quote: Yet once you know the formula, the seams begin to show. Movies all start to seem the same, and many scenes start to feel forced and arbitrary, like screenplay Mad Libs. Why does Kirk get dressed down for irresponsibility by Admiral Pike early in Star Trek Into Darkness? Because someone had to deliver the theme to the main character. Why does Gina Carano’s sidekick character defect to the villain’s team for no reason whatsoever almost exactly three-quarters of the way through Fast & Furious 6? Because it’s the all-is-lost moment, so everything needs to be in shambles for the heroes. Why does Gerard Butler’s character in Olympus Has Fallen suddenly call his wife after a climactic failed White House assault three-quarters of the way through? Because the second act always ends with a quiet moment of reflection—the dark night of the soul.
And if the villain of the past few years of movies is the adolescent male for whom it seems all big-Hollywood product is engineered, Snyder’s guidelines have helped that bad guy close the door to other potential audiences. Save the Cat! doesn’t go so far as to require that protagonists be men. But the book does tell aspiring screenwriters to stick to stories about the young, because that’s “the crowd that shows up for movies.” Following this advice to its logical conclusion means far more stories about young men—since that’s who shows up at the multiplex the most. It’s not an accident that the chapter on creating a hero is called “It’s About A Guy Who … ” not “It’s About A Person Who … ” And with a young male protagonist, women are literally relegated to the B-plot—the love interest, or “helper,” who assists the male protagonist in overcoming his personal problems. It’s not an accident that Raimi’s megabudget Oz movie featured not Dorothy but a male protagonist.
Watching poorly executed movies with Snyder’s formula in mind can become a tiresome and repetitive slog. How many times can you watch a young man struggle with his problems, gain new power, then save the world? It’s enough to make you wonder: Is overreliance on Snyder’s story formula killing movies?
If so, then all is lost. The major studios increasingly rely on a small number of megabudget blockbusters for their profits. But big budgets mean big risks. And the only way to mitigate those risks is to stick with what’s been known to work before. In other words, formula—and the more precise the formula, the better. America’s greatest art form is headed straight, as the Snyderized Star Trek sequel notes, Into Darkness.
posted
I see the point behind make stories about the young (assuming "young" means under 40) but needing male protagonists doesn't vibe with me. I think there are too many examples (Twilight and Hunger Games instantly spring to mind but there are plenty of others) of strong films with female leads.
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What does that excerpt from Peter Suderman's essay mean to you? I can guess, since the excerpt supports one facet of the "formula" debate, others of which Suderman also discusses, that you mean to say formulas are a shortcoming for writing organization. I don't know, though, since you offer no commentary on the excerpt or article.
If a formula's seams show, that to me is a creative invention shortcoming rather than a shortcoming of a formula. Smoothing seams is a challenging process regardless of whether the seams are of a formula or a dramatic structure or a scene transistion. If a seam shows, then the seam calls undue attention to its formula from shortcoming of creative vision.
Film industry and movie theater business models' co-op formula also influences a film's structural or organizational formula, a point Suderman doesn't raise. Production time and cost budgets dictate how "finished" a screenplay script is when production begins. The cast and staff of hundreds then fill in what context and texture gaps they can that the screenplay script summary only touches on in dialogue and a few scene setting descriptions, perhaps costume summaries, camera actions, and stage directions. In final production, editors also cut out perhaps essential scene parts and parcels to meet theater assembly-line projection time budgets: roughly 110 minutes.
Main theater-going audiences who regularly attend theaters, which anymore are tiny, agoraphobic stripmall boxes, made more unpleasant by the rambunctious antics of teenage boys, are young men who are about the only audience who will put up with their disruptive behaviors. So, of course, Hollywood and theater owners interested in the almighty benjamins, in the immediately now payback expectation, appeal to young men. More sedate but not sedated audiences might wait for DVD or Blu-Ray, pay-per-view, paid cable or basic cable, or broadcast releases instead of going to a theater. And that will be a year or more--after a premiere release season--too late for newsworthy and bank-worthy cost and profit payoff.
posted
I tossed it out to provoke debate, extrinsic. The issue has been raised before on this board, more than once, as you well know. There are arguments both pro and con for using formulaic structure in one's creativity. Certainly language itself is a structure that might be called a type of formula. After all, a sentence has to be grammatically correct, or mostly correct, in order to convey any meaning at all. Therefore, it has to follow the correct formula.
