Storyfix.com » An Education– the series

5) “An Education” – The 4th and Final Part of this Story

Larry Brooks — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 07:01:36 +0000

The Conclusion of a 5-post Deconstruction of the Oscar-Nominated Film and Screenplay

The final act of this highly character-driven story can be broken down into two parts. The first is launched by the Second Plot Point itself – Jenny discovers letters in David’s glove box from his wife – which soon gives way to what many writers might consider a cop out.

But is it? Let’s look closer and see.

There are 11 scenes after the Plot Point, comprising only 16 minutes of running time. That makes the final act/part a bit on the short side – as well as exposing the Second Plot Point as a bit on the late side.

But that call is always up for grabs. We make or break the destiny of our stories with what we grab and how we hand it back to the reader.

Teachable moment here – the length parameters and placement targets of the structural principles are guidelines. The degree to which you violate them is the degree to which you may be putting your story at risk, and the degree to which you get away with it may correspond to who you are in the writing business.

Then again, it just might work. It’s always your call.

Nick Hornby gets a free pass on both counts.

But it isn’t the length of this story’s final act that risked cutting a corner. It’s the narrative context of the final scenes. Hornby took a risk here, one that audiences, critics and Academy voters seemed to approve.

This entire story has been a series of dramatic scenes. Of the 66 scenes in this film, 62 of them are little one-act plays, each with a mission, an ending that forwards the narrative, and a fresh stage upon which these characters do their thing.

As it should be. That’s the nuts-and-bolts of scene writing as the building blocks of story architecture.

But then comes a discernable shift in the narrative context.

Beginning with scene 63, the final push to the ending, everything changes.

The story hasn’t yet reached its conclusion, but the means of getting there – scenes 63 through 66 – have a completely different narrative perspective.

Up until scene 63 the story has observed the show-don’t-tell mantra.

From the Second Plot Point, we see Jenny respond to the letters… we see (actually we hear) David drive off forever… we see Jenny’s father’s love for his daughter surface amidst his own complicity… we see Jenny try to get back in school… we see her confront David’s wife… we see her alone with her loss of hope.

But beginning in scene 63 through the ending, the opposite happens – the narrative tells, rather than shows.

Is this okay? Does it work?

To answer that question, we must return to the most basic and empowering question you, the writer, must answer when you set out to write a story: what is this story really about?

And in the case of An Education, it was about Jenny’s journey with David and how it impacted her life. Not about the life that ensued from it.

Those final scenes are, in fact, a time-compressed launch of the life that ensued from it. A preview of the consequences of her choices.

You don’t have to be psychic to know the news that’s delivered in the final moments. Hornby never tries to make that a dramatic premise.

And yet, it works. We feel it.

Why? How? Did Hornby just get lucky here? Or did he execute a strategy?

We feel the ending because of the effectiveness of the 62 scenes that preceded the ending 4-scene sequence. Our emotions aren’t all that involved with those scenes, though – because of the 62 scenes that brought us to that moment – our empathy certainly is.

Jenny’s heroism isn’t her decision to focus on her studies without the prep school behind her. To return to her father’s dream, to the straight and narrow path that she believed would bore her to death. Rather, her heroism is demonstrated via her summoning of the willpower – which was, in effect, almost literally beaten out of her by David’s deception – to move forward without him.

Her heroism was the realization that the life she sought was still out there, but she had to earn it first.

David was simply a catalyst, a lesson, in Jenny’s life.

This structure and focus speaks directly to the story’s major themes: we are human, we yield to temptation, the flesh is weak and desire is intoxicating, our dreams can seduce us, we can lose ourselves in them, and we sometimes need to be broken before we can clearly see the folly of our own blindness.

Not to mention, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

None of that is the product of accidental storytelling.

Rather, it is a model of story planning that unfolds in a perfectly natural organic way…

… even if it could never really be written that way. Hornby had to have those themes at the forefront of his story structure from the opening scene.

