Throwing Your Characters Over The Edge,­ Setting Out What’s at Stake in a Story, by Bill Johnson

When a story’s action shatters the lives of its characters, those characters are thrown over the edge into new worlds. They become dramatic characters because the choices that face them are stark: how will they, can they, survive in these new worlds? How will they change? Can they avoid changing?

In years past, several movies found different ways to throw characters over the edge: The Sweet Hereafter, The Five Senses, and Last Night.

The Sweet Hereafter begins with a man, woman and baby girl sleeping in an idyllic setting. This quiet, peaceful opening begins a story about loss, by starting with a scene that suggests the opposite, a loving, fulfilling moment in life.

We then cut to Mr. Stevens, played by Ian Holm, a lawyer, who takes a call from his estranged daughter. She’s a drug addict and also, we later learn, the baby in the first scene. Because of her drug addiction, he has ‘lost’ his daughter even though she’s alive.

We go from Mr. Stevens, to a father watching his teenage daughter, Nicole, getting ready to perform at a country fair.

Each of these scenes takes place at a different time, but each carries embedded meaning that serves the dramatic purpose of the story. The chronology of the events of any story is not linear. A storyteller chooses those moments in time that best evoke a story’s journey.

Mr. Stevens arrives in a small Canadian town as a lawyer seeking to represent the parents of children who died in a tragic bus accident. Because he’s tormented over the loss of his daughter, he’s focused his life on using others to prove that someone is at fault for every tragedy, that every tragedy has a root cause that can be known and understood. He says to a potential client, “You’re angry, aren’t you? That’s why I’m here. To give your anger a voice. To be your weapon against whoever caused that bus to go off the road.”

As we learn more about each parent and the children involved in the accident, the scenes that lead up to the accident develop more and more dramatic power. But when the accident finally happens, we see very little of it. What we see is the shocked look on a father’s face as he watches the accident unfold, then later sees a blanket put over the bodies of his dead children.

Then he looks up and sees them laughing, running toward him in the snow. At the moment of their deaths, they are more alive to him than ever.

Later, as he looks at the hulk of the bus after the accident, he hears the screams of the trapped children. This is a motif that recurs several times. People looking at the bus hear the screams.

The loss for Nicole’s father is not that she ends up in a wheelchair, but that he loses his dream of helping her become a rock star, a dream he wants to share with her in an intimate way.

As the story advances, one thread occurs years later. On a plane, Mr. Stevens finds himself sitting next to a young woman who was a childhood friend of his daughter. This brings us to a revelation of what happened in that opening scene. In that idyllic bed a hidden menace struck; baby black widow spiders bit the baby girl. As she began to swell, there is a long ride to the hospital during which Mr. Stevens holds his daughter in his lap, a knife ready to cut into her throat if she can no longer breath. Was this the turning point that turned his daughter against him? He can’t know, only wonder and grieve.

The story turns when Nicole is asked to testify at a deposition. When she balks, Mr. Steven’s tries to manipulate her by telling her that people feel sorry for her because she’s in a wheel chair, and testifying is her chance to be angry and get revenge.

She appears ready to go along, but instead, she lies at the deposition, and there is no longer the basis of a law suit against the town or bus manufacturer.

Nicole’s reason for lying is set out by her voice over recital of the Pied Piper, in part, “One was lame and could not dance the whole of the way/and after years, if you would blame his sadness/he was used to say/it’s dull in our town since my playmates left/I can’t forget that I’m bereft/of all the pleasant sights they see/which the piper also promised me/for he led us he said/to a joyus land...where waters gushed and fruit trees grew...and everything was strange and new.”

Nicole has left behind the world she once knew. As she narrates at the end of the story, about Ian, “I wonder if you understand, that all of us, Delores, me, the children who survived, the children who didn’t, that we’re all citizens of a different town now. A place with its own special rules and its own special laws. A town of people living in the sweet hereafter.”

Unlike many films, the Sweet Hereafter does not suggest grief and loss can be resolved. It only suggests that life goes on for the grieving, and that we all grieve in our own way.

A beautiful film.

Another recent film uses a great device to throw its characters over the edge: it’s the end of the world; it’s happening at a clearly defined moment; no one will be spared.

