Yes, Documentaries Also Use Story Structure

One of the questions I get most is about story structure and is, “Is it different for documentaries?” No. In fact one of the best structuralists working in film of any kind is documentarian Ken Burns. I watch his work in awe. If you want to know how stories work, you should become familiar with what he does.

There is something I often urge people to do, but few ever bother: to understand how stories work you must learn to observe them in their natural habitat. You must pay attention to the way people talk in real life to discover when people tell stories, why people tell stories, how people tell stories, and how often.

As I have written before, story structure is natural; we all use it every day and most of us are relatively good at it. Yes, some people are better and others less so, but for the most part we are pretty good at telling stories. It is when we are consciously constructing them that we get confused.

No matter the genre or medium, story construction is basically the same. When you are able to see this clearly, you will have reached another level of storytelling. So many people become confused by the surface of a story—what I call the clothing that a story wears. 

So, I might be lecturing someplace and someone may say when I am making a particular point, “But what about sci-fi, my story is sci-fi. Does this work for sci-fi?”

You can replace the word sci-fi with comedy, drama, western, dramedy, musical, romance, historical fiction, supernatural romance, historical romance, supernatural comedy, docudrama, horror, fantasy, or countless other combinations. For some reason people think that their particular genre will have special structural concerns. (This may be true of your story, but it will not have anything to do with genre.)

I guess that when people ask these questions it means that I have done a poor job of explaining exactly what structure is. Story structure is a way of arranging story events that makes the meaning of those events clear and engaging for one’s audience, to elicit the maximum effect.

In some ways each story has its particular demands, but there are some basic structural forms that work more often than not. Ken Burns uses basic story structure so well that he makes what he does look effortless and his stories could not be more effective. 

At the opening of each series and of each episode of that series he “tells you what he’s gonna tell you.” If the show is about Mark Twain, he lets you know just who Mark Twain was and why he matters—and he does this right up front.

Rather than making you feel like you have already seen the story, it makes you more interested in hearing the story. This is one of the most difficult things to get students to understand, because they often want everything to be a surprise. But what good is a surprise if the audience isn’t interested enough to start listening?

Then Ken Burns will tell you the story in detail, and with emotional truths that give the story resonance. He makes the history relevant by using emotion to connect you to historical events. He makes the story matter because he makes the audience care. 

This is no different than what one would do in a fictional or dramatic narrative piece.  The structure is the same because a story is a story. Period.

Then Ken Burns “tells you what he told you.” He sums up what you have just seen. He tells you again why it matters. And now, because you have an emotional context for the information, it has even more power than it did upon the first hearing.

This is classic structure and Ken Burns, and his team, are masters of it. His latest film THE DUST BOWL does this amazing well. And his film THE WAR, about World War II, moves me in a way that few current filmmakers have.

One of my very favorite films of all time is the landmark documentary by the Maysles brothers, David and Albert, and the brilliant editor Charlotte Zwerin, called SALESMAN. 

This is a film about Bible salesmen in 1969 and their attempt to sell expensive bibles to poor people. There is a humanity to this film that is so powerful that my guess is that David Mamet saw this film before he wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning play GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS. There are some pretty striking similarities. (This is nothing against David Mamet, I just mention it to say that this film has a real impact on viewers.)

It was one of the early documentaries not to have a narrator talking over the film, telling the audience what was happening and how to feel about it. This film is all structure. As with most documentaries, the structure was found in the editing.

The film might be seen by some as merely a character study. I often don’t like things called character studies because what it almost always means is that the characters are “interesting,” but that there is no story to speak of. SALESMAN is great because it is a story that looks and feels like a character study, proving that one need not sacrifice character for story or vice versa. When these elements work in concert, as in SALESMAN, the result is engaging and moving.

Paul Brennan with the Maysles

The film starts with a shot of the Bible and a man’s arthritic hands. This is the salesman who becomes the main character of the story. In this opening he is in someone’s home and is trying—and failing—to make a sale. This opening scene is a real “tell them what you are going to tell them” moment. This is the story of a salesman desperate to make sales, who in the end wonders if he’s made the right choice with his life. It is amazing.

The first act introduces the main character Paul “The Badger” Brennan and all of his fellow salesmen. These other salesmen are characters that allow us to, by comparison, measure the success or failure of Paul. This is a basic structural technique and works exactly the same no matter if the story is a piece of narrative fiction or a documentary.

