Spoiler alert: this structure breakdown contains details about certain events in the story.
I didn't want to see The Lovely Bones. I liked the novel. But the thought of having to watch the rape and murder of a young girl seemed unbearable.
Turns out I was wrong. You don't see the rape and murder. Far more important, the film has some deeply moving moments that brought home for me the true tragedy of the loss of a single human life, and that was the result of choices the screenwriters made. Ironically, those same choices dictated that the film was not as strong as it could have been.
Adapting the book posed several story problems for the screenwriters. The book has multiple story lines, which are easier to interweave in the novel medium where you don't have as serious a dramatic urgency as you do in movies.
In mainstream movies, you have a maximum of two hours to tell your story. That's barely enough time to depict a single main character in a single storyline with both depth and dramatic power. So when you want to tell a multi-line story, something is going to suffer the consequences.
The fundamental technique of the novel, and the determining factor in the adaptation, is the dead girl as omniscient narrator. This creates two big story problems. First, if the character is still talking, she isn't really dead. In most cases, this reduces the sense of tragedy, especially at the end when the writers are going for maximum emotional impact. Second, an omniscient narrator who is also a character is an observer. An observer, by definition, is a reactive character and can't drive the story.
Faced with multiple story lines and a dead omniscient narrator, what solutions did the writers come up with? They began by increasing the role of Suzy, the narrator, in a vain attempt to make her journey the spine, the driving force, of the script. This necessitated spending large amounts of valuable screen time in her fantastical afterlife world. The various landscapes there are quite beautiful. But the fact remains, Suzy is an observer of the more dramatic, present-tense, living drama going on in the world she left.
Whenever you write a scene or a storyline in a script, you must always ask yourself: what is its story value? Answering that question always involves another question: what is the opportunity cost of this scene or storyline? In other words, if I include this in the script what will I be forced to leave out? The scenes in the afterlife have little story value. And they force the writers to cut way back on the effects of Suzy's death on her family. That's a big loss, because this is where the tragedy of the loss of a single life is magnified exponentially.
With the little time they have left, the writers focus on the inherent thriller elements to drive the story home. First the father tries to find the killer, followed by his surviving daughter. The thriller scenes have real power, but even here the line is too truncated to pay off as it should.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the imbalance in the story lines, the writers use a technique I call the crosscut funnel that gives the film a powerful ending. In an ever-quickening pace, the story crosscuts between the daughter finding the killer, the mother returning home, the killer burying the body, and Suzy experiencing her first kiss with the boy she left behind. This shows us the upside of the multiple story strands, like four waves crashing on the shore all at once.
The most powerful moment of all comes just prior to this crosscutting battle sequence. And here the writers find the true power of the dead narrator technique, along with the one great story value of the beautiful, fantastical world. In a golden meadow surrounding an old leafy tree, Suzy meets all of the girls and women whose lives have been cut short by this one murderer. It is a joyous communion, and it brought tears to my eyes. Tragedy is the profound and painful sense of what might have been. Here in one glorious moment these human beings get to show the audience what it means to be alive, along with the terrible injustice of having their magnificent lives cut short. It's one of the great moments in movies this year, and it reminded me once again why I love writers.
To read more reviews go to www.truby.com.
I didn't want to see The Lovely Bones. I liked the novel. But the thought of having to watch the rape and murder of a young girl seemed unbearable.
Turns out I was wrong. You don't see the rape and murder. Far more important, the film has some deeply moving moments that brought home for me the true tragedy of the loss of a single human life, and that was the result of choices the screenwriters made. Ironically, those same choices dictated that the film was not as strong as it could have been.
Adapting the book posed several story problems for the screenwriters. The book has multiple story lines, which are easier to interweave in the novel medium where you don't have as serious a dramatic urgency as you do in movies.
In mainstream movies, you have a maximum of two hours to tell your story. That's barely enough time to depict a single main character in a single storyline with both depth and dramatic power. So when you want to tell a multi-line story, something is going to suffer the consequences.
The fundamental technique of the novel, and the determining factor in the adaptation, is the dead girl as omniscient narrator. This creates two big story problems. First, if the character is still talking, she isn't really dead. In most cases, this reduces the sense of tragedy, especially at the end when the writers are going for maximum emotional impact. Second, an omniscient narrator who is also a character is an observer. An observer, by definition, is a reactive character and can't drive the story.
Faced with multiple story lines and a dead omniscient narrator, what solutions did the writers come up with? They began by increasing the role of Suzy, the narrator, in a vain attempt to make her journey the spine, the driving force, of the script. This necessitated spending large amounts of valuable screen time in her fantastical afterlife world. The various landscapes there are quite beautiful. But the fact remains, Suzy is an observer of the more dramatic, present-tense, living drama going on in the world she left.
Whenever you write a scene or a storyline in a script, you must always ask yourself: what is its story value? Answering that question always involves another question: what is the opportunity cost of this scene or storyline? In other words, if I include this in the script what will I be forced to leave out? The scenes in the afterlife have little story value. And they force the writers to cut way back on the effects of Suzy's death on her family. That's a big loss, because this is where the tragedy of the loss of a single life is magnified exponentially.
With the little time they have left, the writers focus on the inherent thriller elements to drive the story home. First the father tries to find the killer, followed by his surviving daughter. The thriller scenes have real power, but even here the line is too truncated to pay off as it should.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the imbalance in the story lines, the writers use a technique I call the crosscut funnel that gives the film a powerful ending. In an ever-quickening pace, the story crosscuts between the daughter finding the killer, the mother returning home, the killer burying the body, and Suzy experiencing her first kiss with the boy she left behind. This shows us the upside of the multiple story strands, like four waves crashing on the shore all at once.
The most powerful moment of all comes just prior to this crosscutting battle sequence. And here the writers find the true power of the dead narrator technique, along with the one great story value of the beautiful, fantastical world. In a golden meadow surrounding an old leafy tree, Suzy meets all of the girls and women whose lives have been cut short by this one murderer. It is a joyous communion, and it brought tears to my eyes. Tragedy is the profound and painful sense of what might have been. Here in one glorious moment these human beings get to show the audience what it means to be alive, along with the terrible injustice of having their magnificent lives cut short. It's one of the great moments in movies this year, and it reminded me once again why I love writers.
To read more reviews go to www.truby.com.