Theme

Last night we watched a critically acclaimed Canadian movie. 45 minutes in, we could discern a theme, but no actual story. I've noticed that theme is often the enemy of story. Comparing the ALLY MCBEAL pilot to the BOSTON LEGAL episodes we've been watching, it seemed that AB had a theme and BL does not ... and BL is a far more enjoyable show.

(Granted, David E. Kelley applied what he learned on AB to BL, so there's a more mature showrunner; but maybe one of the things he learned is Don't Worry About Theme.)

When I talk about the Seven Elements of Story (compelling character; opportunity, problem or goal; obstacles and/or antagonists; stakes; jeopardy; audience; medium), theme is not one of them. That's because you can extract a theme from any story, if your teacher insists; but you don't need a theme to make a great story.

In Canadian TV, theme is a cancer eating at shows. We had to jettison perfectly good stories on NAKED JOSH because various people insisted on having a consistent theme. And it comes up over and over in development. Any plot that doesn't relate to the show's theme gets scratched.

If a series is only about one thing, it gets predictable and boring. Theme is fun when it generates story and emotion and meaning, but it can become a millstone around your neck.

Anyway, Blog Reader J wrote on the Crafty Screenwriting Facebook page:

Q. What if all you've got is a theme and building a story about it is such a drag? what can I do? Please do tell me.

I responded:

This is exactly what I'm saying. The theme is getting in the way. To build a story around a theme, think of a character with a main problem related to the theme. Then forget about the theme and write an interesting story. The theme will still be there.

But if you don't like building stories, though, then probably you should focus on some other aspect of storytelling, like editing.

Or if you must have a theme, then be a producer, and keep reading scripts until you find one that has the theme you want, and produce that.

The Rising Cost of Theatre Tickets

Americans have put up with a lot of security theatre in airports over the past decade. But theatre isn't free. According to a Cornell study, 520 people die every year because they drive so they don't have to have their junk groped.

The US government's reaction to 9/11 has never been rational. Bruce Schneier has been writing about this for some time. It is not a numbers-based approach. It is a story-based approach. Each time we hear a story about terrorists, we devise a security measure to respond to it.

A short history of airport security: We screen for guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters. We confiscate box cutters and corkscrews, so they put explosives in their sneakers. We screen footwear, so they try to use liquids. We confiscate liquids, so they put PETN bombs in their underwear. We roll out full-body scanners, even though they wouldn’t have caught the Underwear Bomber, so they put a bomb in a printer cartridge. We ban printer cartridges over 16 ounces — the level of magical thinking here is amazing — and they’re going to do something else.

This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it.

It’s not even a fair game. It’s not that the terrorist picks an attack and we pick a defense, and we see who wins. It’s that we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. If we get it wrong, we’ve wasted our money. This isn’t security; it’s security theater.

Understanding how stories work also means understanding where they don't work. Sitting around the campfire talking about how Og killed the tiger helps us all survive the next tiger. But not if the tiger is listening to the story.

I think that human beings are hardwired to understand the world through stories, just as we're hardwired to learn language. I think there is a part of our brain architecture that enables us to make stories out of what happens in the world.

But not everything should be boiled down into a story. What makes a story compelling does not also make it true. But we have a tendency as a species to prefer a compelling story to a boring (or frustrating, or fearsome) truth.

Stories are wonderful. They help us understand the world. You watch a movie about a relationship and maybe you take away an insight about your own relationship. But they are not a substitute for rational thought.

The Sixth Element of Story

As I have taught you, Grasshopper, there are five elements of story:

a. a character we care about
b. who has an opportunity, problem or goal
c. who faces obstacles and/or an antagonist
d. who stands to win something (stakes)
e. but can lose something he cherishes (jeopardy).

It is possible for a story or screenplay or movie or episode to fail even with these five elements, but it is almost certain it will fail if a, b, c or (d or e) are not working right.

But there is a sixth element of any story, and it is as crucial as all the others:

who is the story being told to?

In TV, what network or channel you are aiming for is the crucial question. You can have the most awesome serial drama in the world, and CBS will probably reject it. On the other hand if you take your episodic procedural cop show to HBO, they will stare at you in bewilderment.

It's an important question for the movies, too. A movie can find its own ad hoc audience if it's marketed right, but some stories are hard to market because it's not clear what the audience would be. We had a horror comedy that took place on the set of a lifestyle home improvement show. The script was funny, but who was going to watch the movie? Horror comedy fans aren't interested in lifestyle shows. Reality show fans aren't particularly interested in horror comedy.

The five elements of story must be of interest to an audience.

The five elements of story aren't for just movies, they're for novels, short stories, videogame stories, and for that matter, stories told round a campfire. And the question of the audience is crucial for any of these.

My unsellable literary historical fantasy novel about Morgan le Fay found a publisher once I repositioned it as a Young Adult novel.

While I'm at it, I might consider adding a seventh element of story, and that is the medium: how are you getting your story across? The story must be appropriate for its medium. Movies are not good at telling internal stories.

They are also not particularly good at showing the passage of a lot of time (though there are movies that make a good effort). If you have a character at 5, and 10, and 15, and 20, you need a bunch of different actors. And no age makeup can give an actor sunken cheeks.

Movies struggle to show the great sweep of events involving many people, unless all those people are in the same place at once. A movie will struggle to show "the people becoming disillusioned with their government." A movie can show a handful of people becoming disillusioned with the government.

TV is good at showing what happens to a small family of people in a single place. It's not that good where the cast of characters keeps changing, or the venue keeps changing.

Novels can handle most anything, but if a lot of things are going "boom," your story probably wants to be a movie.

TL;DR: Story is character; opportunity/problem/goal; obstacles/antagonist; stakes; jeopardy. But also: who are you telling this to? And how?

What Do They Want?

I had a conversation with a friend of mine about her spec pilot. I couldn't figure out what her characters wanted. So there did not appear to be a plot.

When I brought it up to her, she told me that her characters don't know what they want.

But this is a different kind of "want." Really there are two kinds of ways a character can want.

There's a global want that defines a character, often in relation to the other characters. Lucy wants Ricky to be proud of her. Ross wants Rachel to think he's cool. Spock wants to be acknowledged as a fully logical Vulcan, in spite of his ancestry.

Then there's a specific want that creates a plot. Lucy wants to be a stenographer. Ross wants to impress his fellow paleontologists by a giving a speech. Spock wants to stop an evil Romulan from destroying Earth.

The two wants can be in line, or they can conflict. But you need both. Without a global want, your character has no drive. Without a specific want, your character has no story.

Of course both wants should be strong, compelling wants, or who cares?