My favorite examples that use to explain this technique are the pigs in the story THE THREE LITTLE PIGS. It’s really the story of one pig—the pig who used bricks to build his house. But it is through the failure of the first two pigs, who build their respective houses from straw and sticks, that we can measure the success of the last pig. This is the very same technique used in SALESMAN.

There is a great scene in the first act where the supervisor of these traveling salesmen states that money is being made in the “Bible business.” And, he says, that anyone who is not making money is to blame. This sets up the attitude of Paul’s boss—that if Paul isn’t making sales, it’s his fault. So we know the stakes—Paul could lose his job.

Again, this is basic story structure used brilliantly. Set up a character’s goal—what does the character want?  It also helps to let people know the stakes—what happens if the character doesn’t get what s/he wants? Then let the audience know about the obstacle to the goal—why can’t the character just go get what s/he wants?

This obstacle can be physical, emotional, or a combination. The combination, if you can do it, can hit an audience deeply. In JAWS, the chief of police must kill the shark that is terrorizing his community. The shark is both a goal and an obstacle, as it wants to avoid being killed. This is a physical obstacle. 

But there is another obstacle and it is emotional—the chief is scared out of his mind of the water. He must overcome both the outer and inner obstacle in order to achieve his goal.

In SALESMAN, Paul faces the physical obstacle that his potential buyers are cash-strapped. But we also see that the number of rejections he gets is taking its toll on him, and he is losing confidence, which, in turn, makes selling even harder.  To make his sales, he must overcome this emotional goal as well.

This film uses the elements of structure to great emotional effect and because of this tells a compelling human drama. This is why it is both a classic and a masterpiece.

Remember that a story is a story, and structure works in the telling of any story regardless of form. The films of Ken Burns, and SALESMAN, are stellar examples of this. 

Movies I Like: Double Indemnity

 “The two most important words in motion pictures are Billy and Wilder” – Alfred Hitchcock

“It was a hot afternoon, and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along that street. How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?” – Walter Neff in Double Indemnity

I could have done an entire post by now on how cool Billy Wilder is, instead of just doing one film at a time, but since I have already done posts for The Apartment, Sunset Boulevard, and Stalag 17, I’ll just continue to do his films one at a time. That way I will have something to write about for some time to come.

One of Wilder’s greats is his third feature, Double Indemnity. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Actress and Best Picture.

People have been trying to recreate the look, witty patter, and insightful narration of this classic film noir since its release in 1944. Just about all film students at some point try their hand at a black-and-white, moody piece with the feel of John Seitz’s brilliant photography. It is almost a rite of passage – even for those who have not seen the original film they are trying to imitate.

A shot from Double Indemnity showing Seitz's lighting

In fact, it’s not just amateurs who try to recreate the feel of Double Indemnity, but seasoned pros. In 1981, Lawrence Kasdan, screenwriter of The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark remade the film and called it Body Heat.

The original screenplay, co-written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, is based on a book by James M. Cain, about an insurance salesman, Walter Neff. Played by Fred Mac Murray in the movie, Neff plans, along with a woman with whom he is having an affair (played to perfection by Barbara Stanwyck), to kill her husband for the insurance money. It doesn’t go well.

Wilder knows how to start a film. He does what he can to pull the audience in as quickly as possible. In Sunset Boulevard he starts with a dead man in a pool narrating the film, so the audience isn’t watching to see what happens, but just how it happened. How did this guy end up dead in a pool?

 Double Indemnity starts with a car careening, nearly out of control, down the night street, running red lights and narrowly missing accidents. This car is in one big hurry. Already we are asking questions – who’s in that car and why are they in such a hurry?

The car stops at a building, and a man, seen only from the back at first, is let in by someone who works there. The building is closed, it’s after hours. The night worker tries to make small-talk with the man, who he recognizes as Mister Neff, but gets little more than grunts in response.

Sweaty and not feeling well, Walter Neff makes it into his insurance office, sits down, and pops a cigarette into his mouth. We see that he only has the use of one arm, the other is injured, and there is a bullet hole in his suit just above his injured left arm.

Fred MacMurray, as Neff, records his confession

He speaks into his dictaphone (an old-fashioned voice recorder). As he speaks, he addresses someone named Keys. He confesses to Keys that he murdered someone named Dietrichson. It seems Keys suspected murder in this case, but he did not suspect Neff. Shortly it becomes clear that Keys is an investigator for the same insurance company that Neff works for.

