Never follow rules...

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Chris Dee.gothampm	Never follow rules...		Lead	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/10/03 17:37 Gothamite	Tags : None ...made up by people who haven't read the real rules That's from the awesome interview with Aaron Sorkin discussed elsewhere in this forum, and if you haven't read it over, I strongly recommend it. I was recently re-introduced to the blueprints for genius: Hamlet's Advice to the Players and Aristotle's Poetics. I wanted to open a topic for them because, truly, they're both fairly brief, not difficult to understand, and can make any story-teller or artist BETTER. So let's have a go at it!
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#1	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/10/03 17:48 Gothamite	Thought for the day from Aristotle: *Quote:* Say what the story demands Big-A criticizes a particular play by Euripides because he says writer served his own agenda rather than the story. There is a particular character, Orestes, who "is made to say himself what the poet rather than the story demands." You know that monologue in Poltergeist (or maybe it's Gremlins) about why the daughter hates Christmas, or John Goodman's monologue about being alone in Always. Nice bit of writing, but you sit there going WHERE did THAT come from??? It's like it was left over from some other screenplay where it didn't get used. By contrast, The American President manages a lot of seeming digressions about the environment, guns, and flag burning, but it's not out of place there because those characters eat, sleep and breathe politics. They are partisan politicians and lobbyists, and the issues are inseparable from the dramatic conflict. So when we watch the film and Sidney goes on a rant about the environment, it is truly HER CHARACTER talking and not the writer using her as a mouthpiece.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#2	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/10/03 18:13 Gothamite	Thought for the day from Shakespeare: *Quote:* Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. In other words, play to the ones who get it. Don't short-change the best and brightest in your audience by dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of hacks out there with no respect for their audience, who consistently underestimate what they can understand. Who, rather than challenge them, lower the bar further and further until they wind up with exactly the unengaged mouthbreathers they expected. They wind up returning to the vile dust from whence they sprung, "unwept, unhonored, and unsung."
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#3	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/12/03 19:50 Gothamite	I'm playing catchup today, so no more Aristotle yet. Just a bit of Shakespeare. The situation with Hamlet's Advice to the Players is this: An acting troupe has come to the court at a very convenient time. Hamlet, for reasons of his own, has asked them to perform a specific play and he's written some additional material he wants them to insert. He is, therefore, aside from being the Prince with a tragic destiny trying to avenge his father's murder, yadda yadda yadda... he is AT THAT MOMENT, a playwright instructing actors how to perform his lines. And for that reason this speech is famous in that we hear in it Shakespeare himself telling us how his stories should be told. Isn't this about acting instead of writing, you may ask? Yes and No. Bear with me. Because in my mind they are so tied up together - the actor's understanding of character is SO VITAL for writing true human characters and making them behave believably. The advice to the players begins like so: *Quote:* Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue This is where many actors stop and dismiss the passage as having anything to do with modern ideas of performance. "Trippingly on the tongue" they think to mean "affectedly", like those puffed up RSC guys on PBS. But that's not it at all. The thing with Shakespeare: you can't break up the verse. If you break up the verse, you break up the thought. And the thought here, if we continue to the period (the end of the thought): *Quote:* Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. A-ha. Trippinglyisn't stylized, it's the antithesis of the overblown announcements of the town crier. Trippingly is NATURAL speach. Pronounce it trippingly, not like you're reciting verse but like you're speaking from your heart. There IS a lesson there for the writer as well as the actor. The characters should speak naturally from their hearts and minds. Not in an artificial, stylized manner. If anyone saw the JLAin't reviewer complaining about profanity, that is 100% the wrong idea. If all your characters speak "trippingly," naturally from who they are, some will inevitably swear just as some never will.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#4	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/14/03 17:05 Gothamite	Aristotle is up today: *Quote:* (The Dramatic Story) is an imitation of an action that is whole and complete in itself and of some magnitude. The key word to look at at this point is imitation. It might set off flags for some of you that perform, since "imitating" action or emotions would seem contrary to good acting. The strutting Jon Lovitz chacter Master Thespian struttng and declaming rather than the method actor being in the moment. And yet here imitation is used, almost in passing, as a good thing. Why? Well Aristotle is using it a little differently. He's using it in the sense of what the Greeks called the imitative arts. The goal is not to xerox reality but to make something - based on reality - but deliberately constructed and shaped to evoke similar feelings in the audience/reader/viewer. In a portrait, the painter will select which details to include that tell something about the person: If they are a famous tennis player, the artist might include the sunburn on the forehead and cheeks. But if the subject is merely an investment broker who got a little too much sun watching his son at soccer practice yesterday, they would leave that detail out. Realistic detail that evokes feelings and reactions from the reader that are pertinent to the character and story are the goal. The realistic detail of the Continuity pedant are to be avoided. Example: In real life, many of us have had inspiring teachers that shook up our way of seeing the world. None of them went to the lengths of Mr.Keating in Dead Poets Society, making us tear pages out of books and stand on our desks. But those scenes succeed because they evoke the same responses in us. The "realistic" depiction of such a teacher would not be able to have the same effect, condensed into a 5 minute scene in a 2 hour movie. So we have an IMITATION, a constructed representation designed to get that reaction from us.