Gauging the Storyline-Part Two

By Shelly Frome

If you missed Part One it appeared last Friday on SWM's Suite T you can view via the archives. All in all, you could say that the key to successful screenwriting, may very well lie in the very beginning as the writer polishes the basic situation until it’s compelling, promising and in a certain sense rings true with no preconceived message. As though the writer himself or herself is on a quest. Given the backdrop of war, will Ilsa and Rick be able to rekindle their romance or will they give way to a greater good? Then again, put in the simplest terms, will Dorothy and/or Lassie ever find their way home?  

In screenwriting parlance, the potential of the project can be found in the logline. Or the ability to succinctly create a premise in order to gauge whether or not, at the outset, this story is worth the candle. You put aside getting caught up in non-essentials like, Will the roles attract bankable stars?

Does it fit the bill for producers looking for a low-budget vehicle? Does the story line comply with trendy genres like super hero action tales or slacker comedy disasters? Instead, you take your time until you come up with a one or two sentence intriguing venture that can’t help being self-generating.

In lieu of naming the movie and/ or the screenwriter, here are two prime examples:

1.) During a prolonged fraught in the 1930s in the west, a con-man rainmaker comes across the Curry ranch, replete with circumstances that appear to be just ripe for picking. The members of the distraught family include Jimmy, a slow-witted gullible youngster, and Lizzie, his disenchanted older sister who is on the verge of spinsterhood.

2.) Two New Yonkers estranged from their spouses decide to room together. The hapless duo include Oscar, a sportswriter as carefree and sloppy as can be and his counterpart Felix, a compulsive fussbudget.

Given each of these dynamics, putting aside any contrivances, it becomes relatively easy to imagine the possibilities as you allow the circumstances to run their course.

In closing, I’m always reminded what happened to Edward Albee when starting to devise Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? according to a plot, he had in mind. In his imagination, George and Martha, his principal characters, told him one day that if didn’t stop interfering with their lives they would no longer appear. He then completely backed off and gave them carte blanch. As a result, you can view the film starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and judge for yourself. 

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Shelly Frome is the film columnist for Southern Writers Magazine. He is also a member of Mystery Writers of America, a professor of dramatic arts emeritus at the University of Connecticut, a former professional actor, and a writer of crime novels and books on theater and film. His fiction includes Sun Dance for Andy Horn, Lilac Moon, Twilight of the Drifter and Tinseltown Riff.  Among his works of non-fiction are The Actors Studio and texts on the art and craft of screenwriting and writing for the stage. Murder Run, his latest crime novel, was just released.  He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

  

Gauging the Storyline-Part One

By Shelly Frome

Because of their collective memory, no matter if they’re watching on a screen at home via Netflix or Turner Classics or at a multiplex, viewers can tell almost immediately whether the   experience is going to be worth their while.

Take The Guns of Navarone (1961) as the first of three random examples.  At the opening it seems some vague garrison in Crete is about to be overrun unless allied ships can come to the rescue. But the channel is deemed impassable because of a pair of humongous Nazi cannons. The only way around depends on the efforts of a handful of men to scale a sheer “impossible” cliff, slip into an impregnable fortress guarded by an overwhelming German force and destroy these “dreadful guns.” And who is the demolition expert and one of the stars of this enterprise? A slight, blasé` Englishman (David Niven) with absolutely no physical training who professes he can’t swim.

It goes without saying if the first building block in a screenplay is contrived, everything that follows is bound to become an escalating set of dubious cliffhangers.

In marked contrast, all you have to do is recall, say, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).  Almost immediately the camera draws you inside the realities and keeps you in suspense with no idea who will survive this ordeal no matter who appears in a leading role. And by realities we’re not referring to pure realism. We’re concerned with the logic within a consistent set of given circumstances, whether it’s Luke Skywalker’s colorful space odyssey or Sam Spade’s hardboiled black-in-white case in San Francisco.

In any event, pure realism can only take you so far. Within the first few minutes of Night and the City (1992) the camera peers in and out of a seedy section of Manhattan following a low-rent shyster lawyer (Robert De Niro) as he plies his sleazy trade, using a bartender’s phone to con prospective clients, takes a moment out for a tryst in the alley with the bartender’s wife, etc. There is no hope here for a single redeemable instant. On the other hand, in De Niro’s iconic debut in Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973), his slow-witted Johnny Boy tries to navigate the Little Italy section, unable to fathom the interplay between petty crime and the tenets of the church, assuming it’s all a game. In this case, the viewer truly has something to worry about as Johnny Boy “keeps asking for it,” borrowing money he has no intention of paying back, goading his gangster creditor to the point of no return. And that, as they say, is just for openers.

