How to write screenplays and TV scripts with flashbacks, nonlinear narrative and ensemble casts'Linda Aronson is one of the great and important voices on screenwriting.’ Dr Linda Seger, author of Making a Good Script Great Welcome. If, like me, you're interested in writing screenplays and TV scripts that contain flashbacks, time jumps, group stories or use any kind of non-linear narrative, I have some good news. Lose the idea that the conventional, one-hero, chronological 3 act structure screenplay is the only possible form we can use for writing a film or TV scripts, and that story structure is written in stone. Films using flashbacks, flash forwards, nonlinear narratives, multiple plots and ensemble casts in group stories (things we can call 'parallel narrative') all follow clear patterns that we can use. Moreover these forms are not on the periphery of screenwriting. They are common in mainstream film, including Academy Award nominations, indeed group stories particularly have been out there forever, never fitting the one-hero-only rule. The Full Monty wasn't about one man creating a male striptease show, it was about a group. We watch The Magnificent Seven, not The Magnificent One, similarly, the Chekhov play we go to see is about three sisters, and not just one. Just for the record, if we want to go back three thousand years, Homer used flashbacks and multiple protagonists in Odyssey, moreover, in much the same way, for the same reasons, and using the same structural mechanics as we can see in films like Amores Perros and Pulp Fiction. I'm a scriptwriter, playwright and novelist and I'd always been fascinated by films that used flashback, multiple plots, big ensemble casts, non linearity and the like. I wanted to use those things too. However, while I could find descriptions of the artistic effects and message that such components could transmit (along with observations like the fact that multiple plotlines were often linked thematically, all things that were clearly true), these comments were short, felt like afterthoughts and left me none the wiser about how to do the stuff. I could never find any precise practical guidelines - any nuts and bolts descriptions of how to make them work, and why, technically, they might go wrong. How do you jump between stories without losing pace? Or chose the content of a flashback? Is there any logic in the order that you show the flashbacks? Why do films like Run Lola Run, Groundhog Day and Rashamon work when any screenwriter knows that repetition can be the kiss of death? Were there any kind of patterns, or was it all random? Since no-one else seemed to be providing any advice on the practical mechanics of parallel narrative, I had a go myself. I was astonished to find that nothing about these forms is random and that there were clear patterns in the successful flashback, ensemble cast and time jump films from all over the world. In fact, I isolated six distinct types of parallel narrative structure, each suitable for different types of story content. I found that each of these worked by multiplying, rearranging or truncating or fracturing the three act structure in very precise and predictable ways. Hence, you could plan them. Suddenly, instead of having guidelines for just one kind of structural model for screenplays - the one we've all come to think of as the Hollywood linear, one-hero three act structure - we had templates for another six, with subcategories, and hybrids appearing all the time. Suddenly, these 'forbidden' components - flashbacks, flash forward, non linear narratives, multiple plots, ensemble casts - became doable. When AFTRS commissioned me to write a book on screenwriting, I wrote not only about conventional structures but about how we can construct and write parallel narrative screenplays.In Australia, the book was called Scriptwriting Updated, and it was immediately picked up in the US by leading film industry publisher Silman James in Los Angeles, and published as Screenwriting Updated. In both its editions the book was instantly popular with professional film, TV and games writers all over the world (who'd all felt the need, like me, to know how construct these kind of scripts), and it became a set text at many film schools internationally, including NYU. That was ten years ago. Since then my ideas on the practical mechanics of flashback and ensemble cast films of all kinds have been enthusiastically received by many thousands of writers, producers, and script executives all over the world, and I have refined and extended my ideas in a new and much bigger book, one that supersedes, indeed, goes well beyond Screenwriting Updated, providing structural guidelines for films like 21 Grams, Babel, Run Lola Run and Atonement, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and many more. It's called The 21st Century Screenplay:A Comprehensive Guide to Writing Tomorrow's Films.  ‘A brilliant book.' Dr Linda Seger, author of Making a Good Script Great ______________________________________ Is the Hollywood three act structure dead?Where does this leave us? Is the Hollywood three act structure dead? Not at all. It's great for one-hero, fast-set-up chronological stories. But scriptwriters don't have to stick solely to that kind of story (and actually we never have). The great news is that there are many structural models out there working to clear patterns, so you can plan them. Flashback, flash forward, multiple plots, nonlinear and ensemble cast films have always existed, but the guidelines I've isolated mean that venturing beyond the conventional model is no longer a step into the unknown. Yes, it's perilous, but we have a map. Instead of feeling safe only with one protagonist we can use many. We can use multiple plots, either running side by side as in TV series, or in fractured form, as in Babel . We can use a whole range of flashback and time jump structures. Even films as apparently aberrant as Pulp Fiction or 21 Grams turn out to be written to patterns. Getting left behindIt's just as well we now have faster more reliable ways to write parallel narrative - because audiences love it. Indeed, they love and expect these forms so much that anyone who wants a screenwriting career in a few years' time probably disregards parallel narrative at their peril. However, screenwriting is never easy and parallel narrative needs time and careful study because in order to work, each structure must be put together in a very exact way. If you don't the structure collapses. Scary? Yes, but not as much as you might think. Use this site as a resource This website can only be the start of your investigations into parallel narrative. Navigate the site to get your head around the principles of parallel narrative (plus my take on conventional narrative). You'll find articles, advice, tricks of the writing trade and a blog in which I analyze parallel narrative films, or comment on craft issues generally. I hope you find it useful and I look forward to seeing all of the terrific films that flashback, multiple plots, ensemble casts and non-linear story lines can help to you to write. Linda Aronson |