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#5	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/19/03 17:23 Gothamite	This is it. This is the section where, if you buckle up and come along for the whole ride, you WILL walk away with an understanding of the story as an organic living thing. Once you've got that, once you understand WHAT THE STORY IS in its natural state, separate from telling it to your audience, then you can go about sharing it with your audience. Without that basic understanding, the story & the storytelling and the writer's own ego & gratification can get all mixed up. That's when the bad stuff happens. *Quote:* (The Dramatic Story) is an imitation of an action that is whole and complete in itself and of some magnitude... a whole is that which has beginning, middle and end. Some mistakenly take that to mean a three act structure, which is mostly considered an outmoded dead thing. But that idea of Act I: Exposition, Act II: Complication, Act III Resolution is not what Aristotle is saying. That's a way of presenting the story TO an audience, and we're not there yet. Think of telling a particular story like becoming a doctor. The reader or audience are the patient. We're not ready to see patients yet, we're still in med school. Day 1: Gross Anatomy. The human body and its parts. At this point, we're just mapping out the anatomy of the story itself. *Quote:* Every (dramatic story) is in part Complication and in part Denouement; the incidents before the opening scene, and..also those within the play forming the the Complication; and the rest the Denouement. By "Complication" I mean all from the beginning of the story to the point just before the change in the hero's fortunes; by "Denouement", all from the beginning of the change to the end. So: 1) Beginning - the Big Bang of our storyverse 2) Complication - from the Big Bang to a change in the hero's fortunes 3) The point of change 4) Denouement - everything from that point of change to the end 5) The End Remember: we are not concerning ourselves with the audience/reader at this point, they're not here yet. Don't pick up a pen or make an outline. This is entirely about what goes on inside your head. 3 frozen moments of great significance: beginning, change, end connected by these chains of time and events, the complication leading up to the change, and the denouement leading away. We'll look at them one at a time, drawing examples from popular stories we know: Batman, movies, famous books. Tomorrow: THE BEGINNING
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Let's start at the very beginning	#6	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/21/03 20:30 Gothamite	*Quote:* a whole is that which has beginning, middle and end. A beginning is that which is not itself necessarily after anything else, and which has naturally something else after it In other words, the beginning of the plot cannot be caused by something outside itself. Bruce Wayne's decision to become Batman is a direct result of his parents' murder. It is NECESSARILY after something, it is after the murder. So it cannot be considered the beginning. The murder - aha, that was a self-initiated action. It didn't have to happen. It was an act of pure will. If you want to play Devil's Advocate, you may argue that there could be something in Joe Chill's story which made the crime necessary: What if he was a gambler suddenly indebted to a loan shark with only 24 hours to pay? ... That is a valid arguement if we are telling CHILL's story, but we're not. If Batman is our protagonist, then the Waynes' murder is unquestionably the Big Bang of this plot. That beginning act of pure will is, strictly speaking, something either the Protagonist or Antagonist does. Joe Chill is not himself much of a character in the Batverse. His action had a huge impact, but he is never seen again once he's played his part. This is the sort of question you wrestle with while trying to get a handle on the anatomy of your story. In Chill's case, I personally decided Batman's antagonist is not an individual but crime itself. Chill's function is not that of an individual, but that of a symbol. That realization would help me structure my story because I would not flesh out Joe Chill as an individual. I wouldn't go into his motive with the gambling and the loan shark, I wouldn't tell about his mother and his dog-- NOT because I want to avoid making him sympathetic, but because I want to avoid making him SPECIFIC. This is not a person, anything that helps him stand out as an individual acts against a clean and powerful shaping of the story. So that's the beginning - the absolute beginning - the Big Bang.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Let's continue from the very beginning	#7	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/22/03 16:45 Gothamite	*Quote:* A beginning is that which...has naturally something else after it That thing which follows naturally from the beginning inciting incident is the Middle of the plot, "The Complication". The middle must be completely driven by that First Cause of Action. It is a chain that must follow from the First Cause in a cause-and-effect manner. Let's look at The Godfather. Solozzo takes out a hit on Don Corleone. This may have been necessary from his POV because the Don isn't supporting his drug business, but there is nothing in the plot, nothing outside of Solozzo's own head, to make that action NECESSARY. So we can consider that hit the First Cause of action, our Inciting Incident, the Beginning of the tragedy that is Michael Corleone's story. Note: Solozzo did have a reason. He had what to him, as his character is established, is a wholly LOGICAL reason, and taking out the hit is a choice. That he would make the choice may have been inevitable as soon as the Don refused to support his operation - and if it were Solozzo's or Don Corleone's story we were telling, we might therefore have to look earlier for an inciting incident. But in terms of telling THIS story, the hit on Michael's father is not necessarily after anything else that happened in our story. It is therefore the Beginning, the Inciting Incident. Now let's look at the chain of events it sets in motion: Michael goes to the hospital - logical since his father has been shot. Who wouldn't. There he encounters additional threats to his father's safety - Solozzo's men are trying to finish the job - and Michael must take steps to protect him. This underlines for him the clear and continuing danger to his family's safety. Michael kills Solozzo. - He never wanted anything to do with the family business, but he has come to realize they are under attack and it is necessary to defend themselves this way. Cause and effect, cause and effect, each development proceeds directly from the last. After killing Solozzo, Michael must flee to Italy. He is a fugitive (cause and effect stemming from the last development). He meets a girl and marries, while at home his brother is killed. At first these might seem like subplots since they do not proceed directly from the chain beginning with the First Cause and pulling Michael through his story. BUT WAIT, look what happens next: With Sonny's removal, Michael is the heir apparent and a new attempt is made on his life. His wife is killed instead, hardening Michael just a little more and reinforcing that lesson of his father's assassination - in this world it is kill or be killed. Those closest to him are harmed if he sits back on his morals and doesn't act to protect them. The change in Michael's fortunes occurs when his father dies and Michael becomes the new Don, signalling the end of the Complication and the start of the Denouement. Looking back, we see a seamless chain of events leading inevitably from Beginning to the Point of Change. Did people have choices at each step of the way? YES they did, but they made their choices based on who they are and what had just happened previously. That is how CHARACTER drives PLOT. Michael did not HAVE to kill Solozzo, he did make a choice. But because of the kind of man he was - a good man who loved his father & his family and wanted to protect them - a war hero who understood sometimes the only way to protect is proactively through violence - then the CHOICE that he made WAS INEVITABLE. Tomorrow, the END.