Sometimes the material is as obscure as its title (Phantom Thread, 2017) and it’s difficult to find what seasoned screenwriters call “the front door.”  In this instance, it seems that a rather clumsy waitress is taken with a customer old enough to be her father (Daniel Day Lewis), accepts his invitation to dine as a middle-aged woman later joins them and looks on approvingly.  The man in question claims to be a fastidious dressmaker and a confirmed bachelor; the young lady soon  occupies a private room in the dressmaker’s house and, through a voice over, declares that she’s flattered because she always thought her shoulders were too wide.  But where are we? And what woman, young or old, could relate to this tale and find herself willing enough to go on with this charade?

Instead, how much more gratifying would it be to hear the gentle, wise voiceover  of the grownup Jean Louse “Scout” Finch (Kim Stanley) as she reminisces about her small town Alabama childhood in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)? And, through cinematic memory, releases countless girls and women at the outset from the burden of being docile, secondary creatures in favor of opting to be a spirited, honest and intrepid force in their life’s journey.  Part Two will appear on Monday, September 24, 2018.

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Shelly Frome is the film columnist for Southern Writers Magazine. He is also a member of Mystery Writers of America, a professor of dramatic arts emeritus at the University of Connecticut, a former professional actor, and a writer of crime novels and books on theater and film. His fiction includes Sun Dance for Andy Horn, Lilac Moon, Twilight of the Drifter and Tinseltown Riff.  Among his works of non-fiction are The Actors Studio and texts on the art and craft of screenwriting and writing for the stage. Murder Run, his latest crime novel, was just released.  He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Story and that Vibrant Otherness

By Shelly Frome

As it happens, one day the dramaturge at the Harford Stage Company advised me to key on provocative imagery when developing a script.  At the time, I didn’t quite get it. It’s only recently when I came to an impasse in my latest mystery novel that I thought back and began to understand what she meant.

My first recollection centered on a period when Tennessee Williams was developing a play called Sweet Bird of Youth at a theater in Coral Gables. After declaring “This is too pat. It just doesn’t light up!” he would return from Key West with a new version. In one instance, I started out as an extra in a tavern scene and the next thing I knew, I was alone at the bar facing Chance Wayne, a drifter just past his prime (a role featuring Paul Newman in the movie version). The only other customers were Chance and a local Southern belle seated directly in front of me. It seems Williams liked my laugh because it served as a glimmer of foreshadowing as my part kept expanding.  

Another example which came to mind took place in a lounge at the University of Florida where Edward Albee was confiding to a few of us graduate students about the creation of the Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton vehicle Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Every time he tried to script the inevitable breakup of a timid professor and his wayward wife at a small college, George and Martha dried up on him. But when he added the subtext of a fantasy child whose demise George could spring on Martha if she went too far, the specter of “the other” energized him and brought his tale to life.

I’m not suggesting I’ve come upon the secret. It’s just that I seem to agree with Stephen King it’s only when the characters and situation reach a point when unknown happenings occur, that I become fully engaged. That I have the sense I’m onto something and I’m dying to continue. But when I find myself enmeshed in anything bordering on the safe and predictable, I start to lose interest—e.g., Right, this is the one where the drifter-gunslinger rids the town of menacing elements and has to ride off because only decent folks belong in a community.  

If I had to pinpoint a factor that finally revitalized my latest, it was the introduction of the occult. It started off promisingly enough.  Miranda, a real estate agent in my adopted small town in the Blue Ridge, discovers that her client, a prominent church lady who listed the storied Raintree mansion, has suddenly taken up refuge at a nearby retirement center. Not only that, she’s been receiving anonymous e-mails suggesting that the wages of sin have become due. And here is what set things off again. Tarot cards began appearing under Cloris Raintree’s door. A denizen of the center, who resented Cloris’ standoffish, uppity manner, let on about a goodwill outing to Havana where something must have happened on the Malecon (the famous seawall). Cloris didn’t return with the rest of their party and, when she did reappear, she was drastically changed.

