WRITEALOT: #drama

Showing posts with label #drama. Show all posts

Monday, 30 November 2020

Downton Abbey - The complete scripts - Season Two

Published 2013.

This book follows the same format as the first season scripts, offering asides and insights from the author Julian Fellowes, plus text that had to be cut for various reasons, usually overrunning time.

These pages are very useful for budding writers of fiction, students of film, and the many fans of the TV series itself. This series, then, as Fellowes states in his Foreword, ‘sees our characters face the ultimate test of war. Some are strengthened by the ordeal, a couple are defeated, but all of them are changed.’

In one of the footnotes Fellowes reveals that he borrows ‘my friends’ names relentlessly.’ The intended of Matthew is Lavinia Swire, for example. He used a Northamptonshire friend’s name Lavinia in her memory. The surname Swire is filched from his friend Hugo, MP, whose wife recently gained notoriety from her memoires!

So many of the footnotes hark to Fellowes’s memories of family and friends, for example his great-aunt Isie commented at the end of the war ‘Sometimes it feels as if all the men I ever danced with are dead.’ A poignant vignette (p21).

On reading the scripts it is evident that all of the actors involved add richness and depth to Fellowes’s script. And he is unstinting in praise in several footnotes. And it’s not only the main actors, either. ‘The hall boys and those maids who have no lines take their contribution very seriously and we are lucky that they do. In fact they do a superb job. These parts may not have much in the way of lines, but they are very important to the show.’ (p452) In one case he was sorry that a hall boy’s line had to be cut.

As mentioned in my review of Season One’s scripts, the footnotes also cover historical and sociological issues, all of them of interest. An aside regarding the use of the Marcel waver, regarding long hair being ‘a sign of bondage’ – a statement of femininity but also impracticality: ‘in the Forties so many women were imitating Veronica Lake’s hairstyle and their hair was getting caught up in machines. So ‘she cut off her long seductive locks and with them, I’m afraid, her career.’ (p144)

There’s an amusing aside about working with dogs and children. Not because they will steal the scene. The actor has to be perfect in each take, in the hope that in one of them the dog or child will perform correctly, and only that take will be used. (p163) Another instance is that it is ‘bred into an actor’s bones that when some potential employer asks you if you can do something, you must always say yes and then go off and try to learn to do it…’ (p239)

What is also fascinating is how Fellowes views his characters, ascribing motivation: ‘I don’t blame Mary for failing to see that straight away.’ (p207)

There are a great number of sad scenes, and again some are inspired by the tales from Fellowes’s relatives. One poignant story is about a female relative being coerced into a marriage with a shell-shocked survivor, doing the honourable thing,, and in effect tragically wasting her life. (p285)

When writing about the Titanic incident (which actually started the first season), Fellowes is critical of the trendy modern perspective of viewing the past through the distorted prism of today’s sensitivities: saying of the people on the ‘unsinkable ship’, ‘they were so unbelievably brave. The modern historian is usually a miserabilist and is only happy when reporting how badly everyone behaved, but if he tries this with the Titanic he will be disappointed. I’m not saying nobody behaved badly, but very few did. And in all three classes there were so many examples of staggering courage.’ (p329)

Inevitably, Fellowes regrets some cuts that had to be made. Yet, to be fair, which he always is, he can also appreciate that in many cases they were valid: ‘I think I was wrong and they were right.’ (p359)

The Spanish ‘flu epidemic of 1918-19 tragically figures in the storyline. Bearing in mind this was written in 2012/2013, Fellowes says: that epidemic is ‘almost forgotten today.’ (p435) How times change; since Covid-19 was unleashed from China in 2019 there have been dozens of articles and TV programmes about its more serious precursor!

What shines through these scripts is the author’s empathy for all the characters. Sometimes people are petty, but then they surprise with an act of kindness; others are generous with their time; while some rail against change but have to face its inevitability. And virtually all of these character drawings are conveyed through dialogue (enlivened by flesh and blood actors). These scripts are a masterclass in drama – and history, in fact.

Again, there are stills from this season (in black and white) and cast and production lists.

Highly recommended.

Friday, 17 March 2017

Book review - Time will darken it

William Maxwell’s Time Will Darken It (1948) is a quite haunting tragedy of manners and relationships. Set in the small town of Draperville, Illinois in 1912, this literary novel mainly concerns the lawyer Austin King, his wife Martha and their daughter Abbey.

Maxwell employs the omniscient point of view, understandably, as he is depicting several denizens in this small township, and entering into many of their heads. It’s a slow, measured narrative, words and phrases clearly considered over months if not years, certainly not rushed out in a few weeks or months; he probably allowed the characters to gestate and conduct their monologues in his mind over time.

