How Dull Can You Get?

The great tale is not measured by its performance

Three Steps of Composition

Telling a tale ‘from scratch’ as it were, involves three steps:

1. Dream up the story
2. Structure the story
3. Perform the story

When the talesman thinks of a setting, characters, relationships, and an action, he dreams up the story. Very often the talesman does not create all these elements out of thin air and his own imagination. Sometimes he hears about the action, other times he notes an interesting character, and he might find a setting that inspires him to dream about what might happen there.

This basic dream of the tale is chronological, straightforward, simple, and without surprise. The talesman tells it to himself, changing elements to suit his taste, to suit developments in the tale, and to suit other elements. There are no surprises because the talesman knows everything there is to know about the tale. There will be mysteries, though, unknowns that the talesman has not yet decided or considered.

Once the tale is fully fleshed out as a tale, the talesman proceeds to give it a structure. This means he may re-order events, conceal information to be revealed later, skip events, give a character a false appearance until the talesman thinks the time is right to reveal the truth about the character. He may design the tale to give the audience a surprise or two along the way. He may begin the tale after the beginning, and end before the end. He may tell it backwards, forwards, or looping back and forth upon itself.

The structure may be as simple as the dream from whence it springs; the talesman may choose to tell the tale in a straightforward manner. Or the structure may be convoluted, and even the talesman, aided with outlines and notes, may lose his way through the thickets of his own devising.

Finally, the talesman writes the tale, or tells it in some form, to an audience. Here he must perform the tale for the sake of his audience’s pleasure.

I call this a ‘performance’ because the act of writing the lines we read is very much a performance. The talesman adopts a mask or character in writing, a style, a vocabulary, an attitude. The finished tale, as we in the audience receive it, has a personality that the simple tale and its structural plans lack. It is to this step that most people refer when they talk about ‘the art of writing.’ I agree; the art involved with dreaming the story and structuring it is that of talesmanship rather than of writing. These are different arts, and talesmen of the past have shown themselves to be masters of one, who are indifferent journeymen of the other.

A strong style, or bold, powerful performance, can hide many weaknesses in talesmanship.

Even the talesman himself can be fooled by his own performance.

The Last Act Before the Curtain Rises

Because the talesman can impress even himself with his literary tricks and talent, he can delude himself into considering his tale strong when it is weak. He sees the strong performance he gives, and confounds that with the tale as he has structured it.

Therefore I deem it wise for the talesman to write out a sort of proto-draft or treatment of the story, when he has completed his structure to his initial satisfaction.

In this treatment he should eschew all elements of a strong performance; style and wit and effects he should avoid at all cost.

In short he should make this treatment as dull as he can. It should be as though a 9-year old told it; as though a dispassionate robot intoned it. It should be little better than a list of events.

When the structured tale is told in this manner, with the least-powerful performance, the basic strength of the tale itself will be laid bare. Any excitement, any suspense or tension, any surprise, any mystery, joy, delight, or involvement the talesman feels as he reads over this treatment, must come, can only come, from the tale itself.

This is the true test of his mastery over the art of talesmanship.

The talesman at this point may find he has a very dull tale.

There is the old joke of the screenwriter,

who woke in the middle of the night with a great notion for a screenplay. It was the best idea he had ever had — the best he had ever heard of. Quickly he took a pen and sheet of paper, and scribbled the essence of the idea, enough so that he would be sure not to forget when he rose in the morning; then he went back to sleep. When he did wake, he looked at the note he had written, and found three words:

Boy meets girl

He never managed to recall what had inspired him to consider the idea so wonderful during the night.

A simple tale can be strongly told. A weak, dull tale can work magic over us, if the talesman be a literary magician of sufficient prowess. There is no shame in this. There is only shame in the talesman who boasts how original and exciting his tale is, when it is as old as the Moon and dull as soap.

The purpose of this dull treatment is for the talesman’s own information, so that he knows whether the tale has great power in itself, or whether he will have to provide all the magic with his performance.

How to Do It

The best way to learn how to write such a treatment, and sharpen you skill at it, is to boil down another talesman’s work into its treatment phase. When you deal with the work of another man, you will feel less temptation to sneak in a little of the old razzle-dazzle and goose up the lines. This exercise will also teach you something of the performing-wizardry of the talesman whose tale you treat in this way.

(Composed on keyboard Tuesday, June 24, 2008)