Well, Holmes and James Bond are examples of the way the flat character doesn't change but reveals the lie inherent in the society and forces the society itself to change. They force change in the world around them. They're like an unyielding rock around which the wolrd finds it needs to re-route itself. Generally a story does include change (except I suppose tragedies, though even there it might be that the wolrd has changed or circumstances have, and the MC is unable or unwilling to change with them). The difference is usually where that change occurs—in the character or in the world around them. It seems like a lot of people haven't looked at the article.
When you think about it, they're enforcers of the status quo. A crime has occurred, trouble is brewing, and they return the world to its old state by dispensing justice/explosions. It makes sense that they are flat because they are rather conservative (in the non-political sense). The change is happening around them and they squash it. They prevent the world from changing in the villain's favor.
The former staus quo, or the 'correct' status quo. Often there's a new status quo being established, or it's already been established. That's the lie that's taken hold of society and that everyone believes, except for the MC*. He has to make them understand that the lie they're all following is indeed a lie, and that his truth (which they've all been laughing at and mocking him for) is really the truth after all. * For instance in The Hunger Games the lie that's taken hold is the dystopian government that forces everyone into poverty so the ruling class can live like decadent god-emperors in luxury. Katniss and the masses of people forced into poverty know the truth, but there's no convincing the people of the Capital of it, until she breaks the system of the Games. In fact even the poverty-stricken classes are forced to pretend to believe the lie, as if they live in North Korea and must convincingly praise the Great Leader and the system that keeps them all crushed down. They're all afraid to come out and state the truth.
I haven't read through this whole thread, so apologies if I'm repeating anything. My opinion is it is fine to have characters who do not change, but they must be tempted into change. A couple of examples come to mind. Maximus in the film Gladiator was tempted to become a bloodthirsty man intent on nothing other than revenge, but instead he stuck to his values and fought for Rome, as he always did. How would the ending of A Christmas Carol turned out if Scrooge resisted the temptation to change, but instead stayed a miserly fool? I think there always must be a temptation for change, either from the angel or the devil on the shoulder. Whether the change occurs is completely optional.
Why? At the heart they are all story telling. Movies are much more condensed than most forms of stories and make good case studies because of that.
Agreed. A very common counter example though is the Treasure Hunter stories (though many don't have actual treasures). Inevitably, the main character does not get the treasure but through change acquires something even more valuable, e.g. true love or a steadfast friend or reunion with a child/sibling/parent.
This is interesting. The temptation to change. I like that and hadn't thought about it this way. I think there are cases where the temptation to change can say a lot about a character and a story. Maybe even a temptation to change and the failure to do so has a greater impact than an actual change. Again, really interesting take on this.
What genre are we talking about? If it is an action genre then like Die Hard and the Martian, there isn't a need for an internal arc. It is when there is an internal character arc, that the character needs to change, for better or worse.
Some action stories do include an internal arc, like Lethal Weapon. Riggs was suicidal at the beginning, and by the end he gave away the bullet he was planning to shoot himself with. But often action calls for a flat arc.
True, my point was the internal arc isn't required in the action genre, it may still be there if the writer wants it
And, although I share montecarlo's dismay, I realize that to a large extent, movies and television are the most likely venues for young writers to support themselves, because that's where the market is. A hundred years ago, aspiring writers could support themselves through selling short stories to the hundreds of magazines that published them, while perfecting their crafts. That market has largely evaporated. It's true that anybody can publish anything online, but the true value of the periodicals was their retention of an editor's staff, who were paid to read submissions, cull the best ones for publication, and critique the lesser ones and thereby nourish the ambitions of the writers. What do writers do now? Without such diligent shepherds, they publish as best they can, and hope that an agent will take them under their wing. That gives them a foot in the door of the TV and movie market, where they can make money.
In part, yes. All the character and story elements are the same. What works in one medium works for the other. However, film writing eliminates 90% of the words, substituting them with tangible visuals and sounds. You won't learn anything about writing (with actual words) interior monologue, description, narrative summary, cogent emotions, or dialogue beat mechanics from film. So, yes, you can glean very valuable narrative tools, but the nuts and bolts of assembling them on a piece of paper and creating sensory experience through black words on a white page? Useless.
Except in movies with voiceovers. But there aren't many of those, and the voiceovers are severely compressed compared to what you get in interior monologue in a story.
