Over the weekend, one of the students in the Advanced Screenwriting course I’m currently teaching online asked this:

I’d love at some point to get your thoughts about how your throughline plays out in different genres. Do you agree with the notion claimed by some gurus that different genres have highly defined necessary elements? How do these play out vis a vis your ten key plot points?

Here was my response:

That’s an excellent question. And while I do agree that different genres are shaded differently — particularly in terms of pace, narrative voice — I assert that by and large, most mainstream Hwood movies have pretty ‘traditional’ Plotlines and Themelines. That is:

* The plot is going to have an Act One that is largely about setting up the story, establishing the Protagonist and their ‘ordinary’ world, who they are, what their problems are and Disunity is about; something happens that shakes things up, then something bigger happens that causes the P (and the story) to leave the ordinary world and enter the extraordinary world. In Act Two, the Protagonist goes through tests, tribulations, complications, roadblocks, reversals, and with these experiences, through the assistance of Attractor and Mentor characters, the P learns stuff. Typically there is some sort of All Is Lost turn of events that signifies the end of Act Two, then somehow the P sucks it up and moves on toward their goal with the third act a compressed version of the story (On The Defensive = Deconstruction / On The Offensive = Reconstruction / Final Struggle —-> Unity).

That is reductionist, I know, but you can pick virtually any movie out this summer — from Up to Year One to Star Trek to (I’m willing to bet) Transformers — and it will basically track along the pattern of that paradigm.

* Per Themeline, if the movie has a solo Protagonist and it’s not a tragedy, it’s almost always involves the P going through some sort of transformation process. There are exceptions, of course, where the P doesn’t change, but causes other characters to change (like Forrest Gump), but most Hwood movies have a Protagonist transformation arc in them.

In both cases, I don’t think there’s any great mystery to why — it’s just the nature of stories. Things happen in the plot that have greater meaning to the characters — hence External and Internal World. As Joseph Campbell so eloquently advocated, stories / myths are metaphors, and if writers look at them that way, we open up each and every moment, each and every character to whole universes of meaning in what they say and do.

Now circling back to your question, as I suggested, genres do have different pace and narrative voice. And I suppose that there are other minor differences. I know John Truby has developed some sort of ‘pod’ approach or whatevever to various genres, and maybe he’s right — I simply haven’t broken it down like that, genre by genre. And honestly at this point, I don’t feel the need. I see too much universality and similarity between stories and genres, not that much in the way of differences.

Of course, the cynic in me wonders if certain screenwriting gurus are promoting different approaches to different genres in order to sell more / different paradigms.

And I can certainly understand the appeal of that to writers at certain stages of their development, a reaction to the seemingly reductionist sense of screenplay paradigms. But then, I recall that anecdote about the great 20th century composer Stravinsky. He stretched the boundaries of modern classical music, especially in terms of dissonance, time changes (some of pieces changed time signatures 100 times — unheard of before him), etc. He was asked by a student if he felt restricted by being “forced” to compose on the 88 keys of the piano. To which Stravinsky replied (paraphrase), “Not at all. These 88 keys provide the boundaries of my creative universe. They provide a context and within that, I have total freedom to compose.”

I basically feel that way about screenwriting. There are these underlying principles that are tied to the spirit and essence of storytelling. They provide a context that goes from FADE IN to FADE OUT. Within that context, we, as writers, have the freedom to do whatever we want.

I haven’t read every screenwriting book, but I’ve gotten through a lot of them. And I see more similarities between various approaches than differences. The number of plot points may vary along with some other subtle distinctions, but in the case of most commercial Hwood movies, they track a familiar course.

For more on Narrative Throughline, go here.