story & drama - random...

CIN 302 – Screenwriting Patrick Nash 2016

Lecture 2

Story & Drama


• This lecture will look closely at Story and a Definition of the form known as Cinematic Story. Our Focus is on Story & Drama for the Screen.

• I will break Story down into its constituent parts and discuss each in turn.

• I will also look at the important role Story plays in human life.

• I will analyse and explain what we mean by Drama and discuss the part it plays in Storytelling and its important relationship to Conflict, Struggle, Obstacles and Stakes.

• I will also look at Dramatic Irony, a powerful force for engaging the audience, and at analyses of the different types of story as defined by Genre, Conflict, Plot and Dramatic Situation.

• Screenwriters are Storytellers and Great Filmmaking is all about Telling Dramatic Stories that Emotionally Move and Resonate with People.

• In Film, Story is King.

Story & Drama


The Role of Story:

• Storytelling is as old as Mankind itself.

• Ever since man learned to talk and communicate he’s told stories by every means possible whether verbally around campfires or through cave drawings, poetry and song, painting and art, in print and now electronically on screen.

• Human Beings are Fascinated by Story.

• It lies at the Heart of All Human History.

• Indeed the very word derives from it…

• History …. His Story.


The Role of Story

• Stories Teach Us about Life, about People, about the World around us and the things that can happen and have happened…

• Stories Teach Us how to Dream and Imagine the Future…

• They Challenge Us to think about the Perils of Living in a Dangerous and Unpredictable Universe…

• They Teach Us how to Live and Deal with seemingly Insurmountable Problems…

• They Speak to Us about Life & Death, Laughter & Tears…

• They Teach Us about Good & Evil, Morality & Immorality, about Justice & Injustice, Love, Joy and the Pursuit of Happiness.

• They Teach Us how to Slay the Dragon and Face the Impossible with Courage and Fortitude…

• The Best Stories Challenge Us to Think… What Is It To Be Human?


What is Story? A Simple Definition

“Someone or somebody wants something very badly and is having great difficulty getting it.”

• This simple definition is very effective as it incorporates so many of the key ideas and elements that go together to make a story.

• ‘Someone or somebody’… this is the person we follow and empathise with. We see the story from their POV and go on their quest, adventure or journey with them. This someone or somebody is known in storytelling terms as the Protagonist or Hero.

• ‘Wants Something Very Badly’… this is the protagonist’s Goal or Objective. It also implies that they have a Problem that they need to resolve.

• The ‘wants… very badly’ speaks to their Motivation, Desire, Need or Want. The ‘very badly’ implies that it’s a goal they can’t afford to compromise on or to which there is no alternative. It implies the goal is of great importance and has a high value to them so there’s a significant cost to winning or losing. This brings us to the idea of Stakes.

• To make a story work the protagonist’s motivation has to be very strong. It’s a great challenge. He might have doubts and set backs but he can’t give up. He MUST succeed. When the Stakes are Life & Death failure is not an option.


What is Story? A Simple Definition“Someone or somebody wants something very badly and is having

great difficulty getting it.”

• ‘Is having great difficulty getting it….’ Why is he having such great difficulty? This incorporates the idea of Opposition and Adversity. Where is this Opposition or Opposing Force coming from? The Protagonist has a problem and a goal but someone or something is preventing them from solving it or getting to the goal.

• In Storytelling Terms the Opposing Force, Person or Thing, is the Antagonist.

• This idea of Opposition and the Protagonist having to face down and overcome an opposing force implies the existence of Conflict and Struggle and suggests that there are Obstacles in his way that have to be overcome before he can achieve his goal. All stories are about characters in conflict.

• Finally the definition implies that the struggle between the Protagonist and Antagonist has to eventually come to a Climax, an End, with an Outcome and Resolution that is either positive and happy, the Protagonist wins, achieves his goal, or Negative, he loses and it’s an unhappy or tragic ending. Maybe the struggle doesn’t end or isn’t resolved and we have an open ending (a sequel?)


What is Story?

