, Hauge's Motivation and Conflicts Chart, Vogler's Hero's Journey and Archetypes as well as unifying themes.

The only learning point for future discussions is to consolidate on existing examples, not just my own (though of course they already exist here). Whilst I could come up with a few, I did stumble when put on the spot.

The handouts were well received and I was complimented on using diagrams and tables and having broken everything down into constituent parts for easy reading.

Five Stages of Loss, Death and Dying

I'm nipping in and out of Rachel Ballon's Breathing Life into your Characters at the moment, and came across a brief section on the five stages of death quoted from one Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (a psychiatrist no less). The idea of the book is to get the writer to engage with their emotions when they are writing so as to create characters with greater depth, provide the reader with more emotion and build better arcs of conflict and motivation for the characters. The five stages are:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

And, as Baron says, as with all rules there are exceptions - some people don't hit all the notes, some get stuck in a cycle. Just as with Syd Field's discussion on 3 Act Structures, as developed by Hauge, et al, we can look at the five stages as simply being another play on Beginning, Middle and End.

Screenwriting 102(6) - Hauge's Structural Checklist

I've been reading Hauge's Writing Screenplays that Sell - it's been sitting under my desk so long (having been discarded from the library) that I didn't realise and bought another copy... how stoopid (SIC) am I?

Anyhoo, I've got to the Structural Checklist, and having read that like my tutor, Hauge believes your first draft should simply be written without consideration to anything but your own imagination, I now get to the meat of what goes into the second draft and beyond...

Note: I personally can't write a whole draft without considering first what is about to follow. Let's hope that doesn't stump me at any point.

1. Every scene, event, and character in the screenplay must contribute to the hero's outer motivation
2. Early in the screenplay, show the audience where the story is going to lead them
3. Build the conflict
4. Accelerate the pace of the story
5. Create peaks and valleys to the action and the humor
6. Create anticipation in the reader
7. Give the audience superior position
8. Surprise the audience and reverse the anticipation
9. Create curiosity in the reader
10. Foreshadow the major events of the screenplay
11. Echo particular situations, objects, and lines of dialogue to illustrate character growth and change
12. Pose a threat to one of the characters
13. Make the story credible
14. Teach the audience how to do something vicariously
15. Give the story both humor and seriousness
16. Give the movie an effective opening
17. Give the story an effective ending

This list will seem obvious to some and cryptic to others, but I can't go putting the whole of Hauge's book online can I? Needless to say, Pages 90-107 cover this in more depth

Screenwriting 102 - Michael Hauge

Michael Hauge, like Syd Field, is one of these Screenplay Uber-gurus, making a mint from providing sturdy advice to writers with no concept of plotting (enter... me). What does he have to say that differs from Syd's?

Michael looks at turning points based upon the 3 Act Structure:

- http://www.screenplaymastery.com/structure.htm

Note 4 important things.

1. Each Act is now split in two with a Turning Point separating them (there are 5 Turning Points, according to Hauge)
2. We now have 6 subActs according to those Turning Points
3. The Turning Points have an alloted appearance based on a percentage of the whole size of the screenplay. This is important, since 25% of a 2 hour film (30 Minutes) is different from 25% of a 3 hour film (45 Minutes).
4. 2 Turning Points are set, as per beginning/ending of Acts 1, 2 and 3. 3 Turning Points have an estimated appearance schedule.
   

Read http://www.screenplaymastery.com/structure.htm for a greater overview from Hauge himself.

Screenwriting 101(2) - The 1st 10 Minutes

Alongside the analysis of Thelma and Louise in regards to the 3 Act Structure, we looked at the importance of the first 10 minutes/pages of a screenplay in getting the reader's attention and really bringing together all the necessary elements of what the film is about, its tone, and the direction its taking.

We looked at the first 10 minutes of Thelma and Louise, pausing the film everytime we had a point to raise, an observation to make:

We see Louise first. She's a waitress (a little older than the others) but she's dependable, a working girl, who can multi-task. Whilst serving coffee her mothering side comes through as she chastises two girls about smoking. "Ruins your sex drive" In the next clip she herself is instantly lighting up.

She phones her friend Thelma, and immediately identifies her as "little housewife". Through their conversation we see their relationship as Louise is the mother/guy and Louise the daughter/girl. Louise is derogative towards Thelma's husband and urging her to tell him that they're both going away for a two day break.

Thelma, by contrast, is a failing housewife - a bit of a slob - her house is decked out in cookery books, post it notes, and a whole host of crap. She is literally drowning in domesticity. She's a child, or at least immature, and that comes through in her mannerisms, speech and actions. She rushes around ineffectually, and we hear that she is afraid to tell her husband, Darryl, that she's going away.