On the flip side, you can argue that dedicating oneself to a strict formula is a dead end street. That way lies stagnation. Monet would never have produced his work, which I worship, if he had followed the traditional formula that was law and gospel for generations before impressionism came to be. For that matter, 3d drawing tecniques were a violation of proper formula when they first came into use. If no one ever disturbed the status quo, we would still be drawing everyone in profile, with both eyes showing on the sides of their heads.
I read a headline recently (pretty much the same headline on several different news sites, more formula) that talked about how Hollywood is crashing and burning this year due to a long line of major flops - all of whom apparently followed the same formula and lost out to cheaper, more original work.
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posted
That current moviemaking is formulaic, well, it's hardly surprising, given the nature and purpose of these movies. I suppose it's a matter of trying to get the audience to like these guys...
Maybe they could have the main character gain the new power first, then get introspective about that...wait a minute, isn't that how the Spider-Man backstories work? Haven't seen the movies, only know the backstory from elsewhere...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
The guy who wrote Save the Cat was a guest on a podcast called The Writing Show. It's now defunct, but I think you can still get the archives.
The name of the book comes from the idea that your protagonist has to do something early in the film that endears him/her to the audience like saving a cat.
The formula is a product OF the audience, not a product FOR the audience. That is, audiences generally want a protagonist they like. So you have to give them a scene to make them want the protagonist.
There are other formulas that work, some of them yet undiscovered.
But if making it as writer/screenwriter is a 1 in 10,000 kind of thing, discovering a new formula that works must be a 1 in 10,000,000 thing.
Posts: 222 | Registered: Jan 2013
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posted
There are still expectations of writers to use the same kind of plot formula... Initiating action, three try/fail cycles, climax, denouement with a significant change in the character. You even see it with cartoon movies... especially the character change with the change being plainly pointed out for the kiddies. (I know, because I'm currently living with little grandkids in the house and have to subject myself to cartoon movies.)
Posts: 1608 | Registered: Feb 2009
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I guess I kind of agree that the three act structure is a bit formulaic. In reality, I'm still deciding, but am now leaning towards formula. I don't think its so much about finding other formulas that will work, as it is following the structure more loosely, than the beat for beat outline in Snyder's book, which I have not read, by the way. I've read Larry Brooks, and he teaches a similar concept.
Personally, I prefer John Truby's take on storytelling. His book Anatomy of the Story, which I highly reccommend and has pretty much become my bible, provides a structure with a lot more wiggle room. Actually, Truby doesn't really describe storytelling as adhereing to any type of structure, but as being organic, and his methods walk you through the process in 22 steps. I prefer his book because 1.) It acknowledges that stories are far more complex than the three act story structure would have you believe. 2.)It emphasizes that great stories transcend genre/formula, whereas Brooks, Snyder, and co. simply teach you the formula.
I also agree with extrinsic, that if the seams are showing, you're not a very good seamstress. I also think this guy was a little unfair in his choice of movies. Many of these weren't the greatest and there are plenty of other movies that adhere to the structure that were done better, so the seams didn't show. But I find that I've grown rather bored with most movies because, like the author, I know at least vaguely, what is coming next. And if what rcmann says it true, it seems others, not just writers, are feeling the same way.
Posts: 118 | Registered: Jan 2012
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The hero's journey used to be the formula, for ancient sagas and ballads. Then came the Greek plays. Then the inimitable Shakespeare.
The formula was worked out to make something that fit the predetermined length of the average movie. How well does it fit something like the Lord of the Rings trilogy?
