A Story is a Promise Blog

The Great Beauty , written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino, is about an aging author who wrote one book when young that gave him entre into the night life of Rome. His barbed wit and interviews eventually made him an arbitrator of what made a party cool (his presence) or not cool (his absence). Reviews call the film Felliniest because of the set up (creatively stuck main character, similar to the director in 8 1/2), and visual references to Federico Fellini films, a young girl around jaded adults and a reference to a sea monster (La Dolce Vita). In Beauty, the opening third of the film has a surface resemblance to Fellini, but a comparison of the two directors and their work reveal a difference in the mind-set of the directors. Fellini loved people, and his films reflect that; the art of his films reflect that. Paolo is more artist as observer. He creates beautiful, lovely images, but they lack that underlying warmth. An example of a Hollywood film described as Felliniest is ...

It was a boutique, mostly women's high end clothes. Most of the men were wandering around aimlessly or following three feet behind girlfriends and wives. The women were so focused they seemed to be guided around the shop point by point by lasers, while the men had a look in their eyes that said, "Tarqet Acquisition Failure; Abort Mission, Abort!" I found a comfortable chair to sit in and ignored the Abort Mission messages. I don't shop. I go into a store to buy something and get out as fast as I can. Unless I'm buying JoJos. That's something that can't be rushed. Or Diet Soda. In restaurants I ask to sniff the cork to make sure I'm getting a good vintage. Sometimes girlfriends buy me clothes. I feel like a clown in some of the things they buy me. Maybe there's a message there. I try not to trip when I wear clown shoes on a date. I'm just glad a long term relationship is three years in my life. My ex girlfriends seem to feel the same...

As we've traveled the country talking with writers and experts on authors, we've come to understand that this remarkable group is first and foremost storytellers. Since earliest times, these are the people in our cave-clans, tribes, castes and social circles who have that special gift to enrapture, instruct and inspire us with tales of myth, truth, daring and insight. George R.R. Martin is one of the world's modern storytellers who has for years spun his legends and kept us watching, listening, and reading. He has been telling fantastical tales since he was a child, and his genres are most often fantasy, horror, and science fiction. His mediums have included comic books, short stories, bestselling novels, and episodic as well as epic television programs and series starting with Twilight Zone and continuing to the current HBO blockbuster series, Game of Thrones. And his art has been acknowledged with bestselling worldwide sales, and numerous awards, including his selecti...

I enjoy writing capsule movie reviews that explore principles of storytelling. The first I'm posting here is a review of the movie Solaris. The goal of these capsule reviews isn't just to review the movie, but to set out what about a particular movie created either the mechanics that helped a movie transport its audience, or some of the causes of that failure to transport. In general, any big-budget Hollywood film that fails to find and satisfy its intended audience will have flawed mechanics. Other, more recent capsule reviews can be found on my website . A Capsule Review of Solaris posted 12/12/2002 This film has gotten some weak reviews that call the storytelling slow, and a few suggestions that Clooney wasn't right for the part. My take, the story has a basic flaw in its structure. The initial set up is fine. Clooney is a therapist who clearly is unable to process through his grief about something that happened to his wife. He accepts an assignment to inves...

For the inexperienced playwright, writing a play can be straightforward. One puts in the time and energy and does it. Getting the finished play produced and performed can appear to be simple as well. Send it to a theatre and get friends on the waiting list for when the play opens Off-Broadway. Unfortunately, that's like saying if you want to learn about hiking, you need to start by climbing Mount Everest. Long before most plays ascend to the lofty heights of a chance for an Off-Broadway production, or even a chance at a production in New York at a recognized theatre, they go through a process of refinement and revision. My goal here is set out some of the steps of getting a well-written play produced. The first step is to write a well-written play. A play that engages and rewards the attention of its readers. Unfortunately for most inexperienced playwrights, their plays fail this first test. They don't read well. Some hallmarks of a well-written play? It immediately draws it...

A hallmark of successful novels is narrative tension. Narrative tension is the tension characters in a novel (and movies) feel about unresolved and unfulfilled events and needs. When characters in a story are blocked from gaining what they want, they experience narrative tension. When acting to gain something increases a character's pain (because the story/storyteller increases the obstacles) a character in a story experiences increasing narrative tension. In a nutshell, a storyteller creates a character who can't refuse to act because of the cost of inaction, but there's also a price to pay for acting. Romeo, in Romeo and Juliet, is a great example of narrative tension. To act on his love for Juliet is to turn against his clan and family; to not act on his feelings for Juliet is to violate his sense of what's important to him. But any action he takes increases his pain. Romeo is a great character because he won't allow even death to block him from being wi...

In a well-told story, a storyteller introduces a story's promise in a dramatic context suggesting a need for resolution (plot) and fulfillment (story). This introduction of a story's promise cues a story's audience to a story's purpose and direction. By making a story's advance toward resolution of its promise dramatic, a story's plot heightens a story's fulfillment of its promise. Because that promise arises out of an issue of human need – for understanding, to gain acceptance, dealing with loss -- a story's audience can be led to feel invested in a story's course and outcome, to be interested in a story's illumination of ideas. To help writers 'see' the connection between story and plot, I teach people to create a story line and plot line. A story line shows the advance of a story's promise from introduction to fulfillment. It's what a story is about. A plot line shows the rising complications that block a story's advance ...

Many years ago a first novel became super popular. The movie tanked. In class, 25 minutes in, no one had a clue what the story was about, the plot either. I love history. As I grew older, I began to wonder, what gave an explorer like Marco Polo the confidence, in the year 1271, to go off on a journey that would cover 15,000 miles, at a time when most people rarely traveled more than 20 miles from home? One answer is optimism bias. This means that, compared to others, we tend to be more optimistic about our chances to succeed or survive in some adventure. This is one reason why people smoke in spite of risk of lung cancer. Individual smokers accept that others will die of lung cancer, but they don't think they will. I believe this bias is transferred to movie characters when we are drawn in to feel invested or enmeshed in what happens to a film's main character. For example, in one of the Bourne films with Matt Damon, he survives a car chase in a tiny car in Moscow. I drov...