In this case, because Hornby was dealing with a memoir, he had to summon the theme from the memoirist’s reality through 62 one-act plays, then drive them home with those four glorious scenes in which we see a learning curve blossom into fruition to save a life.

Which touches us because we’ve all been there, or near there. This is a story about hope after heartbreak, about the power of one’s belief in themselves, no matter how low we’ve fallen.

And so we, as storytellers, are left with our own questions to answer. Answers which must crystallize before our story will work.

What is your story really about? Thematically… dramatically… experientially. Do you have a strategy for it? A story plan, even if it’s only in your head?

That answer is the most critical part of your storytelling. Even before your write a word.

End your story how you need to end your story.

I hope you got as much out of deconstructing An Education as I did. If you’d like to see the scene log I used in this series, click here.

Also, please check out my guest post today on Sirius Graphix, on structuring a genre novel.

5) “An Education” – The 4th and Final Part of this Story is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

4) “An Education” – Part 3 of the Story

Larry Brooks — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 02:18:08 +0000

The Continuing Deconstruction of the Oscar-Nominated Film

3) “An Education” – the Deconstruction Continues

Larry Brooks — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:39:42 +0000

The last post on this gem of a little movie identified the First Plot Point as the moment when David invited Jenny to skip school to attend an art auction.

As is the function of the FPP, this thrust the story into Part 2, which is all about the response of the hero to the new journey at hand. In Jenny’s case, she’s just crossed the line from little girl crush to the realm of the morally compromised — the theme is the loss of innocence — and you just know this is going to get ugly.

Especially for her.

And that’s why this story works.

Because we’ve come to care about her, empathize with her, and most importantly, root for her.

The Part 2 scenes begin with Jenny testing the water with her mother… being picked up on Friday to go to the auction… and then the art auction itself.

This is a key scene, and for two reasons. First, Helen continues to tip her hand as someone who doesn’t fit in, whose role here is little more than eye candy. Which implies that perhaps this is Jenny’s intended part in this charade, as well. This continued dynamic is huge in the strategy to win over this audience, but we’re seeing the shallow world of Jenny’s future if she doesn’t figure out what we’ve already surmissed — these people are bad news.

Later in the auction scene, notice how David allows Jenny to do the bidding for her, which gives her a taste of what she’s already becoming addicted to – the good life, a life of luxury, perhaps a life with David at her side.

Her response to her decision and these first responsive moments after — her first steps down this self-chosen path – seems sweet indeed. If she’s worried or unsure, it’s not on her face or in her manner.

The next scenes focus on what David does to earn all that money.

Suddenly he’s not even trying to hide it from Jenny. Yet he refuses to fully explain, leaving her in the car to observe some strange dynamics between an elderly woman, a black family and the odd exchange of a piece of art.

We can tell that Jenny notices and is confused, but isn’t ready to challenge him.

The next scene shows her getting a failing grade on an exam at school. The consequences of her decisions are suddenly manifesting in her life. She gets a strong talking-to by the Principal, but it falls on deaf ears.

We see her arguing with her father about the grade, who believes his Oxford dream for his daughter is over.

Jenny runs into a young suitor that we’d met earlier, but she dismisses him coldly. She no longer has time for little boys on bicycles, when grown men offering champagne await her that very evening.

The next scene is the First Pinch Point, coming at the 37 minute mark, right where it should. In an earlier scene David had bet his friend Danny that he could talk Jenny’s father into allowing Jenny to accompany him on a weekend away, something even Jenny couldn’t resist betting against.

When we see David sweet-talking her parents with a bald-faced lie about introducing Jenny to C.S. Lewis, who supposedly lives in a village near where they will be staying, we finally get to see the full wonder of how well David can slip into a role to get what he wants.

Jenny sees it, too.

Her boyfriend is a con man, a lair, and he’s very good at it.

This is the Pinch Point because it sticks the story’s primary antagonistic agenda and force right into the viewer’s face, reminding us of the escalating peril into which our little Jenny has been seduced.

They leave. Jenny discusses sex with Helen, who dotes on her like a big sister.