Each character in the story reacts to this situation according to what’s important to them. Some simply want to gather with family like it’s a Christmas dinner and pretend all is well. Others riot. Another character arranges to have sex with every woman he’s ever had a fantasy about, including his high school English teacher. Another man spends his last hours calling people to let them know the local gas utility has appreciated their patronage.

The story’s main character, a young man, wants to die alone. The natural question, why? Fate brings him together with a young woman desperately trying to find her way home to a lover. This also naturally raises a question, why her desperation to get home if the world is ending?

He tries to help her, because helping her means he can die alone. But fate keeps bringing her back. And as the time draws near the end, we find out why he wants to die alone: the loss of his wife who taught him about love has left him bereft. He doesn’t want to go through that loss again. Then it comes out why she’s so determined to go home: she doesn’t want to die a death at the hands of a common fate; she and her lover have made a suicide pact.

She asks him if he’ll kill her. The catch is, she needs to fall in love with him to go through with her plan.

He doesn’t want to get this involved, but the story ends with the two of them facing each other, guns pointed at the head of the other. But instead of killing each other as the world ends, they do something else that acts out what each was really looking for, what each really wanted to share with someone else.

This story raises a question that has stayed with me, what would I do if the world were coming to an end in the next 24 hours? >p> A lovely film.

The Five Senses has a plot that revolves around a missing little girl. The mother of the young girl blames a masseuse whose daughter was supposed to be watching the little girl. The mother’s feelings of grief, loss and anger are deeply felt.

There are many beautiful scenes in this film, but several stand out. In one, a young man begs the masseuse for a massage. The masseuse at first refuses, then gives in. During the massage, the young man begins to cry. The only time he’s touched is when he pays for a massage. Something in his life has thrown him over the edge, outside of normal human contact, and he craves being touched.

Another character is a doctor who eavesdrops on the conversations of others in the office building. The natural question, why? It comes out that he’s going deaf and he’s trying to store as many auditory sensations as he can. After he admits his situation to someone, he’s taken to a concert and shown that he can ‘listen’ to the music by feeling its vibration on church pews. This moment allows him to feel he can survive in what to him would be the most barren of all worlds, one without sound.

In a turning point, the mother of the missing girl accepts the masseuse in her life as someone who understands how she feels. The lost girl is found, and what else is found is the relationship that had been lost between the masseuse and her teenage daughter.

This is a beautifully told story about how we perceive the world through the senses, and through the memories of our sense experiences.

* * * *

One way to discover what drives a character is to ask, what is the one thing a character would miss the most if he or her were to lose everything? What a character craves most in life might be a commitment to the truth, a loving relationship, a sense of justice. Throw that character over the edge into a world where what they value most is taken from away, and that character must react.

Another way to frame this question, what is most important to YOU, the reader, in life? Create a character who loses that, and you can explore your own feelings and thoughts to understand what drives your character to act, to gain some goal, to discover how to exist in the new world you’ve created.

* * *

The Sweet Hereafter. Writing credits, novel by Russell Banks, script, Atom Egoyan. Directed by Adam Egoyan. Released 1997.

Last Night. Written and directed by Don McKellar. Released 1998.

The Five Senses. Written and directed by Jeremy Podeswa. Released 1999.

Writing Down A Story’s Spine, by Bill Johnson

A one-page story synopsis that accurately reflects the issues at stake in a story is valuable when describing a story to agents, producers and editors.

Many writers struggle with writing a one page synopsis because they want to set out the actions of their characters and plot. To describe a story, however, is a separate issue from writing about a character’s goals or one's plot. For example, the story of The Hunt for Red October is about freedom battling oppression.

To describe The Hunt For Red October, then, is not the same as talking about the actions of its main character, Ramius. One beginning for a synopsis of The Hunt For Red October might be:

The Hunt for Red October is the story of one man’s battle to be free of the system that oppresses him.

Note, the first line of the synopsis identifies what’s at stake in the story, namely freedom battling oppression. One should avoid writing:

The Hunt For Red October is the story of Ramius, the commander of a Soviet nuclear-missile armed submarine who uses the submarine to flee to America.

Ramius acts out the story issue of a man who will not be denied his freedom, but the story itself is about this issue of freedom battling oppression.

