The Anatomy of Story (63 page)

SCENE-WRITING TECHNIQUE: THE FIRST SENTENCE

T
he opening sentence of the story takes the principles of the opening scene and compresses them into one line. The first line is the broadest statement of the story and frames what the story will be about. At the same time, it must have dramatic power, some kind of punch. Let's look at three classic opening sentences. I have included a number of lines that follow the opening sentence so you can see how the sentence fits the author's overall strategy for the scene and the story.

P
ride and
P
rejudice

(by Jane Austen, 1813)

■ Position on the Character Arc
Before the hero is even introduced, there is the world of the story—specifically, the world of women looking for a husband.

■ Problems

1. Jane Austen needs to let the reader know this is a comedy.

2. She has to give some suggestion of the world of this story and its rules of operation.

3. She has to let the reader know this story will be told from a woman's point of view.

■ Strategy
Begin with a mock-serious first sentence that seems to state a universal fact and act of altruism but is really an opinion about an act full of self-interest. The content of the first sentence tells the reader the story is about marriage, about women and their families chasing men, and the essential connection in this world of marriage to money.

Having presented the general arena of the story comically in the first sentence, the author proceeds to a particular family who will play out the opening principle over the course of the story. Notice there is not an ounce of fat in these opening lines.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds

of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?" Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it."

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

"Do not you want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.

"You
want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it." That was invitation enough.

David Copperfield

(by Charles Dickens, 1849-1850)

■ Position on the Character Arc
By using a storyteller, the writer creates a hero who is at the end of the arc but is talking about the very beginning. So the hero at the opening will be very young, but with a certain wisdom.
■ Problems

1. In telling the story of a man's life, where do you start and where do you end?

2. How do you tell the audience the
kind
of story you are going to tell them?

■ Strategy
Use a first-person storyteller. Have him say, in the chapter title, "I am born." Three little words. But they have tremendous punch. That chapter title in effect is the opening sentence of the book. The storyteller is planting the flag of his own life. "I am important, and this will be a great story," he says. He is also indicating that he's telling a coming-of-age story in myth form, starting with the birth of the hero. This story has big ambitions.

Dickens follows this short but punchy line with "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life . . ." Immediately he is telling the audience that his hero thinks in terms of stories (and is in fact a writer) and is concerned with fulfilling the potential of his life. He

then goes hack to the exact moment of his birth, which is extremely presumptuous. But he does so because it has a dramatic element to it: as a baby, he awoke to life at the midnight tolling of the bell.

Notice another result of this opening strategy: the audience gets nestled in the story. The author is saying, "I'm going to take you on a long but fascinating journey. So sit back and relax and let me lead you into this world. You won't be sorry."

I AM BORN.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighborhood who had taken a lively interest in me for several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born toward the small hours on a Friday night.

T
he
C
atcher in the
R
ye

(by J. D. Salinger, 1951)

■ Position on the Character Arc
Holden Caulfield is in a sanitarium remembering what happened to him the previous year. So he is close to the end of his development, but without the final insights that will come to him by reviewing and telling his own story.

■ Problems

1. He has to figure out where to begin his story about himself and what to include.

2. He wants to tell the reader who he really is by the
way
he tells his own story, not just by what he says about himself.

3. He must express the basic theme and value that will guide the story and the character.

■ Strategy

1. Write in the first person, which puts the reader in the mind of the hero and tells the reader that this is a coming-of-age story. But since the hero is speaking from a sanitarium and talks with a "bad boy" vernacular, the audience will know that this is the opposite of the usual coming-of-age story.

2. Surprise the reader by making the storyteller antagonistic to him. Put the reader on warning, right up front, that this isn't going to be the usual fluffy, phony kid's story and he (Holden) is not going to "suck up" to the reader to get his sympathy. The implication is that this narrator will be brutally honest. In other words, telling the truth as he sees it is a moral imperative for him.

3. Make it a long and rambling sentence so that the form of the sentence expresses who the hero is and what the plot will be like.