So…the film kicks off with a confession of murder. In typical Wilder fashion, he sucks us in quickly and efficiently. Now he has us asking questions, and, as in his later film Sunset Boulevard, we are not watching to see what happens, but how it happens.

Neff’s confession to Keys bleeds into the narration for the rest of the film, as Neff explains what happened. He remembers the first day he went to Phyllis Dietrichson’s door: “It was a hot afternoon, and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along that street. How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?”

MacMurray, Stanwyck and Robinson

Again, Wilder reminds us that a murder is coming, so we watch with interest. Neff goes on to explain  how he began his affair with Phyllis Dietrichson and how eventually they plotted to kill Mr. Dietrichson in such a way that it would pay off double – thus, Double Indemnity.

Neff and Keys

This brings me to the character of Keys, played by the legendary Edward G. Robinson.  Robinson does an amazing job in this well-written part. Keys is a crack investigator. For Neff, it’s like trying to get away with murder while working in the same office as Sherlock Holmes—if Sherlock Holmes was a bulldog. Keys is scary-smart and is the source of much of the film’s suspense as he threatens Neff’s chances at getting away with his crime.

 

 In fact, one of the amazing things in this film, and all Wilder films, is that no one is stupid. None of the major characters becomes conveniently stupid so that they can get into trouble to make the story happen. Wilder is never lazy that way; he makes everyone smart – as smart or smarter than the audience. It creates great tension when smart people in a story are trying to outsmart one another.

I don’t want to say too much about the film after this because I don’t want to spoil the fun for those of you who haven’t seen it. I will just say that there is a reason that Wilder is considered one of the best storytellers in the history of film. And when you watch, it will be clear to you why Double Indemnity is a classic.

What I Learned From Reading E.T.

 This post was originally written for, and posted at, the Women in Film Seattle site.  Cool organization, check them out. Anyway, in case you missed it at their site, here it is.


A friend of mine recently read a spec script of mine and was very complimentary. Which was, of course, nice. But his compliments are also the specific kinds of comments I like to hear because they tell me that I have hit the target at which I was aiming.

When people like my screenplays, the things they say most often is, “I really feel like I just watched a movie.” Or they say, “I could really picture it!” And one of my very favorites, “I couldn’t put it down”. These kinds of comments have been fairly consistent over the years. Why? How can I get these comments consistently? It’s because I spent many years reading, starting as a teenager, reading scripts and learning from them. I stole the techniques of the writers whose work sucked me into the story and made me see a movie in my head vividly.

It is astonishing to me how many aspiring screenwriters almost never read screenplays. Part of the reason for this is that with the advent of screenwriting software that formats scripts for you, folks no longer feel that they need to look at screenplays to learn that aspect, which was one of the main reasons that people ever looked at screenplays to begin with. Most people I speak to haven’t bothered to read scripts to learn much else, but there is so much to learn.

When E.T.The Extraterrestrial came out I was 17. That movie blew me away and I, already a huge Spielberg fan, became obsessed with the film and screenplay. At this time Spielberg’s most famous films were Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. The man was a juggernaut. I even had a picture on my wall of Steven Spielberg with E.T. that I pulled out of an issue of Rolling Stone magazine. I wanted to know what this guy knew, so I tracked down the scripts to his films and studied them.

Movie geek that I was this picture of E.T. and Steven Spielberg was on my wall as a teenager.

I really got into reading screenwriter Melissa Mathison’s script for E.T. I’m not sure how many times I read that screenplay. Multiple times. It was while reading this brilliant script that I learned one of my biggest screenwriting lessons – make every single thing matter. It was a revelation.

It struck me as I was reading a section of the script where the boy, Elliot, is hiding in a closet with his alien buddy E.T. as they eavesdrop on Elliot’s mother reading a bedtime story to his kid sister.  

E.T. heals Elliot's cut finger

 This scene is interrupted when Elliot cuts his finger, “Ouch!”  This is where E.T. learns the meaning of the word ouch and that is associated with pain. E.T.’s finger lights up and he touches it to the boy’s finger and heals the cut, after which the pair goes back to eavesdropping on the bedtime story.

Elliot and E.T. watch as Elliot's sister is read a story.

