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.

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.