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	The curtains close on a kiss (god knows)	#8	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/24/03 19:12 Gothamite	*Quote:* There are many dramatists who, after a good Complication, fail in the Denouement. But it is necessary for both points of construction to be always duly mastered Like the Complication, the Denouement has to be a logical and believable chain of causes and effects, but this time, instead of linking the Beginning with the Point of Change, we're moving away from the change to the End. Essentially, if we think of the plot as a rubber band, the complication wound it up, the denouement will unravel it. Or if a music box, again the complication winds it up, resulting in it 'playing out' in the denouement. Both those analogies involve 'winding up' or tension, tightening in the middle and now being released in the Denouement - for the Denouement doesn't just unravel what the Complication set up, it does it in such a way as to resolve the conflict. Because this is Aristotle, he's almost always talking about a moral conflict. In The Godfather, Michael had sworn off his family's mafia business because it was criminal and unacceptable to him. But it became equally unacceptalbe NOT to get involved. His conflict is set in motion with the Inciting Action when his father is shot and it becomes necessary to get involved. It escalates when his brother and wife are killed. His change of fortunes - becoming the Godfather himself - is the JOLT which sets off the unraveling of his conflict - he must act against the enemies within his family as well as outsiders, and in having Tessio and Carlo killed he resolves his moral dilemma. In accepting that sometimes you must sacrifice yourself and your beliefs in order to protect those you love, he accepts his fate as Godfather. In modern literature not every conflict is a moral conflict - some readers and critics abhor that and go to fantastic lengths to try and stretch and pull every conflict, every coming of age story like DIRTY DANCING, every tale of isolation like RENT, every existential exploration like AMERICAN BEAUTY, onto the moral playing field. This isn't an especially constructive exercise. It's best to just look on the conflict as the CENTRAL DRAMATIC QUESTION within your story. *Quote:* An End is that which is naturaly after something itself, either as its necessary or usual consequent, and with nothing else after it The same way the Beginning had to be self-generating, not be dependent on something that occured earlier, so the End is NATURALLLY AFTER something. It is the probable or necessary consequence of all that has happened before - the Inciting Incident happened, cause and effect, cause and effect, through the Complication, the Denouement,and now LOGICALLY, NECESSARILY, the END results from that. Within the storyverse of The Godfather, a man like Michael would almost always make the choices he made, to sacrifice himself to protect his family, and wind up where he ends up - because within that storyverse, of course the actions he must take will be violent, and of course there will be enemies within the family as well as without. Within the storyverse of Dirty Dancing, a girl like Baby - with an innocent Kennedy-era optimism and desire to help the disadvantged - will automatically be moved to help the dancer she finds glamorous and admirble, and who is trapped in economic and social circumstances she finds unfair. The End also has "nothing else after it" - the audience has to know the story is complete. Since Ari was mostly talking about classical tragedy, that final THE END was most often the protagonist dying, but that is not the only End audiences recognize as a story's conclusion. "And they lived happily ever after" works just as well - or it did before Disney started making sequels to their fairytales. Just how do we reconcile sequels with this concept of THE END? Well, let's look at The Godfather, considered to have one of the best sequels in existence. Michael's story in terms of the conflict between his principles and the demands of his family ARE resolved by the end of the first film. The second film begins a new story with its own beginning middle and end, which happens to involve those same characters. But the Godfather II's central dramatic issue: is it possible to destroy your family in your efforts to protect it - is a separate WHOLE, not a continuation of the first story, nor a repetition of its lesson.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Once upon a time...Later	#9	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/26/03 20:49 Gothamite	How can something happen before the beginning, you ask? Good question. Aristotle has told us how he is defining "the beginning" the first cause of action/inciting incident: It does not NECESARILY follow something else, it doesn't happen as the result of what's gone on before. It is the beginning of our story, but not necessarily the first thing the audience sees when they walk through the door. Yes, the audience. We're ready to think about them. *Quote:* a dramatic story, then, is...complete in itself The audience needs to be introduced to the characters and storyworld, and in order for the tale to be COMPLETE IN ITSELF this introduction must occur WITHIN THE STORY. This is where that E-word: the Exposition, comes in. In The Godfather the wedding makes a superb introduction to both the characters: Michael, Kay, Sonny, the Don, Tom Hagen, Connie and Carlo, etc. The wedding scene also communicates the powerful family influences (and Family influences) driving Michael's life. These are an intensely family-oriented people and Michael's love for them, despite his disapproving of their business, is apparent. It also clear, within the first minutes of the wedding/exposition scene, what their family business is: the story Michael tells Kay of Luca Brazzi and the Band Leader spells it out eloquently. The wedding even lays groundwork for important subplots, such as introducng not just Sonny as Michael's brother, but Sonny's temper when he curses the FBI in the parking lot and smashes a camera. In addition to the Exposotion, the other category of events that occur before the Beginning/Inciting Incident is: the backstory. This is what happens before the audience even arrives. Few stories begin like David Copperfield's "I am born." Stuff happened to the characters before we meet them. If it's relevant info, we should let the audience in on it. This can be done overtly by telling them (never the best approach), or giving them all the data they need to make the inference themselves (always preferred). Now this is significant: SOME of your audience will not be able to connect the dots. There are, unfortunately, passive readers out there who nobody ever taught to THINK about what they read. But for those who are capable, the act of deducing from what they are shown, rather than passively being told, makes the element *more real and significant, and the entire experience of reading your work more satisfying. It is always preferable to serve those readers and not short change them for the sake of the dullards. So what do you do? American Beauty* does both, telling and showing the audience the backstory, and does so to great effect, so let's look there for a comparison. Lester is a middle-aged man who undergoes a dramatic midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his daughter's friend Angela. Most of his crisis results from the fact that his marriage is a dead and loveless one. Lester TELLS us this, briefly, in a voiceover as he watches his wife garden with an obsessive fixation on how she looks to the neighbors: "See how the trowel is the exact shade of green as her gardening gloves, that isn't an accident. She wasn't always like this..." he tells us. But as the story goes on, there are subtler clues for the alert viewer to understand just what Lester has lost: his daughter's romance with Ricky, a boy Lester has said reminds him of himself at that age, shows us an innocent and hopeful young love, presumably much like what Lester once knew with his wife. There is even a scene later where the couple even glimpse their lost love for a moment themselves, becoming amorous and playful before the wife says something thoughtless and superficial about staining the sofa. Lester recoils, and we see not just what was lost but HOW it was lost. In brilliantly giving us a bit of both worlds, American Beauty succeeds where many backstories fail.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#10	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 02/27/03 20:13 Gothamite	That was a lot of Aristotle. Let's let it digest and turn back to Master Shakespeare for a moment. We'll get back to A shortly. *Quote:* suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. He is still talking about acting - and he is still giving the writer priceless advice through it all. "...to hold a mirror up to nature..." That's the alpha and the omega, Shakespeare says. Anything that interferes with that is screwing up the program. Avoid it. To SHOW the audience themselves: good and bad, their best instincts and their worst, their possabilities and their flaws. "the very age and body of the time" Tell it like it is - a mirror up to nature - on the broader stage of social movements (if that's what you see) as well as individual character psychology. Was the batverse a mess because the perverse fruits of Miller have been taken to extremes for too long? Had they produced a character so stunted and bereft of humanity audiences could not identify with him nor care about him? If that's you're take, reflect it in your characterization and themes. Some writers' insights begin and end with individual psychology--Henry James and James Joyce come to mind as writers who are writing about a MAN in all his complexities, but not his world. Knowledge of their hero's time might be important to follow the story, but for audiences living at the time who would already be familiar with the customs and history, that would not be any additional study. Some writers, on the other hand, are creatures who comment on the times/society almost exclusively: Margaret Atwood, Voltaire, John Steinbeck - their characters have psychology, yes, but there is a sameness to it. The story isn't about them and what makes them tick, it is driven by the writer's beef with their world. None of these writers are second rate talents, they simply follow their own muse, and more power to them. But those who can do both: who can hold a mirror up to not just the individuals in the audience but the whole time and place in which they live, that's the quantum leap from Steinbeck to Shakespeare. Something to be mindful of, however, if one fancies onesself a social critic: quasi-social satire is a trap. Stringing together a bunch of pop culture caricatures does not make your work a daring opus of social commentary- it makes your work a Saturday Night Live skit. And if it's as shallow and pompous as the usual self-styled social pundit, it's a skit from SNL: the Unfunny Years! How to avoid the trap, Listen to the Bard: Hold a mirror up to nature, being neither too tame nor overdone, playing to the ones who get it and not going over the top for the sake of the lowest common denominator.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#11	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/01/03 19:54 Gothamite	Okay then - I haven't said it in so many words, but the astute reader will have gathered by now: with Aristotle, PLOT is the be all and end all. If you and he were buddies, and you were inviting him to go with you see SPIDERMAN, don't bother telling him it stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, he doesn't care. What is the flick ABOUT? he'll ask. Directed by Sam Raimi, you say, who did The Hudsucker Proxy that he liked so much. He doesn't care. What is THIS STORY ABOUT? Peter Parker, ordinary high school kid, kind of nerdy, is bit by a spider and acquires superpowers, etc. Okay, now at least Ari is listening. Now that we have an idea what our plot is - how it's put together, Ari tells us we should keep it in mind as we construct each and every scene: *Quote:* So that it is the action in it, i.e. its Fable or Plot, that is the end and purpose of the story; and the end is everywhere the chief thing He doesn't mean end as "the ending" but the purpose, the point of it all. Telling the PLOT is what we're here to do, and that's what we want to keep in mind, scene by scene. If we're making a cake, we will keep that end (the cake) in mind at each step: when we go to the grocery store, we will buy flour, sugar, butter and eggs, not ground beef and barbecue sauce. When we mix the flour and sugar, we will remember we must blend the dry ingredients before adding the butter, then we'll crack the eggs and stir in the butter, not as an end in itself, but to add to the flour-sugar-butter mixture with the END of making batter which will bake into that cake! So what's a movie example, you ask? How about The Breakfast Club - not anybody's idea of high-fallutin' art, right? Five stereotypical high school students stuck at Saturday detention discover they have more in common as teenagers sharing similar traumas growing up than they are separated by the artificial roles of athlete, princess, brain, basket case, and so on. What we see as we watch the movie are not RANDOM conversations. Each conversation reveals a little of what the students have in common: feelings of alienation, problems with parents, difficulty living up to their stereotype. The writer of this silly bit of fluff kept the END and PURPOSE of his story in mind at each and every turn.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#12	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/01/03 19:58 Gothamite	Shakespeare concurs *Quote:* And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Don't go off on tangents to get a laugh, or because it's a cool idea or you think it would be dramatic. Keep your focus on the NECESSARY QUESTIONS OF THE PLAY. You're here to tell THIS story.