It is a tender scene of friendship between boy and alien, but it is so much more than that. I learned something reading the script, seeing the words on the page that I had not noticed consciously while watching the film.

The story being read to Gertie, the little girl, as played by Drew Barrymore, is Peter Pan’s. So what? Think about this: writer Melissa Mathison could have chosen any story to be read to the little girl. It could have been about Snow White or the Three Little Pigs or Rumpelstiltskin or Stone Soup, but it was Peter Pan, the part where the fairy Tinkerbelle is dying. And this is what the mother is reading when Elliot and E.T. go back to listening in.

“She thinks she can get well again if children believe in fairies, “ reads the mother. “Do you believe in fairies,” she continues, “Say quick that you believe.” Gertie says emphatically that she does believe. “If you believe,” the mother reads, “clap your hands.” The girl claps earnestly. “And Tink is saved,” says the mother.

Mom reads Peter Pan to Gertie

Here’s what’s amazing: later in the film E.T. dies and is brought back to life.  Mathison works this fairy-tale imagery of miraculous resurrection into our minds; she primes us to believe what’s coming later. She did it seamlessly and skillfully. She did not stop the story to have this tender scene – she continued to tell, and add, to her story by choosing a story for the mother to read that mattered, not an arbitrary or generic one.

Not to be forgotten is the fact that the fairy Tinkerbelle is often depicted as nothing more than a glowing light, with the light dimmed to indicate when she is dying, and made to glow brightly again when she is coming back to life.  E.T’s light, too, goes out when he is dying and comes back up when he comes back to life.

The amazing screenwriter of E.T. Melissa Mathison

I often compliment a film I like by saying that it had no fat. What I mean is that the storytellers used every line, shot, scene, and character to stay on track with the story in some way. Nothing is wasted.

If I ever have to pleasure of meeting Melissa Mathison, I will remove my hat out of sheer respect for the craft of her screenplay.

Today, I use this lesson I learned from reading the screenplay for E.T. in every story I construct. This lesson changed the direction of my writing profoundly. I have no doubt that if you read great scripts, you will learn great lessons. And when you do, steal them and use them liberally. 
  

P.S. And in case you missed this, I was on the 20/20 Awards podcast discussing one of my very favorite films Norma Rae: And also another film I love Groundhog Day:

Shows I Like: The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Not long ago I read the late legendary comedy writer and teacher  Danny Simon used to show episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in his classes and talk about the writing techniques. I loved hearing this because I, without knowing about Danny Simon doing so, have been known to do this very thing. So I have at least one thing in common with Danny Simon.

The show has been on my mind lately because Mary Tyler Moore co-star Valerie Harper announced that she has terminal cancer and has very little time to live, news that has saddened me deeply. I have been a fan of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Ms. Harper from the beginning of the show and nearly the very beginning of my life. The show first aired on September 19, 1970, when I was five years old. Somehow I knew it was great, even at that tender age. In fact, during its run, the show won a total of 29 Emmy Awards. Over the years my admiration for the show, its cast, and its writers, has only increased. 

A good friend of mine owns this slate from the last episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He let me hold it and then had to pry it from my hands.

  

It is fair to say that I’m not sure I would know anything about constructing stories if it weren’t for this show. When I was about ten or so I started to audiotape the shows to listen to them over and over again. (This was before people had any way of recording television. Once show had aired that was it. You were at the whim of the network as to when you might ever see that show again.)

After repeated listening, I started to see the patterns to the stories. I had never read a book on story structure or ever heard anyone talk about such a thing; I was happening upon it without knowing. I remember clearly the epiphany when I first discovered the purpose of each act even before I knew the formal concept of an act.

The now classic Mary Tyler Moore show was created by Allen Burns and James L. Brooks. (Brooks went on to produce Rhoda, Lou Grant, Taxi, and The Simpsons, to name a few hits.)

One of my very favorite episodes – one I have used in my classes – aired in Season One of the series, is called Support Your Local Mother. This episode is so well constructed it blows my mind.  

In the episode, Valerie Harper (who plays Rhoda, Mary’s upstairs neighbor and best friend) gets a visit from her mother, but Rhoda refuses to see her, and so Mary, not understanding this, puts up Rhoda’s mother while she is in town. This is how it plays out.