Other elements began proliferating that I previously knew nothing about, like astrology, the transit of Venus on a certain month, and the Southern Cross and its double meaning. All kinds of things came into play that affected who the sender might be and what was at stake. There were now sins of omission and commission, and the more it went on, poor Miranda found herself increasingly way over her head.

Out of the blue, I began devising a scene that took place in the dark of night when Miranda came upon the showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at a local rural college. Here, students dressed in grotesque Halloween costumes were echoing the characters on screen, shouting dialogue they knew by heart like “We’re going insane!”

At that juncture, the advent of Halloween became yet another intriguing element.

I suppose it’s like realizing if you only had some flint, some combustible counterpoint you could rub against one another, the two could create enough friction so that who knows what’ll happen.

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Shelly Frome is the film columnist for Southern Writers Magazine. He is also a member of Mystery Writers of America, a professor of dramatic arts emeritus at the University of Connecticut, a former professional actor, and a writer of crime novels and books on theater and film. His fiction includes Sun Dance for Andy Horn, Lilac Moon, Twilight of the Drifter and Tinseltown Riff.  Among his works of non-fiction are The Actors Studio and texts on the art and craft of screenwriting and writing for the stage. Murder Run, his latest crime novel, was just released.  He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

  

  

Story: the View from the Woman’s Section

By Shelly Frome

Anyone, like myself, who has been a husband and a father certainly appreciates how gender affects perception.  And it’s not that when it comes to plot, all my mentors and influences have been predominately male. In fact, my acting coach was the renowned Uta Hagen, deep discussions on the topic of character and story took place with the celebrated Julie Harris and Estelle Parsons, the head of the creative writing program at NYU, and the chief dramaturges at the Hartford Stage and the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven were female. However, whether it was a play, movie or a novel, I was led to believe that the gold standard of storytelling was a self-generating impossible quest. This was later amplified by people like the famed literary agent Scott Meredith who told me that if I didn’t come up with at least a variation on this theme, I was never going to get anywhere in this business.

We all know the old expression that rules are meant to be broken, but it’s only lately that I’ve really begun to reconsider this more or less masculine gospel. As it happens, a friendly lady crime writer invited me to join her Internet writers group she dubs “Mystery We Write.” One thing led to another, and even though I realized I was one of the very few male authors, just out of curiosity, one day I and two other ladies decided to exchange our latest published work. And that’s when all three discovered a marked difference in gender approach. Whereas my male lead was unwittingly caught up in a collision course, their central female characters seemed to be on a more circular trajectory.

Here, for instance, is an example from the distaff side of the fence. In the background, every now and then there are radio bulletins intimating that somewhere in this homey neighborhood in Cincinnati, a serial killer targeting women is on the loose. In the foreground, a housewife is concerned about her marriage and the little trials and tribulations of her two young children. Her husband, an insurance salesman, has become ill-tempered of late, taken to drink, and flies off the handle when the subject of finances, his imbibing and keeping late hours, plus  their little boy’s possible ADD is brought up. In turn, the wife wishes she had someone to talk all this over with and is also contemplating taking a part time secretarial job at the church to help make ends meet. The author, who apparently is very kind and understanding, devotes a chapter or two to the husband’s woes and longings, and a few equally understanding chapters to other characters the wife encounters. And at least one of the opening chapters to one of the wife’s confidants, a retired police officer, who also had a drinking problem, was a prisoner of war and has seen it all. He spends this episode assessing the past and his present circumstances and finally catches the latest bulletin about the Westwood Strangler but doesn’t respond.  

In short, like the crime novels of P.D. James, a sense of unease is more or less percolating. 

Ruminating and thoughts of mending fences and relationships, healing and making things whole again are integral, even by the husband whose sudden outbursts are followed by retreats to a bar.

This doesn’t mean there won’t come a time after the first quarter of the book that characters won’t be pressed into service. But it’s a far cry from the advice of todays’ agents, editors and publishers who claim that if they aren’t “hooked” in the first three pages, they will automatically stop reading.

Evidently there’s another market out there for women readers who want to take their time and get to know everyone and the given circumstances first. Perhaps an initial disturbance propelling a worrisome, proliferating thrust and parry isn’t the only way to go. Perhaps writers don’t have to continually ask themselves “Why here, why now, and so what?”

