Tag Archives: plotting

Movie Reviews

How ‘A Christmas Story’ Tricked Us Into Loving It

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Let’s get this out of the way up front; I love this movie and am here to sing its praises. If you love it as much as I do, this next bit may sting a little.

A Christmas Story is a facade of a narrative. It makes a mockery of several cardinal rules of screenwriting, leaving it no right to be as good as it turns out being.

Let the nitpicking begin…

There’s no overarching story goal. “Nonsense,” you may say. “Protagonist Ralphie wants to get an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time! If that’s not a story goal, I don’t know what is!” And here we arrive at the first big trick. As far as plot structure goes, this goal is a decoy.

The BB gun pursuit adeptly disguises itself well as a legitimate story goal. It’s established in the opening scene, and Ralphie takes several overt actions toward it; placing the ad in his mom’s issue of Look magazine, crafting his theme assignment at school to make a case for the blue steel beauty’s superiority to a football, bringing up the grizzly bears spotted in town (disclaimer: nothing in this blog post should be interpreted as hunting advice, and we would never recommend going after grizzly bears with a BB gun). These attempts are all swatted down like flies and Ralphie’s mission feels more and more hopeless, yet another way it appears to follow a proper plot trajectory. BUT… these setbacks don’t result in Ralphie learning anything, acquiring new skills or insights, or toughening him up to rise to the achievement of the goal.

This brings us to another issue; Ralphie doesn’t really develop as a character and has no arc.  He doesn’t even overcome the antagonistic mantra “you’ll shoot your eye out,” as he very nearly does. (For the record, I’m so glad this incident didn’t dissuade him from wanting the BB gun even a little. That would’ve ruined it for me.) I’ll discuss this more below, and address the counterarguments you’re muttering right now.

The resolution comes from the one adult in Ralph’s life whom he didn’t appeal to on his journey; the Old Man. The prize is there on Christmas morning, not as a result of any of Ralphie’s efforts, but because his dad wanted to surprise him with it. Sure, it’s possible that Mom passed along Ralpie’s Christmas wish after he let it slip in the kitchen, but going by the Old Man’s child-like giddiness (as only the great Darren McGavin could pull off) while Ralphie was opening it, it looks to be something he’d planned all along, regardless of his son’s coaxing.

So, he wanted the BB gun, some things happened, and then he got it. Hardly a killer logline. How does a story get arranged in such a way?

A Christmas Story is based on a book of several fun short stories by the great Jean Shepherd, but high-quality source material does not a great movie make. If you don’t believe me, just search something like “great books adapted into terrible movies” on YouTube, and I’ll see you in a few hours.

Combining multiple short stories into one film (that’s not an anthology) brings about numerous hazards, namely that it’ll come out like a disjointed episodic series of stuff that happens, not a cohesive story.  And indeed, even if you haven’t read the book (as I haven’t), you can see the separate story threads in there. Several of them don’t focus on our protagonist Ralphie, or even really involve him. Sure, some of them are bona fide subplots, like the Scut Farkus affair and the Major Award impasse, but others don’t qualify (the tongue freezing to the lamppost, The secret message from Little Orphan Annie, the mouth washing for saying the f— word, etc.), as they largely come up and get resolved in one scene. Plus nearly ALL of these break a sacred rule of subplots and asides; they don’t serve the main plot in any way. They don’t cross paths with Ralphie’s quest for Old Blue, they don’t move the story forward by changing the status of the story world, they’re just there… for fun (a factor we’ll come back to).

With all this going against it, how did it turn out so good?

Brilliant story construction. 

The filmmakers knew this script’s inherent flaws and challenges, leaned into them, and produced something not only passable but truly special. By harnessing the universal themes around being a kid at Christmastime, A Christmas Story does plotting all wrong while appearing to do it all right, that appearance becomes our reality and shapes the viewing experience, so the flaws cease to matter in the least.