4. Refer immediately and with disdain to
David Copperfield,
the ultimate nineteenth-century version of the coming-of-age story. This will let the reader know that everything the narrator says will be opposite
David Copperfield.
Instead of big plot and big journey, this will be small plot, perhaps even antiplot, and small journey. It also hints at ambition: the author implies that he's going to write a coming-of-age story for the twentieth century that's just as good as the best of the nineteenth.

Most important, the reader will know that the guiding value for the hero and how he tells his story is "nothing phony." Get ready for real characters, real emotions, and real change, if it happens at all.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. . . . I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty rundown and had to come out here and take it easy.

Values in Conflict

Great drama is not the product of two individuals butting heads; it is the product of the values and ideas of the individuals going into battle. Conflict of values and moral argument are both forms of moral dialogue (Track 2). Conflict of values involves a fight over what people believe in. Moral argument in dialogue involves a fight over right and wrong action.

Most of the time, values come into conflict on the back of story dialogue (Track 1), because this keeps the conversation from being too obviously thematic. But if the story rises to the level of a contest between two ways of life, a head-to-head battle of values in dialogue becomes necessary.

In a head-to-head battle of values, the key is to ground the conflict on a particular course of action that the characters can fight about. But instead of focusing on the right or wrong of a particular action (moral argument), the characters fight primarily about the larger issue of what is a good or valuable way to live.

I
t's a
W
onderful
L
ife

(short story "The Greatest Gift" by Philip Van Doren Stern; screenplay by

Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, 1946) It's a Wonderful Life
is superb not only in its ability to show the texture of a town in magnificent detail but also in its ability to show the values of two ways of life. The scene where George and Potter argue about the future of the Building and Loan is the most important argument in the film. The writers make Potter an even greater opponent by allowing him to express in detail the values and indeed the logic system by which he lives. And these values are in direct opposition to George's values.

As a social fantasy, this isn't just an argument between two people on the personal level. This is about how an entire society should live. So this dialogue is also political. It's not political in any specific way, which quickly becomes dated. This is human politics, how people live under leaders. What's really brilliant here is the way the writers make this big picture talk extremely emotional and personal. They focus on a single action—closing the Building and Loan—and personalize it with the death of the hero's father.

Notice that with the exception of a short interchange in the middle, this scene is really two monologues. Both monologues are quite long and break the conventional Hollywood wisdom requiring short snippets of back-and-forth talk. That's because each character needs time to build his case for an entire way of life. If the writers didn't ground this in a personal fight between two people who despise each other, it would come across as dry political philosophy.

■ Position on the Character Arc With the death of his father, George has experienced the first frustration of his life's desire (to see the world and build things) and made his first act of self-sacrifice for his family and his friends. Now he is about to go off to college to pursue his dreams.

■ Problem The writers must mount a fight about the values on which the town and America itself should be built without sermonizing.

■ Strategy

1. Have the hero and the main opponent argue over the future of an institution that funds everything else in the town, the Building and Loan, as well as about the man who built the institution but has now died.

2. Focus the entire philosophical argument down to one word, "richer," in the last line of the hero's monologue.

■ Desire Potter wants to close the Building and Loan.

■ Endpoint He fails because George stops him.

■ Opponent George.

■ Plan Potter directly calls for the closing of the Building and Loan, and George directly opposes him.

■ Conflict The conflict intensifies when Potter moves from talking about the institution to talking about George's father.

■ Twist or Reveal Young George is able to go head to head with this man who bullies everyone else.

■ Moral Argument and Values The exchange between these men is worth close inspection because it is a classic example of values in conflict. Notice how well both these monologues are sequenced. These men are making very specific arguments, representing two opposing political and philosophical systems.

Potter's argument and values

1. There is an important distinction between being a businessman and being a man of high ideals.

2. High ideals without common sense can ruin the entire town. From this, the audience knows that the town itself is the battleground and that the central question of the film will be, What way of life will make that battleground, that world, a better place in which to live?

3. Potter goes to a particular example, Ernie Bishop, the friendly taxi driver, someone the audience knows and likes. Ernie has already shown the audience that he is not a risky man, but Potter claims that Ernie got money to build a house only because of a personal relationship he had with George.