When they stop for a meal, David pulls out a C.S. Lewis book and shamelessly forges the autograph they will show to Jenny’s father later. She looks on with a slight doubt evident in her eyes, one she doesn’t want them to see lest they doubt her.

And then comes the inevitable moment when they are to share a bed.

But to her surprise – and ours – he respects her wish to actually sleep with him, rather than the more common interpretation of the word when two people falling in love share a bed. David respects this, and we – and perhaps Jenny – are encouraged that maybe his intentions where she is concerned are not as dark as we, the viewers, feared.

Her emerging doubts sated, Jenny attacks the next day in the country with new zeal. But the fun takes a dark turn when they stop at a home to look at some artwork, leaving Jenny and Helen in the car while the men go in to do their business.

Jenny is curious, and Helen is forthcoming in explaining that this is what they do, it’s what pays for the dinners and the car and the trips. And sure enough, the men emerge from the house with a piece of art and a sudden need to depart as fast as possible.

There can be no doubt now. Not for us, and not for Jenny. This bunch is nothing more than four very pretty, low-life crooks masquerading as sophisticates.

Jenny is still responding – she’s outraged and suddenly frightened. She knows what’s just happened and realizes she allowed herself to be sucked into it.

But is she entirely regretful of that fact? We aren’t so sure.

The issue comes to a head upon returning to Danny’s place, which has become their base of operations. Where David lives is never mentioned, and Jenny has never asked.

She confronts David with what she believes, and he doesn’t try to bend the truth. Instead he tries to explain and defend that they are stealing from people who don’t appreciate the art they own or know its value. Such beauty deserves to be in the hands of sophisticated people, like them, who can love and appreciate the treasure that it actually is.

He goes on to explain that this is the way they fund their lifestyle, reminding her that he shares her dreams and wants her to join him on this life journey. But she needs to choose, right here and now.

David is every bit as seductive here with her as he was while talking her parents into allowing their prep school daughter to leave town with a 30-year old man.

We watch Jenny crack at this point. Her dream, which is actually her inner demon, stops her from yielding to higher callings. She rationalizes it as harmless, and David does have that legitmate business downtown with the rental flats.

Maybe she wants to change him. To save him. Or maybe she wants to ride at his side and feed off the adrenalin and night life. We aren’t sure… and neither is she.

This moment of capitulation is the Mid-Point of the story.

The context going forward has shifted from Jenny as innocent passenger to Jenny as fully aware and endorsing player, a girl who has earned her smoky wings much sooner than even she would have imagined.

We are now embarking on Part 3, where Jenny leaves her wandering, following ways behind and begins a proactive role in understanding the mechanics of what they do – steal art – and the chemistry of her complex relationship with David.

At home she shows her father the signed C.S. Lewis book, which impresses him mightily and buys her some space as she continues to sink into the depth of the night into which she is seemingly destined to disappear.

The deeper they go the harder it is for David to control all the variables of his façade, and soon Jenny will discover that David isn’t the player he has positioned himself to be.

And once again, Jenny is facing a decision that could affect her life.

Will she yield to David’s significant charms and follow him into darkness? Or will she wake up and finish school, in the hope that it’s not too late to snag that scholarship to Oxford.

So far, from a structural standpoint, this story has been flawless. When this happens it makes all the other elements look good, too, which is why An Education received an Oscar Nomination for Best Picture and for Best Actress.

Both are well deserved. As well deserved, perhaps, as the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination that it also received, but like the others, didn’t win.

British film in a hot commercial U.S. market… tough sell to the Academy membership. But nonetheless, completely worthy of all three statues.

In the next post we’ll see why.

Next up – the wrapping up of An Education… and then some.

3) “An Education” – the Deconstruction Continues is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

2) “An Education” – the First Plot Point

Larry Brooks — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:42:31 +0000

The thing I like most about the First Plot Point in this story is the way it illustrates the absolute need for the 16 scenes that precede it. That set it up.

In An Education, it’s a subtle and delicate moment, indeed.