Austin King has reluctantly invited the family of foster ‘cousins’ from Mississippi to stay in his house, against his wife’s wishes. They have never met the Potter family, but Austin feels he must do the right thing. He is plagued by that condition, and is hostage to always wanting peace. With the first paragraphs we appreciate the tension between the married couple. This is not the first time they’ve been at loggerheads.

There are several instances where Maxwell gives us an authorial aside (and a number of these asides are surreal, observations made by furniture and such like!); not from any particular character’s viewpoint: ‘It was not his failure entirely. Women are never ready to let go of love at the point where men are satisfied and able to turn to something else. It is a fault of timing that affects the whole human race. There is no telling how much harm it has caused.’ (p12) This is a telling conclusion to a chapter, excellent foreshadowing of harm to come.

Mrs Potter’s first appearance is colourful and described with amusing wit: ‘… so small, so slight, here dress so elaborately embroidered and beaded, her hair so intricately held in place by pins and rhinestone-studded combs that she seemed, though alive, to be hardly flesh and blood but more like a middle-aged fairy.’ (p14)

Maxwell is good at conveying mood, too. ‘… and the clock threatened once more to take possession of the room.’ An awkward silence fell between them and the clock’s ticking again intruded. Another example: ‘The front stairs creaked, but not from any human footstep. The sunlight relinquished its hold on the corner of an oriental rug in the study in order to warm the leg of a chair. A fly settled on the kitchen ceiling. In the living room a single white wheel-shaped phlox blossom hung for a long time and then dropped to the table without making a sound.’ (p71)

Time will darken most things, perhaps; or fade them, if left out in daylight. Take this description, for example: ‘The rooms were large and opened one out of another, and the cherry woodwork, from decades of furniture polish, had taken on the gleam of dark red marble.’ (p1`59). Good visualisation, indeed; you can almost smell the age, and the polish, of course.

Austin’s father was ‘the nearest the town of Draperville had come to producing a great man.’ Unfortunately for Austin, he was forever in the dead man’s shadow, but acquiesced, rather than ruffle feathers and change things.

There’s a clever piece of flashback employed, too. When Martha spends time unpicking the sewing of her dress, an expressed favourite of her husband’s, she unpicks her courtship with Austin and her running away from him when he first proposed. ‘Although so much time and effort have gone into denying it, the truth of the matter is that women are human, susceptible to physical excitement and the moon.’ (p75) She yearned for a man ‘who would give her the sense of danger, a man who would look at her and make everything go dim around her’ (p73). But finally she settled for staid upstanding Austin.

While the township gives the appearance of being genteel, it isn’t. Another aside tells us ‘The world (including Draperville) is not a nice place, and the innocent and the young have to take their chances…’ (p53)

To the local townspeople, the Potters seem almost exotic, and before long Mr Potter is inveigling certain prominent folk into investing in his cotton business. Their daughter Nora is besotted with Austin and declares her love for him, and instead of telling her not to be foolish, he does nothing save allow her to stay behind with neighbours when the rest of the family return south. The neighbours have their own fascination, whether that’s deaf Dr Danforth who feels cut off because of his affliction and then finds companionship and marriage unexpectedly, or the middle-aged spinster sisters Alice and Lucy Beach, dominated by their mother, or Austin’s senior partner, the relatively idle pompous Mr Holby, or the rumour-mongering card club ladies, or the Kings’ Negro maid and cook, Rachel, who suffered domestic violence.

Slowly, inexorably, a crisis approaches as Martha’s pregnancy comes to term, as a disastrous accident occurs, and as a possible suicide looms.

The world and characters created linger long after the last page has been absorbed.

A highly regarded author, Maxwell was a famous fiction editor of the New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. He wrote six novels and a great many short stories. He died in 2000, aged 91.

Minor editing comments

Surprisingly, even an accomplished editor and writer such as Maxwell uses the dubious phrase ‘His eyes rested uneasily on the design…’ (p2) Nowadays, we try to avoid eyes doing these surreal things. His gaze rested uneasily, perhaps. Later, ‘Austin’s eyes wandered to the clock…’ (p10). Minor quibbles; in this latter scene we’re easily caught up in the strained relationship, only lightened by the appearance of little Abbey.

‘On the mantelshelf there was a brass clock with the works visible through panes of thick bevelled glass, and several family photographs.’ (p159). Perhaps it would read better thus: ‘On the mantelshelf there were several family photographs and a brass clock with the works visible through panes of thick bevelled glass.’

Many of the most dramatic events are off-stage, and that can frustrate some readers, but on reflection I don’t believe it matters too much, as it is the consequences these individuals have to deal with, not the actual occurrences that drive the narrative.