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#13	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/07/03 18:13 Gothamite	*Quote:* the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action...the unity of plot does not consist, as some suppose, in its having one man as its subject. An infinity of things befall that one man, some of which it is impossible to reduce to unity; and in like manner there are many actions of one man which cannot be made to form one action. One sees, therefore, the mistake of all the poets who have written...similar poems; they suppose that because Hercules was one man, the story of Hercules must be one story. This is MAJOR. So let's slow done and make sure we're all starting on the same page. Remember that key word "imitation". The dramatic story is the "imitation of action," not the action itself. It is a made thing. A mind is deciding what to include and what to leave out to achieve a specific effect. There is a classic example of Alfred Hitchcock: he says if two people are in a room talking about baseball and a bomb explodes, the audience jumps for a second but that's it. And that is NOT how to make a good thriller. Rather you give the audience information the characters don't have: you show them the bomb ticking, then they feel suspense. They sit on the edge of their seats saying "Stop talking about BASEBALL already, there's a BOMB in the room!" This isn't "realism," it is "imitation" - If we were in the room, we wouldn't see the bomb. We are shown the bomb to get a specific reaction from us. It can go the other way too: sometimes you OMIT information. For example, in a lighthearted comedy piece where someone has been kidnapped, you would not dwell on the after affects of the chloroform, the nausea and hangover, if the tone of the scene is a humorous exchange between the victim and their captor. As we go on to look at the hero in relation to the story, let's hold on to that distinction between REALISM -thrown around by the uninformed as a good thing but known to us as counterproductive, and IMITATION. In the quote which kicks of this post, Aristotle is again trying to keep our eyes on the prize: the specific story we are telling, its beginning middle and end. The story is not the MAN. It has a main character, YES, but everything that happens to that person is not pertinent to the story. Michael Corleone went to college, he was a war hero, he met and romanced Kay Adams, yet we don't see any of this portion of his life because it is simply not relevant to the story of The Godfather. We are told as much as we need to know to understand his character-- that he is educated, that he and his family obviously intended him for something other than the family business in sending him to an Ivy League school, that he was willing to fight or die to protect his country. But the specifics we simply don't need, so they are omitted. Think of being on a job interview. If the interviewer says "Tell me about yourself," you will not tell EVERYTHING beginning with your first memory of the red bucket in the sandbox. You will select those characteristics that are significant to THIS conversation, i.e. what aspects of your life and personality are pertinent to your role as a potential employee. *Quote:* in other imitative arts (like sculpture) one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole If we see a statue of a man or a picture of a bowl of fruit, it's obvious what the "complete whole" is: it's the man and the bowl of fruit. Those images are frozen in time, but a story moves through time. Yet Aristotle is saying your story must be just as tight and unified as those frozen moments. A story's whole, we've seen, is a series of incidents joined by cause and effect. It has parts - yet those parts all fit together to make one thing. The bowl of fruit has parts too: it has an apple, an orange, two pears, and a bunch of grapes. The statue has head, neck, torso, arms and legs. Each part makes up the whole. *Quote:* (the story) should have its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole The statue has a head, neck, torso, arms and legs. The whole wouldn't look right if any were missing. And there aren't any extras thrown in just because. You ever see a classical statue with a third hand growing out of the head? There's a reason for that. You ever read a story with an utterly pointless 20 pages of legal minutia so the author can show off their expertise? That's a third hand growing out of its head. Ever read a story with a six chapter digression to nowhere so the writer's standin can have an adventure with the hero? That's a third hand growing out of its head. Aristotle wants your plot to be just as tight, just as mindfully constructed as that sculpture. Your story is a living thing. Don't add organs. Next time we'll look at how subplots fit into the scheme of things.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#14	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/10/03 21:56 Gothamite	*Quote:* The perfect plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue. Some readers mistakenly interpret that as saying: No subplots. But that's not quite correct. A single ISSUE is what is called for, not a single plot: in other words, the subplots either directly interact with the main plot, or else they echo it thematically in some way. Ideally both. Let's go back to our favorite example, The Godfather, and look not only at the subplots that are there but at those that were in the novel but were dumped for the movie. First: We have Connie's marriage to wife-beater Carlo. Their wedding acts as exposition, our introduction into the Corleones' world - so far so good. But Connie and Carlo do not disappear from the story once the wedding cake is cut. As we proceed with MICHAEL's story, we periodically go back for glimpses into their married life - and it's not a pretty picture. He beats her, she tells her brother Sonny, who in turn beats the crap out of Carlo. Sonny has quite a temper - this isn't the first we've seen of it - and ultimately, this gets him killed: Carlo beats Connie again - Sonny rushes off to deal with it, right into an ambush -- moving MICHAEL a step closer to his destiny as Godfather, AND establishing Carlo as an enemy within the family that Michael will eventually have to deal with in the moral conflict of his story. That's why the Carlo/Connie subplot stayed in. Next: Remember back at the wedding Sonny was schtupping one of the bridesmaids? In the novel that ALSO stirred up a whole subplot, where she got pregnant, had a child, moved to Nevada, and was one of the front names under which the Corleones controlled the casinos. While interesting, the knocked up bridesmaid's tale did not impact Michael's story in any way, so she was sent on her way when it came time to adapt the story for the big screen.