That fear isn't serious fear, and we know, as Darryl arrives, that he's a buffoon of a character, thinks highly of himself, and is easily pissed off at Thelma if she gets in his way. He thinks he has Thelma pegged, though he's too full of himself and getting his own way to truly understand. She is manipulative (a little foreshadowing for her persona change later) and tests the water with Darryl about asking him if she can go away. When he shoots his mouth off at her, she decides not to ask him at all. When he says he'll be home late, she makes the statement that it's funny how he sells so many carpets late on a Friday, when everyone would rather be going home that buying carpets - her insinuation is that he's playing the field. He, however, doesn't get it and again shoots his mouth off at her - we have her motivation now. She is in a loveless marriage.

Darryl leaves and Thelma calls Louise back at the diner. She has decided not to tell Darryl, but will leave him a message. A waiter picks up the call and tries a momentary wooing - every male in this film is trying to chat up Thelma. Louise comes second. Whilst talking to Louise, Thelma keeps flitting in and out of the fridge. She has a chocolate bar in there which she keeps snacking on and putting back. She's compulsive, scatty, sassy and lacks willpower. She wants the chocolate (for breakfast?) and yet a voice in her head (probably Darryl's) keeps telling her to put it back. So, after every bite she puts it back and shuts the door - willpower! But, as she's leaving, she goes back and takes it with her. She can make up her own mind.

We then have a montage of Thelma and Louise getting their bags packed - Louise is methodical, planning, clean and practical. Her items are bagged up, everything is tidy, her house is pristine and everything in its place (she is controlling and obsessive compulsive). We then have her call Jimmy on the phone. He's out and she gets his answer phone. In retalliation she puts down the photo of him on her dresser -This sets up that she has a boyfriend. We know now she isn't single. Also, their relationship is separate; she assumed he'd be there, and though she feels that attachment (she called him to tell him she was off), her putting the photo down reasserts to herself that she can't rely on him, and only on her self. Has he let her down? This contradicts Thelma's relationship and also relates back to Louise's smoking and her comment to the girls about smoking ruining sexual drives.

And of course, Thelma's manner of packing involves every bag in the house and throwing all her clothes, higgledy-piggledy into them - no structure or order. She hasn't a clue about what she'll need. Then she takes the gun, holding it like a rat's tail, and dumps it in one of the bags - it's hers, it was in her drawer, and she feels she'll need it, but she doesn't know how to handle it (has never handled it).

Note: Chekov's rule on guns

Chekhov's gun. If you put a gun onstage in Act I, Chekhov once wrote, you must
use it by Act III. A Chekhov's gun is a fictional element (threat, character,
mystery, prize, challenge) introduced early and with fanfare and in which the
author expects the reader to invest. That investment must pay off with
deployment later in the story even if the Chekhov's gun then disappears offstage
for a long interval. (CSFW: David Smith)

- http://www.foolquest.com/fooltrek_faq/glossary-sfwa.htm

Louise collects Thelma, and they pack the bags into the trunk, with Louise catching herself wanting to do it all for Thelma. Thelma scattily advises Louise about psycho-killers, and they take a photo of themselves before getting in.

We get a brief exposition of where they're going to a lodge of Louise's friend; he's separating from his wife, she gets the lodge in the settlement so he's allowing all his friends to use it - setting up a theme of divorce and separation - Louise responds to Thelma's comments about not telling Darryl by saying: "You get what you settle for. " which foreshadows how the two are escaping.

Thelma dumps the gun on Louise, and though Louise is shocked, she takes it. Thelma again reasserts - psychokillers. Thelma then puts her feet on the dashboard and her dress billows up (Marilyn Monroe style), which Louise tells her to stop because of the kind of attention it will bring - another foreshadowing that Thelma's actions (though not neccessarily self aware) are going to lead to something.

Thelma badgers Louise to let them stop somewhere for food, and though Louise finally agrees, the point is that this is all because of Thelma's inability to keep her willpower in check - beyond the 10 minute mark we'll see her drinking excessively, picking up a man she's doesn't know, dancing with him, and then letting him take her outside, where he tries to rape her. (Ooh'er, responsibility?!)

So, they stop off at a truckstop, The Silver Bullet (apt name - though it was the real name of the place before the filmakers arrived). Tons of men and tons of trucks. The trucks appear throughout the story. The road is laden with them, man's world. Here are two women trying to escape men, to emasculate men and take control of their own lives, and yet men are all about them, and here they are, 10 minutes in, going into the most male area possible.