So from our analysis Story contains all of the following elements:

• A Protagonist

• An Antagonist

• A Problem

• Goals & Objectives

• A Strong Motivation

• A Desire, Need or Want

• An Uncompromising Will to Win

• A Need to Act

• Stakes – High Value

• Opposition & Adversity

• An Opposing Force

• Conflict & Struggle

• Obstacles

• A Climax or End

• A Resolution

• Positive or Negative Outcome


What is Story? More Definitions

• A character has a problem that he badly needs to solve…

• A character wants something very badly but is having great difficulty getting it…

• A protagonist (hero) is highly motivated to pursue a specific clearly defined goal but to achieve it and satisfy his or her deepest needs or desires he or she must struggle against a mutually opposed antagonist (villain) and overcome an increasing series of obstacles. Against all odds he must subdue or defeat this opposing force. The stakes are high (win all or lose all) and failure is not an option (neither is compromise). This conflict comes to a head in a dramatic climax and resolution in which the protagonist wins all (a happy, victorious, successful ending) or loses all (a tragic, unhappy, negative ending). A great insight or lesson may be learned.


What is Story? Protagonist

• The Protagonist is the central character of the story and is the person we follow throughout as he or she pursues their goal. Usually introduced at the very start.

• He or she must be an ACTIVE character, making decisions, taking actions, relentlessly propelling the story forward. Stories do not work with Passive Protagonists.

• The Protagonist must be an Empathetic Character i.e.: we, the audience, must be able to emotionally identify and ‘bond’ with this character. We must be able to emotionally understand and ‘share’ his or her predicament and must care about them enough to follow them on their journey. We must be able to ‘walk’ in their shoes and see the story from their POV. We must be able to see and understand the ‘human’ in them.

• Note Empathy does not mean Sympathy or even Liking. There are plenty of unlikeable or morally questionable Protagonists in movie history. The old definition of hero was likewise more ambiguous than today’s understanding of the term. Ancient heroes could be great warriors, protectors and defenders but were often flawed characters adhering to their own often morally dubious code of behaviour. Nowadays a Hero figure in a movie or indeed in life does not have to have any militaristic or warrior qualities at all, e.g.: Gandhi, Neil Armstrong, Stephen Hawking, Billy Elliot, etc.


What is Story? The Protagonist• The Anti-Hero is a Protagonist who lacks conventional heroic qualities such as

Idealism, Courage or Morality. They often have dark personality traits, are morally ambiguous and act contrary to the archetypal hero of old. When anti-heroes do the ‘right thing’ it’s often only because it serves their own self-interest.

• The Sixties Counter Culture era raised the status of the solitary anti-hero and they were common in sixties movies (e.g.: the ‘heroes’ of the Spaghetti Westerns, Easy Rider, Kelly’s Heroes, Mash, etc.) Archetypal Heroes were not ‘cool.’

• Anti-Hero Protagonists are prominent in Film Noir, Crime and Gangster Dramas (The Godfather, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Breaking Bad, Sam Spade, Bogart Characters).

• ‘False Protagonists’ when the true protagonist doesn’t appear until later and we’re tricked into following the wrong character e.g.; Marion Crane in Psycho.

• Buddies & Ensembles: These act as a sort of ‘group protagonist’ but in reality one buddy or one character of the group tends to dominate or come to the fore and tends to be the person we follow most.

• In general All Protagonists (like Antagonists) need to be credible, complex, well drawn, multi-layered characters with real emotional and psychological depth.


What is Story? The Antagonist• The Antagonist must also be a strong multi-layered character. Heroes need strong

villains, without them who would the hero be? Both need to be equally strong so the outcome always appears uncertain and in the balance. It intensifies conflict.

• He or she must have good credible reasons or motives (however dark) for doing what he does. His opposition to the Protagonist must make some kind of sense within the story’s and antagonist’s world.

• We are all the hero of our own story. The antagonist thinks he’s a hero too. In ‘Macbeth’ he’s the protagonist yet is morally corrupt and bad. MacDuff, his nemesis and the antagonist of that story, is the morally good character. It turns the norm on its head.

• Antagonists can be people, an organisation, a thing or an it. Usually they take a single human form but anything that opposes the hero can be an antagonist. A creature (Jaws, Alien, Orca), a supernatural entity or force, a devil or demon, a volcano, tsunami, earthquake, force of nature (Dante’s Peak, Twister, The Day After Tomorrow), big government (1984), big corporations, sinister organisations (Mafia, Klu Klux Klan), a machine (Terminator, SkyNet, I-Robot) or even rival sports teams or love rivals.

