5
A Good Story (The Simple Answer)
The representatives of the Department of Defense who came to Los Angeles in 1997 found the secret of making compelling movies very quickly. A really good story. Once they had the concept and even after they had tried to implement it in a series of training simulations, they were still faced with the interesting question, “What makes a good story, or what makes something a story at all?”
Certainly, everyone from Aristotle to Mel Brooks has voiced an answer to that question, but the best answer we have encountered comes from longtime Hollywood scriptwriter Bill Idelson. Idelson has written, edited, and produced hundreds of television shows (mostly comedies), but these days he spends his time teaching small groups of writers in his home. He teaches the craft of Hollywood storytelling. According to Bill, just about everyone in the world these days is a writer. And to his tastes, far too many of them live in the Hollywood Hills.
“Listen,” he tells his class on the first evening. “Can you hear them . . . the writers in the Hollywood Hills? Night and day they are writing. They generate enough pages to wallpaper every room in Los Angeles, and all the cars, and all the highways too. In a few years they will have written enough to wallpaper the whole world. Can you hear them? What the hell are they writing?”
“Something they think is important,” a student volunteers.
“Yes, important,” Bill answers. “But will it sell? Never! None of all those pages will ever be turned into a screenplay or make it onto television. And so the scripts for television and films continue to be created by a few handfuls of professional writers.”
“What do the professional writers know that the writers in the Hollywood Hills don’t know?” Bill asks. The answer from the class is obvious: “How to tell a story.”
“Right,” Bill answers. “But you know that’s not too easy. Everyone talks about stories but there are very few really good definitions of one. What is a story anyway?”
“It has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” someone says.
“So does a piece of crap,” Bill answers, paraphrasing a line originally attributed to Mel Brooks.
“Here’s my definition,” Bill says. “It’s not perfect, but it’s better than most.” He goes to a rickety blackboard he has propped up at the head of the table and draws a circle.
“What is that?” he asks, and then he interrupts himself. “Better let me tell you . . . it’s the hero. It can be a single person or a group of people but this is the hero.”
He draws a star above and to the right of the hero.
“And what is this?” he asks.
“The goal,” someone suggests.
“That’s right,” Bill answers. “The goal. We have a hero and a goal. But do we have a story? Hell, no! Why not? Because something is missing. What’s missing that would make this a story?”
The class is silent for a long time. Bill studies them and then he draws a big rectangle between the hero and the goal. “What’s that?”
Silence.
“It’s an obstacle. Something that prevents the hero from reaching the goal. Why is that important?” Bill starts answering his own questions. “It’s because the audience wants to share in the hero’s experience of overcoming the obstacle. That’s what turns them on. But if the obstacle is overcome too easily, the audience loses interest. They don’t care. They go away.
“The obstacle has to be as big and awful and as monstrous as any obstacle could ever be. The hero has to throw himself against the obstacle again and again so that the audience begins to identify with the hero, to cheer him on. It makes their juices flow. That’s what writers are after—making the juices flow, engaging the audience, making them remember, making them come back for more.
“It’s not easy. It’s very hard work. Many good writers have gone to an early grave because they couldn’t do it successfully. But that is what you have to do if you want to be a successful writer.”
Unlike many courses on writing that discuss structure and plotlines and review the great Hollywood movies, Bill’s course is designed for skill building. That is, the students are given writing assignments to work on every week and then they bring their scripts in and have the members of the class read them aloud while Bill observes and comments and challenges.
“What kinds of obstacles are there?” he asks.
“There are only four:
Over the 13 weeks of the course, Bill drives people to write realistic dialog, to create believable characters, and most importantly, to create stories that have powerful obstacles.
There is one amazing assignment in Bill’s extensive arsenal that really brings his point home. It goes like this:
“Listen,” he says at the end of the third or fourth class, “I want you to write a short script based on the following idea:
“Two college professors are married and very much in love. She goes off to the Congo to do some research and she is gone for six months. At the end of the six months, she returns suddenly. The husband is thrilled to see her. He runs up to her.
Figure 5.1 Bill Idelson’s simple answer to story construction.
‘Darling’, he says, ‘I’ve missed you so much.’
‘And I’ve missed you.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine, but so many wonderful things have happened, I just have to tell you about them.’
‘Great, but first why don’t we go upstairs for just a minute and get reacquainted?’
‘That would be wonderful, darling,’ she says. ‘I’d like that. But first there is someone I want you to meet.’
“She leads her husband to the door, opens it and standing there is a gorilla.”
“Give me a six-page script about that,” Bill says to conclude the lesson.
A week later the class reassembles, very happy and proud of the very creative work they have done. The first student to have his story read has the husband and wife at odds with each other. Her leaving caused a big fight and now the husband is indifferent. She’s not worried. She has found someone in the jungle that has helped her understand her husband and how to make things work for him. It’s the gorilla, a female gorilla that is also a marriage counselor.
As the script reading ends, Bill’s look turns sour.
“Why did you make the gorilla a female?” he asks.
“To avoid the obvious confrontation with a huge male gorilla,” is the answer.
“Writers are cowards,” Bill responds immediately. “Listen, if you are walking down the street and you see someone coming toward you, someone mysterious and menacing, someone who might do you harm, what do you do? You cross the street, right? You’ll do anything to avoid meeting that person.
“Writers can’t do that. Writers can’t be cowards. They have to walk right up to the menacing person, look them in the eye and say, ‘Okay. Now what?’
“I’ve given this assignment hundreds of times. I’ve had female gorillas, I’ve had baby gorillas, I’ve had gorillas who are sedated or in cages. What good is that? The dramatic scene, the scene that makes the audience’s juices flow is when the gorilla is big and menacing and as much in love with the woman as her husband. The gorilla is a rival; the gorilla is a challenge. The gorilla is the obstacle. The husband’s efforts to get his wife alone and away from the omnipresent protective urges of the gorilla, is what makes this a story.”
COMEDY, DRAMA, AND PEDAGOGY
Bill Idelson is a comedy writer. His credits include The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Odd Couple, among others. It could be argued that skills at comedy writing are not necessarily those that will lead to the successful creation of serious games or military simulation training. The truth is that the formula for the successful construction of a story applies to comedy and drama. Though Bill may not want to admit it, his story structure is very much like that of the noted story lecturer Robert McKee, who brings all stories to a climax in which the hero must face the ultimate obstacle, which at that point, in McKee’s words, is the embodiment of all his or her greatest fears and challenges.
Teaching is about having students confront obstacles and challenges, and find strategies to cope with and overcome those obstacles. In this and many other ways, story material can serve the delivery of pedagogy, investing it with even greater meaning and impact.
SUMMARY
One very clear definition of a good story requires that it have a hero who has a goal but who must face an obstacle standing in the way of reaching that goal. The bigger the obstacle, the better the story.
We will talk more about story structure in the next chapter. But when all is said and done, perhaps the best way to make sure that you have constructed a story that will make the audiences remember, learn, and come back for more, a story that makes the audience’s juices flow is to start by asking yourself, “Where is the gorilla?”