In Act One, Mary’s friend and neighbor Phyllis instructs Mary on how to whack a table with a length of chain to give furniture an antique look. Mary, who is a prim and proper woman and a little uptight, finds it silly to whack her furniture and comes down with a case of the giggles with each whack.

No sooner has Phyllis left Mary alone to do her work when Ida Morgenstern, Rhoda’s mother (played brilliantly by actress Nancy Walker), shows up at Mary’s door. Rhoda lives upstairs, but Ida says that she is not home and Mary lets her wait in her apartment until Rhoda arrives.

Ida and Mary as Ida waits to hear from Rhoda

Mary goes back to her work beating her table and is now embarrassed to have company.  Ida is a no-nonsense New Yorker from the Bronx and finds Mary’s giggling a little odd. This is not a small thing. Mary is very middle-America, very Midwestern. Already it is established that there is a clash of cultures at work – brash New Yorker meets Pollyanna.

Turns out Rhoda has been home all along and is avoiding her mother, so Mary marches upstairs to talk some sense into her friend. Rhoda tells Mary her mother drives her crazy and that it’s better that she not see her at all. This makes no sense to Mary, so Rhoda explains that Bronx love is not like Midwestern love and comes with a healthy dose of guilt. Mary still doesn’t understand, but Rhoda still refuses to see her mother.

As Mary is leaving, Rhoda asks Mary in all earnestness to ask Ida if she’s taking her pills.

Okay, some things to point out here. If the three acts are thought of as proposal, argument, and conclusion, then Rhoda saying that Bronx love is not like Midwestern love in that it comes with guilt is the story’s proposal. The rest of the story will deal with this idea – the story will argue, or prove this proposal.

Nancy Walker as Ida and Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards

Also, it is great that the scene with Mary and Rhoda ends with Rhoda showing that she truly cares for her mother and her health. Without this, Rhoda would look just plain mean, but now we know she cares. That is beautiful construction.

We are still in the first act at this point. Mary lets Ida stay with her in hopes that Rhoda will change her mind, but right away Mary starts to get an idea of what Rhoda was talking about: Ida wants to pay Mary for letting her stay there and Mary refuses.  The two go back and forth over this with Mary saying that it would make her feel uncomfortable to take the money, but Ida finds a way of wearing Mary down and guilting her into taking the money.

By the end of the first act, just as the two are about to go to sleep Ida takes one more little stab at making Mary feel guilty and we know that Mary is in for a hard time with Ida. This is a brilliant first act. It sets up everything perfectly.

Ida and Mary settle in just before the end of act one.

The second act is the argument for, or proof of, the proposal that Bronx love comes with guilt. Second acts prove (or sometimes disprove) their proposal through dramatization.  By dramatizing an idea I mean demonstrating through the storyline and actions and reactions of the story’s characters. To dramatize is to demonstrate and this second act demonstrates the proposal by seeing Mary driven to near insanity by Ida just as Rhoda said would happen.

Cloris Leachman, who plays Phyllis, along with co-stars Mary and Ms. Harper

At one point Mary tries to explain to Phyllis how she is being driven crazy by Ida, but Phyllis doesn’t understand. Now Mary is in the same boat Rhoda was in Act One, trying to explain to an outsider how this seemingly sweet woman is making her insane.

By the third act, Mary understands through experience what Rhoda was talking about in the first act. Now Mary can talk to Rhoda from a place of knowledge – and is able to convince her that should see her mother. It is an amazing piece of writing. There is a reason the show won a bunch of awards and has become a classic.

This is me meeting Ms. Valerie Harper in October 2012.  She was very sweet.

 As a side note I want to say that I was lucky enough to meet Valerie Harper not too long ago and I was able to tell her how great she is as an actress and how much the show means to me. It was one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me.

I would very much like to thank Ms. Harper and the cast and writers of this show that has had such an impact on my life from the first day it aired until this very day. This show was one of the very first things that helped me to understand my craft, not to mention how much joy, laughter, and happy memories it’s given me.

For those of you wanting to better understand the craft of storytelling, you have a great teacher in The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

A Lesson from Andy Griffith

“If a jokes makes a liar out of the character then lose the joke.” —Andy Griffith

We lost a great storyteller last year by the name of Andy Griffith. If you don’t know of him he was the star of a television show in the 1960s bearing his name. His show is one of my very favorite shows of all time. I learn something about the craft of storytelling every time I watch it. There is a real reason it is considered a classic.

