Welcome!
If, like me, you're interested in writing screenplays and TV scripts that contain flashbacks, time jumps, group stories or use any kind of non-linear narrative, I have some good news. Lose the idea that the conventional, one-hero, chronological 3 act structure screenplay is the only possible form we can use for writing a film or TV scripts, and that story structure is written in stone. Films using flashbacks, flash forwards, nonlinear narratives, multiple plots and ensemble casts in group stories (things we can call 'parallel narrative') all follow clear patterns that we can use. Moreover these forms are not on the periphery of screenwriting. They are common in mainstream film, including Academy Award nominations, indeed group stories particularly have been out there forever, never fitting the one-hero-only rule. The Full Monty wasn't about one man creating a male striptease show, it was about a group. We watch The Magnificent Seven, not The Magnificent One, similarly, the Chekhov play we go to see is about three sisters, and not just one. Just for the record, if we want to go back three thousand years, Homer used flashbacks and multiple protagonists in Odyssey, moreover, in much the same way, for the same reasons, and using the same structural mechanics as we can see in films like Amores Perros and Pulp Fiction.
I'm a scriptwriter, playwright and novelist and I'd always been fascinated by films that used flashback, multiple plots, big ensemble casts, non linearity and the like. I wanted to use those things too. However, while I could find descriptions of the artistic effects and message that such components could transmit (along with observations like the fact that multiple plotlines were often linked thematically, all things that were clearly true), these comments were short, felt like afterthoughts and left me none the wiser about how to do the stuff. I could never find any precise practical guidelines - any nuts and bolts descriptions of how to make them work, and why, technically, they might go wrong. How do you jump between stories without losing pace? Or chose the content of a flashback? Is there any logic in the order that you show the flashbacks? Why do films like Run Lola Run, Groundhog Day and Rashamon work when any screenwriter knows that repetition can be the kiss of death? Were there any kind of patterns, or was it all random?
Since no-one else seemed to be providing any advice on the practical mechanics of parallel narrative, I had a go myself. I was astonished to find that nothing about these forms is random and that there were clear patterns in the successful flashback, ensemble cast and time jump films from all over the world. In fact, I isolated six distinct types of parallel narrative structure, each suitable for different types of story content. I found that each of these worked by multiplying, rearranging or truncating or fracturing the three act structure in very precise and predictable ways. Hence, you could plan them.
Suddenly, instead of having guidelines for just one kind of structural model for screenplays - the one we've all come to think of as the Hollywood linear, one-hero three act structure - we had templates for another six, with subcategories, and hybrids appearing all the time. Suddenly, these 'forbidden' components - flashbacks, flash forward, non linear narratives, multiple plots, ensemble casts - became doable.
When AFTRS commissioned me to write a book on screenwriting, I wrote not only about conventional structures but about how we can construct and write parallel narrative screenplays.In Australia, the book was called Scriptwriting Updated, and it was immediately picked up in the US by leading film industry publisher Silman James in Los Angeles, and published as Screenwriting Updated. In both its editions the book was instantly popular with professional film, TV and games writers all over the world (who'd all felt the need, like me, to know how construct these kind of scripts), and it became a set text at many film schools internationally, including NYU. That was ten years ago. Since then my ideas on the practical mechanics of flashback and ensemble cast films of all kinds have been enthusiastically received by many thousands of writers, producers, and script executives all over the world, and I have refined and extended my ideas in a new and much bigger book, one that supersedes, indeed, goes well beyond Screenwriting Updated, providing structural guidelines for films like 21 Grams, Babel, Run Lola Run and Atonement, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and many more. It's called The 21st Century Screenplay:A Comprehensive Guide to Writing Tomorrow's Films.
Talent is the Problem
Talent is a problem. If you're a good writer anything you write is likely to be much better than most people's best. Your worst stuff is likely to be better than most people's best. So push yourself. Don't slip into automatic pilot.That's how fine writers become hacks. It's very easy to slip into writing below your best - and in this business you can't afford to write below your best.
Throughout my site I have tried to give practical writing advice to screenwriters at any stage in their career. For answers more specific questions and more information on non-linear structure buy 21st Century Screenplay and subscribe to my Craft Skills Newsletter for articles on the craft, news about my teaching appearances and early bird offers on forthcoming webinars and videos.
Throughout my site I have tried to give practical writing advice to screenwriters at any stage in their career. For answers more specific questions and more information on non-linear structure buy 21st Century Screenplay and subscribe to my Craft Skills Newsletter for articles on the craft, news about my teaching appearances and early bird offers on forthcoming webinars and videos.