• The Antagonist does not have to be a morally bad person or villain at all, e.g.: a love rival can be a perfectly decent person as can rival sports players.


What is Story? The Problem

• A character has a problem that he badly needs to solve…

• The Problem is typically part of the story’s Set Up and sets the story in motion. A really interesting problem can be used to Hook our interest and curiosity. We want to know how is this character going to resolve this problem. It hints at thing to come.

• This type of problem is often called the Inciting Incident in story terms.

• The Inciting Incident occurs very close to the start of the story and triggers the action. It upsets the balance of the protagonist’s life and world. It disrupts it, turns it upside down, causes a crisis he can’t ignore and forces him or her to act. He must act. It’s that kind of problem. He can’t ignore it (e.g.: Liam Neeson’sdaughter being kidnapped in ‘Taken’).

• In some stories the problem occurs off screen before the story begins and we enter the story with the story already in motion, the character’s already pursuing his or her goal and part of the hook of the film is our gradually discovery of what the problem was or indeed discovering that what we thought was the problem wasn’t and that the true problem is something even deeper or darker. We discover a hidden layer or side to the story. It surprises us.


What is Story? The Stakes

• The Concept of Stakes is very important in a story. It adds meaning and plays a powerful role in creating conflict, tension and suspense and adding dread (the dreadful alternative) as well as eliciting an emotional response from the audience. Raising the Stakes adds further pressure, intensifies suspense and increases the urgency of winning. It adds to the cost of losing.

• What’s at stake? The Price of Failure Must Be High. The Rewards for Success Must Be Great. Both must be significant to make the struggle worthwhile. The audience needs to care about what’s at stake.

• What does the Protagonist (or indeed Antagonist) stand to win or lose? How dangerous is losing (sacrifice a minor character at a key moment to show us) and how important is winning? How valuable is the ‘prize’? The Stakes can present a physical, emotional, mental or spiritual danger to the Protagonist.

• The Highest Stakes are Life and Death but other things can be equally valuable depending on the context of the story and the nature of the protagonist and his or her problem. They can be tangible or intangible: the life of a loved one, great wealth, a treasured possession or one’s livelihood, survival, safety, security, sanity or something higher, love, honour, self-esteem, personal or national freedom, loyalty to one’s family, group, nation, religious faith or ideological belief and so on.


• Who is the Hero?

• How is he established?

• Who is the Antagonist?

• How is he established?

• Who are the Support Characters?

• Allies?

• What is the Protagonist’s Problem?

• What is his initial objective?

• What’s his main goal?

• How is he going to achieve it?

• What obstacles does he face?

Story Case Study:

Gladiator

• What’s at stake for the Protagonist?

• What’s at stake for the Antagonist?

• Do the stakes rise? How?

• What’s the set up?

• What’s the central conflict?

• What are the other layers of conflict /

secondary conflicts?

• Note use of Sequences in the Story.

• Discuss key changes to the original

script & story, dilemmas producers and

writers faced.


What is Drama?

• ALL DRAMA IS CONFLICT

• ALL DRAMA INVOLVES STRUGGLE, CHARACTERS IN STRUGGLE

• Without Conflict there is no drama, no story and no screenplay.

• Conflict lies at the Heart of all Great Drama.

• Conflict is the Essence of Great Storytelling.

• It’s the Driving Force, the Dramatic Engine, that together with the Protagonist’s Motivation energises the characters and moves the story forward.

• Conflict generates action and is integral to all forms of narrative filmmaking and storytelling.

• As a writer and filmmaker you must study conflict and learn about it in all its many forms then replicate it in your films and stories.


What is Drama?

• Conflict forces characters to make decisions, to solve problems, overcome obstacles and to act in pursuit of their goal.

• Conflict forces them to reveal their true nature and drives their emotions and true intentions out into the open.

• Without Conflict characters have nothing to do.

• Conflict galvanises audiences and ignites powerful emotions both on and off screen. The sooner Conflict erupts in your story, the sooner you will hook the reader and the audience. If you can, open your story while your protagonist is already locked in an ongoing Conflict.

• Drama needs the kind of Conflict we all avoid in real life.

• In a story you can never have enough layers of Conflict.

• All great writers embrace Conflict. Make life hell for your characters and watch how they fight their way out of it to achieve their goal.


