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Questions and Answers
by Bill Johnson
If you've read my essays and have a story question about a script you're working on, or a question about one of the movies I've reviewed, send it to me at bjscript@teleport.com. I would be happy to answer your questions on this page. It's a way we can explore together more about the craft of storytelling.
Question
I have to say I'm not entirely sure what you mean by narrative tension.
You have, say, a character with an issue of deep human need (eg, to be forgiven); the story "promises" to resolve it -- ie, the resolution of the need for forgiveness is the story's promise.
The character is somehow blocked/can't get what (s)he needs. Not being able to satisfy the deep human need creates tension within the character. The audience (hopefully) internalizes this tension, which equals "narrative tension." Correct?
If this is correct, can you give more examples of this internalizing? For example, in the book you mentioned, Tell No Lies, or another of your choosing, what, specifically, makes the audience internalize the tension of the main character?
Sharleen
Sharleen,
My Response:
In Tell No One, as the story opens, the main character has told a lie that's
creating some distance between himself and his wife/soul mate. There's an
immediate question of how this issue of his having lied to her will be
resolved, how it will impact their relationship.
His tension comes from not knowing what to do, and fearing that his wife might be withdrawing from him while he's not sure what to do.
Everyone who's been in a situation of having done something to damage a relationship, but not sure what to do to repair the damage, will understand this situation. At that moment, the tension this man is going through can be experienced by a story's audience
What would I do in this situation? What would you do?
Before this issue can be resolved, they are attacked, and the last thing this man hears is his wife screaming his name.
When the story picks up years later, he has never been able to resolve his feelings about that night. He's stuck in his grief. His love for her defined his life. Without her, there's a void that can't be filled.
Then he gets an email from her telling him that she's alive, but to tell no one.
This eases his grief over his loss, but it increases his pain around not knowing why she's lied to him, and what happened that night.
His tension increases.
If the story's audience also feels caught up in the question, how can his wife who was murdered still be alive, the tension for the audience increases.
His situation is complicated because he's not supposed to tell anyone she's alive. But, if he doesn't tell someone, how can he find out what happened?
The tension in the story is relentless. Everything he does to discover the truth -- a truth he must seek -- puts him in greater danger, yet he can't not seek that truth.
That's narrative tension.
The main character in this story is a doctor, a very caring man. At one point in the story, he's being chased by the police when he's just been given directions on a place and time to meet his wife for the first time since her 'death.' When he's confronted by a lone, young policeman, he can either give up or go for broke and attack the policeman. He attacks, rams the young man with his head, then kicks him until he knows he can't get up. Then he flees.
The whole time he's attacking the policeman, he's horrified at what he's doing, but he can't stop, because he might miss his only chance to see his wife again.
That's narrative tension.
What brings Tell No One to life is this man who will risk everything to find out what happened to his wife, and I as a reader internalize and share that tension. I have to find out what happened to the wife as well, and I can't stop reading until I do.
A novel lacking narrative tension is just a sequence of events, a collection of details.
Bill *******************New Question
What is the difference between climax and fulfillment? Could you offer some more examples?
I associate a story's climax with the resolution of its action. In Die Hard, the action of the story is resolved when Bruce Willis' characters outwits and defeats Hans, and the black patrolman shoots the brother of the terrorist who had sworn to kill Willis' character, saving Willis. The fulfillment of the story, however, revolves around Willis' character and his character's wife, played by Bonnie Bedalia, and the patrolman. What fulfills the story is that Willis and Bedalia reunite, and that, secondarily, the black patrolman regains his ability to do his job and fire his weapon.
To see the comparison to a story with a weak fulfillment, compare Die Hard with Die Hard 3. Die Hard 3 has all the action of the original story, but it's not set up to offer any particular sense of fulfillment based on its resolution. For example, it's suggested that Jackson's character has an issue with disliking white people, but not much energy is spent developing the idea or issue in a way that generates a quality of resolution or fulfillment. Willis' character is presented as being estranged from his wife, Bedalia, but not much is set up around that issue. She's never even shown. At the end of the film, he walks toward a pay phone to call her. But it's not an act the audience has been particularly led to care about by the action of the story.
Jeremy Iron's character, the brother of Hans in the first film, is at first presented as acting to avenge his brother's death. But later in the film he says that's not it, he really has no feelings about the fact that Willis killed his brother.
Compare those story situations to Die Hard and the subplot about the terrorist out to get Willis to avenge his brother's death. It was skillfully woven into the story and figured prominently in both its climax and what it set up to be the story's fulfillment.
Each film, Die Hard and Die Hard 3, worked to achieve a sense of resolution, and built toward a climax of its action. Die Hard, however, was also very clear about generating the deeper quality of an enjoyable story, fulfillment. The most deeply felt moment of Die Hard 3, for me, doesn't even involve the main characters. It was set up around a bomb squad officer who risked his life to save some children. The story of Die Hard, by comparison, revolves around, and is fulfilled by the actions of its main characters.