The prevailing wisdom used to be that you can't get a new sci fi/fantasy novel published if it's too long. Yet data compiled by Smashwords shows that the longer novels (~200K+) actually sell better. Te longer I live, the less predictable I find the real world to be.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
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posted
I think it wise not to get carried away with this stuff too. Everything we're told about writing seems to be contradicted at every turn. I think the most important thing we have to remember is that we all must do what the story needs, rules be damned.
If your story needs to be 1,000 pages long, then write a 1,000 page long story. The tricky part for those of us not in the professional market is: 1.) We may not know enough to truly know what is best for our stories even if we think we do, and 2.) It's much easier to break the rules once you're in the club, and not so much when you aren't.
Something every writer has to struggle with individually: Knowing what you know, and recognizing when you don't. The ones who master that move the fastest up the ladder.
Posts: 118 | Registered: Jan 2012
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quote:Originally posted by babygears81: 1.) We may not know enough to truly know what is best for our stories even if we think we do, and 2.) It's much easier to break the rules once you're in the club, and not so much when you aren't.
Those are good points. I'll give analogy. Some youngsters buck the idea they should learn proper grammar. They point to authorities that break the rules. If the rules can be broken then they must not have value.
But the authorities know the rules of grammar and they know WHY they're breaking them. It's much easier to know how to tweak and even break the rules of story when you know what the rules are and more importantly WHY the rules are.
Posts: 222 | Registered: Jan 2013
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One point Suderman makes is a basis for my understanding of structure, which formula is but one manner of structure; that is, organizing principle. An organizing principle structures a narrative's parts. Different organizing principles suit different metaganre compositions. For example, a formal argumentation composition begins with a claim followed by why the claim matters, then gives at least three supporting points, anticipates objections, rebutts objections, and restates the claim and concludes according to the claim: the claim is akin to a dramatic complication in prose writing, poetry too, for that matter.
A problem, inquiry, solution composition also follows its own formal organizing principle, obviously oriented around a problem; in other words, a main dramatic complication. Research and report compositions too. These organizing principles package the materials in a way that readers find them more accessible and appealing than if they had no discernible organizing principle.
Performance genre, like fiction, similarly has one overall organizing principle; that is, plot, or dramatic structure. Plot has one unchanging organizing principle that has existed since the first story ever told. Variations on that principle are infinite yet finite in the way a Mandelbrot set is. Between the set's finite boundaries an infinite set of fractal coordinates exist.
Metagenre similarities end at that one overall organizing principle. Fiction and creative nonfiction, prose, for example, ideally benefit from more than the one organizing principle. Yet struggling, inexperienced writers encounter daunting challenges with the one, let alone more than one.
An answer is to just accept that creativity only carries a narrative so far and accept that conventional organization is a tool for accessing writing that readers will appreciate and find appealing. More so, it's expected.
Yet I encounter published writers who curse plot's tyrrany at the expense of creativity. To me, plot's not a tyrrant, it's a method for navigating through the creative chaos.
I've noted several concurrent organizing threads in narratives I enjoy more than ones with one-dimensional organizing principles, though every appealing narrative I've read has the one core organizing feature of dramatic complication: a want or problem wanting satisfaction. For any narrative I write or read I ask and hope for an answer soon, What is the main dramatic complication? Then, does the narrative address the complication? Then, does the ending meaningfully satisfy the complication? That's the three-act structure in a nutshell, simple as it is, it's nonetheless frustratingly challenging.
Unconventional organizing principles, in about twenty percent of the narratives I read, don't even emphasize other standard plot features, though they are nonethless appealingly organized around a dramatic complication.
Appealing organizing principles reflect and imitate real-life experience. Every moment in life is part of a plot, upon a larger plot, upon a larger plot, organized seemingly randomly yet rigidly ordered. How artfully a writer organizes, reflects, and imitates life's meaningful complications, no matter how fantastical, is to me the crux of creative writing.
quote:Originally posted by babygears81: 1.) We may not know enough to truly know what is best for our stories even if we think we do, and 2.) It's much easier to break the rules once you're in the club, and not so much when you aren't.
