The Science Of Drama: Same Old Stories

The Science Of Drama: Same Old Stories
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Next to religion, movie making (screen writing) suffers the most from audience mystification. While no one can pinpoint the initial spark of inspiration, once the choice is made to transform that spark into a story, it begins a laborious scientific process. As a matter of fact, the science of drama can be viewed as precise as architecture itself. How so, you ask? Structure. Structure. Structure. No house will stand without a proper foundation and the dramatic blueprints forged a few thousand years ago have survived the test of time!

However, Drama as Science is not a new concept. None other than Aristotle himself, western civilizations' first drama critic (at the time of plays not movies), would have labeled playwriting a craft, 'techne,' 'meaning,' 'skills,' 'arts' or 'forms of expertise.' This great philosopher, with popcorn in hand, sought out Red Carpet events in the Greek City States with the best showings of The Frogs by Aristophanes, or Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. We have his fragmented notes as they exist in his Poetics, used to teach his class playwriting 101. For the celebrated tutor of Alexander the Great, theme and character were important, but the essential building block in drama was plot. Plot, as one central action, challenged by conflict, is what creates the "mechanism" of drama (my phrase)," as would the span of a cantilever bridge over a river. Yet, although the mechanism of the drama can be taught in the same way as "tension or compression" in bridge building, screenwriters often ignore its principles.

Novices make two errors that quickly reveal their lack of life experience and their lack of understanding, and lead to a considerable waste of time. First is the mistake in thinking drama is merely a good idea or story. Wrong. Though drama tells a story, it is not solely a story, but instead requires a story that needs to be structured as a drama. Structure creates the "dramatic mechanism," and as clever an idea might be, it is not drama. Story or its fancier term "narrative" remains only a sequence of events. Script instructors use the legend of the "choking Doberman" and I will use my variation: If a Man one day found his dog choking in the back yard, slammed him on the back until a bone popped out, that is story, a sequence of events. If the same man found the same choking dog, and slammed him on the back, but two bloody fingers fell out, now you have a drama. The next event creates a tension that compels the reader to seek further information toward a resolution.

A script opens with FADE IN: A poker game between a group of men at a card table, who smoke cigars, exchange biting comments, push forward their chips, etc. Even with Tarantino's best snappy dialogue, it would not be interesting for long, without something new. But what if the same script opened with FADE IN: A poker game between a group of men at a card table, who smoke cigars, exchange biting comments, push forward their chips, etc. What they are not aware of is the ticking time bomb that has been placed under the table that shows one minute until exploding (tension). Now, each chip, each drag on the cigar, an even the short glances at cards, will take on a new meaning, and the audience will wonder when will the bomb ignite. The same dramatic structure as montage was used during the silent era, as the train approaches and our hero slays the bad guy, and we cut to the damsel in distress tied to the tracks. In addition to drama compelling the reader forward, it condenses time (compression), heightens the stakes, and moves pel mel toward resolution.

Novices will also try to "break form," a strategy sure to guarantee years of spinning wheels, increasingly cementedd bad habits, and adding to an already plentiful collection of rejection notices. Breaking traditional forms, or plot, would be the equal to the human body existing without a skeleton. You could prop the story with crutches like spectacle (earthquakes, fires, CGI wonders, etc) in visual style, but eventually the body will collapse. Many alternatives have been tried, and are quite interesting, even plotless stories like Beckett's Waiting for Godot, but the only successes have been with alterations in mood, not structure. You might change the curtains, or add some color, but you cannot remove the support beams!

Today the arguments against conventional structure are fed by the use of non-linear style storytelling. Case in point would be visionary filmmaker Christopher Nolan's films like Memento or Inception or Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, recent examples of non-linear storytelling or the "supposed" breaking of form. Yes, there is a more circuitous route taken for three act structuring, perhaps beginning with A part of Act III, then some of Act I, before beginning story found in Act II, but in the end, there remains a full skeleton. In the case of our cantilever bridge, we might start with the span first, and suspend the cables last, but ultimately we need the support towers (structure) in place to move anyone across. Please stop me before I metaphor again!

In the end, it is not an act of rebellion to tell a great story, but the very ability to tell the same stories over and over again. No one would seriously attempt to defy the laws of physics required to support our cantilever bridge. Fashion changes, styles, or even Tarantino's adding the "N" word in dialogue do NOT make a new form, but merely an entertaining (contemporary) way to tell the old forms. The true challenge is not to ignore drama's core principles but incorporate them through the filters of our contingent culture - a modern culture with technology and fashion quite foreign to Aristotle. After all, imagining the great philosopher sitting through Tarantino's Pulp flick featuring a gimp in black leather is a whole other story. Pun intended.

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