Another opening for a one-page synopsis might emphasize the type of story.

The Hunt for Red October is a high-tech thriller about the captain of the Soviet Navy’s deadliest nuclear-missile submarine getting revenge against his communist masters.

I offer two different synopsis openings because there is no set formula for a synopsis. A synopsis needs to read well and engage the interest of an agent, editor or producer.

To continue, a story’s synopsis should make clear what’s at stake in the story itself.

To gain his freedom, Ramius, the commander of the Soviet nuclear missile-armed submarine Red October, sets in motion a plan to escape to America.

Note that Ramius is described in relationship to what's at stake in the story, the issue of freedom. This continues the synopsis describing the issue that underlies the story itself. One should avoid writing:

As the story opens, Ramius, commander of the nuclear missile-armed submarine Red October, sets in motion a plan to escape to America.

This only offers a description of the story’s main character, and the story’s plot. It doesn’t suggest the connection between Ramius' actions, the story’s plot, and what’s at stake in the story.

Ramius has long hated his oppressors, the communist party that rules Russia and his native Lithuania. He’s been held in check while his wife was alive. With her passing, he has no restraints on his desire to be free.

This gives a sense of why Ramius desires to be free: it is to escape the oppression of his communist masters, whom he loathes. Even though this appears to be describing Ramius, it’s describing him in a way that makes clear his relationship to the story itself. One should avoid writing:

Ramius wants to pay back the communists for what they have done to Lithuania, his homeland.

This explains why Ramius acts, and although it's true, it doesn’t tie his actions into the story’s underlying premise.

To set in motion his plot to escape to America and freedom, Ramius must risk killing his political officer. Then he gives his crew orders they must follow blindly, because he’s the ship’s captain. Ramius knows one of the crew has been trained to kill him if he acts suspiciously.

This description continues to tie Ramius' actions into the story’s underlying premise, that he can act to gain his freedom, but must take risks. It is the nature of a story that the actions of a story’s characters and its plot generate drama over its outcome. A synopsis should offer an idea about a story’s drama. Because Ramius is part of an oppressive system, it is guaranteed that his orders will be obeyed. This description of the story ties these elements into its premise. The synopsis raises a dramatic issue that plays out through the story. How long can Ramius hide his true purpose from his assassin? Avoid writing:

Ramius kills the Red October’s political officer, and then gives his crew orders he knows they will follow because he’s the ship’s captain.

The above merely describes the actions of Ramius without tying them into the story’s underlying premise or without giving a strong suggestion of the drama over the story’s course and outcome.

Killing the political officer is only a first step. Next, Ramius must avoid detection by his fellow submariners when they are ordered to find and detain him. Later, to find and destroy him. His communist oppressors fear what a free man armed with nuclear missiles might do.

Note the repetition of the story’s main theme: freedom, and the escalation of the drama over the story’s outcome. Ramius' oppressors now actively hunt him. Note how this synopsis shows that with each step Ramius moves toward freedom, others double their efforts to stop him. This, in brief, is the purpose of the story’s plot, to increase the drama over the story’s outcome. Avoid writing:

Ramius outmaneuvers the Soviet submarines sent to find him, captained by men he has trained. In Moscow, those in the military and communist party begin to fear what Ramius might be planning, and plot his destruction.

The above fails to directly state 'why' the men in Moscow fear Ramius.

Ramius’s outmaneuvering of the Soviet submarine fleet alerts the Soviet surface navy to find and destroy him. The Soviet navy going on alert in the Atlantic puts the Americans on the alert. When they learn that a nuclear-armed submarine is on a course toward America, decisions must be made about the nature of the Soviet threat. If the Red October is a rogue submarine, the Americans will destroy it. Tensions escalate in Washington, D.C. and Moscow. CIA analyst Jack Ryan suspects Ramius' true purpose. Because he operates in a free system, his council is given weight."

