PLOT

I really wanted to write something else for this edition. But something caught on during my conversation with a few old students of my Screenwriting Academy Studio – ScreenWrite.In about ‘plot’ and ‘story’, that I think now, should share with you what transpired from our discussion, yesterday.

The sort and type of queries I tried to give light to from my experience and readings indicate that there definitely exists some kind of ambiguities in the minds of some students and aspiring writers (at the least) about ‘plot’ and  ‘story’.

Let’s start from a beginning. What’s the definition of plot? This’s what I found from a dictionary relevant to what we need to know:

plot   

noun, verb, plot·ted, plot·ting.

–noun

2. Also called storyline. the plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play, novel, or short story.

6. a list, timetable, or scheme dealing with any of the various arrangements for the production of a play, motion picture, etc.: 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plot

Plot is a literary term for the events a story comprises, particularly as they relate to one another in a pattern, a sequence, through cause and effect, or by coincidence. One is generally interested in how well this pattern of events accomplishes some artistic or emotional effect.  . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_(narrative)

Here, we find  words related to planning and scheming ‘events’ a story is comprised of, which in turn suggests ‘plot’ and ‘story’ are deferent.  Plot relates to an exercise of making an order of the main events of a work of fiction (or fact). So, Plot differs from story to clearly define how events are related, how they are structured, and how they enact change in the major characters. Example: In a movie such as "Love Actually," the plot and the story are two very different things.

Now, how do you define a ‘story’?

Story is the chain or succession of events in a work of fiction (or fact) as we imagine them to have taken place, in the chronological order in which they would have occurred in life (as opposed to plot). Story can only have chronological order, but plot needn’t. When the plot has a linear order, it can adapt to a structural paradigm like Three Act Structure as Syd Field advocates or when the plot is non-linear or doesn’t resort to any structure at all, it’s called plot variation as in the movie ‘Usual Suspects.’

Whichever be the definitions, ‘plot’ is distinct from ‘story’ and I’d like you to understand one thing. As far as I know, plot and story definitions come one single source, Aristotle’s Poetics. Aristotle clearly marks ‘plot’ as an arrangement of incidents, and ‘thought’ as the story (the ‘theme’ or the ‘narrative’). Every other definition is derived from these two basic elements.

From my readings, I find story more connected with emotion, and plot more of a structure of story telling. William Goldman: “Stories are emotions and screenplays are structures”. It’s a 'Holistic Force' that can permeate a part of a story or the entire story as a whole. It is a plan. A plot is a storyline and develops like this: what happens first, what happens next, what happens after that, what are the conflicts, what are the resolutions, what is the rising action, the climax of the story, the falling action, what happens at the end.

In most cases it’s the plot that keeps us interested in the story. And good stories always have all the plot elements in them. Ask yourself the following questions regarding "A Jury of Her Peers,( Susan Glaspell )" -- "Why did the author arrange the story elements the way she did? How does she control our emotional response and prepare us for reversals or surprises?"

End Cap:

Plot is also known as: scheme, framework, scenario, progress, artifice, setup, design.

Common Misspellings:

plote, plott.

WRITER’S BLOCK II

Thanks for all your comments and criticisms about the initial part of this blog – Writer’s Block I. It seemed to me many are either suffering from Block or have experienced it through their many writing attempts.

Of the many comments I received from my students at my Academy Studio – ScreenWrite.In, also from some ingenuous readers, I guess the most prominent was the statement: ‘When one is hungry and crave to fill in, I don’t think anyone will come up with a hunger-block.’  Some liked the idea, and some vehemently said, ‘you can’t compare the psychological necessities to a physical one.

I still believe without any doubt in ‘persistence’ and the ‘priority’ to write. When you have a deadline to meet and you want the money to survive an emotionally-strenuous-and-huge financial imperative without any other alternative within your immediate control, well, you’ll write. You have to.

Or to look at it another way, though I really well know such a thing called ‘Block’ exists and it IS recognized by psychologists or many an intellectual, I don’t want to believe I know it personally, because that’s going to give me another reason for my Block. And I don’t want my students to know about it either, lest they’d reason out for their not-writing.

Robert Mackee, the author of Story, and a much-sought-after screenwriting guru, at one of his lectures chose a parable to recount Writer’s Block. A little child who bruises his knee won’t, at any time sit on the floor where he has fallen down, and think of the best of ways and words to describe his pain and anxiety to someone in the vicinity. On the other hand, he’ll yell out impulsively and run to his mom or dad and say: “Look at me, I’ve hurt my knee”. The right words will come just spontaneously when it’s required. The child has had something to say and he has got the message across quite well; he never put himself to any thinking process to say that.

What Mackee hints at is that Writer’s Block means, ‘the writer has nothing to say’, so the writer has to be persisting and see that he/she says, at the least, something. Once said that something, the writer will carry on with it. What’s said is how well said is a case the writer can take care of later.

From my readings and research here are a few points which may be of help, when grope in the dark:

1. Imagine Writing as Day-to-Day Work, NOT a mammoth Intellectual or Artistic Effort:  In ‘On Writing’, Stephen King the famous author says it’s better we link writing to a physical work instead of a grave psychological endeavor. If we think ourselves as laborers, as craftsmen, it’s easier to sit down and write. At the end of the day, we’re just creating things – stories, poems, or screenplays – only we use vocabulary instead of bricks and mortar.

