Writing the short film 3th - Part 11

way and also tell the story. There are exceptions to this “rule,” of course—
many of them comedies, or experimental films or videos.
All the same, if you are interested in making narrative films, it’s useful to
learn the ground rules before you take to the air.
ON CHARACTER AS HABITUAL BEHAVIOR
As we have noted, Aristotle referred to character as habitual action. You are
what you ordinarily do—that is, until you do something you don’t ordinarily
do, which is what makes for drama. To be believable, the character’s capacity
for out-of-the-ordinary behavior needs to have been glimpsed by the audi-
ence—even if not recognized for what it is—at some point in the story before
it appears full blown. (If your aim is to create cartoon characters in a live-
action world, believability of behavior doesn’t matter as much.) For example,
in the outline above, Icarus ordinarily obeys his father without question, if
sullenly, until the moment in the flight when he realizes that Daedalus is no
longer in command, that he can do as he chooses. His out-of-the-ordinary
behavior in disregarding Daedalus’s warnings would make sense to us as an
audience, because we have witnessed for ourselves earlier signs of rebel-
liousness. In Cocteau’s sense, the logic of it has been “proven” to us.
It is the “movement of spirit or psyche,” as Aristotle calls dramatic action,
that produces a character’s behavior. In any of the dramatic forms, the inner
life of a character has to be expressed in what that character does, as well as
in the way he or she does it. In a good screenplay, both dialogue and physi-
cal action flow from a character’s dramatic action (or want or need).
ANOTHER ADAPTATION, WITH DAEDALUS AS HERO
Now we shall work from the same source material as before (the myth) but
in a very different way, using Daedalus as our main character. We’ll answer
the seven questions briefly, as a step toward writing a bare-bones synopsis
of the projected script, which is for a live-action, realistic film of 15 to 18 min-
utes, set during the time of the American Civil War. The synopsis is a useful
tool, one required by many teachers as a first step in writing any screen-
play—a kind of trial balloon. It is also useful for an initial class discussion of

a student’s work. Widely used in the industry, it is often required in appli-
cations for foundation grants, and many writers prefer it to a story outline.
Here are the questions and our answers:
Who is the protagonist? Mark Dedalus, a captain in the Union army, in civil-
ian life an architect. (We have changed the spelling of his family name to
reflect the fact that in our story he is an American.)
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Who or what is the antagonist? Dedalus has been captured by Confederate
troops and is being held prisoner under close guard. Therefore, the prison
and his captors are the antagonists.
What is the protagonist’s situation at the beginning of the script? The time is
1862, early in the Civil War. Dedalus believes that his captors won’t hold him
much longer in the great, old house that serves as makeshift military head-
quarters for the area, but that they will send him on to a prisoner-of-war
camp. Meanwhile, he gathers whatever information he can on their move-
ments in long hours spent at the window and by the door.
He shares a small room at the top of the house with a boy who is awaiting
court-martial—and most likely death by firing squad—for having fallen
asleep while on sentry duty.
What event or occasion serves as catalyst? Dedalus accidentally cuts his hand
on the sharp edge of his cot’s metal bedspring and finds that one of the coils
has pulled away a little from the frame. He succeeds in working it free and
begins to fashion himself a tool.
What is the protagonist’s dramatic action? To escape to the Union lines, at any
cost, with the information he has gathered.
What is the antagonist’s dramatic action? To prevent any prisoner’s escape,
by killing him if necessary.
Do you have any images or ideas, however unformed, as to the climax? The

ending? During the two men’s descent down the high outside wall of the
mansion, footsteps can be heard approaching in the yard below. The
youth loses his nerve and freezes. The climax comes as Dedalus has to
decide whether to waste precious minutes trying to talk him down or to
leave him and go on. The ending could be Dedalus running toward the
woods beyond the house; he slows and looks back to see his cell mate still
frozen on the wall. He hesitates (a close shot here), then heads off into the
darkness of the woods.
How is the protagonist’s action resolved? He succeeds in escaping prison with
the information. We assume he will get to Union lines.
The synopsis that follows is a distillation of this information into a couple
of paragraphs.
Just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, 1862. Union Captain Mark
Dedalus is being held prisoner in an old mansion used as a mil-
itary headquarters by the Confederate Army. He is determined to
escape back to Union lines with valuable information he has
gathered. A skilled craftsman, he fashions a tool from a bedspring
coil and sets to work on the frame of the barred window.
But the major obstacle to a successful escape turns out to be not
the guards or their prison but his cellmate, a terrified Southern
youth who is awaiting court-martial, and probably death, for