Perhaps there’s a whole lot to be said for a more feminine point of view.    

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Shelly Frome is a member of Mystery Writers of America, a professor of dramatic arts emeritus at the University of Connecticut, a former professional actor, a writer of crime novels and books on theater and film. He is also the film columnist for Southern Writers Magazine and a features writer for Gannett Media. His fiction includes Sun Dance for Andy Horn, Lilac Moon, Twilight of the Drifter, Tinseltown Riff and Murder Run.  His transatlantic mystery Murder Crosses the Pond will be released this fall. Among his works of non-fiction are The Actors Studio and texts on the art and craft of screenwriting and writing for the stage. He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina. www.shellyfrome.com

When the Story Starts to Come Alive

By Shelly Frome

During the hiatus before the next project, I keep asking myself, what are you waiting for? I realize there are those who’ve made lists of bright ideas and simply devise an outline for the most promising notion. But that approach doesn’t excite my imagination or seem brimming with life. . 

And so, after sending off the corrected galley proofs for Murder Crosses the Pond, I’m trying to come to terms with the necessary ingredients. In the case of this last mystery, I began with Oliver, a young golden retriever, smashing through the doggie gate of a B&B, scampering up the trail to the high meadow, drawn by the squawks of wild turkeys and the curses of a stranger. I did so because I’m well acquainted with goldens and that spontaneous image seemed so full of promise. Soon enough, Emily, a tour guide emerged in my imagination finalizing her plans to shepherd three eccentric siblings to the far off moors of England. Then a few what-ifs? came to me. What if the fellow shouting was a front man for a rapacious development corporation out to turn the meadow into an upscale condo complex? What if the B&B was owned by Emily’s mom and the construction activity would ruin her way of life? And what if Emily’s mentor was head of the local Planning Commission who stands in the way of site approval and, as Emily overhears chasing after Oliver, has to be “taken care of”? 

It’s as if elements stored away in my subconscious were waiting to be released by something lively. I care about open space and once had a run-in with a large corporation threatening to turn a pristine preserve next door into a gated community. My late wife and I were taken on a private tour of Dartmoor and the west of England. And, most of all, Oliver’s spunky curiosity, like my own dogs, was bound to dig something up, some vital evidence perhaps, knock somebody down at the last minute, etc. This catalyst made the possibilities of provocative settings, folk tales, and the impossibility of Emily being in two places at once, colorful people I might meet along the way and all the rest of it begin to percolate.  

As Oliver’s imaginary antics set things in motion this time, a real life encounter on the streets of New York caused a previous effort to catch fire. It started while I was recalling James Dean’s haunts (the farm boy from Indiana before he got his big movie break). Here I was, walking the same mean streets, remembering my own days as a starving New York actor when I ran into a swarthy character in a sloppy sweatshirt who said, “I’m Johnny Diamonds and this is my territory.” Out of nowhere, a pre-teen popped up and said, “And I’m Johnny’s go-fer.” 

It wasn’t long before I gave her the name Angie, Johnny became a racketeer, and I couldn’t help wondering what a troubled Indiana farm boy named Jed, who looked a lot like James Dean, was doing here and what he was desperately seeking. In no time, I began doing research about organized crime in the Big Apple and a scenario for Murder Run began to unfold. 

What led me on, besides the fact that the provocative setting became a character and influenced everything, were the things I learned about Angie as long as I left her alone. And how, though she was at least twenty years younger than Jed, she had to look out for this fish-out- of- water and keep him from harm’s way.

Perhaps those times I was a starving actor and taught improv at the University has a lot to do with the way I work. I intuitively know if I try to second guess any of the characters they’ll freeze up on me. When I let them be, they prompt me in the most wonderful ways. 

It appears that all I have to do is trust my muse. In the famous words of Dickens’ Mister Micawber, “Something will turn up.” Or, taking a cue from West Side Story, “Something’s comin’. Around the corner or whistlin’ down the river.” And it will surely be worth the wait.        