2. Isolate Core Causes: Evaluate and analyze for yourself the cause of this Block. Is it a fear of failure, a trait of procrastination, not having a computer to write? You can even seek the help of true friends to isolate the root cause – whether it is internal or external; then, you can make a plan of action to surmount them.

3. Allow Optimal Time for your Project: May be your ideas for a specific Project need their own time to conceptualize. May be you need time to look around you, and find new experiences from life, or reading or watching or hearing from others the many inputs you need for your writing.

4. Don’t Criticize Yourself While You Write: This seems to be a vital reason for many aspiring writers not to write. They look for perfection in the first draft. We all have this over-emphatic desire to impress ourselves too fast. I always tell my students completion is the first perfection when it comes to writing screenplays. There’s a time you can make your writing revised and polished to make it impeccably shining. Anna Quindlin had said, "People have Writer’s Block not because they can’t write, but because they despair of writing eloquently."

5. Habituate to Writing: This again, I believe is a very plausible thing to do, if we aspire to be professional writers. May be, this’s almost another perspective to the point 1 we have discussed above. Like we brush your teeth, have our breakfast or watch the evening news on television, habituate to writing everyday. When that becomes part of our routine, we find ourselves at loss when we don’t do it physically.

Well, I don’t want to say things like the gurus out there, but these that I have found, seems to 
help us around in times of need ‘when we have nothing to say.’ And I found this wonderful website to help any writer come out of Writer’s Block. The intention of this website looked truly generous and fantastic to me:

http://www.webook.com/911writersblock

And before I conclude, I’ll post some quotes which may be of use to many who look for a beacon in the maze of their Writers' Block:

"Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write."

(Paul Rudnick)

"One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily."

(Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."

(Mark Twain)

"I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block. When I find myself frozen--whether I'm working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire book--it's usually because I'm trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place."

(Jeffery Deaver)

 "I carry a notebook with me everywhere. But that's only the first step. Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats."

(Sue Grafton)

3. Cope with the Badness

"Don't get it right, just get it written."

(James Thurber)

"If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word."

(Margaret Atwood)

"I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out."

(Roy Blount, Jr.)

"I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning."

(William Faulkner)

"I set myself 600 words a day as a minimum output, regardless of the weather, my state of mind or if I'm sick or well."

(Arthur Hailey)

"Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."

(Barbara Kingsolver)

"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule."

(Robert Parker)

"My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline."

(Mary Garden)

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining--researching--talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing."

(E. L. Doctorow)

"To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write."

(Gertrude Stein)

"The writer's duty is to keep on writing."

(William Styron)

Happy writing folks!!!!!

STORIES: A WRITER'S PERSPECTIVE

All these years of my writing I’ve been asking myself a question, hundreds of times – what do I have to write as screenplay, so many people like it. At the same time I wanted them to know that I wrote it. OMG! It’s a tough nut to crack.

And this question came up again at the Academy Studio - ScreenWrite.In when a few of my student-writers gathered to work on their screenplays which are getting produced soon.

You can't make films about something the audience knows nothing about. The trick is getting the audience to tell their own stories in the story so that they know what will happen. And then, just before they get bored, you surprise them and move the story in a new direction.

You may call it a theory or a system or whatever but the basic idea is that you’re very much part of an audience with a life, regularly pulsating, emotionally binding, trying to make meanings about many things we are all ignorant and wary about than you’re a writer. At the same time, a writer also wonders about the ignorance and unpredictability of life, which he relives to make meanings.

As many writers had long interpreted, a writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world, lies a deeper feeling of wonder at it. Writing stories is an exercise of dreaming of course, but paradoxically, conscious dreaming, and so, necessarily not apart from living. It’s of course, a double living. 

For the same reason, I believe, a writer needn’t be known personally, but by his reliving in his products – his stories. And only those who need him would know where to find him. That would be sometimes filmmakers, sometimes audiences or sometimes characters themselves long lost in the maze of those wakeful imaginings.

If this is the kind of story that screenwriters select to write for films to communicate, screenplays literally provide the ingredients to make it happen. For the same reason, it becomes a blue print for just emotions and not literary depth and display. It works as an effective catalyst for the story to be told well, audio visually and the emotions carved and guided to the optimal peaks.

And if the screenwriter has to show this great art of structuralizing emotions, he has to wear the attire of a composer of music as he writes. It involves a lot of technique, a lot of rules, a lot systematic specifics and a lot of knowledge of how people respond to emotional packages. A good screenwriter must be aware of all that. If you don’t know the rules you can’t challenge them or break them.

I believe that film is built up with completely banal stories, which everyone knows. But what makes it plausible, attentive and remembered is channeling a unique emotional approach and definitions. And I believe, that is incomparably personal of the screenwriter; and depends on the life experiences and awareness of the many pockets of life conditions the writer has gone through or can identify as emotional springs to mark in his structuralizing labor. That’s what really matters. Only that matters.