Note how this synopsis introduces Jack Ryan, the other main character of the story. His actions revolve around the idea that Jack is listened to because he operates in a free system. This description of Jack ties his actions into the story’s underlying premise. Avoid writing:

Ramius, outmaneuvering the Soviet submarine fleet, finds the Soviet Atlantic fleet on full alert to find and destroy him. An American attack submarine that has picked up Ramius' trail passes along information about the Red October. The American sailors are intelligent, capable, and able to think for themselves, in contrast to their Soviet counterparts. In Washington, D.C., CIA analyst Jack Ryan suspects that Ramius’ purpose may not be what it appears. He is a strong, charismatic man, and his opinion is listened to. In Washington and Moscow, tensions mount.

The above is okay, but it doesn’t clearly identify what’s at stake in the story.

Ramius and the Red October narrowly avoid being destroyed by a Soviet attack submarine. Now the American military must make a decision. Should Ramius, a rogue military commander, be destroyed? Is he a threat to America? Jack Ryan puts into action a plan to prove that Ramius is attempting to escape to America, and bringing a tremendous prize, a new type of submarine with a revolutionary propulsion system.

Again, this ties Ramius’ action to what’s being acted out in the story, a battle between freedom and oppression.

To conclude:

In a climactic confrontation, Jack Ryan boards the Red October and is able to kill the KGB trained assassin. Working together, Jack Ryan and Ramius stage a fake explosion and sinking of the Red October.

Through his own undeniable courage and with the aid of Jack Ryan and other Americans, Ramius gains his freedom.

The Hunt For Red October is a dramatic, compelling story about how the values of freedom defeat oppression.

The synopsis ends with a reiteration of what was at stake in the story and its fulfillment.

At each step of this synopsis, it has been clear what’s at stake in this story. To simply describe the actions of a story’s characters and its plot is to leave out what actually engages the interest of an audience.

When you write a synopsis for your script, what’s important is that it communicate what is dynamic and engaging about your story, not that it appear exactly like the synopsis I’ve created for The Hunt for Red October. In working with students, I’ve found they often create a flat first sentence when they talk about a story and its premise in a concrete way. Often, the second sentence of their synopsis was the natural opening.

Choose the opening sentence for your synopsis that communicates the purpose of your story in the strongest, most engaging language. Show your synopsis to others with different opening sentences to find out which version created the most interest.

A few suggestions:

Your synopsis should be clear and easy to read. A synopsis that is difficult to read suggests a story that will be difficult to follow. Keep it simple.

In your synopsis, move from an overview of your story and plot to a strong, personal sense of the roles of your main characters in acting out your story. Use your description of your main characters and their actions to create a spine for the body of the synopsis.

The more characters you introduce, the more you need to explain, the greater the chance your audience will feel lost.

Use your synopsis to demonstrate how your plot increases the dramatic tension for your story’s main characters and transfers that tension to your audience. Express the main thrust of the story along your story line and plot line.

When you finish reading your synopsis, do you feel enthused again about your story, or do you find yourself tired of wading through details? If you find yourself skipping details to get through your synopsis, edit out those details, or condense them.

If you’re struggling to write a one page synopsis, try starting again and just write about one thing, how your main character feels compelled to act out the promise of your story, and what that character goes through to fulfill that promise. Mention only those characters who interact with your main character, and the significant events your main character deals with.

Before you send out your synopsis, set it aside for a few days (or until your mind is fresh and relaxed), then read the synopsis again. Does reading your synopsis make you want to read your story? If not, consider writing another synopsis.

If appropriate, use terms that quickly identify your story genre. ‘Coming of age.’ ‘Cozy mystery.’ ‘Contemporary romance.’ ‘Historical drama.’ ‘Psychological thriller.’ ‘Hard science fiction.’ ‘Sword and sorcery fantasy.’

If you are going to offer a verbal synopsis to an agent, editor or producer, practice it out loud until you’re comfortable with what you want to say, and you can speak about your story with some of the passion and interest that led you to create it. Start by suggesting what your story promises your audience along with an idea of your plot concept. Keep your verbal pitch simple. If you get lost, that feeling is probably double for whoever is listening to you. Examples of pitches and log lines for scripts that have been sold are available on-line. They are a valuable resource for anyone who needs help understanding how to offer a quick, verbal synopsis of a story.

Remember, a synopsis is an overview of your story’s promise, its characters and plot, not an explanation of your story, characters and plot.

Good luck. Writing a great synopsis can be difficult.