That's the same as dialogue most of the time. Though the Scorcese style might be considered as such. Not so much Goodfellas, but definitely Taxi Driver where DeNiro has a blank look on his face while he narrates rambling, disjointed thoughts. "Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads...." Classic. Not sure I've heard "screwheads" ever mentioned anywhere else. I'll try using it tomorrow and report back!
How is voiceover like dialogue? It's in the character's head, and is his or her thoughts. By definition that's inner monologue. Though maybe there are different kinds. I'm thinking of Bladerunner: I guess sometimes it's done in third person and is more like narration. When it's done in first person by the POV character it's inner monologue, like in Taxi Driver as you said. This one is bad because it's mostly telling things you can infer already from the movie. I think it's much stronger without it. Harrison Ford thought so too. He really didn't want to record it and lobbied to get it removed.
I thought I remembered a Screwhead Army from some old Puppetoon movies. Turns out they're actually called the Screwball Army, but they do actually have screw heads: Ahh dammit! Why do so many uploaders disable embedding? Click on through if you want to see it, it's a brief clip from a cartoon called Bravo Mister Strauss.
Movies and tv shows omit the skills with language a novelist needs to be successful. For a writer working with the print format, the delivery is just different, and I don't think you can really learn that and nourish that by watching anything. It's important to keep in mind that how you say something is often just as important if not more important than what you're saying when dealing with words on a page. And I don't think that has anything to do with genre. If you can tell a good story but can't really write, it's unlikely you'll be successful. I just don't think anything you can watch is really a good guide for developing writing skills.
But even those who write for the screen or want to actually read the scripts. I will say that, yes, those writers should definitely watch stuff, but I don't think that alone will actually do the trick. And I'm not sure breaking into screenplays is any easier than breaking into the print medium. In fact, it could be harder. I have a friend who sells screenplays, but they buy them outright from her for $5k and then have their people rewrite them. She will get no more money or have any credit if one of her screenplays is turned into a movie. She has sold a few over the years, but none of them have actually been made into films. She said places buy more scripts than they intend to produce into films. Again, she gets no credit and definitely does not earn enough to support herself from writing screenplays, but I guess you could call her successful. And, for my friend at least, she does still read more than she watches. I think writing for the screen and writing for the page are just different art forms.
IMHO, the only thing a writer can learn from television or movies is how dialog is supposed to sound, which could probably be better learned from actually listening to people. I watch The Big Bang Theory and marvel at how tight the dialog is, and how the actors understand how the dialog is supposed to work.
Literary journals are still my favorite things to read and write for. It's a scene I know well, though, not what it once was. However, there still are hundreds of journals and there still are ones that pay well. But then you do have the ones that pay in contributors copies, and some of those ones are still really good journals.
I should probably rephrase and say that voiceover is more like the literary equivalent of narrative summary, meaning it functions to provide background information and explanation that can't easily be captured visually or delivered through conversational dialogue. Goodfellas is an excellent example where 95% of what Henry Hill over-voices is background info (namely mob lore) that allows the scenes to unfold in context. He rarely expounds on his inner thoughts as the scene is unfolding, though there are a handful of occasions when that does occur. That would just be weird, kind of like the original Dune film where the characters would stop speaking just so they could over-voice their inner thoughts. A good actor doesn't need that to convey what they're thinking to the viewer. And good movie story probably doesn't want the viewers to know exactly what the actors are thinking either.
That is the last film I would reference. They butchered that story trying to put it on the screen. I take that first statement back, that film is an excellent example of what not to do to a story.
I agree with that. It's what I was groping for when I said sometimes voiceover is more like narration. And as I thought more about it, I realized that kind of voicover isn't always done in third persoon, it can definitely be in first, like you just said about Goodfellas. In fact parts of the Bladerunner vocieover are like that, and parts seem to be more his private thoughts. There's another kind, you'd see it in like 30's crime movies where it's a narrator talking in a loud announcer's voice and saying what could be done in newspaper headlines, for instance "Chicago was held in the grip of Capone's gang. Ordinary people were afraid to leave their homes, and even the police had to watch their step." That's almost like omniscient narration I guess.
This discussion reminds me of that movie Adaptation where the Nick Cage character, who is writing the screenplay for that movie, is being admonished by a screen-writing instructor to NEVER, NEVER use voiceovers. Or deus ex machina plot devices. The joke there, of course, is that the movie ends up breaking both of those rules.