What is Drama?

• There are many Different Types of Conflict.

• External & Internal, Benign & Malign, Physical & Non-Violent, Emotional, Polarities & Contrasts.

• A beginner’s mistake is to assume that all conflict is physical and violent or that it involves characters arguing and shouting at one another.

• Conflict takes many forms but it must be something of weight, that really matters.

• Conflict at its simplest is a struggle between opposing forces and in its most basic form this can indeed involve physical clashes and combat between individuals, groups, armies, societies, nations. War is its most extreme form.

• Conflict can also mean an opposition between ideas, interests, simultaneous but incompatible wishes, desires, drives, needs and wants.

• Conflict can occur without any physical violence or interaction at all taking place.


What is Drama?

• Conflict can exist on many different levels and for many different reasons.

• Conflict can be a dragon with many heads, each of which the hero must slay before he can achieve his goal.

• Conflict can manifest itself in dialogue, in the character’s actions and behaviour, in the subtext and interplay of secrets and hidden agendas, or it can be silent and show itself only in non-verbal cues and body language.

• It can be expressed in many different ways.

• Conflict can be violent or non-violent, overt or covert, direct or indirect, openly stated or subtly implied…

• But whatever it is it must be there in the story for the story to work, to grip our attention and interest us.


What is Drama?

• Great stories have Multiple Layers of Conflict.

• There will be a Central or Primary Conflict that runs throughout the story but there can be many Secondary Conflicts that add colour and depth and play a key role in strengthening or weakening one or other of the adversaries.

• Secondary Conflicts can involve secondary support characters or mentors, sidekicks or minions. If it’s a buddy movie or there’s an ensemble cast secondary conflicts can occur between these co-protagonists as they argue about the plan, strategy or best way forward. Doubts and distrust or even treachery can erupt.

• Secondary Conflicts may occur as the protagonist struggles to overcome various obstacles along his way to his central goal. Each obstacle or subplot can create its own little conflict or challenge for the hero to overcome.

• The more conflict you can create in your story the better but you must never lose sight of your central or core conflict and struggle. You must not allow yourself to become distracted from it or become so side-tracked by it that the audience become confused.


What is Drama?

“Drama is Life with the Boring Bits cut out”… Alfred Hitchcock

• Drama springs from unusual events and extraordinary situations, from crisis, conflict and dilemma, from life being turned upside down.

• When Life runs smoothly there is no drama.

• Drama occurs when the abnormal happens, when something throws life out of kilter, when normality cannot continue.

• Drama Subverts Normality so when writing a story take the normal and inject the abnormal. Create an intolerable situation for the protagonist and make him fight his way out of it. Put him through hell before he reaches his goal.

• Avoid the ordinary and give us the extraordinary. It’s what people go to the movies for. They want to be excited and entertained and to escape from the everyday boring normality that we all live. Drama = the Normal + Abnormal.

• It’s how real life works. Think 9/11 or 7/7, JFK and Pearl Harbour, Pompeii and Volcanoes, Earthquakes & Tsunamis, Wars and Apollo 13, Wall St Crash, etc.


Dramatic Irony:• In Dramatic Irony the audience know more than the character. We know

something the protagonist or villain or both don’t. It creates a Dramatic Subtext that heightens the drama of the story. We’re curious and want to know what happens next. How will it play out. Dramatic writing creates scenarios where the audience know or find out something before the characters do.

• Dramatic Irony plays a great role in generating Tension, Suspense and Interest in a story. It has strong links too with Jeopardy, Anticipation & Set Up.

• This information disparity or difference in knowledge takes on particular importance when we know the character is in danger or walking into a life threatening or changing situation. They’re in jeopardy but only we know it so we worry about their safety. We wonder whether they’ll survive or how they’ll escape the situation.

• It takes on great power in thrillers, horrors, crime, war or gangster films, action adventures and some sci-fi movies. Even love stories exploit it e.g.: a love interest is not the nice person the other lover or admirer think they are… but at the appropriate moment the truth is revealed. Femme fatales are classic cases of dramatic irony.

• Some films are loaded with dramatic irony from the outset e.g.: Titanic, United 93.


Story Typing & Classification:

• Over the years literary analysts have tried to classify stories into a number of fixed story types or categories using such criteria as types of conflict or plot, character types and theme.

