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Story and plot are two different things. Sometimes you see someone when you leave your apartment or mansion and in their face, there is a story. Or someone does something - a single moment, a single action and it's filled with story. Just today I was in the grocery store and heard a woman on the phone as I passed (and even after I passed - why do people talk so loudly on cell phones?) - She was speaking pretty intensely to the other person - "No - tell me exactly what happens, I gotta get this straight for when I reem her later."
And the strange thing was - I could tell she was loving every minute of it. Sure, she seemed generally upset, and she was certainly boiling, but she was right where she wanted to be. Yeah, later she'll complain to someone else that she's got nothing but trouble - but that is where she lives. That's HER STORY. All in that one beat.
When you're looking at classic paintings if you're evaluating them for how close they match reality - you're probably going to be pretty unimpressed. If you look at them for how they capture the moment - think "A Woman Pouring Milk" by Carravaggio - they are trying to capture the person's story in one frame.
Now, if you ask your friend what they did today and they tell you, "I went to the bank, I went to the hardware store, I bought a screwdriver, I ate at Baja Fresh." - They're just giving you the plot. Informative, but not terribly interesting or dramatic.
And the strange thing was - I could tell she was loving every minute of it. Sure, she seemed generally upset, and she was certainly boiling, but she was right where she wanted to be. Yeah, later she'll complain to someone else that she's got nothing but trouble - but that is where she lives. That's HER STORY. All in that one beat.
When you're looking at classic paintings if you're evaluating them for how close they match reality - you're probably going to be pretty unimpressed. If you look at them for how they capture the moment - think "A Woman Pouring Milk" by Carravaggio - they are trying to capture the person's story in one frame.
Now, if you ask your friend what they did today and they tell you, "I went to the bank, I went to the hardware store, I bought a screwdriver, I ate at Baja Fresh." - They're just giving you the plot. Informative, but not terribly interesting or dramatic.
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Re: Story verses Plot
Mon, February 21, 2005 - 5:22 PMcool concept. you just described a story without plot and a plot without story!
so is plot a secondary function? can we ever have good plot without good story?
i became a 'napoleon dynamite' cultist this weekend. heavy on good story and light on plot! -
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Re: Story verses Plot
Mon, February 21, 2005 - 6:27 PMI think your description of Napoleon Dynamite is pretty accurate. Amazing how it really touched such a nerve with people though - I think that's proving the importance of story over plot.... yet, sure would have been nice to have more plot - 'cause I was about done with the movie midway through.
You can have a great story moment - but to be fully effective it needs a great context - that context is provided by the plot.
My example of the woman on the phone is not something necessarily that you're going to make a short film out of. It's just a beat. In my post it had a context because I was illustrating something relevant with it. But out of context, it's this odd moment that has no relevance. Plot provides the relevance and significance and story provides the depth.
(Let me just say right now that I realize I'm treading on thin ice in the world of semantics and it would be very easy for anyone reading this to start arguing my semi-redefiniing of colloquial "story" word - but in order to get at this concept better, I'm getting brazingly specific with the word.)
A great story moment would propell forward the plot because it raises our curiousity about the people or situation. A great plot provides interest and meaning to our story moments (which provide depth).
I think the danger of plot is that often people relegate it to simple "events." I've heard them called "and then" movies - meaning... "and then the barbarian joins the team, and then they fight a monster, and then they need to find some food, and then they find another, bigger monster, and then they talk about the map, and then... etc." All these things happen - but nothing means anything.
I'm really waxing philosophic here, jump in anytime.
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Re: Story verses Plot
Thu, March 3, 2005 - 6:13 PMMark -- funny about Napoleon Dynamite. in all honesty, i too walked away from it during my initial viewing! i just didn't 'buy' it. i wasn't involved. the whole affair seemed pleasant enough, but just kinda bland and sophomoric like supermarket muzak or something.
then i gave it another shot. and it just HIT me. i was utterly, inexplicably CHARMED. i literally watched it four more times over the course of the weekend, loving it more with every viewing.
now, what i want to know is -- where does that mojo come from? i truly can't pinpoint why it worked so well for me. the script was hardly even there -- in other hands, the film would have been a colossal trainwreck.
anyone care to offer their two cents? why did you love it? why did you hate it?