A friend of mine could not understand why I watched the show so often, until he started watching it himself. He called me one day to tell me he “got it.” Now he is a big fan, too.

Andy Griffith and co-star Ron Howard

Griffith, who was from Mount Airy, North Carolina, first got famous as a young comic specializing in regional humor. In 1953 he recorded and released a record called “What It Was, Was Football,” where he tells the story of backwoods southerner explaining the first time he saw a football game. The record was a hit. It may not seem funny to many of us now, but at the time it made an impact on listeners. Andy knew how to tell stories.

When Griffith got his own television sitcom, every opportunity was taken to showcase his storytelling talents. Andy’s character often told stories on the show. But Andy also worked hard behind the scenes making sure that each script worked as well as possible.

This brings me to a piece of advice he gave to his writers: “If a joke makes a liar out of the character then lose the joke.”

This advice above is a block of solid-gold wisdom. It sounds so simple, yet it is hardly followed anymore. I see this “rule” broken all the time. Storytellers make their characters do whatever that writer wants, with little regard for the character or story.

Griffith said this about his comedy show, but it could apply to any kind of writing, not just comedy. Any line, scene, or event that makes a liar out of the characters should be thrown out. This does not mean that characters can’t lie. It means they must be consistent characters. If the writer forces a character to do something just for a laugh, that laugh will damage the story’s internal logic. The audience will be taken out of the story. The more one does this, the less the audience trusts the writer. They sense the story’s “reality” is not grounded. It is unstable.

As I said in my book Invisible Ink, when we see a film where the young college student hears a noise in the dark basement and goes to investigate on her own we know this is a lie. This is lazy writing and the audience knows it.

But what I see in movies and on television nowadays is that having a character do something unexpected or shocking takes precedence over staying true to that character. Yes, one can surprise an audience this way, but one reason they are surprised is that there is no way they could have seen the action coming. The lie makes the event impossible to predict, but it is a cheat. And the more one cheats like this to make allowances for a line here, a joke there, a scene here, the more tenuous becomes the trust of your audience.

There is a trend to go for the shock reaction that comes from breaking the internal rules of a story rather than playing by the established rules and surprising people anyway. This is the hard work of the craft.

Amazing things can happen when you work within the established rules of your story world. Homer Simpson is never funnier than when he does something that only Homer would do. But if he does something only because the writers thought it was funny, the audience may laugh, but at the same time have a nagging feeling that something is off.

Do yourself a favor and don’t make it easy on yourself by doing whatever comes to mind just because you will get a cheap response like a laugh or a shock or because it is easier than solving the tough story problems. There is no craft in random writing. It is cheating. It is sweeping the pieces off the chessboard because you are losing and declaring yourself the winner.

Work within the parameters of your story-world and its characters. This can sometimes be difficult, but if you do it well, in 50 years’ time some young writer may be quoting your advice.

Time Travel: The natural way to tell stories

 

Ever since Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction was released, people have talked in awe about how that film and others have played with traditional notions of story structure. That film tells its story out of sequence and is therefore innovative, or so the reasoning goes. This is a mistake. Telling stories out of sequence is actually as traditional as it gets.

The idea that story structure is ruled by linear chronology is a common error. As I have often written, and told students, one must look at how stories are told in real life. One must study stories not in their written form, or some other medium like TV or films, but in their natural habitat.

Real-life storytelling, person-to-person, is the parent form of every other form of storytelling. In this ancient and most-used form of storytelling is contained every structural element of story.

 Since stories are all around us all the time, if you can train yourself to pay attention to everyday speech, you will learn more than I—or any book, blog, or teacher—could ever tell you about storytelling.

So, let’s look at stories in their natural habitat to see how we are not married to linear chronology in stories and why. 

Someone might tell you a story like this:

STORYTELLER:  So, I go into work this morning – traffic was crazy so I was about five or six minutes late. I grab some coffee from the break-room. Someone had brought donuts so I grabbed one and everyone in the office started talking about their long weekend and what they did. We did that for about 10, 15 minutes until I noticed the time and mentioned that we should get back to work. Someone was in the middle of a story, so they all stayed in the break-room and I headed back to my office. On the way my supervisor stops me and tells me that I’m fired for too much socializing.