Some people argue that something huge and compelling that occurs within the first few pages or scenes is, in fact, the First Plot Point. Or at least “a” first plot point.

Know this: there can only be one First Plot Point in your story. You can have all the plot twists and surprises you want, but the First Plot Point is like a 21^st birthday – everything changes, and you only get it once, at a prescribed time.

Others don’t argue this, they are simply confused by the difference between a killer hook, an Inciting Incident and a viable First Plot Point.

We’re deconstructing this story not so much to turn us into raving fans, but to learn from it. Toward that, I’d like to return to some fundaments about the First Plot Point to create context for our look at how An Education pulls it off.

As formulaic – and therefore distasteful – as it may sound, perhaps the primary criteria of a First Plot Point is where it appears in the story. If it happens too early, it’s simple not one and the story is already broken. No matter how dramatic such a false plot point is, and no matter how much it shakes things up.

That doesn’t mean you can’t insert a “big moment” in the opening quartile of your story. That you can’t change the game. Have at it. But it’s not the First Plot Point – also known as the Inciting Incident – unless it happens between the 20^th and 25^th percentile mark in the story.

Why? Because like a 21^st birthday, your story isn’t ready to stand on its own legs until that point. Not enough foundation has been put in place.

If what you call your Inciting Incident happens on page 10, then it’s just a hook. You still owe the reader a First Plot Point at about page 80 to 100. And yes, you can have both, no matter what you call them, as long as you’re clear on the differences.

Of course, there are other criteria for the First Plot Point, and they substantiate both the timing and the necessity of the various Part 1 set-up scenes that precede it.

The First Plot Point has a mission to accomplish.

A specific set of things it must do.

It changes the story. In many ways, it actually commences the story. Because everything that preceded it, no matter how dramatic, was there to set it up.

Allow me to repeat. The mission of the scenes in Part 1 is to set-up the arrival of the Plot Point and the story that ensues from it.

Let’s look at an example that illustrates this.

Let’s say your story is about a guy who is in an irreversible coma after an accident. Your hero is the only one who refuses to pull the plug, believing that the strength of her belief and faith will pull her lover through. That’s the premise, easily converted into a “what if?” proposition: what if you could conquer death through faith?

Big-time theme in such a concept.

So what’s this story about? The accident, or the coma, or the theme?

It’s about the coma in terms of storytelling. It only becomes about the theme if you do the storytelling properly.

Which means if you wait until the 20^th percentile to show us the accident, and if you’re calling it your First Plot Point, you haven’t nailed it. Because the First Plot Point is always what the story is about.

The accident is just a set-up for the coma.

In this example, the First Plot Point would be the moment the doctors tell the hero that no recovery is possible, and that they’ll need to pull the plug. Notice this isn’t as visual or even dramatic as the accident itself, nor does it need to be.

Without a proper set-up, such a moment wouldn’t be functional or effective.

We wouldn’t be as emotionally invested as we need to be, as established through a series of Part 1 scenes that show us the strength of their love and shared faith, and the stakes – part of the mission of the opening quartile – of a future together.

The accident, which is integral to the story, is better placed as a hook. Either in the beginning of the story, followed by a series of flashbacks that define their relationship, or a bit later but still early in Part 1, followed by a series of dramatic scenes in which the hero pushes the doctors toward the right outcome.

The First Plot Point defines – at least for the time being, until something else changes – the impending need, the quest, the journey of the hero, in context to established stakes. It isn’t complete until it also defines or at least introduces the obstacles that will stand in the way of that need.

If stakes aren’t yet in place, then it is the First Plot Point that defines them.

The fact that we’ve seen all three – the need, the obstacle, and the stakes – prior to this First Plot Point moment doesn’t change anything. When the First Plot Point arrives something new and urgent is always exposed, thus igniting the fuse and commencing the journey of the hero toward her goal.

In An Education, this moment meets all of this criteria in a subtle, easily-missed way.

In scene #17, we find Jenny sitting at a table with her friends in a dance club after an evening of music, dinner and dancing.

