A New Paradigm for Story Creation

That Old Black Magic

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John Fraim

I’m the author of the yet to be published, Hollywood Safari: Exploring Modern Screenwriting Theories. As always, thanks to really the co-author on this project in so many ways, Heather Hale.

Heather is a longtime friend and a well-known producer and author in Hollywood. She wrote an email to me the other day asking where I would place Eric Bork’s Seven Rules into my Hollywood Safari survey of theories on screenwriting.

I went to the Hollywood Safari manuscript and realized I had not mentioned him in it. Yet, I had certainly heard of him. My interest up I returned to read Bork’s Seven Rules. And, found them fascinating and seen in a new way and so different from other Hollywood screenwriting gurus. No, I did not have a place for Bork in my Hollywood Safari manuscript.

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There needed to be one. Really a new category of story structure in creating screen stories. One different from all the others. Different in a very important way. Almost all other screenwriting theories proposed their own ideas of structural steps in a screenplay or story. Their own idea almost always related to their own devised linear timeline in the number of steps or acts in a screenplay.

Yet, a system based around rules or ideas is not bound to most of the screenwriting theory today, all proposing structural sets. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan might call this structural step method more of a “hot” one-way broadcast, non-participatory media. 

Bork offers truly a new system which McLuhan would call “cool” or participatory in that the storyteller/screenwriter creates their own timelines or structures for their stories based around the seven rules of Bork. Importantly, his rules do not offer a structure. Just the idea the writer is attempting to get across. In effect, Bork suggests freedom given to storytellers if seven rules are met. 

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The author/screenwriter is allowed to create his/her own timeline of a story. Within the rules and the most dramatic way for the rules to play out. 

Bork with his non-linear rules for storytelling throws a bombshell into the linear method of storytelling. It has largely been an unheard bombshell because few have seen it as offering a truly new truly revolutionary way of storytelling. Letting the author create timelines around Bork’ seven rules of stories.

Here are short summaries of Erik Bork’s seven rules for screenwriters below.

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They form an acronym for the word PROBLEM, so that it’s easy to remember that the nature of the central problem is really what we’re focusing on, when we develop an idea. There’s a chapter on each of these seven elements. Here’s the short version:

1) PUNISHING So many story concepts fail because the nature of the central problem just isn’t difficult enough for the main character(s). They don’t struggle and suffer enough. They aren’t beaten up enough by the events of the story. Characters in a movie or series we love are generally under siege, and almost nothing can feel right until that problem is solved! And even though they try to solve it, actively, in virtually every scene – because it dominates their attention and even obsesses them, and is in the way of life being okay – it defies resolution. In fact, things only complicate as they try to resolve it, in a kind of “punch-counterpunch” fashion, changing and escalating the problem all through the middle of the story, and up to the end.

2) RELATABLE
A story has one main character through whose eyes the audience sees everyone and everything. The audience needs to take on their emotional perspective and desires, as if they were their own. And thus, everything has to be focused on what they are experiencing, thinking, feeling, wanting and trying to achieve, to keep that audience “reason to care” strong. (Some movies and virtually all TV episodes have multiple stories within them, each with its own main character.)

3) ORIGINAL
A great story idea feels like something we’ve never quite seen before in this form, and even hints that the writer has a fresh voice in some way. But it doesn’t completely reinvent the wheel. It’s an intriguingly fresh twist on a familiar genre or story type.

4) BELIEVABLE
The audience understands what’s going on, and it’s easy to buy into the premise and the central actions and desires of all the characters. This is a problem way more often in scripts and concepts than most writers realize. Nothing turns off a reader or audience member more than “I don’t buy that” or “That doesn’t feel real, given the situation.” Going for the real – beyond any fantastical situations that a story might begin with – is crucial.

5) LIFE-ALTERING
The stakes of solving the story problem for the main character has to feel huge to them, and to the audience. If life itself isn’t at stake (and it often is), something almost as important to happiness and “all being right with the world” is at risk. There is an external problem (not just an internal one) that feels like it MUST be solved now. Failure is unthinkable.

6) ENTERTAINING
We are paid to make audiences feel something they want to feel, when they consume the kind of movie or show we’re writing. We help them escape to something that’s pleasurable to watch, in a clearly definable way. When we don’t do that, we don’t give them the main thing they tuned in or bought a ticket for. The process of watching the story play out has to be fun (at least if we’re looking for mainstream commercial success in the U.S.).

7) MEANINGFUL
The story is about something bigger than just its surface plot. It has a real impact on the audience because it explores an aspect of the human experience in some way that’s relevant to their lives. It’s not just a brief distraction. (This last element is somewhat optional but tends to be present in the most beloved stories.)

Is it easy to do all this, and do it well? No. that’s why it’s not easy to succeed as a screenwriter. But it’s also not a big mystery, in terms of “what they’re looking for” and “why it’s so hard to be successful.” If a script and its core idea achieve all of the above, it will be well on its way.

(Erik Bork is a writer/producer best known for his Emmy-winning HBO miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS. I also teach screenwriting at UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, and offer one-on-one consulting via my blog, FlyingWrestler.com – for which I was recently names one of the top ten most influential screenwriting bloggers.)

Erik Bork is a writer and producer best known for his Emmy-winning work
on the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. 

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The rules sum up much of story philosophy in a few words. It is the kind of stuff that needs to be in all stories. In seven rules one doesn’t often hear these days in screenwriting theory.

Yet, the newness Erik Bork offers is a screenwriting based around ideas rather than structure. Structure follows from ideas. Not the current view that ideas follow from structure. 

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It certainly seems like a time for change in this idea about the media of screenwriting and its teaching. It has been a “hot media” for years as structure has been pronounced for writers to fit into. 

Importantly, Bork does not offer a linear structural theory for writers to fit into. For him, ideas come first before structure. For too many modern storytellers, structure dominates ideas. It is an external (Guru) imposed structure and might not match the original idea of the screenwriter. In fact, Hollywood screenwriting gurus claim dominance over several steps in screenplay structure. 

And look how well this has worked out. Certainly, a reason why the dominant linear method of screenwriting needs to consider the rules method of screenwriting. The screenwriter is given a new freedom to create structure around rules rather than rules around structure. In effect, the structure of a story fit into the ideas and rules of a story. 

(Thanks to Heather for bringing Erik back to my attention)