Linda Aronson Story Structure Innovator
Ealing Studios London
Introduction
Nicknamed ‘the structure queen’ by international colleagues, Linda Aronson has awards as a scriptwriter, novelist, and playwright. She pioneered the first practical templates for nonlinear screenwriting and remains a global authority in the field. Her groundbreaking books Screenwriting Updated and The 21st Century Screenplay are required reading in film schools worldwide, in English and translation.
Her fiction is published in several different languages. Today, she continues to think outside the box, demonstrating not only how nonlinear narrative structures are essential suspense devices for new generation TV and film but creating, in her own writing, ground breaking nonlinear multiplot screenplays for 360° immersive VR installations.
My Story
I cut my teeth in theatre, writing Dinkum Assorted, the world’s only tapdancing musical comedy for fifteen women and a live nanny goat which premiered at the Sydney Opera House, then I moved into film and TV.
Impressed by TV writers’ amazing structural skills and narrative templates, the film theorist puzzled me. At the same time as the TV industry was paying me to create interwoven multiplot series adored by millions, these theorists, talented as they were, defined story as exclusively about a single hero in a three or four act structure, put all scripts involving multiple protagonists under the heading of ‘ensemble’ without explanation or analysis and either ignored or roundly castigated flashbacks.
The three act structure is great, but it is clearly not the only model. As a writer needing answers, I viewed nonlinear and multiple protagonist films repeatedly, realized that the good ones worked to structural patterns and wrote a book that went viral.
What I discovered was that all nonlinearity involves multiplying, fracturing and putting together the old three act structure in very specific ways, creating a set of entirely new models which not only pump suspense into your film or TV series but permit a dazzling range of story material that just wouldn’t work in the conventional one hero template.
What’s even more exciting is that we can take nonlinear storytelling into the future, going beyond current film and TV, using it in new and mind-blowing TV/VR commercial and domestic installations that have yet to be built.
It works to patterns we can use as templates.
We can do it, I’ll show you …and you don’t even need to learn to tap dance.
Storytelling in Immersive Environments
Always intrigued by the storytelling potential of 360 ° VR, I have invented a VR/Film/TV hybrid, named TV Immersive, which removes player agency and combines 360 VR technology with my nonlinear templates to create real films involving real storylines, not games. There is no player agency, no audience control.
These films (scripted but unproduced) involve a set of separate, nonlinear storylines about a group of strangers caught in the same horrific crisis, with the action cutting between the characters’ different, interwoven nonlinear stories as these slowly circle the 360° space.
Sometimes the stories are shown alone, sometimes they appear simultaneously or overlapping, always with the soundtrack directing where in the space the audience looks. The films are intelligible - indeed hit home powerfully -because of their precise nonlinear construction and interweaving along with the way sound is used to direct where the audience looks and when.
Games writers using my templates?
I am not a games writer, but from what I have seen, I feel games writers could create complex games much faster using my templates.
For example, my only VR film/ game involved four separate interwoven flashback storylines; was replayable more than twenty times with only minimal plot repetitions; and, submitted merely in plan form to the world’s first VR screenplay competition, was shortlisted.
I wrote the plan in a couple of hours – solely because of the templates. The possibilities are enormous.
Immersive storytelling intrigues and divides the industry internationally. I have spoken on panels and been invited to give seminars. I’m convinced TV Immersive or something like it will have a future in the mainstream, and all down to controlled nonlinearity.
Speaking on TV Immersive at the Goteborg Film Festival
Impact
Linda Aronson changed the paradigm. For decades, she has shared her unique structural nuts and bolt solutions with film and TV writers and producers internationally from beginners to top BBC and Nordic Noir professionals. Her consultancies, script doctoring, and masterclasses – all based on thirty years as a working scriptwriter - have helped thousands, revealing to writers that nonlinear material, once dismissed as unworkable can work brilliantly if the three-act chronological model is duplicated and reconstituted in a special way.
Expertise and Practical Solutions
Linda Aronson is the only scriptwriting teacher to identify and provide practical solutions in the form of tried and tested structural frameworks for scripts that don’t fit the Hollywood model (particularly if they are nonlinear or involve multiple protagonists). In so doing, she provides actionable fixes for the writer who knows the story is good but can’t find the advice or the vehicle to break through the boundaries.
Equipping Writers for the Future
Film and TV are diversifying. Long-form series dominate but single season models increase. Episode length is variable. Traditional procedurals and sitcoms are making a comeback. Nonlinear techniques routinely pop up in chronological series while sometimes entire hit series are strikingly nonlinear.
All this means that screen industry creatives must widen and keep widening their skill set. Linda Aronson is trained in conventional skills, cracked the code on nonlinear narrative and currently leads the way in new VR/TV/film hybrids in the world of future storytelling. Her experience, expertise and instinct for lateral thinking make her the go-to expert for feedback, training and nuts-and- bolts structural solutions.
