I have been writing for 36 years. I started by writing poetry. I was quite prolific for a 14 year old. As you could imagine, it started to get more and more difficult to pump out successful poetry that could potentially be read in front of an audience.
Why? It was because I also read poetry. I mean, a lot of poetry. My favorite type of poetry to read was from the Romantic Period. I did consume quite a bit of Shakespeare. However, It was Keats, Shelley, and Byron that caught my heart.
As I continued to write, a thought creeped into my head. How in the hell can I (or anyone , really) ever dream to succeed in writing verse poetry in the year of 1984? There were a few, to be sure. Yet, it still seemed that they stood in the shadow of the greats. For what it’s worth, I did not want to stand in the shadows. I wanted freedom. I just could not stand up in front of people and tell them that I was going to work hard to write better poetry than Shakespeare, Shelley, Morrison & Angelou. What to do, indeed.
My 14 year old brain decided to free myself from “Wordsworthian” structure and began to write free verse. I do have to partly thank E.E. Cummings & Shel Silverstein for that decision. A whole new world opened up to me. Verse, free verse, parts of each, missed verse, etc.
Fast forward six years and now I am up reading live poetry in front of audiences as big as 500 people. I am on college radio in poetry competitions and I am pretty well known in the cafe and college crowd because of it.
Fast forward another 20 years, (because I don’t want to bore you with my entire life story) after delving into editorial journalism for two different newspapers. Now, I am working diligently on screenplays.
Again, I was introduced to structure, structure, structure. The three act structure. The four act structure (whoa, thats a departure). Real time. Multiple Timelines. Fabula/Syuzhet. Reverse Chronological. Roshamon (Game of Thrones books). Non-Linear (now we are getting there). Oneiric.
Here is where I want to stop for a moment.
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From Screencraft, a wonderful resource in screenwriting:
“Oneiric Structure is unique as it depicts a cinematic story using dream-like visuals, exploring the structure of dreams, memories, and human consciousness.
Subtle usage of this structure is best represented by Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky. The lines between real world and dream world get more and more blurry as the film moves forward. We’re not sure what is real and what is not.”
“The Tree of Life embraces the Oneiric Structure tenfold. Just watching the film feels like you are witnessing someone’s life — and the life of the planet overall — through vague and half-remembered memories and dreams.”
“These types of films are often presented by auteurs, likely because telling such stories — especially in the extreme cases like Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life — often requires one single vision and visionary.”
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Now, this is probably as close as you can get to a comparison to the realm of free verse poetry in screenwriting, but also staying within a workable screenplay format.
I do have to apologize, but I think we have to push the envelope a little further. You know, the search to be un-namable and to be totally free. Before we offend anyone, I am not trying to tell everyone to venture into this territory with poetry or screenwriting. I do not have an issue with the three act structure or any other structure of screenwriting. They all have their place in certain stories. What I am saying, is that at times even writers need to feel free. I do believe I have a prescription for that. No, I do not have a name for it. Nor, do we need one. Please. Pretty Please.
Finally, I am very sure this has been thought of and done before. So, kudos to the original rule breakers out there! My beef here is to make it o.k. for a writer to be freeform. While at the same time leaving it in the file cabinet marked TABOO.
The structure I am speaking of combines the Oneiric Structure along one or two other known story structures. And. . . Just like those silly sales commercials . . . Wait! There’s more! While this sounds ridiculous enough to some, I highly suggest breaking other widely known conventions along the way. Such as one of Tarantino’s favorite to break . . . “Do not write long monologues!” Wait, there’s more conventions to break!
Such as:
Nick-of-time arrivals
Ho-hum reaction to death or injury
Unreal action
Show, don’t tell
Clichéd dialogue
Androgynous names
Freedom.
Good god, why do images of Mel Gibson in “Braveheart” come to mind?
For those of you that are skeptical of this process, take a look at the above list again. If you search your extensive catalogue of movies watched, you will see that there are many (yes, produced) movies out there already breaking convention. Anyone who doubts this needs to watch any Tarantino film or even the old classic comedy film “Airplane”.
Why not free yourself? Of course you can go back to your old three-act structure when you are done.
I will tell you, however, that you will feel more free with that little glint of Dreamland in your eye.
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