It is clear that David, her suitor, is moving fast. Assumptively so. And that this is a bit awkward for all, since Jenny is still in prep school and David is north of 30 and slightly slimy.

How do we know that? Because we saw it in a prior set-up scene that showed him sucking up to her parents. Among other foreshadowing that includes Helen’s (the other woman at the table) barely hidden inner bimbo.

The preceding Part 1 scenes also showed us Jenny’s burning desire to escape her dreary existence and jackass father for a life of sophistication and adventure. These define the stakes, the emotional investment, that make the First Plot Point work.

That moment arrives, both literally and symbolically, while sitting at that table.

It’s as simple as this: David invites Jenny to accompany him to an art auction. It’s on Friday.

Friday is a school day. David knows this, but suggests that it isn’t that big a deal. Jenny must skip school – this, in the midst of striving to get into Oxford with her grades and teacher assessments – to stay in this fantasy romance with David. To say no is to allow the reality of her age to sabotage her dreams.

This is classic temptation versus conscience. The apple has been offered.

Jenny says yes. And thus, the First Plot Point cometh.

Because everything changes at that moment. The story, one with stakes and conflict, really begins here.

Jenny has just taken a sharp turn in her life.

She’s heading down a new path with David, the devil in this scenario, at her side. She’s blind to his motives and his true character. Her challenge will be to conquer her own naiveté and desires before they ruin her. Before David takes her past a point of no return.

Notice how this moment fulfills all of the criteria for an effective Plot Point One.

Notice how it wouldn’t work as such had it not been preceded by those 16 set-up scenes. How, without our emotional investment and our growing sense of dread and suspicion, combined with our empathy regarding her attraction to him and her desire to leap aboard this dark train, the moment wouldn’t work had it come any earlier.

Now notice how this happens, in this same manner, in every novel you read and movie you see.

This is the physics, the law, of effective storytelling.

You don’t have to kill someone, blow something up or have the sky fall to introduce an effective First Plot Point. You need a moment that fulfills the criteria, yet melds seamlessly into the tone and established direction of the story.

A direction which you, as the architect of it all, are fully aware of long before this moment arrives. How else could you make it happen if you weren’t?

You couldn’t.

If you don’t plan your story ahead of time – if you’re an organic writer, or a pantser – rest assured that your first drafts will be a search for that direction and architecture. Which is valid if that’s your choice, it can and does happen. Rest assured, also, that if you don’t start over when it finally dawns on you, your story won’t work.

But… if you do plan your story with this knowledge and aforethought in mind – something that, once you understand story structure, is entirely possible to the point of necessity – you actually can make it work on the first draft you write.

Want more story structure? Please consider my ebook, Story Structure Demystified.

Next: Part 2 of “An Education.”

2) “An Education” – the First Plot Point is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

1) “An Education” – The Opening Act (Part 1)

Larry Brooks — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:10:19 +0000

A Story Deconstruction

Welcome to another opportunity to jack your learning curve to an even steeper angle. Because nothing says “I get it” better than knowing what to look for in a story… seeing it… and understanding why it works.

When analyzing a story, especially one as good as An Education, there are several levels of interpretation at hand.

First, we are looking at how the writer assembled the story across its four sequential parts, scene by scene, and noticing how the context of those scenes align with the defined mission of the parts in which they appear.

Just knowing what those contexts are, and how they differ, puts you ahead of most writers struggling to learn this craft.

We are also looking for the major story milestones that separate and transition between the parts – the plot points, the mid-point and the pinch points – and then noticing how those moments are in alignment with their mission under these principles.

When we see it working – as we will here – we begin to notice something.

We notice how we no longer fight off this approach to storytelling. How natural and clean it is. How pervasive and effective it is. We realize that this is how it’s done. We understand we are no longer forced to — or even allowed to — make up our own alternative basic story architectures.

We begin to realize that story planning becomes an inevitability once you “get it.”

Even if you don’t want to come close to outlining, you can’t help but think ahead to the milestone toward which you are writing. Which is, perhaps, the most empowering thing you can bring to the craft.