Tuesday, 3 November 2015

Writing – fiction - Aristotle’s point of view

Aristotle’s analysis of tragic drama, epic poetry and stylistic devices such as metaphor has spoken to writers down the years, and still has relevance today. The following notes are based on his On the Art of Poetry; by poetry he means drama (tragedy and comedy) as well as lyrical poetry; my observations are in square brackets.

The word ‘drama’ means literally ‘a thing done’, ‘an action’ in effect; the writer aims at the representation of life. [Note, a ‘representation’ – that’s an impression, an approximation – hence eschewing all the uninvolving boring bits. Writers approximate life.]

Thought and character are the two natural causes of actions and it’s on them that all people depend for success or failure. The representation of the action is the plot of the tragedy; what Aristotle means by ‘plot’ is the ordered arrangement of the incidents. Character is what enables us to define the nature of the participants, and thought comes out in what they say when they’re proving a point or expressing an opinion – reacting, in other words.

His view is that the most important element is plot, since tragedy is a representation of action and life, of happiness and its reverse, bound up with the action. It is their characters that make people what they are but is by reason of their actions that they’re happy or not.

Incidents and the plot are the end aimed at in tragedy, and the end is everything. [Not every writer provides a satisfactory ending, I find; and some labour it instead of getting out of the story when the natural ‘end’ has been reached.]

Reversals and recognitions are the two most important means by which tragedy plays on our feelings, both being constituents of the plot.

The plot has a beginning, a middle and an end. Plots must be of a reasonable length, so that they may be easily held in the memory. [Sagas with multiple plot strands naturally break away from this injunction! The point is, don’t complicate or obfuscate or risk losing audience interest.]

Everything within a story – or plot – should be pertinent. The best way to test this is to ask if any aspect were be removed, would the effect of wholeness be seriously disrupted. If the presence or absence of something makes no apparent difference, it is no real part of the whole. Many writers are skilful in complicating their plots but clumsy in unravelling them; a constant mastery of both techniques is what is required.

Tragedy is the representation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents that awaken fear and pity, and effects of this kind are heightened when things happen unexpectedly as well as logically, for then they will be more remarkable than if they seem merely mechanical or accidental. [For example, cause and effect should stem from the world-view of the story, its characters’ motivations and also be as a result of their established traits.] The unravelling of the plot should arise from the circumstances of the plot itself, and not be brought about ex machina. [Don't fall for a contrived ending!]

Drama involves change of fortune – a reversal or discovery. Discovery is a change from ignorance to knowledge, and it leads either to love or to hatred between persons destined for good or ill fortune. These changes should develop out of the very structure of the plot, so that they’re the inevitable or probable consequence of what has gone before.

Besides the elements of reversal and discovery, there’s a third – suffering or calamity. Our pity is awakened by underserved misfortune, and our fear is generated by that of someone just like ourselves – in short, we empathise with the character.

There’s emphasis on making your characters lifelike, consistent and appropriate.

In putting together his plots and working out the kind of speech to go with them, the writer should as far as possible keep the scene before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything very vividly, as though he were himself an eyewitness to the events, he will find what is appropriate and will be least likely to overlook inconsistencies.

As for the stories, the writer should first plan in general outline, and then expand by working out appropriate episodes. [This is not the only method, of course, but it is one I advocate in my book Write a Western in 30 Days – with plenty of bullet points!]

Irrationality and depravity are rightly censured when there is no need for them and they are not properly used. [In other words, they have their place!]

The greatest virtue of diction is to be clear without being commonplace. [I wish modern movie directors paid attention to this instead of allowing their actors to mumble; of course, here he is also suggesting the avoidance of cliché; make sure too that the dialogue is clear and not abstruse.]

The most important thing to master is the use of metaphor. This is the one thing that cannot be learned from anyone else, and is the mark of great natural ability, for the ability to use metaphor well implies a perception of resemblances. [This often separates good story tellers from literary authors – the latter are recognisable by their use of metaphor.]

Hopefully this overview of an ancient work of literary criticism will ring a few significant bells regarding the modern approach to writing of fiction. These comments merely skim the surface and by dint of length omit considerable additional insights. Recommended.

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Aristotle was born at Stagira in Macedonia 384BC; in 342 he was appointed by Philip of Macedon to tutor his son, later Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s untimely death, Aristotle fled to Chalcis in 322 where he died.

Apparently, the three Aristotelian rules – unities of time, place and action – were not propounded until a 1570 translation.

Aristotle does not advocate rigid rules but outlines the most effective practice of best dramatic writers. And even after all this time he still has many useful and relevant comments for writers of fiction of all types.

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