Those are good points. I'll give analogy. Some youngsters buck the idea they should learn proper grammar. They point to authorities that break the rules. If the rules can be broken then they must not have value.
But the authorities know the rules of grammar and they know WHY they're breaking them. It's much easier to know how to tweak and even break the rules of story when you know what the rules are and more importantly WHY the rules are.
The "authorites" have learned that grammar is but a guiding principle for proficient communication. They've learned that language is ever alive. They contribute meaningfully to language's vitality and vigor by thinking critically, consciously for themselves how grammar principles are but guides and not inviolate laws. When a grammatical vice transcends its "error," it becomes a vitrue and will soon be part of language's living expression, probably soon overworn or trite, cliché, or transcending even that and becoming idiom or metaphor. Exquisite!
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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posted
Really, you can't cite any single "rule for writing" that you can't find some story that violates that rule. I generally favor reading those whose writers learn the rules and then violate them...but there are lots of successes out of those writers who have no idea they're violating rules, too...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by babygears81: Something every writer has to struggle with individually: Knowing what you know, and recognizing when you don't. The ones who master that move the fastest up the ladder.
Much depends on which ladder you are climbing.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
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quote:Originally posted by babygears81: I guess I kind of agree that the three act structure is a bit formulaic. In reality, I'm still deciding, but am now leaning towards formula. I don't think its so much about finding other formulas that will work, as it is following the structure more loosely, than the beat for beat outline in Snyder's book, which I have not read, by the way. I've read Larry Brooks, and he teaches a similar concept.
Personally, I prefer John Truby's take on storytelling. His book Anatomy of the Story, which I highly reccommend and has pretty much become my bible, provides a structure with a lot more wiggle room. Actually, Truby doesn't really describe storytelling as adhereing to any type of structure, but as being organic, and his methods walk you through the process in 22 steps. I prefer his book because 1.) It acknowledges that stories are far more complex than the three act story structure would have you believe. 2.)It emphasizes that great stories transcend genre/formula, whereas Brooks, Snyder, and co. simply teach you the formula.
I also agree with extrinsic, that if the seams are showing, you're not a very good seamstress. I also think this guy was a little unfair in his choice of movies. Many of these weren't the greatest and there are plenty of other movies that adhere to the structure that were done better, so the seams didn't show. But I find that I've grown rather bored with most movies because, like the author, I know at least vaguely, what is coming next. And if what rcmann says it true, it seems others, not just writers, are feeling the same way.
I've read those by Snyder, Brooks, and Truby. In general, each provides informative guidance on singular pieces of the structure puzzle. What they don't do--no single writing how-to or poetics text can--is provide first principle guidance on the backtrail to their origins and, hence, how to start from foundations. One poetics text I've read partially fulfills that role: Gustav Freytag's Technique of the Drama is singularly about tension.
Though The Poetics of Aristotle provides fundamental guidance on causation's role in dramatic structure, the discussion is chaotic and overburdened with the influences of translation from the original Greek and, worse, that the authoritive text was not written down from the oral original until some fourteen hundred years after its inception. Decoding it is problematic.
Yet another principal organizing plot axis exists that no one I know of has located as a plot feature, besides me; that is, antagonism. Causation and tension do not in and of themselves separately function in dynamic structural organization. Antagonism is what I've located that functions along with both in glorious synergistic interaction. The whole becomes more than the sum of its parts when antagonism's functions are fully realized.
Take a flat tire complication. It is a minor nuisance in many situations; it is causal, it has causes and effects; it has tension potentials in that it may develop empathy and curiosity. Add in antagonism's problem and want influences, a measly flat tire may become the tangible core of an appealing narrative. Further, if the flat tire symbolizes intangible complication, say poverty's cripping problems and wants, the possibilities expand into perhaps delightful storytelling. I have regaled my audiences with particulalry riveting accounts of flat tires.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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posted
Well, movies are different from books and short stories, in that they're massively collaborative projects. You've got hundreds of people working on even a modest project, and thousands on a big one, and you want to make sure they aren't working on a giant pile of narrative mush. For one thing you can't budget what a giant pile of narrative mush will cost to shoot.