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Shelly Frome is a member of Mystery Writers of America, a professor of dramatic arts emeritus at the University of Connecticut, a former professional actor, a writer of crime novels and books on theater and film. He is also the film columnist for Southern Writers Magazine and a features writer for Gannett Media. His fiction includes Sun Dance for Andy Horn, Lilac Moon, Twilight of the Drifter, Tinseltown Riff and Murder Run.  His transatlantic mystery Murder Crosses the Pond will be released this fall. Among his works of non-fiction are The Actors Studio and texts on the art and craft of screenwriting and writing for the stage. He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina. www.shellyfrome.com

The Journey and the Joys of Serendipity

By Shelly Frome

Social media and posts from various Internet writing groups have made me aware lately of a race to keep churning out product. At the same time, I’ve been receiving e-mail notices offering “essential keys to acing story structure” and gaining a competitive edge if I will just buy this or that tutorial.    

Naturally, this marketing frenzy makes me ponder why I create stories in the first place and the process I use along the way.  

The first thing that comes to mind is something a noted college instructor from the Midwest used to tell his students. He believed the best way to generate a worthwhile tale was to try not to write. When and if the time came when you couldn’t stand it any longer, when you were haunted by a compelling what-if? Or unfinished business, that was the sign you were ready to begin.  

If so, I can only guess your subconscious must be busy testing and sorting things out until you reach a certain tension point. Something has been baking and stockpiled so that, seemingly out of the blue, all kinds of links start to appear. For me, this signal is a promise of never-ending discoveries once you set out on the path.   

For example, in my crime-and-blues novel Twilight of the Drifter, a couple invited my wife and me down to the backwoods of Mississippi. It seems Bob, the husband, had just inherited an old log cabin. While taking an exploratory walk, he and I got lost in the brambles and thickets until we came to a stream of water blocked by shattered fallen limbs. Not at all sure where we were, Bob said, “I think this here is Wolf Creek.” Soon after I learned there had been a Civil War skirmish close by along with a troubling Civil Rights episode some hundred years later. Back home in Connecticut, for no apparent reason, my wife decided she wanted to contribute to a homeless shelter. While there I couldn’t help noticing an abandoned box car rusting on the railroad tracks across the way. Some drifters were holding out there, I was told, until it became much too cold and they were forced to relent and come inside.

By this time my imagination was off and running. I placed the box car in Paducah, Kentucky where a shivering runaway pre-teen by the name of Alice was hiding, blocking from memory what she had witnessed over the border up in a hunter’s blind above Wolf Creek. Josh, a homeless man, was also, in a sense, a runaway when, by chance, he came across Alice. Like me, Josh had never really stuck his neck out, never really faced danger. He just wanted to be a rambler and play the blues. It later dawned on me that he didn’t realize you had to earn the right to be a bluesman. And on and on the links began to evolve, connecting to the past and the present day—the Civil War and hidden secrets from the Civil Rights movement, the blues scene on Beal Street in Memphis, and a current political campaign for governor of Mississippi.

Needless to say, it took a while for all these interweaving threads to resolve. But in the end, and judging from what readers have shared, the effort seems to have been worth the candle. And I can’t help recalling F. Scott Fitzgerald’s advice. To paraphrase, it goes something like this: “The born novelist has to have the soul of a peasant, tilling the soil, nurturing the crop through all the seasons until the work is genuinely ready for harvest.” 

I should point out that it’s not that I’m oblivious to the marketplace and what may await you “out there.” For instance, here’s a blurb from my latest on Amazon:

“5 stars.  “Murder Run is a terrific read—fast and funny, with well-drawn characters and a good deal of ambiance and charm.” Peter Lefcourt, Emmy winner, Hollywood”

I do wish Mister Lefcourt had taken my quest a bit more seriously. But still and all, the journey was self-generating, driven by a haunting set of circumstances, unfinished business and surprising moments of serendipity that led me from the hills of Connecticut, to the streets of New York, down to Miami Lakes and back again until this twisty conundrum finally played itself out.

I wonder?  Is it possible that the “essential keys” are built-in once you are truly ready?    

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Shelly Frome is the film columnist for Southern Writers Magazine. He is also a member of Mystery Writers of America, a professor of dramatic arts emeritus at the University of Connecticut, a former professional actor, and a writer of crime novels and books on theater and film. His fiction includes Sun Dance for Andy Horn, Lilac Moon, Twilight of the Drifter and Tinseltown Riff.  Among his works of non-fiction are The Actors Studio and texts on the art and craft of screenwriting and writing for the stage. Murder Run, his latest crime novel, was just released.  He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina.