15
Variety
At first, it seems impossible to find any general rules concerning the basic material. Stories are as varied as life itself. Everything that can be imagined can also be told. A story can deal with a Sherpa mountain climber or with the Queen of England, it can dramatize death and agony, or it can describe an idyllic planting of flowers.
Instead of attempting to impose a narrow definition upon such bountiful freedom, we proceed to make this very variety our first demand: stories must be different from one another. The audience constantly wants new stories, the public desires to hear new things. Thus variety is an essential attribute of the story.
Still, in all this multitude and variety, there are elements which all stories have in common.
Since the primary subject of storytelling is the human being and his actions, all stories are in accord with the principles investigated in the chapters on dramatic construction. Consequently, these rules are the skeleton of any story since they are general enough to be applicable to most living beings and to most actions about which stories are told.
Let us consider a few examples: Love for a divorced woman prompts a king to abdicate his throne. A child wishes to get a toy. A gangster attempts to rob a bank.
All stories with intentions, like the gangster’s attempt to rob a bank, are subject to the relations between motive, intention, difficulty, goal, no matter how different from each other they appear to be.
Now let us propose two alternative stories about the same person: (1) a grocer competing with a supermarket; (2) a narrative description of the grocer’s married life. The difference is that in the first instance there is the dramatic drive of an intention, and in the second there is none.
Some kinds of stories, such as “a chase” or “revenge” or “ambition,” invariably contain a built-in propulsion. Others lack any basic intention. As a result, there are erratic filmmakers who, to their own amazement, produce good pictures as well as bad ones. The inconsistency of their output stems from the fact that they have no real knowledge of their craft. Occasionally, however, they are fortunate enough to get a story with innate dramatic qualities so that it need not be revamped by an expert adapter.
At first, we may be blinded by the variety of the story material, but after a while our mind achieves the faculty of the X-ray looking through the outward layer of flesh, blood, and muscle in which a specific happening is clad. Inside, we find the bones of structure and the invisible nerve fibers through which the dramatic impulses are relayed.
In no event should this structure be confused with what is commonly known as the “formula.” The laws of dramatic construction apply to any action or combination of actions, whereas the formula is a whole system which is never changed. Although the formula may be clad in new clothes every time, it is the death of any creation. It is the aid of the weak writer, who is incapable of looking into the depths of the dramatic laws; instead of using his knowledge, he works on the basis of previously tried-out schemes. Obviously, this limits the field of his story material considerably. Besides, the formula violates the essential attribute of the story—variety. Soon the spectators recognize the same scheme in different clothing and become uninterested. But if the writer possesses a thorough knowledge of the dramatic laws, he can combine an unlimited number of schemes, and his stories will be of limitless variety.
Considerations of Form
Generally, the selection of story material rests with the producer and studio executives: the screenwriter is engaged later. But the freelance writer, particularly in television, must choose his basic material very carefully before investing a great deal of labor on writing it, since sale or rejection may depend upon a correct choice.
But apart from these practical considerations, the choice of material is of decisive importance, because it predetermines the success or failure of the final script to a large extent. It is true, however, that many a good picture is based on most insignificant material; an expert screenwriter was employed to develop it. It is also true that many a time the bad material cannot be improved, and the story is shelved after months or even years of fruitless attempts to improve it.
Since we are forced to base our primary choice upon material which is still raw and incomplete, we can be misled to overestimate its potentialities; or we may overlook the obstacles for further development in a treatment. But we might also fail to recognize valuable seeds in a short story, just as we might throw away a diamond before it has been polished. Indeed, how many timid souls would have been as perceptive as Frank Capra, who used the text of a Christmas card by Philip Van Doren Stem as the basis for It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)?
After our initial response to the material, we should proceed to examine each element and evaluate it separately. To say “I like it” or “I don’t like it” may be too rash a judgement in accepting or discarding a story. Instead, we ought to consider whether it qualifies to meet some of the preliminary requirements of the film medium, such as are demanded by its form, for instance.
Not all stories are equally adaptable to motion pictures even though they were eminently successful in other forms of storytelling. For one thing, the material must fit the limitations of space, which means that it is suitable to be compressed into a restricted time of performance. Therefore, it cannot be too much or too little. It is better to choose too much than too little, because too much can be condensed, while too little, if it has to be stretched, becomes thin. An enormous novel, if it is to be translated to the screen, must be of such nature as to allow simplification and reduction to essential lines. There are but few novels where this is not possible. Tolstoy’s War and Peace has been filmed most successfully (1968) by the Russians in a huge film that had to be shown on successive nights. On the other hand, Robert Bolt and David Lean successfully condensed Doctor Zhivago (1965).