That said, if you actually apply the Save the Cat beatsheet to a number of movies, not only will you find it just about always fits, you'll find (and this is important) that there's often more than one way to fit the beat sheet to the script. What this means is that to some degree *structure is in the eye of the beholder*. It's subjective, even where the author has used a particular structural framework, you as an editor or critic can choose to apply it in a different way than he did.
Something so subjective in its application can't be all that limiting to a writer. Take three act structure. No matter what structural framework you choose to employ, unless your story is experimental and non-linear it's bound to have a beginning, middle and end, and I'm perfectly free to call them Acts 1, 2 and 3. It obviously doesn't restrict your freedom if I retroactively label part of your story Act 1, but it does give us a language to discuss your story and some possibly useful rules of thumb. If Act 1 takes up 80% of your manuscript, I might suggest you reduce it to something like 1/5 to 1/3, not because you *can't* take that long to start a story, but it's usually a good idea to get a story rolling into the complication phase pretty early.
I actually used the Save the Cat beat sheet framework on The Keystone. It was a satire of old-time Hollywood screwball comedies, so I decided to structure it like a script. In the end this was a good idea, although I eventually knocked out/de-emphasized some parts as irrelevant to a printed story. Still there were some helpful things about using it. First, it gives you a nice benchmark for size and pacing, and how close you are to having a complete first draft. Another thing is that the standard Hollywood script formula demands a B plot that restates/reinforces the main story theme -- which turned out to be a great success for me in this story (YMMV).
Still, even though I built the story around the Save the Cat framework, I'll bet if you analyzed it with that framework you'd end up with something that is slightly different from my outline. And you wouldn't be wrong.
If you're thinking of using a structural scheme, I say go for it. If you think you can write a pretty good 100K word novel entirely seat of the pants, go for it. When you've tried it both ways, you'll know what works best for you.
I second the endorsement of Paula B's The Writing Show podcast. Eventually she got burned out doing the podcast, but it's still an excellent resource. She and Ann Paden did a review of the first chapter of my first novel, The Wonderful Instrument, available here. Over the years we've become friends, and she still continues to offer story development and coaching. She also has a number of helpful, approachable writing craft ebooks available on Amazon. They cover basic stuff like narrative voice, introducing world-building in fantasy and SF, structuring and pacing dialog,etc. A lot of that stuff is pretty basic for people here, but the ebooks are short, affordable and full of helpful suggestions. Plus, Paula is a real mensch.
Posts: 1459 | Registered: Dec 2010
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posted
I'm not an either/or writer. Sometimes intuitive; sometimes deliberate; sometimes both work for me. I tried intuitive writing alone and encountered headwinds. I also tried every kind of plan and encountered headwinds. Eventually, I found both work for me, though not in every occasion at the same moment. I progress most when right brain and left brain conscious and subconscious processes work together.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: I have regaled my audiences with particulalry riveting accounts of flat tires. [/QB]
LOL! I bet you have, extrinsic. I bet you have.
MattLeo--You raise an interesting point. One that frustrated me when I studied structure. I always interpreted the points or milestones differently, which can be quite frustrating when you're trying to learn what they are. That's one way of looking at it. You presented another. I guess that does provide some wiggle room. I'll have to consider that. (I love that this place has spell check. frustrated is one of those words I can never spell by myself.)
Posts: 118 | Registered: Jan 2012
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Much depends on which ladder you are climbing. [/QB][/QUOTE]
True, but I only meant the ladder to traditional publishing. The more apt you are at deciphering the inappropriate advice from the advice your ego is not ready to hear, the better off you'll be. And that's a journey (because it is a journey, at least in my experience) we all must walk alone.
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