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#15	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/11/03 19:55 Gothamite	If anyone is still out there reading, you may have noticed something - this isn't hard. There is a lot of common sense in what Aristotle has to say, once you a) get past the Greek tendency to make their point by using simple words then defining EXACTLY how they're using them and b) replace Ari's examples drawn from the blockbusters of HIS time with the well-known works of OURS that we're all familiar with so can cut into and really examine. Now that we're getting comfy with the basics, let's go the extra mile and look into the problem areas where people reading Aristotle get muddled. Muddle #1: The importance of Character *Quote:* The first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of the Dramatic Story is the Plot; and that the characters come second That's where 3 readers out of 4 stop quoting, and that's why they go off the rails. Aristotle is NOT saying considerations of a gripping plot and valid character work are in conflict and that plot outranks character. Yet he is often held up by limited minds to criticize good characterization. Let's take the whole quote - What Ari goes on to say, the part that's never read, is possibly one of the most achingly profound metaphors on record. This is WHY Aristotle is on that pedestal above everyone else: *Quote:* The first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of the Dramatic Story is the Plot; and that the characters come second -- compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid on without order and unity will not give one the same pleasure as a simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait He is not choosing his metaphors lightly. Random colors (read: action, eye candy, excitement - the X-Men movie if you will) thrown together will not give as much pleasure as a simpler, less sexy & eye-catching, black and white sketch of SOMETHING that has shape. Yes, right ho. And to illustrate the thing that has shape, Ari doesn't say a bowl of fruit or a tree or a landscape of the mountains - he says specifically, a portrait. A picture of a human being. Character! He is saying the most perfect story consists of a unified plot that, through its chain of cause and effect incidents, forms the IMAGE OF A HUMAN BEING. Compare the X-Men movie, with all of its visually stunning ado about nothing, to the first Tim Burton Batman: Incident by incident pulls back the layers to finally reveal that Bruce Wayne is Batman because of what Jack Napier did to his parents. Rocky and American Beauty are two more examples that nobody could call "character studies" but are, in fact, gripping, plot-driven stories that sketch, from their non-random order, a picture of a human being. Everybody DOES the things they do and WANTS the things they want because of WHO THEY ARE. That's why the moment a story, be it action or romance, betrays character, it ALL goes into the ashcan. Not every reader will be aware of why, but on a subliminal level the LIVING THING inside the story is snuffed out. Back to the painting analogy: Adding color is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it makes the entire piece more real and pleasing. But only if it doesn't obscure the image of the face.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#16	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/13/03 19:20 Gothamite	Muddle #2: Confusing Do's and Don'ts about the MEDIUM with Do's and Don'ts about STORYTELLING. *Quote:* There is, however, a difference in the Epic as compared with Tragedy Much of what Aristotle has to say applies to all dramatic stories - but he was talking specifically about the dramatic stories most prevalent at his time: tragedies performed on stage. He therefore has some "Don'ts" that deal directly with the problems of what you could show an audience in the Theatre Dionysis within the limits of 500 B.C. stagecraft. Now there are those reading Aristotle's poetics for the soul purpose of backing up their twobit opinions about comicbooks and movies, and they figure nobody is going to argue with Aristotle. If that's your goal, it doesn't matter what Ari was really trying to say. If, on the other hand, you actually care and are reading Aristotle because he's right and his ways work, then you need to distinguish between the stage-rules and the always-rules. It's pretty easy: the always-rules are the ones Ari repeats when he's not just talking about Tragedy, but also when he talks about Epics and Histories. He repeats unity of plot, the structure and character points we've covered: *Quote:* The construction of its (epic) stories should clearly be like that of a drama; they should be based on a single action, one that is a complete whole in itself, with a beginning, middle and end, so as to enable the work to produce its own proper pleasure with all the organic unity of a living creature. Sound familiar? And how about this: *Quote:* Herein then, to repeat what we have said before, we have a further proof of Homer's marvelous superiority to the rest. He did not attempt to deal even with the Trojan War in its entirely, though it was a whole with a definite beginning and end. Through a feeling, apprently, that it was too long a story to be taken in at one view or too complicated from the variety of incidents in it. As it is, he has singled out one section of the whole...this being all that is proper to the Odyssey (Odysseus's story) is all that matters and everything else is filler. Those are the always-rules. Other rules that don't always apply, we can easily work out by looking to Ari's commentary on epics: here, he comes right out and says the audience is in a different situation: *Quote:* The epic, however, affords more opening for the improbable, the chief factor in the marvellous, because in it the agents are not visible before one. The pursuit of Hector would be ridiculous on the stage- the Greeks halting instead of pursuing him, and Achilles shaking his head to stop them; but in the poem the absurdity is overlooked Translation: If they're reading, or listening to a poet reciting the story aloud, they use their imaginations, and you can describe fantastic things. Whereas on stage, if you want an Ogre in your story you've got to show the audience an ogre, and if it looks STUPID it won't work. In other words: some of these "not on stage" rules will not apply to prose stories or to poetry, because you're drawing on the audience's imagination. They also won't apply to screenplays for movies, or to comic books where you can realistically show your audience incredible spectacles and fantastic creatures without stretching their suspension of disbelief. Lord of the Rings: in 1950, great as a book. We imagine Hobbits and Orcs and Balrogs in our mind's eye, so the reality is there. If we were shown a guy in Balrog suit looking like a demented Disney walkaround character, it wouldn't fly. But in 2003 movies CAN show us viable realistic Balrog, so what would have once been a Poetics NO for this medium is now a big fat YES! *Quote:* the poet may speak at one moment in narrative and at another in an assumed character, as Homer does In other words, point of view can shift on the page as it cannot on stage. *Quote:* one may remain the same thoughout without any change some stories are told entirely through a first-person narrator, others are not. *Quote:* or the immitators may represent the whole story dramatically, as though they were actually doing the things described.... The epic also differs in its length, which is due to its action having no fixed limit of time, whereas (staged dramas) endeavor to keep as far as possible within a single day. It was generally felt the best plays should place in a single day, the very day when the hero's fortunes changed so dramatically. But it is not felt necessary to hold written stories to that standard, because the audience isn't watching it in that small confined space of the stage: you can jump around in time as well as in space more easily without making excessive demands on your audience (or your set designer).