Next it must be realized that the camera’s photographic realism affects the story and thereby the choice of material. The lens shrinks the realm of fantasy and imagination for the spectator to a considerable degree: the events are visualized for him by the camera. On the other hand, no matter how vividly the novelist designs and paints with words, each reader must use his own imagination to translate these words into pictures. But the photographic certainty of the camera limits his mental concept of, say, a medieval knight. Instead, it shows him an actor clad in armor. To conjure up and preserve illusions under these circumstances is difficult: historic pictures often depict characters and events that are larger than life so that style and élan overcome the earthbound realism of what is seen on the screen.
Fantasy, parable, and allegories are more easily accepted in the legitimate theatre, where the limitations of the stage necessitate a partial suspension of disbelief. We know full well that in reality people would not enter or leave a room in a precise succession which precludes any stage waits. If only intuitively, the audience grants the playwright permission to overcome the immobility of his set by resorting to various devices which could be rejected as dubious or downright creaky upon literal scrutiny.
Indeed, the theatre has continually sought to escape from realism, vacillating throughout the centuries between a declamatory and a naturalistic style. The exaggerated masks of the ancient Greek actor and the stylized conventions of the Japanese Kabuki or Noh plays matched unreal appearance to the other factual shortcomings of the dramatic composition.
Reality, photographed in close-ups, has made it more difficult for the moviegoer to accept the improbabilities that are not only permissible but sometimes desirable in the theatre. Watching a play, we are prepared to go along with the symbol-substitutes of the stage: our skepticism is pacified by the tacit agreement that what we see is “as if” and not “what is or was.”
Nevertheless, this symbol-substitute has the same exactness — without being fully true — that, a map has in comparison with a landscape. The map represents a scientifically exact transcription of the landscape; nobody could doubt its correctness, yet it is not the landscape. If that “likeness” remains consistent, as has been achieved in some of the allegories by Kurosawa or Fellini, a gauze seems to be draped over the harsh stare of the camera. That same consistency makes the writing of Franz Kafka so effective: his fantastic allegories are conceived and executed with a chilling realism. On the other hand, erratic and undisciplined symbolism in pictures multiplies the difficulties of overcoming the fundamental opposition of the medium, which, in any event, tends to return to realism after its sporadic flights of fancy.
Though comedy seems to be the exception, it also proves the rule. Unlike the drama, which has much less leeway in its truthful representation of life, there are dozens of different kinds of comedy, ranging from broad farce to sophisticated wit. A whole new set of requirements and responses comes into play that appear to escape the evaluations of logic or the scrutiny of a spectator comparing implausible events to his own experiences. Coincidences or misunderstandings that would be judged outrageous in a drama become permissible in farce. Indeed, unrealistic exaggeration has the same illuminating effect as the comic distortions of caricature and is equally desirable.
Yet it would be wrong to believe that “in comedy anything goes.” For one thing, once the kind of comedy is selected, its style must be preserved. It would not work to alternate between Rabelaisian ribaldry and Shavian wit. Oscar Wilde would not have been the ideal scripter for Laurel and Hardy, nor could the Marx Brothers have done justice to Philip Barry’s Philadelphia Story.
Beyond this adherence to a certain style, the writer should not assume that he can expect a total suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. “Deuces wild” presupposes that other cards retain their normal validity, or the game would become too confusing. Similarly, suspension of disbelief is best expected of only one essential premise — from which all other comedic situations arise.
Considerations of Dramatic Construction
Since it is the story content which is of primary interest to the audience, one might assume that the requirements of dramatic structure are not to be considered in the initial selection of the material. But because the story’s dynamic potential becomes crucial in the development, the dramatic elements must be evaluated in their still latent stage.
In some instances, the basic substance simply does not lend itself to dramatization. There may be no way to establish a main intention that will vitalize the entire drama. Then again there may be too many separate intentions which would confuse the basic story line. In such cases, one can explore which single intention would prove to be most productive; the others can then be either eliminated or suppressed. Having chosen the dominant flow, it is often possible to link the others in a subsidiary confluence. Thus material that does not seem promising at first glance can be “whipped into shape” like a lumpy clod of clay by a sculptor’s molding hands.
The quality of the dramatic elements embedded in the material will come to the fore more plastically as the script is developed. Despite hackneyed dialogue and stale situations, many Westerns owe their popularity to clear and strong intentions: the rustler sets out to steal cattle and the sheriff wants to get him behind bars. On the other hand, the same simple setting can enhance a powerful clash between clear-cut determinations.
While some inexpensive pictures provide little burden for strong motors, many a big film has placed a heavy load on weak propulsion. We find the feeblest and most uninteresting intentions among some “colossal, stupendous, spectacular” productions.
Dramatic construction has taught us that all happenings occur on the basis of very intricate relations and interconnected proportions. It is perilous, therefore, to pick out one element and strengthen it so markedly that it unhinges the others. However, a careful evaluation may serve to recover a balanced structure that has been twisted out of shape.