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That is a hell of a lot to pack into the first 10 minutes/pages of a screenplay, but it gives us characters, location, time, tone, genre, foreshadowing... so much stuff.

Screenwriting 101 - Syd Field

Syd Field is one of those pioneer guys, there at the beginning of something nice and structured. Having read through a gazillion scripts for Hollywood he happened upon the idea of the 3 Act Structure, by which all movies (ahem) are defined.

- http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/3act/

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Field

Field's most important contribution has been his articulation of the ideal "three act structure". In this structure, a film must begin with about half an hour of 'setup' information before the protagonist experiences a 'turning point' that gives him or her a goal that must be achieved. Approximately half the movie's running time must then be taken up with the protagonist's struggle to achieve his or her goal: this is the 'Confrontation' period. Field also refers, sometimes, to the 'Midpoint', a more subtle turning point that should happen in the middle (approximately at page 60 of a written screenplay) of the Confrontation, which is often an apparently devastating reversal of the protagonist's fortune. The final quarter of the film depicts a climactic struggle by the protagonist to finally achieve (or not achieve) his or her goal and the aftermath of this struggle.

Plot point 1 occurs at 30 minutes, Plot point 2, at 90 minutes. Simple!

That paradigm has undergone rigourous changes throughout its first inception, providing us with a slightly more flexible situation in which we have a set of demarcations that help better define the Acts and moreoever, the plotting of the story itself.

Now we have a Midpoint that separates Act 2 in two - actually giving us a 4 Act piece (but let's not worry too much about throwing that idea around). We have an Inciting Incident that occurs in Act 1 (could be the first 10 minutes, or at Plot Point 1). And at the end we have the Epilogue (in which loose threads may be tied up - how will our protagonist exist in their new world?) - it's important to keep in mind that this isn't rigid, and these points may be slid up and down the scale to fit the story being told. Famously, Callie Khouri decided against writing to Syd Field's formula because she found it too rigid, and yet when he released an analysis of four films that adhere to his structure, Callie's Thelma and Louise came first.

Then, we have two other unique events - the Pinches. These provide Act 2 with more punch. Things that help the plot further progress.

Finally, right at the front, is the 1st 10 Minutes. And why is this important? Because the writer needs to jam a whole loads of information in there so that the reader/audience can get an understanding of what's in store for them: characters, genre, plot, tone, etc.

This, thus, gives us, if you count the demarced zones, perhaps 9 Acts (crazy notion), but this helps with advert breaks!

Applying this to our first week's film: Thelma and Louise:

1. Act One - We meet the characters, setting up who they are and that this is a road/buddy movie.
2. Inciting Incident - Hal attempts to rape Thelma. Louise rescues Thelma through the threat of violence. They have a chance to walk away, but Hal antagonises Louise and she shoots him dead.
3. Plot Point 1 - Louise explains to Thelma that she's going to Mexico, that the cops won't believe that Hal was trying to rape Thelma and that Louise intervened, because they could have got away without shooting him. Louise feels she has no choice but to flee to Mexico and evade capture
4. Act Two - The situation gets darker, but our characters develop from the seeds sown in Act One. Their greatest challenges and the point of no return are coming.
5. Pinch 1 - Thelma and Louise meet JD, a young drifter, who catches Thelma's eye, and though Louise knows the last person they need to tag along is JD, she finally agrees to Thelma's wishes.
6. Midpoint - Having slept with JD, Thelma goes to brag to Louise (she's growing up), only for Louise to ask after the $6,500 (Louise's life savings) that her boyfriend had wired over. They go to the room. JD is gone and the money with him (Thelma is still a kid). Louise breaks down. All is lost and finally Thelma takes charge of the situation (perhaps she is growing up).
7. Pinch 2 - Captured by the cops, JD explains that Thelma and Louise are going to Mexico.
8. Plot Point 2 - Louise points out to Thelma that they have two things going for them. 1) The cops don't know where they are, and 2) The cops don't know where they're headed. The cops let slip to Louise on the phone that they know where she's going, and then, because she's on the phone too long, they manage to trace her call. Thelma and Louise make the decision to go for Mexico, rather than hand themselves in. This is their last chance to turn back.
9. Act Three - The journey is about to end. The girls are awake to the world, but Louise's act of shooting Hal in the inciting incident can't go unpunished...
10. Epilogue - Thelma and Louise doesn't lend itself to an epilogue. The frame fades out before their car begins to plummet (a happy ending? They have gone out on their own terms, after all), and there can be no further resolution. There is a brief montage of them together, setting out on the journey, however.