Another way to recognize and define this structural realm is to acknowledge what I call “mission-driven” storytelling. Once you get this, you can sense the mission of each scene and each part as it unfolds before your eyes.

Because a scene without a mission is… failure.

No longer is a story remotely random, chaotic or arbitrary. Suddenly it all makes sense… even if you have to wait until the ending to realize it (ala Shutter Island).

A writer is like a doctor in surgery. Every phase of the procedure – from scrubbing in to the assembly of equipment and talent, to anesthesia and the incision, to the specific goal of the operation, to the stitches and after-care – is part of a whole while also being separate in context and mission.

And any one of them, done wrong, can kill the patient.

The first quartile of An Education delivers on the stated mission for Part 1 of a story.

The context here is clearly that of a set-up, as it should be.

Every scene introduces something and/or somebody. Every scene delivers a piece of exposition we need to understand. Every scene, even if it seems to stand alone as a unit of dramatic action, has a higher calling: to set-up what’s down the storytelling road.

There is abundant foreshadowing among these scenes that connects to the forthcoming First Plot Point and the ensuing story. Of course you, as a viewer (or reader) may not recognize it as such, but once you understand how these connections are made you realize that the writer absolutely had to.

And most importantly, these 16 pre-Plot Point scenes accomplish the mission at hand: they capture the understanding and empathy of the audience.

That is the higher goal, the purpose of the functional goals of character intro and depth within her current situation, foreshadowing, establishing of stakes and any mechanical set-up business required to unleash the forthcoming plot point.

We find ourselves rooting for Jenny.

Which is no accident.

Disliking her father… intensely. Feeling for her situation. Sensing her backstory, even without ever really glimpsing the iceberg it represents.

All this in 16 brilliantly crafted, yet seemingly soft-edged scenes from the life of a bright yet normal young girl in 1961 Britain.

Everything Jenny desires, everything that makes her who she is, stems from a burning need to escape her father’s power and the life-plan he’s set in place for her. We feel and see behind her need to see the world and become a sophisticated woman who “wears black and smokes” in the romantic dark alleys of Paris is a primal yearning to escape, to make her own way.

To seek adventure. To quench her thirst for life and literature and romance.

In other words, Teenager 101.

Who doesn’t empathize with that, in the face of a boorish, bigoted, small-minded, controlling father.

Notice how all of this combines to define the theme of the story.

An Education is an exploration of parental influence and the passing on of a limiting world view colliding with the naiveté of youth and the blinding power of first love.

Universal life-experiences all. As common as puberty and hormones.

We empathize — yet without really thinking about it in these terms – as much with the story’s theme as we do with the hero through whose experiences we feel it.

We are invested. Rooting. Feeling. Caring. Wondering what is coming next for Jenny as we are simultaneously thrilled for her and fearing for her.

I won’t take you through the scenes themselves.

For that you can go HERE, where you’ll find a scene-log (unedited, as I wrote it in real time) that defines each scene’s content and sometimes it’s context, with a time-code for reference.

The hook comes in scene 5, five minutes in, when Jenny is offered a ride home in the rain by David in his sexy sports car. We know this isn’t a random event, that it’s the story itself kicking in. And because of the obvious age difference and the already introduced yearning on Jenny’s part, we are hooked.

Notice how the four scenes prior to that one serve two masters: they not only introduce the hero and paint a clear picture of her current life situation, goals and world view, but they also serve to set-up this hooking moment itself.

Somewhere between the promise of romance and trouble, this story just lifted off the runway.

There is one brilliantly rendered storytelling subtlety that you may or may not have noticed in Part 1, but certainly becomes more obvious when we get past the Plot Point. And as such, becomes a wonderful yet subtle tool of foreshadowing.

It’s a peripheral character – Helen, the girlfriend of Danny, who is David’s partner in crime. Notice how she doesn’t fit in. Just as Jenny doesn’t fit in, though the nature of their incongruences are quite different.