That is one way someone might tell you a story, but it isn’t very likely. Why?  It’s a little boring. Why? Because the listener has no idea why they are listening.  Most of us are natural storytellers and understand that power of structure and the manipulation of chronology.  Most of us know to start with the most interesting part of the story to cue people in to why they are listening.

TYPICAL STORYTELLER: I got fired today! So, I go into work this morning – traffic was crazy so I was about five or six minutes late. I grab some coffee from the break-room. Someone had brought donuts so I grabbed one and everyone in the office started talking about their long weekend and what they did. We did that for about 10, 15 minutes then I noticed the time and mentioned that we should get back to work. Someone was in the middle of a story, so they all stayed in the break-room and I headed back to my office.  On the way my supervisor stops me and tells me that I’m fired for too much socializing.

See how this small change impacts the story? Putting the point up front works to engage one’s audience; that sometimes means hopping to the end of the timeline. “I got fired today” is the end of the story. It’s what everything is leading to. But notice how your brain barely notices this time shift. It’s because it is a natural way for us to tell stories and not anyone’s invention or construct.

We all know people who tell stories the way I did in the first example and those people make us very impatient because as listeners we are straining to ascertain just which details of their stories are germane.

The myth is that Hollywood invented story structure. They did not—they capitalized on it. Structure is not about adhering to page counts or putting the story events in a predetermined order, but rather understanding what order of events is most effective for the story one happens to be telling.

My advice—listen to people talk. Listen to people tell stories when they don’t even know that they are doing it. If the story is engaging, chances are they are instinctively using sound structural principles. You can learn all the “rules” of storytelling by listening to people. All you have to do is take the time.

Movies I Like: Stalag 17

You can’t beat Billy Wilder—the guy was amazing, so good that it’s almost scary. He was a screenwriter first, and if he had remained a writer, he would still be a legend; he and his early writing partner CharlesBrackett wrote several hits for Paramount studios.   Because of this success, he was able to convince the studio to let him try his hand at directing. He went on to direct a string of classics. Stalag 17 is one of those classics.

Billy Wilder and  early writing partner Charles Brackett

I should state that I don’t think that the film is perfect—much of the comedy doesn’t age well. It’s much too broad for modern sensibilities and often distracting. (I go into more detail about this in my book Invisible Ink.) Still, in most ways, it is a solid piece of work that entertains.

Stalag 17, made in 1953, takes place in a German POW camp during World War II. The prisoners are all American airmen, who begin to suspect that one of their fellow prisoners is working with the Germans and feeding them valuable information. Which of them is the traitor?

The suspicion falls on a man named Sergeant J.J. Sefton, played by one of my favorite actors of all time, William Holden (who won an Academy Award for the role). Sefton seems to get favors from the Germans, and he seems privy to information that must have come from them. He also has a trunk full of supplies and goodies that the other prisoners do not have: Sefton has soap to wash with while the others do not. Sefton eats eggs, while the others must eat watery potato soup.

William Holden as Sefton

Not only is Sefton is permitted to visit the off-limits area where the female prisoners are held, but he charges all the men in the camp to have a look at the women through a telescope he has managed to acquire.

For all of these reasons, when the group suspects that there is a spy amongst them, Sefton is the prime suspect. Sefton contends that it’s a POW camp, after all, and that he has just learned to live by his wits. He has learned how to trade well and that’s how he gets things, but that that doesn’t make him a traitor.

At some point two new prisoners are introduced to the barracks. One of them is a guy that Sefton knows—a rich guy named Lieutenant Dunbar. Sefton doesn’t like Dunbar, believing that the rich guy has had life easy because of his wealth.

Dunbar and Sefton

This is great story construction. The inclusion of Lieutenant Dunbar is at the heart of what makes this story work: The group is judging Sefton the same way Sefton is judging Dunbar.

Wilder shows Dunbar to be a team player, even though he outranks everyone in the barracks and is worth 25 million bucks. Right away, when he is introduced as a lieutenant, he waves it off as unimportant—he just wants to be one of the guys.

What makes Billy Wilder better than most writers is that his stories are not just a series of events strung together. His stories have a point—a reason for being told. In this story we learn something about the danger jumping to conclusions before we have all the facts, and just how wrong we can be. In the end, the prisoners learn that they should have not been so quick to judge while Sefton learns the same thing.

Billy Wilder with his six Oscars

Knowing how to make a fun, entertaining film that has a meaningful theme at its core is what helped win Wilder six Academy Awards and a place in film history as one of the giants. Believe me, if you learn how to master this aspect of the craft of storytelling there may be a few awards in your future, too.

