Masterclass on Parallel Narrative (non-linear screenwriting)  

By parallel narrative I mean complex story ingredients like flashbacks, multiple protagonists, time jumps, multiple stories, fractured stories and so on. As far as I know I am the only person who has worked out the practical nuts and bolts of these forms and provided precise details on the sort of story content that suits each form.  My seminars are very practical. I'm a writer, so, like you, I'm interested in how scripts work.  In my seminars I not only describe the outward appearance of parallel narrative forms  but I also explain the mechanics. Together, we lift the hood or bonnet and examine the engine inside to see firstly how it works and secondly - crucially - how you too can build it.   I give templates that you can use as plans. I explain the structural principle and practical mechanics of six types of parallel narrative 'engine' (they're all different), and their subcategories.  For example, in the flashback family alone there are six different sorts of sorts of flashback structure, each suited to a different purpose. I explain the potential traps and provide practical planning techniques  -because these films need a great deal of planning. 

Course length can range from two-hour overview/introduction sessions through to full four-day intensive courses involving the group working together to create rudimentary outlines for new parallel narrative films.

The seminars are based on my book The 21st Century Screenplay

Content: what's the masterclass about?

Screenwriting today is dominated by the US mainstream model. It is a fine model but it is not the only one. One of the unfortunate side-effects of the pervasiveness of this model is that, excellent as it is, it deems a whole range of stories unsuitable for film on the basis of their structure and content. I think many films that won’t work in this model can work using one of the parallel narrative forms. In some cases this is obvious. For example, if you want to tell a story that jumps between a story in the past and a story in the present, obviously you are not using a one-hero linear model and what you need is a good, reliable flashback structure. However, there is another issue here, philosophical content. The world-view of the standard US mainstream screenplay model is optimistic and assumes that the main concern of any film is the emotional and spiritual development of an individual hero, who, as a result of their experiences, becomes a better person. This means that script experts are always trying to find or insert a hero on a journey towards spirititual growth into the script. But as filmmakers we don’t always have to be optimistic, and we don’t always have to write about individuals. Many filmmakers around the world, both inside and outside of the US are more interested in films about groups of people rather than individuals. They are often concerned with the social and political pressures on the individual or the minority. Indeed, in some cases they are actively pessimistic, wanting to show the individual compromised or crushed through no fault of their own. For these filmmakers, the optimistic individual-centred model is often not appropriate. They often need parallel narrative to tell the stories they want to tell.  

I should stress that I am not saying that one philosophy is better than the other. I am simply saying that film that if your story is about a group, that’s fine. You just need a different structure from when you are writing a story about an individual. My work is about explaining that alternative structures – alternative templates - do actually exist.

The fascinating thing is that the parallel narrative structures all conform to predictable, patterns, patterns based on manipulating the three act structure in one or more ways - multiplying it, fracturing it, truncating it – hence it is possible to create templates and guidelines for writing it, which I have done. The important thing to remember when planning these structures is that their mechanics are very precise. Each form requires a different structure and operates according to different rules. You cannot simply add or subtract elements or the structures will collapse, and you have to get used to to the idea that these forms are separate structures in themselves, with different structural paradigms. They are not just elements one can add to a standard linear model.   To emphasise the fact that all of the structures are actually different structural paradigms, with their own structural rules, I have given them names that remind us of their precise structure. This means that while the names are sometimes inelegant, they keep reminding us of what each structure does and what story content it uses.

Six Categories of Parallel Narrative (non-Linear and/or multiple story narrative structures)

1.Tandem Narrative.

Films in this form have equally -weighted stories running simultaneously (City of Hope,Caramel, Lantana, Traffic – practically everything of Altman’s). This is a form familiar in TV,which inherited from the stage (Shakespeare does three equally-weighted plots). These films, which usually are didactic, span a whole community . These scripts often have very specific problems - like being predictable, overly-didactic and, typically, becoming characters in search of a plot - all the kiss of death. I explain how successful films using this form use a whole variety of structural techniques to prevent these problems.

2.Multiple Protagonist

(The Big Chill, American Beauty, Saving Private Ryan, Galaxy Quest, Tea with Mussolini, Ordinary People, All About my Mother etc) these films are all either missions, reunions or physical or emotional sieges and they are all about groups, not the ‘one hero on a single journey’. Almost all films about families are multiple protagonist films, because they are emotional sieges. Multiple Protagonist form tends to meander in circles, particularly in an inherently static form like a reunion. The backstory problems with these films are huge because they are normally about unfinished business. I explain a range of practical ways to prevent these problems.

