THE DRAMATIC REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE

By David Beilstein 

I STATED in my last post, I would share some pieces from my screenwriting manuscript. The following excerpt, gets into some literary aesthetics, pulling from Mr Albert Murray and Mr Stanley Crouch. 

The below excerpt was written for a fellow screenwriter; some advice, some thoughts. But what it is, really, is me working through different ideas; trying to untangle all the things I've learned into something coherent. 

If it is, I'm all the better for it. If not, what can I say - I'm not perfect. 

Enjoy! 

“AND here we go...” –– Joker, 23The Dark Knight, 2009

In other words as a serious writer and also as an engaging and entertaining

storyteller, you are always concerned with what Kenneth Burke calls the

representative anecdote [emphasis author’s], which I take to be that little tale

or tidbit of gossip, that little incident that is in effect definitive in that it

reflects, suggests, or embodies as basic attitude toward experience” (Murray,

1996).

ONE of the greatest minds America has ever produced, Mr Albert Murray, past 90 years old now, is the mentor of Jazz writer and essayist Stanley Crouch, 64. Nobodies heard of Crouch, but the man is no punk. Murray is better. What’s important is to understand what the hell Albert Murray –– ever the Negro wizard of American storytelling aesthetics –– is saying, because it happens to be true and is helpful to any writer with resplendent ambitions. You are a writer of such resplendent visions, Jason.

You have great taste whether popular or more artistic cinematic expressions, and you have decided to make a livable income by writing. Great. Writing is hard and getting it right is even more difficult. Central to you as a aspiring screenwriter is the art of ‘creating a dramatic representative image’. If simply a good prose stylist, you will not create the drama –– which nets dramatic tension, which equals an engaging and interesting story, necessary. The hard thing about screenwriting is, it is both much more simple, and much more difficult than people presume. It is simple in that you are simply throwing two opposing forces against themselves to create dramatic combustion. 24Who Wants What From

Whom, Why Now, What Happens If They Don’t Get It? That is the

dramatic circle. Everything firmly and confidently comes down to that ––

23 The Dark Knight will be the greatest Superhero/Comic Book movie for a very long time unless

Christopher Nolan tops himself with the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises. It could happen. The amount

of mythic and epic drama going on in The Dark Knight cannot be expressed in a few words. It’s a

masterpiece of big commercial filmmaking and simply put: it’s great magic trick was hiding a serious

“film” inside a popcorn movie.

24 David Mamet famously came up with these three sentences. They have the beauty of being true and

summing up the core responsibilities the dramatist has. Mamet is beyond great as a writer and dramatist

but we shall see whether his recent and very public conversion to classical liberalism/conservatism hurts

him in Hollywood’s leftist progressive environs.

always. But pulling this off and doing it over and over again within the structure of drama becomes difficult. We are convinced of things or scenes or whatever else we do not need and this leads to excess. We end up with leeches on our dramatic story. It is not unlike the beginning fighter who assumes the best thing to do when someone throws a punch at him is to just step widely out of the way. Once this young 25Mose is trained in the arts of pugilism, he soon learns timing, pacing, slipping, feinting, and parrying. He learns the best thing he can do when punched at is step closer with precise footwork; slip the offender’s punch, get in tight and close, so he can counter.

The same is true for writing.

The hard part of screenwriting is what to do when our nature –– or feelings –– hustle us into composition that drags the story to a standstill. The three questions Mr David Mamet poses for each scene, listed above in italics, is all a dramatic story should be about. The prose should be terse and sparse. That’s it. But the fight against the overflow of scenes, actions, exposition, and beats, which contribute to nothing in your screenplay, is the main battle. The eye to see what is excess is tough and must be honed and sharpened. That means writing and rewriting and reading regularly. And it is a battle.