Plot & Structure . . . and Movies?

Yesterday I completed James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure, a marvelous “how-to” book for those wanting accessible, appliable points to their fiction. I’m sure I wouldn’t have reaped so bountiful a harvest without being several thousand words into a long writing project. The book’s allowed me to immediately apply his points, make corrections to my underlying story structure, deepen my characters and their challenges, as well as think through muddy areas of subplot. Plus, at key points, he differentiates between commercial and literary choices while always insisting both can be used, so that’s helpful.

Bell also does a great job of using many concrete examples with each point, so that they’re easily grasped. However, he also falls prey to the same tendency most writing “how-to” books get mired in today.

Writing Books or . . ?

There’s a tendency in today’s writing books to reference movies as examples instead of … you know, books, the art form you’re supposed to be wanting to learn how to write. Bell only references movies as examples 40-45% of the time, but I’ve read others that seem to go higher than 60%. (And I’m not trying to single this book out as the primary culprit. It is published by Writer’s Digest, so we’re assuming MFA’s won’t be picking it up anytime soon.) Still, it’s part of a larger, pungent trend.

At no point does Bell reference Tolstoy, Flaubert, Henry James, or Faulkner. There is 1 Hemingway, 1 Dostoyevsky, 1 Cervantes, Mehlville, and perhaps a few Dickens. There are lots of Stephen King and Dean Koontz and Catcher in the Rye illustrations. There are also innumerable Casablanca, Godfather, High Noon and any number of other movies great and small.

To use a strained analogy, if you were reading a book on composing symphonic music, and the author kept referring you to TV theme songs and movie scores by John Williams, without once mentioning Beethoven, Bach, or Mozart, wouldn’t you find that . . . unsettling? Might you think it was time to find another book? Yet that mindset is de rigueur for most writing how-to books.

Are Writers Stupid?

Is this another sign of the dumbing down of our society—that most readers of these books wouldn’t know examples from the classics? (If you don’t understand why the historic writing greats are considered great, even if you disagree, how can you hope to make your mark?) Or is there an assumption that most writers don’t want to read? Or are “how-to” writers just lazy?

What’s also handily overlooked with these points is that novel-writing is almost completely a single person’s passion transformed into art, while films are entirely collaborative. Screenplays are almost entirely dialogue in 3 acts that rarely eclipse 120 pages. They are often rewritten during shooting by the writer, director, actors and any number of others. Yes, movies examples can certainly work as story examples, but I can never flush genius-crank Alan Moore’s evaluation out of my mind either; he says movies might be only the 7^th most vibrant art form ever created. (So are we infatuated with 4-color inferiority?)

No Confidence in the Written Word?

I’m not saying film is not an art form or even unworthy of comparison at points. I am insisting of all the art forms, writing has the most examples since it is the oldest extant art form. So why are film examples even necessary in these types of books?