3.Double Journeys

These are films like The Departed, Brokeback Mountain, Finding Nemo, and The Lives of Others, where you have two equally important protagonists journeying towards or apart from each other emotionally, physically or both.  To control and focus these films there are a variety of principles and practical construction techniques that I explain. 

4.Flashback. 

Flashback is difficult, so you must proceed with care.  There are several different flashback structures. I explain six different types of flashback (each with subcategories), some simple to do, others very difficult and prone to problems. The more complex flashback forms can be put together much faster if you construct them as concentric circles (each circle being a different story in a different time frame), and jump on cliffhangers in specific places in the story of the past and the story of the present. BUT this is an extreme simplification. There are many factors to consider. You must choose your scenes with enormous care, constructing in effect at least two films in one, and you must jump between stories in the right place or risk confusing and irriating your audience. The three major and most commonly-used structures are:

• ‘Preview Flashback’ (as in Michael Clayton, Goodfellas etc)
• ‘Thwarted Dream Flashback’ (e.g.Shine, Eternal Sunshine, Remains of the Day etc – where an enigmatic outsider pursues a thwarted dream)
• ‘Case History Flashback’ (e.g. Citizen Kane, The Usual Suspects, Memento etc – where the enigmatic outsider is either dead, close to death, and their story is told by others).   

Thwarted Dream flashback and Case History flashback utilise two complete stories in different time frames, one in the past, one in the present. Their subject matter involves the life story and motives of a person who, in the present, is an enigmatic outsider.  Structurally, they are complex, and are best understood as concentric circles linked at a crucial place that has a different meaning in each story. It's complicated and you can easily get it wrong, but they are patterns that work and patterns that don't. I explain and give you templates.

5.Consecutive Storiese 

(I used to call this Sequential Narrative but that caused confusion with a theory that sees linear one hero films as being formed out of sequences). Consecutive Stories form consists of equally-weighted, self contained stories following one after the other joined together in one of a number of ways at the end (Pulp Fiction, The Circle, The Butterfly Effect, Run Lola Run, Amores Perros, City of God).  These films split into a number of categories with different structural rules. The most interesting (but unfortunately also most complex to write) are those which, like Pulp Fiction, use what I call a ‘portmanteau’ or ‘bag’ structure. That is, they use one story to contain the others, like a bag or suitcase, but do so according to clear structural patterns involving fracturing and reconstituting the multiple storylines in different ways. Follow these patterns and the films work. Don't follow them and you have an angry and confused audience. I explain the patterns. 

There are four main sorts, and I’ve given them names that describe their appearance and can be used as mottos: if your film sounds like one of these names, it probably needs to be structured according to the paradigm I provide

• Stories walking into the picture: new protagonists walk into shot and the film switches to their stories (e.g. The Circle, Ten)
• Different perspectives: different versions of the same event (e.g. Run Lola Run); or different characters’ views of the same events (e.g. Rashomon)
• Different consequences from the same event (e.g. Atonement)
• Fractured frame/portmanteau: several stories are split up and held within one story, which forms a frame (e.g. Pulp Fiction, The Butterfly Effect, City of God, The Joy Luck Club). Films in this form are actually fractured forms of either (a) stories walking into the film or (b) different-perspectives

6. Fractured Tandem.

This is the form of films like 21 Grams, Babel, Three Burials of Melchiades Estrada, The Hours and Crash.  It consists of equally-weighted stories, often in different time frames, fractured and reconstructed so as to steal jeopardy and suspense from the ending. This is hard, but follows patterns that we often come across in parallel narrative. 

What is most exciting for writers about fractured tandem is that you can use it to tell or to fix up film stories that need a long set up - as in 21 Grams, for example, where the normality of each of the three protagonists is vitally important to the film’s poignancy, but is profoundly boring except with hindsight – you have to flashforward in order that the audience can have that hindsight). The conventional screenwriting wisdom here is that if you have a story with a long set-up it’s not suitable for film. I agree it’s not suitable for the linear one-hero form. It just needs fractured tandem.