While there’s no throughline of Ralphie achieving his goal, there is a clear ticking clock established immediately, leading us up to Christmas, that creates a timeline and framework upon which the Parker family and friends’ disparate episodes are woven so seamlessly that we don’t question them for a second. It’s the winter Christmas season, so kids dare each other to stick their tongues to metal objects, companies run aggressive ad campaigns for sponsors like Ovaltine and scammy sweepstakes for gaudy prizes like leg lamps, furnaces are working overtime and may need to be battled, and tire blowouts are more common. They sprout up as naturally as the grass.

Back to Ralphie’s character development, or lack thereof, he does have a few mini-arcs in some of the sequences. The most prominent is that he learns to stand up for himself when he wades into Scut Farkus and beats him to a pulp, completing a solid subplot. He also learns something about the dark side of mass media advertising when Little Orphan Annie’s secret message is an Ovaltine ad.

While none of these serve the main conflict, they do inspire empathy and relatability like few other pieces ever have, which goes a long way in explaining why this film is played for 24 hours straight every Christmas Day on at least one network.

Your humble blogger naturally exaggerated the point of “does plotting all wrong” earlier. The employment of setup and payoff is executed to perfection here.  Take the Bumpus’s Hounds thread, for example. They show up a few times as extras for what seems like comedic garnish, becoming an organic part of the movie’s landscape, only to emerge as a major plot influence when they infiltrate the Parker house, eat the Christmas turkey, and displace the family from their home so they can be introduced to Chinese Turkey. And that’s only one example of how adeptly story elements are introduced and played out across multiple episodes.

One last factor that can’t be overlooked or overstated in a piece like this is the charm, style, and just plain fun of the direction and wordsmithing. It reminds me of a quote I heard from Karl Iglesias, author of Writing for Emotional Impact; “you can break every rule except one, be interesting”. The dialog, comedic timing, and creative craziness of the recurring calamities of this movie keep us so charmed in the moment, that there’s little concern for the big picture or how it all connects, and while we writers would like to always be firing on all cylinders, this is something we should all relish, as it’s rare to reach this high a level of captivation.

So, there you have it; a dissection of a beloved holiday classic that hopefully we can all learn from. Rules can be bent, broken, and mangled; and you can still come out with a timeless classic on your hands if you sprinkle in the right doses of the right storytelling magic.

 

Screenwriting Issue of the Day

Derail Your Plot To Get It On Track!

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First, the bad news…

Recently, while trudging through a page-one rewrite (those are always a breeze), I found myself in a familiar (not to downplay its awfulness) predicament. In my steadfast resolve to knock out this draft from start to finish, I’d written myself into a corner, or several corners if the metaphor still holds ( I don’t think it does). It went like this – I had an idea of where I wanted my plot to go but didn’t see how the stuff I was currently writing could reasonably get there. I wouldn’t call my condition the dreaded b-word (you know the one), but I was definitely stuck. (No more parentheticals. I promise.)

This lead to me adding things, things, and more things. Entire expository scenes and new extraneous characters were popping up in my story to bridge logic gaps and steer the narrative in my intended “right direction.” The anatomy of my script became nightmarish. The core meaning of the story that had initially drawn me to this concept was getting buried under a muddled mass of fluff, to the point where it was becoming unrecognizable. The plot was wandering aimlessly. I was re-committing the same sins that had necessitated the page-one rewrite in the first place.

I took stock of what I was writing and I wasn’t sure whose material this was, but it wasn’t mine, and I wasn’t sure who was writing it, but it wasn’t me. There was a severe lack of “me” all the way around this thing. No, this was some other guy, who was writing a term paper of sorts, in strict chronology, with mandatory requirements imposed by… someone? And what was his tool of choice to fulfill those requirements? Plot contrivances employed to rationalize other plot contrivances! I got into such a tangle that I started asking those questions that can be lethal to a writer’s motivation: Is every word I write taking me further in the wrong direction? Do I need to go all the way back to the concept phase and rethink my whole idea? Should I maybe scrap this piece altogether and start that other one I’ve been pondering? Am I really cut out for this writing thing?

But it wasn’t time to hit self-destruct quite yet.

