This week saw the
debut of the first volume of my new book Screenwriting and The
Unified Theory of Narrative, the
fruit of my last year’s worth of labor (and reason why there have been
so few new articles on this blog during that time). Part I:
The Unified Narrative Structure is
now available from Amazon in eBook and paperback.
Part II: Genre, Pattern, & the Concept of Total Meaning
is expected to follow some time
in the first half of 2016.
(You can check out the Amazon page here for Kindle and paperback.)
You
may be wondering what exactly is the “unified theory of narrative”
and what the book is all about. First off, I have to say this is not
a how-to book. It is also not a book for beginners. It is an advanced
study of practical narrative theory. “Practical” meaning is not
full of useless academic debate and boring critical ramblings. This
book was written to be used as an active resource for those who wish
to not only understand cinematic storytelling, but use such knowledge
to create better and more effective stories of their own. It will not
guide you by the hand to create a screenplay by the numbers, but will
hopefully give you a complete and comprehensive understanding of how
cinematic stories really (REALLY) work to help elucidate the
storytelling process and make putting a script together far easier.
Most
works on screencraft overlook the fact that the true purpose of a
storytelling is to communicate meaning
from artist to an audience. Stories are social tools. They hold
cultures and societies together by providing lessons and reinforcing shared ideas and beliefs. For this reason, Screenwriting
and The Unified Theory of Narrative
focuses far more upon theme and ideological communication than
anything I written (or read on the subject) so far. The emphasis is
not only upon theme and meaning itself, but more importantly upon how
plot and character express such meanings, whether it is done overtly
or hidden deep within subtext.
But
I am getting off-track. The title “Unified Theory of Narrative”
was inspired by the concept of the unified field theory in physics.
From Einstein to Stephen Hawking, physicists have searched for a
single theory that would explain all the fundamental forces of the
universe, one theory that would unite all other theories and show how everything fits together
(something that has yet to be conclusively found). In the same way, there are dozens upon dozens of concepts in screencraft on plot, on character, on theme and genre, and so on.
Analysts have spent decades disassembled cinematic stories as if they
were enormous machines; but with all of this, a big question has
always remained: How do all of these concepts fit together? I have
said before that the field of screencraft has become like a child who has
taken apart a watch to see how it works, but now cannot figure out to
put the parts back together so the watch will work again. Anyone
with any experience watching movies should realize that a great story
is not a collection of independent parts, but a holistic experience
where where all elements meld together to create a single line of
action that ultimately expresses a singular message or
meaning. Therefore, a true understanding of the form, function, and
power of the cinematic narrative cannot be found by focusing on the
parts, but on how those parts interact to create a singular experience.
A dissected animal is a dead animal. Even if you staple all the parts
back together, it is still dead. Therefore, if screencraft is to
provide any real help to cinematic storytellers, deconstruction needs
to transition into re-construction.
In short, we need to find a way to put Humpty-Dumpty back together
again.
As
the title suggests, Part I: The Unified Narrative Structure
focuses upon narrative structure; particularly, how the structures of
plot, character, and theme work together to create a singular and
unified story experience. Starting my study where I left off in
Screenwriting Down to the Atoms,
I was surprised to discover that my quest for a unified structure was
actually somewhat easy as soon as I discovered one simple thing. I
will not get too far ahead of myself, but I found that all successful
Hollywood and American Independent feature films of traditional form
fit into four categories of narrative types based upon the combined
outcomes of their Story Spine and Character Arcs (which I have
labeled Celebratory, Cautionary, Tragic, and Cynical). After an
advanced breakdown of over 300 feature films from the past fifty
years (along with an impressive multi-colored Excel spreadsheet) I
found that the interactions between plot, character, and theme were
exactly the same in all four types of narrative. The only differences
came down to two essential factors; one structural and the other
based upon the audience’s perception of story content. Yet from
this one basic model comes the endless variety of stories found in
Hollywood and American Independent filmmaking; regardless of style,
tone, or genre; regardless of whether the film has a happy ending or
a sad one; regardless of whether the film be a serious Oscar
contender or pure pop entertainment.
Chapter
1-1 recognizes the many errors that have been made in the study of
screencraft to date, along with the causes for confusion and
frustration felt by many developing screenwriters. It then sets a
course by which this may be rectified.
Chapter
1-2 establishes the most basic principles of cinematic storytelling;
namely the process of narrative communication through dramatic
action, the relationship between narrative principles and the physical
limitations of the cinematic medium, and story’s three-dimensional
trinity of plot, character, and theme.
Chapter
1-3 introduces the three primary structural components of the unified
narrative; namely the structure of plot (the Story Spine), the
structure of character (the protagonist’s Character Arc), and the
structure of theme (the Thematic Argument).
Chapter
1-4 wades into deeper waters by revealing the basic means by which
these three structural dimensions interact; first with the symbiotic
relationship between the Story Spine and Character Arc, and then how this interaction combines with the Thematic Argument to express
the story’s basic meaning.
Chapter
1-5 brings it all together to reveal the basic unified narrative
structure which unites all traditional Hollywood and American
Independent films, aided by an essential concept
called World Alignment.
Chapter
1-6 presents twelve sample films to support this model, three for
each narrative type: Back to the Future, Rocky, The
Shawshank Redemption, Raging Bull, Amadeus, Citizen Kane, Chinatown,
Braveheart, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Godfather, The
Silence of the Lambs, and
Apocalypse Now.
Chapter
1-7 recognizes causes for deviation from the standard unified
structure as well as the existence of alternative structures.
Due
to its sole focus on structure, Part I
is shorter than my last book. Part II will
be twice as long, as it takes a far more macroscopic look at
cinematic storytelling beyond its structural superficialities. In Part II,
you will find not only a detailed breakdown of my 16 Plot Patterns*
of American film, along with their 34 sub-patterns, but a detailed
theory explaining how these patterns combine with the elements of
genre and mode, the selection of the story’s protagonist, and other
factors, unified by the properties of myth to communicate each
cinematic story’s total meaning.
(*Yeah, I know my
first article on the subject said there were 20 patterns, but all my
subsequent study has narrowed this to only 16 primary categories,
most with two or three sub-categories.)