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Chris Dee.gothampm	La Forza del Destino	#17	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/16/03 20:06 Gothamite	*Quote:* Even matters of chance seem most marvellous if there is some appearance of design in them...for incidents like that we think to be not without a meaning One of the best analysts of the Poetics says: Aristotle can't teach you how to write all kinds of stories, only GOOD ones. The quote above is a terrific case in point: Once you get it, it not only helps you craft GOOD stories, it helps you AVOID BAD ONES! There is a perfectly dreadful trap the bad writers fall into over and over again. It's called God in your Pocket Plotting. Or conversely: Devil in your Pocket Plotting. Or if the writer really, really awful: Devil's in your pocket for 1:45 of a 2 hour movie then turns into God for the last 15 minutes. What the hell am I talking about? God in your Pocket = everything goes the hero's way for absolutely no reason. When the sabotaged Enterprise finally finds the mole who framed the captain and learn the secret location of the peace conference - that could have been anywhere in the galaxy - a ship captained by their old comrade Lt. Sulu shows up and oh they just HAPPEN to be close enough that there is JUST enough time to get there and stop the assassination. Devil in your Pocket = everything goes against the hero for absolutely no reason. The mole just happens to enter the captain's quarters in time to hear him make incriminating statements in his log that will be damning evidence against him when he's accused of murdering a peace delegate. What Aristotle teaches is that it doesn't have to be that way. By bringing Fate into the mix, what would otherwise be an eyerolling run of luck and coincidence is transmutated into something marvelous, where the audience perceives design of a higher power. It is this addition of Fate that doesn't just save the poor plot from sinking into the trap, but it gives the whole story a bit of that 'magnitude' Ari tells us is vital. Case in point: Star Wars. If it were blind coincidence that Luke Skywalker's uncle just happened to wind up owning the droids, and Luke therefore just happened to be the one to unlock Leia's SOS, that would be a lot to swallow. In all the galaxy, her unknown twin brother just happens to be the one sucked into this adventure! But because the Star Wars 'verse is governed by The Force, we perceive that there is a cosmic design behind it all, drawing these people together to right the wrong of Anakin's initial fall. In some stories, the power of Fate is stated outright: The gods get honked off and curse the hero, so there! In others, it's all more subtle: In Pulp Fiction, Jules talks about Destiny when a chance accident saves his life. It's a sign from God, he says, that he should leave crime. When he witnesses a similar accident kill off Marvin, he is more convinced than ever. But it's ultimately his opinion. Whether Fate is really at work inside these chance incidents is ultimately for the viewer to decide. Ditto The Blair Witch Project. The students get lost and loose their map: are these "incidents ...without a meaning" or is there "some appearance of design in them" in the machinations of a real witch playing with them like pawns? The possability of Fate is introduced, for the audience to accept or reject as they choose. Curiously, the one genre that manages to get it right and wrong at the same time is Film Noir. The stock Noir P.I. is probably the worst offender in terms of Devil in Your Pocket Plotting - he's always in the wrong place at the wrong time, falling for the wrong woman, getting the offer he knows is a trap the very day his car is set to be repo'd, etc... and all this happens JUST BECAUSE LIFE LIKES SHITTING ON HIM! Woe is him. It's not his Destiny, it's not the hand of Fate, it's the ludicrous coincidence brand of bad luck, "a lousy stinking world" he'll say - like that cartoon character that has a dark cloud following him around. On the other hand, if we leave Philip Marlow and Sam Spade to their own devices and look at the rest of the Film Noir genre, at Mildred Pierce, DOA, Double Indemnity and the like, we find that supremely subtle suggestion of "design" ...of a universal mechanism moving characters to their destiny. The genius of true noir lies in its ability to communicate Fate thru TONE. In any case: Lesson to be learned. Coincidence BAD, fate GOOD.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	The Tragic Deed	#18	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/17/03 19:32 Gothamite	Not all dramatic stories are tragedies, but many are even if they don't involve guys in togas coming to forefront of the stage to deliver a soliloquy to a dagger. A tragedy, among other things, turns on a "tragic deed" which Big-A defines as *Quote:* an action of a destructive or painful nature, such as murders, tortures, woundings, and the like.... In a deed of this description the parties must necessarily be either friends, or enemies, or indifferent to one another. Now when the enemy does it on enemy, there is nothing to move us to pity either in his doing or in his meditating the deed, except so far as the actual pain of the sufferer is concerned; and the same is true when the parties are indifferent to one another. Whenever the tragic deed, however, is done within the family -- when murder or the like is done or meditated by brother on brother, by son on father, by mother on son, or son on mother -- these are the situations the poet should seek after. Like so much of Aristotle, when one delves into what he actualy says it's easy to blurt out: WELL OF COURSE, D'UH! Naturally it is more gut-wrenching when Michael Corleone has his brother-in-law killed than when he shoots Solozzo, the enemy that tried to assassinate his father. In American Beauty, of all those who are suspects in Lester's impending murder, the actual perpetrator is probably the least satisfying from a dramatic standpoint, since of all the suspects, the murderer has the least ties with the victim compared to Lester's wife, daughter, the boy he considers a mirror of his young self, and Angela with whom he is infatuated and nearly becomes his lover. Now to a great extent, your story is what it is. If you have a great clash between enemies nobody, least of all me, is suggesting you manufacture a family tie (Bane Wayne anyone?) just to make Aristotle happy. Sometimes there IS no tie and you have to accept that and do the best you can (American Beauty sure did, to the tune of 5 Oscars, 3 Golden Globes, and god only knows how many smaller SAG, Writers Guild & Film Festival statuettes!) However sometimes there are ways you can create a tie between the participants in a tragic deed without cheating: In Rosemary's Baby it's Satan who impregnates Rosemary, but it is her own husband who betrays her to enable that to occur. In Batman (the Burton movies) there are subtextual links likening Batman and Joker, Batman and Penguin, and even Batman and Catwoman. The fact that Batman and Joker created each other, or the fact we see Penguin separated from his wealthy parents at an early age, does not make them "family" in the strict sense of the word, but it does create one of those links far beneath the skin that make the tragic deed, when it happens, more tragic and dramatic and hence more satisfying from a dramatist's standpoint.