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falling asleep on sentry duty. His only chance to live is to escape
with Dedalus—who reluctantly agrees to take him along. At
night, Dedalus and the boy remove the barred frame from the
window and drop a rope made of twisted sheets down the side of
the house. Dedalus quickly descends and waits for the boy, who
starts down but freezes when he hears footsteps somewhere in

the yard below. Dedalus gestures him on, but the boy can’t
move. The footsteps fade, and Dedalus sets off at a run for the
deep woods beyond, turning at one point to look back at the fig-
ure on the wall. In a moment, and with a curse, he continues on.
This story outline and synopsis bear a strong family resemblance to a
number of feature films in the escape genre, particularly Robert Bresson’s A
Man Escapes and Don Siegel’s Escape From Alcatraz (said by Siegel, in fact, to
have been heavily influenced by A Man Escapes). However, this story is set
apart by its setting, the specific moral dilemma faced by the protagonist dur-
ing the escape, and the ambivalence of the outcome.
The main challenges in writing the script would be twofold: developing
each character fully enough in a short time, and exploring the relationship of
Dedalus and the Icarus figure.
ADAPTATIONS OF MYTHS AND FAIRY TALES
Some contemporary adaptations of myths and fairy tales done by students
working collaboratively in workshops given by coauthor Pat Cooper include
the following:
1. A teenager in a bright red jacket wends her way with a bagful of
groceries to her grandmother’s apartment through a shadowy
labyrinth of burnt-out inner-city streets. The wolf is a drug dealer
hanging out on a corner, but this Red Riding Hood turns out to be
wily and fierce and gets the better of him with a few well-placed
kicks.
2. Goldilocks is a talented unknown singer, the three bears a group of
up-and-coming pop musicians.
3. Icarus is an arrogant, adept, but reckless hang glider, and Daedalus
is his instructor.
4. In an adaptation of “Bluebeard,” the heroine is a young
schoolteacher who makes the mistake of marrying a smooth but
dangerous wheeler-dealer in slum properties.

Adaptations of fairy tales, particularly, tend toward the melodramatic, and
that can be a good part of the fun of doing them.
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NINTH ASSIGNMENT: FINDING A MYTH OR FAIRY
TALE TO ADAPT
Find yourself at least two good collections of myths or fairy tales, and pick
a tale you’d like to work on. After you’ve located it, make at least two pho-
tocopies of several versions of the story—one to keep as a clean copy, the
other to mark up as you work on your outline. In addition, photocopy any
other material that interests you, such as illustrations or observations by the
book’s editor. At this point it is better to have too much material rather than
too little, as you can’t tell which bits and pieces of information may prove
useful in writing your outline.
While collections of myths or fairy tales intended for children can be good
sources, depending on the audience you want to reach, they are often heav-
ily expurgated or simplified. Adults, not children, were the original audience
for most folktales; for earlier versions, it would make sense to consult more
scholarly collections, like LaRousse’s Mythology, an unexpurgated Grimm’s
Fairy Tales, or a good encyclopedia such as the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Researching and locating the right myth or fairy tale can take a good deal
of time, but it is important to choose a story that is personally meaningful,
one that you will enjoy working on. It is also important that this assignment
not be rushed.
TENTH ASSIGNMENT: GETTING STARTED
Consider the character in the story who appeals to you, the one with whom
you can most readily identify. In writing narrative of any kind—except farce
or parody, where one doesn’t necessarily have to identify with the main
character or characters—identification is really more important than

whether you approve of the character. One often identifies with characters
or finds them appealing even if one doesn’t approve of them (Richard III, for
example). When you have decided, take that character as your protagonist.
Now think about whether you would like the script to take place in the pres-
ent, at some period in history that particularly interests you, or in the myth-
ical time in which it was originally set. If you can’t decide at the moment,
choose the last option, at least for your first rough draft.
For this next part of the assignment, you will need two or three different-
colored pens. Mark on one of your photocopies the events, images, and
remarks on characters or setting that seem essential to the story you want to
tell. Then, using a different color, mark material you think you will probably
want. Last of all, in a third color, mark anything that seems problematic but
intrigues you.
At this point, it makes sense to look back over the seven questions listed
earlier in this chapter, as well as the answers we gave to them. By now, you

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should be ready to try answering these questions for your own project. Write
as clearly and simply as you can, unless you are planning to do a detailed
story outline in place of a first-draft script, as discussed earlier; in that case,
you can overwrite and revise, as we did with the outline for “Icarus’s
Flight.” Either way, the question-and-answer process may take you as much
time to complete as the actual writing of your story outline, but it will be
time well spent. When you’ve completed the answers, some sort of feed-
back—from a class session, your teacher, or informed friends—would be
helpful before continuing. It is especially important that the dramatic action
of your main character be clear and make sense to your audience as well as
to you.
ELEVENTH ASSIGNMENT: WRITING THE STORY OUTLINE

Now take up pencil and paper, or go to your computer, and write down the
steps of your outline, the spine of your story. Revise at least twice before
handing it in or showing it to anyone, giving yourself enough time between
each revision to develop some sort of detachment about the writing. As for
criticism, listen and take note but use only what works for you.
NOTES
1. Rust Hills, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular (New York: Houghton
Mifflin, 1977), 4.
2. Aristotle, Poetics, ed. Francis Fergusson, trans. and introduction by S. H. Butcher
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1961), 62.
3. Ibid., 72.
4. Ibid., 87.
5. Quoted in John Brady, The Craft of the Screenwriter (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1981), 115, 116.
6. David Lodge, The Art of Fiction (New York: Viking, 1993).
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