Helen is the ticking clock of this story. Helen is what Jenny could become if she doesn’t recognize what she is and what she represents.

Meanwhile, the seduction of Jenny proceeds.

We see it on two levels – through the time she spends with David as she witnesses the slow exposition of what he does for a living and, more subtly, what his three degrees of characterization are… and how that begins to color her experience with her friends and at school. Especially relative to the awkward young man who keeps trying to catch her eye.

You can feel it all building toward something. And while it’s never really on the surface in these 16 set-up scenes, you can already feel the wheels wobbling a bit. Because we’ve come to care for Jenny we sense an approaching darkness with an almost parental sensibility.

None of this is an accident the writer stumbled onto. All of it, down to the most finessed of subtleties, was planned and executed.

The gift of this story, in terms of learning, is how clearly the scenes are seen as a set-up for something to come. This classic Part 1 story architecture at work.

When you coat that skeleton – pre-draft scene identification, mission and specific exposition of action, foreshadowing and contextual meaning – with fluid dialogue and multi-faceted characterizations beneath what we see clearly as surface affectations, the result is a story that is ready to soar.

By the way, total running time for this story is 96 minutes. In theory then, the First Plot Point should show up somewhere between 19.2 minutes and 24 minutes, according to standard story structure.

Scene #17, which delivers that Plot Point, arrives at 21:37.

The moment at which the story takes a major turn – throwing open the gates to Jenny’s journey in this story, with an intention (goal) and opposition (the squirrely nature of David, and the shadow of doubt cast by Helen) – happens toward the end of that particular scene.

Everything changes. As it should when you reach the inciting incident at this point, fully set-up, foreshadowed and vested with stakes.

The scene itself cuts at 24:16, less than a minute after that moment.

Perfect.

Next up – the “First Plot Point” of An Education.

1) “An Education” – The Opening Act (Part 1) is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

Welcome to “An Education”

Larry Brooks — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 01:38:18 +0000

A deconstruction wherein we analyze this critically-acclaimed story… part by part, milestone by milestone, scene by scene.

Let’s do this.

I always get a little nervous when I tear into a deconstruction. What if the milestones are in the wrong place? What if the storytelling principles I write about are contradicted and blown to smithereens?

This is why I don’t deconstruct foreign films. Or art-house films. Or classic movies. Or Quentin Tarantino flicks.

It’s also why I don’t try to write them. This is about mainstream storytelling… even if it has an edge.

Using an iconic classic novel to challenge today’s storytelling standards – like Don Quixote, which is what one self-proclaimed and unpublished blogging “guru” tried to do recently – is like referencing 18^th century tribal potions and campfire rituals to refute the merits of modern chemotherapy and radiology.

So far, though, the principles have proven valid.

The Oscar-nominated film An Education doesn’t disappoint. It’s spot-on in terms of four-part linear structure, four contextually-evolving realms of plot and character, the location of milestones and the essence of character arc.

It has much to teach us. Because while thrillers, mysteries and even romances – or any other genre story – often have milestones that leap off the page to seize you by the throat, An Education is nothing if not a character-driven story.

Many of you have asked for this. So here you go.

We’re going to see how a softer, slice-of-life story in which nobody dies and nothing gets blown up – a love story, a coming-of-age story, a family story – is rendered effective and astoundingly compelling by virtue of the very narrative and structural principles we study here.

Effective storytelling isn’t just about drama. It’s also about humanity. About hope and loss. And that’s precisely where An Education shines.

A Bit ‘O Background

The screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, the British equivalent of John Irving in terms of literary niche and cache’. It was based on an article by the renowned and sometimes edgy British journalist Lynn Barber, and as Hornby was adapting it into a screenplay she was expanding it into an autobiography, which was published in June 2009, four months prior to the release of the film.

Some call that a coincidence, I call it killer marketing.

The screenplay was nominated for an Oscar, as was the film and its lead actress, Carey Mullligan. Google the reviews – across the board this story is heralded as nothing short of spectacular. And while Mulligan gets much of that acclaim, the screenplay is frequently mentioned as the foundation of making this thing work.

