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Welcome everyone. I am very happy to see all of you here at the finest bookstore in Los Angeles. It's great to see so many old friends, and so many fellow writers. The only person who could not be here is tonight the woman who wrote that fabulous but totally objective review of the book that was in your invitation. She is in Hawaii spending all the money I gave her for writing that fabulous but totally objective review.
What I'd like to do tonight is explain how this book came about. Then I want to read the first two pages of the book, read two of my favorite excerpts, and finally open it up to questions.
I'd like to tell you how this book came about by telling you a short story about myself. Since I was a kid, I have always been fascinated by stories. Whether it was listening to my grandmother read me stories of the gods and heroes, or watching old movies with my mother or sitcoms with my old man, or sneaking into a showing of The Fly at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo when I was 6 years old and being scared out of my mind.
These stories gave me tremendous inspiration. I remember watching King Kong when I was around 10 and I immediately strapped a chain across my chest and tried to break it with my bare hands. It didn't inspire me to actually break the chain, but it did inspire me to try.
In college, I began to look inside stories. And I realized that story is the first and most powerful strategy of communication and way of thinking that we have. Sports, politics, religion, even business are really forms of storytelling. Jesus spoke in parables. Lincoln translated complex issues into stories that everyone could see. He said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." That's a great story. And it remade the nation.
It's impossible to overestimate how much stories determine our lives.
When I got out of college I wanted to tell stories of my own and I wanted to see how they work. At that time, the only way to do that was to use Aristotle's technique. In other words, to look at real stories. To study the masters. So I spent three years in a dark theater watching two movies a day and taking notes by movie light. This was so long ago it was before the penlight was invented.
People thought I was nuts, but I knew it was the right thing for me because what I saw amazed me. What began to take shape was the incredible workings under the surface of a story, where the magic is made.
That's what this book is about.
I've thought about this stuff for a lot of years, but it wasn't until I wrote this book that I realized what a great technology a book is. Everything I know about story in this one handy, portable book. One reason it was fun for me to write is because I got to see what it all looks like in one place. I have to tell you, there's a lot here.
I'd like to read you the first two pages of The Anatomy of Story.
"Everyone can tell a story. We do it every day. "You won't believe what happened at work." Or, "Guess what I just did?" Or "A guy goes into a bar..." We see, hear, read, and tell thousands of stories in our lives.
The problem comes in telling a great story. If you want to become a master storyteller, and maybe even get paid to do so, you run up against tremendous obstacles. For one thing, showing the how and why of human life is a monumental job. You have to have a deep and precise understanding of the biggest, most complex subject there is. And then you have to be able to translate your understanding into story. For most writers, that may be the biggest challenge of all.
I want to be specific about the obstacles of story technique, because that's the only way a writer can hope to overcome them. The first obstacle is the terminology most writers use to think about story. Terms like "rising action," "climax," "progressive complication," and "denouement," terms that go as far back as Aristotle, are so broad and theoretical as to be almost meaningless. Let's be honest: they have no practical value for storytellers whatsoever. Say you are writing a scene where your hero is hanging by his fingertips, seconds from falling to his death. Is that a progressive complication, a rising action, a denouement, or the opening scene of the story? It may be none of them or all of them, but either way these terms don't tell you how to write the scene, or whether to write it at all.
The classic story terms suggest an even bigger obstacle to good technique: the very idea of what story is and how it works. As a storyteller in training, the first thing you probably did was to read Aristotle's Poetics. I believe Aristotle was the greatest philosopher in history. But his thinking about story, while powerful, is surprisingly narrow, focused on a limited number of plots and genres. It is also extremely theoretical. Which is why most storytellers trying to learn the practical techniques of their craft from Aristotle leave empty handed.
If you are a screenwriter, you probably moved from Aristotle to a much simpler understanding of story called "3-act structure." That was a big mistake, because while 3-act is a lot easier to understand than Aristotle, it is also hopelessly simplistic and, in many ways, just plain wrong.
"3-act" says that every story for the screen has three "acts." The first act is the beginning. The second act is the middle. And the third act is the end. The first act is about 30 pages. The third act is also about 30 pages. And the second act is around 60 pages. And this 3-act story supposedly has 2-3 "plot points" (whatever those are). Got that? Great. Now go and write a professional script.
