by PJ Reece
A few years ago, nothing stood between me and my Hollywood career except…Jack Lemmon and Eva Marie Saint.
My screenplay had worked its way through 4000+ scripts to emerge as one of eight finalists in the prestigious Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowships in Los Angeles. One of those illustrious Academy judges nixed it, finally, saying that my Act III “devolved into melodrama.”
Ouch!
Melodrama. Damn! It was like watching my glittering Oscar slip from my fingers and vanish into a chasm. (I never, personally, made that leap to Hollywood.)
What is melodrama, anyway? Yes, it’s a lousy ending. It sucks. But how and why? I’ve spent my entire writing life seeking an answer so it wouldn’t happen again. And I did, I’m here to tell you…
I discovered why fiction flops.
I hadn’t understood the true nature of “story”. About the role of struggle and conflict, the textbooks are misleading. About defeat and failure, the manuals are superficial. But it became clear to me—it’s evident in every good movie and novel—that failure serves the protagonist as the portal to her higher nature.
I hadn’t understood that this is how the human organizm is designed!
Without that understanding, how can we love the human condition? How can writers love their characters? And finally, how do we write a conclusion that will truly save them?
Instead of “devolving into melodrama.”
I think I can help writers understand what’s really going in the conventional
story. It’s all here in this book, which is short because the message is simple:
• The dramatic story is actually TWO STORIES.
• Between the two stories, an abyss.
• Our protagonists will be sucked into that darkness.
• It’s a law of fiction.
“There’s a hole in my story…
and everything’s flowing into it!”
STORY ONE / chasm / STORY TWO.
STORY ONE has only one purpose—to deliver your protagonist to the edge of this vortex. You could die there. Metaphorically, yes, your protagonist is going to die in there.
Welcome to the HEART OF THE STORY.
This key story moment—lasting mere seconds in most movies—contains everything you need in order to understand…
• what your story is about
• why you’re writing it, and even…
• why readers read
And best of all, tuning into your STORY HEART as you begin to write is going to…
• SAVE you TIME.
This book is organized into three sections:
First, I make a case for imagining a drama in its simplest terms—as a TWO-PART STORY.
Then, we enter the gap between the two—into the HEART OF THE STORY.
Finally, we go on a spelunking expedition DEEPER INTO THAT DARK HEART to gain a better understanding of what Jack Lemmon… or was it Eva Marie Saint?…were thinking when they so astutely dashed a young man’s dreams of Hollywood.
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The above is an introductory excerpt from the upcoming ebook "How Fiction Really Works" by writer PJ Reece.
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PJ Reece has scripted 100+ hours of broadcast documentaries. His client list includes National Geographic, A&E, Discovery, Bravo!and History Channel. Reece has published two novels, and the memoir of an Iranian’s escape to freedom. His blog at pjreece.ca is a radical examination of story and meaning.
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