(and sorry, perhaps this should be a new thread).
incidentally, this same sort of thing happened to me with films like Rushmore and The Big Lebowski. bored and uninvolved during the initial viewings, then completely enraptured the second time around.
what 'clicks'?
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Re: Story verses Plot
Thu, March 3, 2005 - 6:36 PMI think what works in Napoleon Dynamite is similar to what works in Office Space. We know him. The character is drawn so specifically and with such great detail that most people can't help to identify with him. They know him or they are him - or both.
Most movies are using very generic characters. People churn scripts out and the characters satisfy functions in the script. But that is nothing like your daily experience. Everywhere I go I see people with all these crazy idiosynchasies and such obvious history. Even the "cool kids" wonder what the "biggest dork"'s life might really be like at some point.
Big Lebowski - again - about a man we have all met and know - and the movie explores that. Rushmore... somewhat similar. I think you could point to some non-comedies as well where there are strong identification from specificity.
Morale of the story - when writing - make sure your characters are real people and they're different from eachother. If your dialogue is flat - look at your characters and see why these people don't create good dialogue in your head. Pick someone you know... Why is that guy obsessed with his stapler?
My 2 cents on that.
Lejos Egri (Art of dramatic Writing) will tell you (I think - it's been over a decade since I read that book) that character leads to story as well. Perhaps true. Character leads to desire. Interesting characters make interesting choices.
What clicks? That's where the next thread might start.....
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Re: Story verses Plot
Fri, March 4, 2005 - 6:29 PM'strong identification from specificity'. awesome. well said.
but still -- why didn't Napoleon Dynamite work for you? you seem to have such a solid grasp on why everyone else loved it. i'm genuinely curious....
and are most movies really using very generic characters? hmmm, can we say that a 'good' movie is necessarily populated by 'specific', well 'filled-out' characters? are there examples of 'good' movies out there with generic, flat characters? (can i stop using 'quotation marks' now?)
and how much of this 'specificity' can be attributed to a nuanced performance? a great actor can probably make a poorly-written character pretty 'specific'.
and good points about crafting characters in writing. Napoleon Dynamite is an interesting film in this respect, because (from what i understand) the actor already had the character all worked out before the movie was even made, and i bet the thing was scripted with the actor's heavy involvement. (whereas most movies begin as uncasted scripts, of course....)
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Re: Story verses Plot
Fri, March 4, 2005 - 10:01 PMI thought Napolean Dynamite was awsome, but for about 30 minutes. Simply said... it got old. It was a great character and I was charmed for 30 minutes by that alone. Once that died out, the story was no longer compelling. The plot events didn't lead anywhere satisfying. At the end of the day, you can have an amazing character and that isn't going to make for a complete feature length movie. You need the story and plot to be compelling.
Collateral was a good script. I read it while they were casting and it was quite clearly a strong script. I think both Cruise and Foxx definitely added a lot of depth to their characters that I didn't necessarily read in the script. I suspect Michael Mann had a lot to do with that.
I have also seen great actors take a lousy scripted role and infuse life into it. That's a lot to expect of an actor though and quite often these performances end up being distracting because they are throwing the movie out of balance. These deep characters are now in a different world than the other characters. This is why it helps to have the basis for interesting characters.
Again - the best way to make for interesting characters though is in their choices - and that is the writer. Anything else seems unorganic.
I think often you discover your characters even better on your second pass through a script because you see what they need to do and you can say to yourself "what kind of person makes that choice?" and then you start thinking of people who do things that way.
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Re: Story verses Plot
Thu, March 3, 2005 - 5:23 AMgreat topic & tribe, M
i just think of plot as the physical through-line and story as the metaphysical -
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Re: Story verses Plot
Sun, March 6, 2005 - 5:16 PMHow so do you see the story as metaphysical, can you define that a little more? -
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Re: Story verses Plot
Thu, March 24, 2005 - 5:27 PM>>How so do you see the story as metaphysical, can you define that a little more?
