One of my
favorite ways to prepare for writing a new novel is to breakdown stories by other
writers in order to understand how they were made and why they either work or
don't work. I can remember walking into my first film class in college, Film
Structure 101, taught by Joseph L. Anderson. Joe had worked on THRONE OF BLOOD
with Akira Kurosawa, was the leading scholar on Japanese film in the country,
and created the Japanese director series for PBS.
The first
thing he said on the first day of class was that if you had any intention of
becoming an artist or critic, you needed to understand the difference between
good and great. When you're only eighteen-years-old, a statement like that has
a certain reach to it and can go in a lot of different places. But the reason I'm
mentioning it now is quite straightforward: breaking down a story that doesn't
work is often times as enlightening as breaking down a story that blows me
away. And if I examine both kinds of stories, after a while I'll know more than
what makes a great story great -- I'll know why.
 |
| Kurosawa's 1957 Masterpiece, Throne of Blood |
When I'm doing a story breakdown, I
don't include novels. I realize that this may sound strange. But the truth is
that there are way too many reasons why I like to read a work of fiction. It
could be the characters, the plot, or maybe the author's voice. It could be the
time the novel was written in, the idiosyncrasies of the language from that
time or setting. It could be the pleasure I get in knowing what a character is
thinking or feeling. In a novel, the story is often times hidden or masked by
the complexity of the experience. In a novel the story can be hard to see. But
even more, because the experience is multifaceted, reading a great novel
doesn't necessarily mean that I'm reading a great story.
In a film the situation is entirely
different. The story is out in the open. Notice that if the story doesn't work
in a film, no amount of effort by the cast, the director or cinematographer can
change the outcome. If the story doesn't work in a film, it's just a bad film.
And that's why I breakdown films and not novels when I'm developing a new idea.
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