I'm simplifying this theory of story, but not by much. It should be obvious that such an elementary approach has even less practical value than Aristotle. But what's worse is that it promotes a view of story that is mechanical. The idea of an act break comes from traditional theater, where we close the curtain to signal the end of an act. We don't need to do that in movies, novels, and short stories; or, for that matter, in a one-act play.
In short, act breaks are external to the story. 3-act structure is a mechanical imprint laid on top of the story and has nothing to do with where the story should or should not go (its internal logic)."
In this book I've tried to lay out the craft of storytelling in great detail. So there is a lot of technique. The two examples I'd like to read to you are from the chapter on Story World. Story world is misunderstood and underestimated by most writers. It took JK Rowling to tell a story about a boy in a prep school for wizards to teach us that a detailed story world is huge.
The first example I'd like to read for you has to do with time in a story, and it is especially relevant to this time of year (Christmas). I mentioned I place a lot of emphasis on learning from the masters. This excerpt talks about Jean Shepard, author of The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters and A Christmas Story.
"Humorist Jean Shepherd is a master at constructing a story around a particular holiday. He begins by combining a holiday with a storyteller reminiscing about his family. This sets up a utopia of childhood for the audience, where each viewer nestles in the recognition of living happily within a family. The particular holiday creates a time passageway, rocketing the viewer back to his childhood. Shepherd does this by having the voice-over storyteller recount the funny things that happened every year on that holiday. For example, his little brother always wore a snowsuit that was too big for him. His dad always got a gift that would infuriate his mom. He always had to deal with the neighborhood bullies. And what about the time Flick got his tongue stuck on the flagpole?
Notice how Shepherd supports the philosophy of the holiday, not in a straightforward or religious way, but by pretending to make fun of it, by laughing at the silly things people do at this time every year. But those silly things also make him feel good, especially because they happen every year and because the people of his memory will never grow old. This is the power of the perennial story."
The second example refers to the use of the house. The house is the most important physical structure in stories. In the book I talk about two extremes: the terrifying house and the warm house. And when I talk about the warm house I talk about Casablanca. The technique I'm talking about in this excerpt is the "character in his world" and it is one of the elements of great storytelling. The following passage is not only my favorite passage in the book. It also has elements that have a lot to do with why I am so happy all of you could be here with me tonight.
"The story world is as important to the success of Casablanca as it is to the most advanced fantasy, myth, or science fiction story. And it is all focused on the bar, Rick's Cafe Americain.
What makes the bar in Casablanca unique as a story world, and incredibly powerful for the audience, is that it is both a dystopia and a utopia. This bar is where the King of the Underworld makes his home.
Rick's Cafe Americain is a dystopia because everyone wants to escape Casablanca, and this is where they pass the time, waiting, waiting, always waiting to get out. There is No Exit here. It is also a dystopia because it is all about money-grubbing and bribery, a perfect expression of the hero's cynicism, selfishness, and despair.
But this bar is at the same time a fabulous utopia. Rick is the master here, the king in his lair, and all of his courtiers pay their respects. The Cafe is a big, warm house with lots of nooks and corners, and all sorts of characters to fill them. Each character not only knows his place, he enjoys it. There's Carl the waiter and Sascha the bartender, Abdul the bouncer, Emil who manages the casino and Rick's sidekick, Sam, master of song. Over in that booth is Berger the nerdy Norwegian underground fighter, just waiting to follow Laszlo's command. There's even the perfect hiding place for the letters of transit, under the lid of Sam's piano.
In a land of contradictions, this warm house is the home of cool, the origin of hip, embodied in King Rick, impeccably dressed in his white tuxedo jacket, a man who is always suave and witty, even under threat from Nazi killers. But this is a world that lives at night, and the King is dark and brooding, too. He refers to two murdered couriers as the "honored dead." This king is Hades.
By creating a sealed world that is both dystopia and utopia, the writers of Casablanca in effect create a Mobius strip story world that never stops. To this day, Rick's Cafe Americain is open every night. Refugees still gather there, the Captain still gambles and enjoys the women, the Germans still make their arrogant appearance. It is one of those timeless places that make great stories, and it continues to exist because it is a cozy lair where everyone enjoys their role.
Far from being the place where everyone wants an exit visa, Rick's bar in far-off Casablanca is the perfect community where no one in the audience ever wants to leave."
Thank you.
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The Anatomy of Story:
22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller
By John Truby
Related Products:
Software:
Blockbuster 5.0
Classes:
Great Screenwriting
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