Why don’t people ask why?

 “A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.” – Bruce Lee

In English we use the word “why” to ask questions, but we also use “why,” rhetorically, to mean that one shouldn’t, to criticize. When we are annoyed by people we might say, “Why do people act like that?” But it is not meant as a question as much as a condemnation.

When it comes to story structure, I often get questions from students that are not questions. I remember once talking about the structure of Finding Nemo and a woman asked me, almost angrily, “Why do so many of the mothers die in these stories?” She meant, “I hate when they do that.”

This is really common—we ask questions without wanting an answer. Often we think we know the answer. We often don’t ask a real “why,” an honest “why,” a “why” without judgment. A “why” without assuming the answer. A pure “why.” Until we train ourselves to do, that we will never get to the true answer.

We have to take the time to ponder. Pondering is an essential part of asking why. And it may take, days, weeks, months or even years before you have come to a conclusion where all of the puzzle pieces click together. Even then, your answer may change and evolve as you learn more.

“Why?” and I are lifelong companions. I often ask “why” because no one else will. There is a scene in the HBO biopic Temple Grandin where the autistic Grandin is at a slaughterhouse and asks why the cows are mooing. 

 

She is dismissed for asking such a question, but Grandin’s reasoning was that cows are prey animals, and would not make sounds unnecessarily to call attention to themselves.  A moo alerts predators to their location, so they would not do it without cause. She asked a real “why” and got a real answer. The cows were stressed. They were alarmed. There were too many things around that spooked them. It was through asking this question that Temple Grandin was able to help design more humane slaughterhouses.

I, to the best of my knowledge, am not autistic, but I am dyslexic and dyslexics are known to think this way, too. When Temple Grandin asked that question, it reminded me so much of myself. It is exactly the kind of question I would have to ask.

In my ongoing quest to understand my brain and why it works the way it does, I just read a great book called The Dyslexic Advantage by Brock L. Eide, M.D., M.A., and Fernette F. Eide,M.D. One of the traits they mention is that dyslexics have a compulsion to know why. I know this is true for me. It is difficult for me to grasp anything fully until I understand why. So most of my “whys” are honest ones. I need to know.

So, why do so many mothers die in fairytales and other stories? I could be wrong, but I have pondered it, and had even before I was asked the question.

If stories are told and re-told because they contain survival information, as I and others have argued, then why so many stories with deceased moms?

Because, I think, for most of human history this was not an uncommon occurrence. Mothers did die, often in childbirth. But children need to know that life goes on and that they can survive even this ordeal. In BrunoBettelheim’s book on the subject of fairytales, The Uses of Enchantment, he points out that often there is fairy godmother or some such figure that is a kind of ghost of the mother looking after her child even after death.

Mothers want their children to survive even if, God forbid, they are no longer there to take care of them.

Stories are dress rehearsals for life’s ordeals, so that when we confront a problem we are better equipped to deal with them. And no matter how our world advances technologically, we still face the same basic problems that humanity has always faced.  We need to eat, find love, protect and feed our children. We still fear death and wonder what happens when we do die, just as did that famous Danish prince:

HAMLET: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Stories are rehearsals for life’s problems. Stories allow us to face and survive many of life’s dilemmas in our imaginations, so that when confronted with such problems they are not wholly new to us, and we can better navigate them. And because we have the same basic problems as humans have always had, with mainly superficial changes, stories will by necessity have many repeating patterns.

Many storytellers today, upon noticing these patterns, ask, “Why do they always do that?” But it’s not a real “why,” if they vow not to use this pattern themselves. “I’m going to do something that no one has ever done,” they proclaim. They change things without asking an honest “why.”

Sometimes the answer is that many storytellers have been lazy and followed the story patterns without asking “why” themselves. This too is a mistake. But often the pattern has stayed in place because it helps make the story’s point clearly.

Many storytellers want to know what makes their story unique, then, if they are going over such a well-worn path. The answer is you. You are the only one with your particular set of experiences and if you filter what you write through those experiences and make honest observations about what it means to be a human being trying to survive in this world, even those old dusty story patterns will shine like new.

But that will only happens if you know why, or why not to, use certain story devices.  And the only way to do that is to ask with humility and sincerity, “Why do they always do that?”