oops, didn't see the question til now. we're in production, so... raincheck on definition please -
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Re: Story verses Plot
Thu, April 7, 2005 - 5:22 AMI don’t think my phys/metaphys explanation adds much beyond what’s here, but I’ll ramble anyway. I like Die Hard as an example cuz it’s a very effective if unsubtle attempt to weave a solid story into an “and then” movie. (I haven’t seen collateral or spidey 2)
Plot = action, deals with character’s immediate problem & goal. Physical question: will he rescue hostages from terrorists? = what character *wants*
Story = internal action, deals with character’s arc, emotional experience, motivation. metaphysical question: will he reunite with his estranged family? what he *needs*
well-crafted movies have totally interdependent story & plot. every plot-twist is character-driven. every choice leads to physical & emotional consequences that further the character arc. the protagonist has to overcome their internal flaw to accomplish their physical goal (or some satisfying equivalent). the really cool ones have physical & metaphysical goals that clash – tootsie, casablanca
haven’t seen napoleon (i know, sorry excuse for movie junkie) but would lost in translation also qualify as skewing toward story over plot? It’s very much a collection of character moments, though it hits all the classic structural beats
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Re: Story verses Plot
Thu, March 24, 2005 - 4:57 PMExcellent posts. I’m a novelist, so I hope you don’t mind if I butt in. I think there may be only one story: character versus problem. Plot then becomes the problem solving process:
Act I: Define problem
Act II: Search for solution
Act III: Implement solution
I think what we are usually looking for is a powerful combination of character and stimulus, followed by the captivating response that is plot.
My two sense…
Christopher Sly
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Re: Story verses Plot
Tue, May 3, 2005 - 11:23 PMI caught Mike Nichols on Charlie Rose about a week ago and he used a memorable quote to distinguish plot from story. (When I heard this, I immediately thought of this thread.) "Plot," said Nichols, "is the king died and then the queen died. Story is: the king died and then the queen died of a broken heart."
I thought, ok, that's pretty much how I see plot versus story too -- but unfortunately, I missed who Nichols was quoting. So I turned to Google. Not only did I find the quote attributed to both Nabokov and E.M. Forster, but from site to site the terms plot and story were juxtaposed.
I've always considered plot as *what happens* and story *why it happens* but apparently just as many people believe the exact opposite.
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Re: Story verses Plot
Wed, May 4, 2005 - 10:02 PMguess it doesn't matter as long as we have both. nice quote D. -
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Re: Story verses Plot
Wed, May 4, 2005 - 10:31 PMI think a good rule of thumb is to remember when writing that it just isn't that interesting when a series of events happen.
Yet even in major studio movies (and maybe even more and more) it seems like they have become a bunch of things that happen. In place of story - goals are being used (tap the right combination on the keypad - doesn't work? go in to "manual mode" and do exactly the same thing but for a few minutes longer - doesn't work? shoot the control panel, that always works) - but all these "things" are happening with events and goals without any emotional link between them (emotional link being the "...of a broken heart."
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Re: Story verses Plot
Thu, May 5, 2005 - 11:25 AMWould Koyaaniquatsi be an example of a movie that has only story and no plot?
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~now that's a treatment~
Tue, June 21, 2005 - 10:57 AM -
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Re: ~now that's a treatment~
Wed, June 22, 2005 - 12:35 AMI started poking around that site and browsed an article called "The Big Picture: The 7 Best Inevitable Endings You Never Saw Coming". The writer includes "Annie Hall" in his list because it's a romantic comedy about a couple that doesn't end up together.
Huh? Doesn't Alvy say from the beginning that they didn't end up together? Isn't the whole movie a deconstruction of a relationship that went awry, a memory driven by Alvy's desire to figure out the big demise? Isn't that the action that binds together all the seemingly disjointed moments of the movie, that makes it work? How can you not see that ending coming when it's set up in the first few moments? -
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Re: ~now that's a treatment~
Sun, June 26, 2005 - 4:18 PMi wouldn't say i never saw it coming but romantic comedies have conditioned us to hope/expect his setup to be a red herring. -
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Re: ~now that's a treatment~
Sun, June 26, 2005 - 5:32 PMTrue enough, but if in the first five minutes a movie tells you it's a story about a relationship that didn't work out...where's the surprise?
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Re: ~now that's a treatment~
Fri, June 24, 2005 - 11:41 AMThanks for the link to this site. It had some interesting articles. -
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Re: ~now that's a treatment~
Sun, June 26, 2005 - 4:16 PMwelcome. their weekly emails are actually worth subscribing to
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