And now, the good news…

Having already wrestled with creative roadblocks in several forms, I’d found that taking a short break from the process to reboot my perspective was usually in order. So, while catching up on my consumption of Better Call Saul, cookie dough, and Bourbon; my decompressed mind conjured up a way out of this abysmal slump that might just help you too.

Interestingly, my instinct to go back to the source wasn’t actually wrong in principle, only in content. The solution simply involved asking BETTER QUESTIONS, the type that everyone should ask when they lose their way: Why am I doing this? Why do I want to tell this story at all? Why this one instead of another of those creative bugs infecting my brain? The answers were just as useful as they were reinvigorating. They got me unstuck and in a better flow than I had before all this happened, when I was writing insincere fodder with blissful ignorance.

Why am I doing this? This one’s easy. I’m doing this for the enjoyment of it, for the unparalleled excitement of having my creative impulses pour out through my fingers and take a form that some like-minded (and maybe even some differently-minded) readers can recognize and appreciate.

Why do I want to tell this story at all? This one isn’t so hard either. I wanted to tell this story because I have a perspective on life that’s uniquely mine, and by putting these characters that I have in mind in these situations that I’ve conceived of, I can try to express that perspective in a way that connects with people to make their experience of reading/ watching my work as satisfying as it was for me to create it.

At this point, I realized that scrapping the idea was no longer on the table, and the tougher question with the more actionable answers was to soon to follow…

Why this one instead of another of those inspiration bugs infecting my head? Because I was excited about this and that particular sequence; the moments that would be a true pleasure to write, where the characters were pushed to their limits and forced into the actions that would define them and make them memorable, the points where the audience and the characters thought things were going one way, and then they take a sudden turn, and the plot unfolds in a surprising and satisfying way to subtly convey my theme.

Once I realized all this but didn’t see it happening the way I wanted, I just snapped and said, “I’ll write that scene that really needs to be in there to keep me excited about this thing, and even if I jettison the whole thing, it’ll be fun to write that scene. And that’s what this is all about, right?” So I did exactly that, and, it came together nicely. But what about when that scene was written? Where to take it next? And what about this big timeline gap standing between where I’d gotten stuck, and this completed scene?

Rinse and repeat. I thought, what’s the next most important scene for me to include in this sequence, to make this a story I’d be interested in as a writer and as a reader? It was a scene that takes place a little down the road from the one I’d just written. That scene was also a blast to write, and some unexpected gems found their way in there to enrich it as I went. I did this again and again, without regard for what came next, only what came next in importance to me.

After a few more scenes were done, I’d worked my way down to one that actually occurs between where I initially got stuck and that first “priority scene.” So, instead of being lost near the start of the journey, not knowing how to get where I wanted to go, I now had a series of waypoints laid out in front of me, and I just had to figure out how to connect them. This took some adjustments and alterations, but that was part of the fun too! And in the course of this, I really got the feeling that I had overcome something.

Things continued to happen in the process that surprised me. The characters told me what should happen, and each sequence came out a little different than I’d planned it. Most importantly, this all rejuvenated my enthusiasm for what I’m doing.

But now let’s come back down to earth. This wasn’t a magic bullet that just launched me into the stratosphere. I’m not writing this post poolside at my new place in the Hollywood hills, where John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart once arm-wrestled to decide who would eat the last cigar butt. But it did generate a wealth of inertia that continues now and has me barreling through this draft with renewed confidence that I will complete it, my only limitations being time constraints and the fact that my typing skill falls somewhere between infant and nineteenth-century Santa Fe pack mule. If I hit another snag, I know that I’ll handle it, and it may very well involve another joyous discovery!

So… if you find yourself similarly confounded; take a step back, consider your grander purpose for all this, let go of any overly-rigid “plans” that might just be stifling your inspiration, and move forward according to your priorities. Let us know how it goes!