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Four Species of Dramas:	#19	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/18/03 18:02 Gothamite	One of the best parts of really delving into the Poetics are these little glimpses of a real honest-to-god person in the mind of Aristotle. Just like a fictional character comes alive when we see their humanity, so does Ari. And it's a treat like no other - a treat those who just skim looking for dogma to back up their opinions will never experience. There is a story of Tom Stoppard's, when he approached Shakespeare in Love. How can you even begin writingan icon like William Shakespeare? What happened was, he found a document from an Elizabethan court case, where the contract between a theatre and playwright survived because it was entered as evidence: the playwright will receive x amount on delivery of the complete manuscript of at least 6 pages, the playwright will be available to attend rehearsals, will make himself available for rewrites, etc. Tom looked at his wife and said "I signed this contract for Disney 2 years ago!" It was that EUREKA that some things never change that gave him the key to writing Will Shakespeare. He's a writer, Stoppard thought, just like me. So like me he's....well..... broke, blocked, and horny. Just hold on to that thought for a moment, and let's return to the Poetics. Nothing ...NOTHING... makes a writer so accessible to other writers as hearing him bitch about critics! There is a wonderful section of the Poetics where Ari maps out "four distinct species of dramas" and at first it looks like every other section, the Greek compulsion for classifying and labeling. But then ...oh my god.... he starts bitching! It seems there were a few poets of his time who excelled in turning out each type of drama, and critics were therefore pressuring ALL writers to do the same: every guy putting pen to paper was suddenly expected to turn out some of each type of drama, and criticized if they were not equally adept at each type. Going to the comics world: some writers kick ass on action (Chuck Dixon for instance), some do magnificent character studies (Devin Grayson), some excel at one shots/graphic novels, some at historical elseworlds. Not everybody can do all of these equally well, and it was Aristotle's position that it was wrong to make them try and then spit at them if they didn't flourish. What he finally settles on is urging writers to incorporate some of the four elements into a single work "if possible" -- that is, without screwing up the unity and structure he's spent so much time championing. So...as a matter of interest, what are the four? 1. Reversal of Fortune/Discovery: What happens is: the plot builds to a point where the hero learns something that instantly and completely changes his circumstances from good to bad, or bad to good. The movie ANGEL HEART is a prime example. 2. Tragedy of Suffering: or Woe is me. ANGELA'S ASHES and THE COLOR PURPLE comes to mind as a contemporary examples of a miseryfest where the suffering is the soul of the drama. 3. Drama of Character: often loosely plotted tales where personality and character traits are emphasized. Think GOOD WILL HUNTING 4. Spectacle: The story is just an occasion to parade eye-candy in front of an audience: TITANIC, MOULIN ROUGE, JURASSIC PARK
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Chris Dee.gothampm	Re: Never follow rules...	#20	[url]	[-]
Posts: 3928 03/20/03 20:35 Gothamite	*Quote:* An imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear... pity is occasioned by undeserved misfortune, and fear by that of one like ourselves...the change in the hero's fortunes...must lie not in any depravity, but in some great error on his part. Alright folks, listen up. This is where we separate people who can write good stories from those who can't. There's a lot more going on in the above paragraph than the bit about undeserved misfortune. What's going on is Ari is explaining WHY humans respond to a dramatic story the way they do. Forget the window dressing and grasp the PRINCIPLES BEHIND THEM, and you can do what Loeb is doing, applying those principles to any number of genres and media. If you don't, then you're stuck being Brubaker, mindlessly reproducing the window dressing of a genre or a successful story without a clue what makes it work in the original, producing a hopeless mess that doesn't work and causes readers to desert you in droves & soap your car. The hook is PITY and FEAR Fear comes from witnessing the events happening to "one like ourselves" We have to RELATE to the hero. Even if he's a Roman general sold into slavery and fighting as a gladiator, or a burned out legbreaker for a Philadelphia loan shark getting a shot in a professional prize fight. The particulars of a hero's circumstances can be vastly different from ours, but we MUST see within them a commonality with ourselves. Without empathy for the hero, there is no FEAR or PITY, and the tale doesn't work. Once you've lost your audience- as Bru did the moment he redefined Selina away from the hero the audience had latched on to - it doesn't matter what you do to them, how brilliant or dramatic you think it is. The empathic connection isn't there. It will never work. One No-No Aristotle spells out: the hero's change in fortune MUST NOT LIE IN ANY DEPRAVITY BUT IN A WRONG CHOICE. If the hero is simply depraved: We don't view ourselves this way. We are morally superior to that degenerate. The scumbag DESERVED what they got. But if the hero's fate comes from an error of judgement: that we can bite into! We've all make choices that cause our own misfortune in some way, big or small. Whether it was blowing off studying for that chem final or marrying the wrong person, we have no one to blame but ourselves for the choice we made. But the misfortune is certainly "undeserved" in that it arose from an error of judgement, not depravity. So when misfortune befalls a hero with whom we identify, and that misfortune is undeserved, the result of a misjudgement, it arouses "pity" and "fear" in the audience. There but for the grace of missing that left turn at Albuquerque... Aristotle goes on to specify MISJUDGEMENT - an error of reasoning - because the ability to reason is what makes man unique. If the error was the result of primal urges, it is uninteresting. But poor reasoning, that strikes a chord: man has this wonderful gift, a higher mind that can analyze his existence and his circumstances, and still he can screw up his life. Ideally, the error in reasoning is brought on by the tragic flaw: the hero's pride, ambition, jealousy, desire for revenge, etc. BUT that is getting into specifics and it is, I repeat, the underlying principle of empathic connection to the hero that we really want to take away from this section. We are not JUST talking about Greek Tragedies here. We're talking about all dramas and a number of comedies. The tale of undeserved misfortune does not have to end with the hero falling on a sword. Dramatic stories with happy endings abound, especially in Hollywood, where the hero overcomes the misfortune. (Rocky is a decent example)
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