Audiences in general can't be "fooled" about whether or not a story provides a "moving" experience. For example, a movie like Babe connects with its audience because it sets up a story-like quality of movement, and the action of the story resolves its issues in a way that offers a desirable state of fulfillment.
*******************
New Question, 'What is the redemption in the movie, "The Shawshank Redemption"?'
Tim Robbins goes from being emotionally numb to an ability to feel. There’s a shot early in the movie when he goes to prison showing the width of the walls. That is symbolic of the internal walls that block Tim’s internal life.
Morgan Freeman’s character gains an understanding of how he ended up in prison.
Two men who appear beyond redemption are redeemed.
New Question, 'In novels, do you believe that theme is always more important than plot?'
This needs to be broken down.
To say a story has a theme is a way of saying it has a point.
A novel that doesn't have a point risks appearing to be pointless.
When I would be asked to critique pointless novels that eventually had a character dealing with redemption, the author would put the word redemption in the 2nd paragraph of the 2nd page and say, 'See, I have a theme. Everything should be okay now."
Not really. Consider Harry Potter, which is storytelling/plot 101 in terms of mechanics.
Harry wants to fit in. He's the symbol of a war about pure versus mixed blood (about allowing more people to fit in versus a smaller group of pure blood).
That issue connects every character in the novels.
Each novel is a step in Harry's journey toward fitting in.
Each chapter in a Harry Potter novel is a clearly defined step along a plot line, that large step that will resolve the issue of fitting in for Harry in that novel.
Rowling uses a process I call question, answer, question. Each short chapter starts with a question. The answer to the question at the end of the chapter raises a new plot question to resolve that gives meaning to the next chapter.
Returning to the issue of fitting in, even the Dursley's want to fit in by appearing normal. Harry Potter by his existence is a mortal threat to that desire.
See the conflict this creates? It creates what I call narrative tension, the tension an audience feels about whether Harry will be expelled from Hogwarts back to the Dursley's.
As the plot of a Harry Potter novel increases the obstacles Harry must overcome, the narrative tension increases, making each novel compelling (to its audience).
Now, compare that to a novel that appears to be pointless.
The reader has to memorize details until they have a context. By the time you get to the third character who acts to no apparent purpose, getting through that is like getting through a swamp.
Using another example from a popular novel, The Hunt for Red October. Ramius wants to be free of oppression. That's what the story is about, it's theme, if you will. Each step Ramius takes to gain his freedom increases the obstacles he must get through. Once a reader is hooked on the question of whether Ramius can gain his freedom, they have to finish the novel.
Note that any character in the novel, a Soviet pilot for example, can be in the novel for two paragraphs, but his actions clearly have a purpose within the scope of the story, trying to stop or aid Ramius in his quest.
Like in Harry Potter, every character in Hunt is on a side and their actions have meaning that advance the plot.
So you can look at hugely successful, popular novels and generally the plot is accessible, typically via a main character (so the story has a point from that character's introduction).
But these mechanics of storytelling also apply to literary fiction.
In Joyce's short story The Dead, an intellectual doctor in Ireland takes his wife to a salon, where other intellectuals debate the issues of the time. After the salon, riding home in an open sleigh in the snow, the doctor images his wife is waiting for him to explain the intellectual arguments of the evening she didn't understand and that will be a prelude to intimacy.
Instead his wife is thinking of a time when she was a young girl and a suitor came to see her in the snow just before he passed from consumption (tuberculosis).
The intellectual doctor realizes that with all his vaunted intellect, he could not recognize the mood of his wife. That all the intellectual arguments of the night are like the snow covering the earth, some frozen water vapor covering the deeper reality of the earth.
The plot and characters of The Dead revolve around ideas.
The Dead as a story is an inch wide and a mile deep.
The Hunt for Red October is a mile wide and an inch deep.
But both operate to a dramatic purpose and both have a plot.
I recently read All the Light We Cannot See, which is a novel about how war impacts ordinary people. The plot is about which of two main characters will survive a city being bombed, and then who will survive the war.
Simple story, complex plot.
Returning to the issue of theme, in general I avoid using the word and just come to an understanding of what a story is about. Typically for an unpublished novel that starts out pointlessly, that revelation can come deep in a novel.
Another way to consider this is to think of a story in terms of music. Lets say Harry Potter is told in the key of C. That means there are particular notes that work and have an effect in that key, and notes that are discordant. Struggling writers are hitting notes/words in the wrong key.
The audience can hear the difference. Coming up with different verbs for how something crosses a room - siddles, glides, dances, strides - doesn’t change anything if those words are in the wrong key.
Fixing an unpublished (or self published) novel written by someone who doesn't understand what key/theme they are playing in can mean conveying an understanding of storytelling and not thinking changes in grammar or proofreading or changing the order of opening chapters will fix the overriding problem.
Also, someone who doesn't understand what a story is about generally doesn't understand how to create a strong plot.