Book Reviews

Review: The Plot Machine: Design Better Stories Faster by Dale Kutzera

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Stumbling blocks are inevitable in any form of writing. Fiction writing carries some special challenges, and one of the most vicious monkeys on the screenwriter’s back is the formulation of a logical, well-structured plot. Plotting complications might arise in the prewriting/ planning phase, in the midst of cranking out the pages, or, worst of all, when you’ve completed a draft and realize your story thread has serious issues and needs some damage control. It’s a scary feeling to write a slew of scenes that are working for you, only to zoom out and realize you’ve lost your way along the narrative through line. Even the coolest beats are pointless if they’re just dangling in the ether, or drifting by on a winding, dead-end street.

These hiccups can take a variety of forms, affecting (or infecting) your script in a number of ways, and looking to one of the classic, standard, comprehensive screenwriting bibles may not always be the most straightforward or efficient troubleshooting route to take. Sometimes what you need is a specialized tool geared directly at what’s ailing your story. The best such tool I’ve encountered in a long time is The Plot Machine: Design Better Stories Faster by Dale Kutzera.

Did you catch that word “design” in the title? Well, Kutzera means exactly that. He comes right out and states, “this is a design guide, not a writing guide,” at one point analogizing story planning to architectural engineering and the final movie to a solidly constructed building.

Through his chosen method of taxonomy, or classification into ordered categories, Kutzera effectively deconstructs, simplifies, and distills the plotting process into a readily applicable workflow, or rather, one of several possible workflows depending on the type of story you’re going for. He neatly catalogs some of the most prevalent and successful types of endeavors, archetypal characters, brands of character arcs, possibilities for your death moment, and so on. This technique essentially is The Plot Machine, and it ticks like a Swiss watch.

Don’t let these cold pragmatic overtones (or the page count) fool you. The conciseness doesn’t render it light so much as dense. There’s a surprising degree of depth and thoughtfulness built into The Plot Machine. It begins by taking a step back to ponder the overall purpose of stories and storytelling and then bears this in mind as a referential guidepost throughout. This same principle is applied to each tier of the system. We’re prompted to consider the core functions of each plot element or to ask ourselves a few simple up-front questions about what we hope to accomplish in its development. This serves as an aid to our creative choices, a course-correcter to keep us on track, and a hedge against the problems that tend to come up later if we overlook these factors.

With the essential overarching intentions established, he funnels down to the nuts and bolts of the process. One of The Plot Machine‘s key features is its focus on prioritization. The objectives seem to be maximized economy and minimal need for revisions and rewrites in the end, as you will have built a solid foundation at each stage before moving onto the finer details and ornaments. So if you’re diving into a new script, The Plot Machine can offer a place to start shaping your plot (hint: it’s not on Act 1, Scene 1, Page 1), and a full unfolding of where to go from there in terms of what narrative components you have to work with, ways to structure them, and how the sequences you build can lay into the storyline. If you’re having trouble with a script that’s in the works, these same procedures can just as easily serve as a quick-reference problem-solving guide.

If all this sounds too rigid and formulaic, think again. The Plot Machine’s starting point is your own creative inspiration, as Kutzera prescribes beginning with what you have in mind for your movie idea, whether that’s a particular character, situation, genre, or whatever. He also points out the infinite avenues open to the plotting process due to the disparate demands of different types of stories, and the virtues of understanding the conventions so that we can turn them on their heads. Not every plotline needs a midpoint reversal, not every protagonist needs to refuse the call to action, and who’s to say the slayer can’t join forces with the dragon in Act 3?

The Plot Machine can be a boon to your writing regardless of where you are or how it’s going. Its only weakness, near as I can tell, is also one of its greatest strengths. As mentioned, it’s a design guide, so it doesn’t delve into the mechanics or fundamentals of screenwriting, telling you how to color within the formatting lines in your description (until it’s time not to) or how to keep the rhythm and cadence of your dialog in tandem with the tone of the piece. If you’re looking for those things, you should turn to one of the classics. You won’t find it in The Plot Machine. However, you will (quickly) come away from it with an enriched understanding of how to configure your story, why you’re writing it, and perhaps why you write at all.