Writing is like that. Too often in movies the writer gets blamed for a dud and gets pushed out of camera range when the raves start rolling in.

As for novelists, we stand alone in the crosshairs of reader judgment. There are no directors and actors to make us look good. We need to do those jobs ourselves, on every page.

Which is why deconstructing a movie is every bit as valuable as analyzing a novel across the same criteria.

An Icon of Narrative Symmetry

The film is listed at 100 minutes, but from the opening title frame to the beginning of the credits, my DVR clock-counter showed 96 minutes of running time. Which makes the math easy when we start looking at percentage-of-completion relative to the major story milestones.

Spoiler – they’re right where they’re supposed to be. Almost to the exact minute.

I logged 66 separate scenes, though this might differ from your analysis because sometimes the camera cuts imply a new scene when it’s really not, and sometimes it’s a judgment call. My criteria for a new scene is a change of location and a time-shift, rather than where the camera is pointing.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, I encourage you to rent the DVD before moving forward with this series of analytical posts. We’ll be here waiting for you when you’re ready.

To make this easier, I’ve posted my real-time scene log HERE.

You can follow the story scene by scene in very abbreviated, shorthanded form, along with the time-codes of where each begins and ends, and the sequential scene number. This is raw, unedited stuff, and may not make complete sense until you’ve seen the film.

I’ve marked the two plot points, the mid-point and the two pinch points in bold. In the analysis we’ll look at each of those milestones and juxtapose what happens there against the criteria for each given story transition.

This is learning by example. And in the act of recognition, it is also learning by doing.

The next post will begin looking at the story in the order in which it unfolds.

For now, though, let me close with this.

No matter how many times I do this exercise, I always learn something new. And/or, I deepen my understanding of, and belief in, the liberating and empowering nature of story structure and the six core competencies model to which it belongs.

Sometimes we look at a story from the consumer side, as a reader or a viewer, and we marvel at what the writer has managed to achieve. Shutter Island was certainly such an experience for me, and the more I studied it the more complex and nuanced I realized it was.

Sometimes this isn’t a good thing. It’s downright intimidating. It’s like watching Roger Federer play tennis, watching Baryshnikov dance or listening to Pavarotti sing. How can we ever aspire to even a fraction of such greatness?

One answer is to grasp the fundamentals upon which they have built their own level of craft and art. That’s where they started, and it’s where we should continue to focus, even as our learning curve goes vertical.

It also begins by immersing yourself in the work – the specific story – to the same degree the author had to.

Once you get inside a story – be it a Shutter Island or An Education – and see how it ticks, how it fits together seamlessly, you realize how critical it is for the writer to completely own that highest-level, nuance-laden architecture and mission-driven scene execution in their head.

Because in a story like this, every moment is interconnected. It’s like blood chemistry streaming to all extremities of the body. It has to be right or the muscle won’t grow, the wound won’t heal and the body won’t flourish.

At the end of the storytelling day the sum must exceed the total of the parts. Once you own it, you can render it. And not until.

What’s particularly fascinating to me is this:

What we’re doing here in the deconstruction process is almost precisely the same exercise, in reverse, that a writer must complete in terms of depth of understanding before it can be written wisely.

In fact, if you can create a document for your story that looks somewhat similar (in terms of scene identification and sequence; the Cliff-notes nature of that is your call) to the scene log I’ve provided HERE, minus the time codes and typos, you have the skeleton of a functional story on your hands. Provided, of course, that your choices are enlightened in terms of the principles, rather than random.

Such a document — called a beat sheet — is a critically important step in the story development process.

Which means, to some extent, we benefit from the deconstruction process almost as much as we benefit from the experience of actually writing a story of this psychological sensitivity and complexity.

It’s all just storytelling, inside and out, frontwards and backwards.

Plan it or pants it, it won’t work until… well, until it does.

If you’d like a primer on some fresh techniques of characterization, allow me to suggest my ebook, The Three Dimensions of Character.

Welcome to “An Education” is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com