Last week I posted James Cameron’s answer to the question “What’s the most important thing you know about storytelling?” Discussing Cameron’s ideas with the writer Bonnie Friedman – with whom I have an ongoing, percolating conversation about craft and creativity (as regular readers of this blog well know) –, I mentioned that I particularly liked his idea that “you have to take [your characters] on a journey – and then you have to make it excruciating somehow.” Excruciating – such an intriguing word! Bonnie agreed, as usual responding with nuance and subtlety to my own visceral reaction:
“It seems to me sheer genius to come at storytelling from this vantage point,” she said. “So many of us begin from a thing in us that demands to be told and whose unleashed energy we hope will fuel us all the way along, rather than from this distant and perhaps more masterly height. And that term ‘excruciating’ is somehow so validating. Because one does find those sequences late in a film just torturously suspenseful. So many romantic movies end with a chase scene, the main character running: The Graduate, Manhattan, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Up in the Air, Sleepless in Seattle, Casablanca, etc.
“It’s interesting to think about this in terms of novels. Even in Great Expectations, a book that precedes the movies by half a century, there’s a grand, excruciating chase scene at the end. When Pip finally discovers who his benefactor is, late in the story, he also discovers that it’s urgent he help his benefactor run for his life, with the grand escape via the river, the race to intercept a foreign ship — and that sinister mystery craft which shoots out of the gloom and pursues them. The whole race and apprehension of the benefactor Magwitch has this very quality of the excruciating about it.
“It occurs to me that one effect of this is that the audience is left with fast-beating hearts and an upswing of energy, even as they are haunted by the final, grand, masterpiece-sized vision – and so instead of feeling exhausted by their long journey, they end up energized, and want to relive the thing or recommend it to their friends.”
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“Making it excruciating somehow” can also include the small-ticket items of life. So many of those are the markers around which we must navigate that I would not want any young writer to think that you’ve always got to sink a luxury liner or save your benefactor to have a good story. Never forget that watching a woman dress for the funeral of a friend can be the ultimate scene in witnessing someone power up for life’s big challenges.
Hi Christina, I love this blog – there’s very little out there as wise and complex about writing as this classy forum, I reckon.
I love how mere physical urgency can propel a story, or keep up momentum. Films teach literature a great deal in this regard – the closing space, the running, even simple physical needs like thirst or discomforts like being too hot can do so much work for the novelist. A filmmaker friend has taught me a huge amount about this kind of stuff, and it’s electrifyingly helpful in writing even a very interior literary novel, I have found.
Having just begun a second draft of my fourth book, I am finding these simple physical demands to be great powerhouses of narrative. Loving it!
And please tell Bonnie Friedman how much I love her words about writing; I finished a recent MA thesis with a quote from her incredible essay ‘Your Mother’s Passions, Your Sister’s Woes: Writing About The Living’ which is just about the best thing I’ve ever read on the thorny issue she was (as was I) tackling.
best wishes
Charlotte
I just rewatched Love Actually, a British movie by the maker of Four Weddings and a Funeral. One of the protaganists, an 8-year old boy devastated by the love of his classmate, wisely tells his stepfather, “You know they never fall in love until the very end.” Excruciating…
Thanks for the post – a great reminder of the elements of good storytelling.