I spent the day at a screenwriting workshop on the Upper West Side today.
It was an all day class put on by the Gotham Writer's Workshop and it was excellent.
The instructor Doug Katz, started out by talking about the story.
Humans have always had a fascination with stories.
Cavemen told stories using carved drawings. The Greeks acted stories out on stage. Throughout all of history, every civilization has in some way or another passed on, recorded or acted out their stories.
The fact that so many people are willing to leave their lives for hours at a time and pay money to watch something that is not real speaks to our innate love of a good story.
That is what screenwriting is - telling a story.
The beautiful and artistic part about it is that the stories must be told in images. Thoughts and feelings can not be photographed so the writer has to create images that will evoke the feelings.
You can't tell the audience that your character is angry, you have to show them. This challenges the writer to come up with gestures and movements and dialogue that will help viewers to make connections in their minds. It is challenging and exciting and some writers are masters of the art.
The instructor simplified things for us and that helped me a lot.
Simply stated, a story is a journey with conflict.
It has a beginning, middle and end and at the end the main character's character has been tested and he has gone from one point to another.
If the character is better off at the end of the movie, that is a comedy. If he is worse off, that is a tragedy.
All stories are either comedies or tragedies and sometimes it isn't very clear as in the case of Saving Private Ryan.
In Saving Private Ryan the main character played by Tom Hanks dies. Is he better off or worse off? At first glance one might say he is worse off but this is not the case.
This character chooses to die for his mission. Throughout the movie he is portrayed as someone who is burned out and feels his life has become meaningless. He chooses to die for his cause and death gives hi life meaning. The character would say he is better off at the end of this journey and that makes this movie a comedy - even though everyone dies. I thought that was pretty interesting.
Another important thing is that a story can only have one main character or hero. These terms are interchangeable.
One person drives most of the action. One person is doing more heroic action. One person is on a journey and all of the other characters are peripheral to that (unless there are multiple stories going on at one time like in Magnolia and Traffic).
The instructor gave us 4 Questions to answer before writing a script:
Who is the main character?
What does s/he want?
What event changes everything?
Is it a comedy or tragedy?
This may seem really easy but it isn't always clear.
Here's a good example that was used in class.
The main character in The Titanic?
I thought it was Leo DiCaprio's character but I was wrong.
The main character was Rose.
Rose had the most heroic action. She walked away from an arranged marriage, she risked loving someone outside of her class, she saved Leo's life, she went on to live a happy and full life and she was better off at the end.
Although the story of the Titanic was a tragedy, James Cameron brilliantly chose to focus on Rose's story which was a comedy.
This was a great class.
Now let me get back to writing my story...