• They argue that ultimately all stories can be reduced to one of these simple basic categories.

• However while there may be a finite number of story types there are an infinite number of ways to tell those stories.

• It’s like comparing the few keys and notes available to music yet look at how they’re used to produce an infinite variety of songs, tunes and musical compositions.

• We will look at five models of story classification:

• The Seven-Plot Model

• Robert Tobias’s 20 Master Plots

• George Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations

• The Movie Genre System

• Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots


Story Typing & Classification

The Classic Seven Plot Model is one of the simplest and probably most useful and effective from a screenwriter & filmmaker’s point of view. It’s particularly useful because of its focus on the centrality of conflict. Note: The use of ‘Man’ is generic and not gender specific. Consider film examples of each type.

• Man versus Man

• Man versus Nature

• Man versus The Environment

• Man versus Machine (Technology)

• Man versus The Supernatural

• Man versus Self

• Man versus God (or Religion)



Robert Tobias in his book ‘Twenty Master Plots’ proposed 20 story types centred on plot.

1. Quest

2. Adventure

3. Pursuit

4. Rescue

5. Escape

6. Revenge

7. The Riddle

8. Rivalry

9. Underdog

10. Temptation

11. Metamorphosis

12. Transformation

13. Maturation

14. Love

15. Forbidden Love

16. Sacrifice

17. Discovery

18. Wretched Excess

19. Ascension

20. Descension.

http://www.writersdigest.com/wp‐content/uploads/Master‐Plots‐Exclusive.pdf



In the 19th Century Georges Polti studied literature and plays from the Greek era to his present day and came up with what he called The 36 Dramatic Situations.

His book and definitions are quite convoluted but a simple easy to read summary can be found on Wikipedia at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations

…or simply type in The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations in Wikipedia. His book is actually available for free on the internet and there are other interpretations of it around.

Another story analysis is Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Seven Basic Plots.’ He reduces all the classic stories to the following seven types. A summary of these too can also be found on Wikipedia – type in ‘The Seven Basic Plots’ to find it.

• Overcoming the Monster

• Rages to Riches

• The Quest

• Voyage & Return

• Comedy

• Tragedy

• Rebirth



The Movie Industry employs its own classification system known as Genre. This aids the selling and marketing of films to distributors, exhibitors and audiences worldwide. Genre simply means ‘kind’ or ‘sort’ in French and each Genre has Sub-Genres or Hybrids. The industry categorises films by type of narrative, settings, character, mood or tone, theme, even budget and target audience. The list is long.

See ‘Film Genre’ article in Wikipedia for more and especially Tim Dirk’s brilliant website www.filmsite.org (select Genres on the Menu bar). It has a vast info archive on Genre.

Genre has two roles:

1. Genre is all about Expectations. It helps us as an audience decide what we want to watch when we go to the movies and it helps marketing attract the right audience, selling them the experience to go with those expectations. It raises our expectations about the kind of movies we like. Classification therefore creates Expectation.

2. Genre also helps writers and filmmakers create the right kind of story for that genre. Every genre has certain storytelling conventions and narrative patterns that need to be adhered to however loosely. (e.g.: Film Noir has a particular style, tone, narrative structure and characters that’s very different from a Western or Romance ).



• Another potent influence on Screen Storytelling especially in Hollywood was the analysis conducted by Christopher Vogler in his book, ‘The Hero’s Journey.’

• Based on a book by Joseph Campbell called ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ Vogler’s book analysed mythical storytelling and broke the hero’s journey down into 12 stages with 7 archetypal characters (Campbell has 17 stages). This analysis has influenced a lot of Hollywood filmmakers and executives.

• This particular analysis is often known as the Monomyth. There are many summaries of this available in PDF on the Internet – simply search ‘The Hero’s Journey’ or do the same on Wikipedia.

• Some aspects are useful such as the idea of the character going on an Inner and Outer Journey. We’ll return to this in a later lecture.

• Lastly don’t forget the impact of the following on all forms of storytelling down the ages: myths & legends, folk tales and fables, fairy tales, classical theatre and even the bible. All have provided ideas and inspiration for film stories whether in their original form or adapted to the present day.


Next week,

Structure:

How do we structure and tell a cinematic story?

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