I just watched Tropa De Elite and was deconstructing from a story perspective, trying to really get at the process for creating such a story.

Okay I’ll assume you haven’t seen Tropa De Elite, so I’ll just say it’s the kind of story with several different character’s whose paths intertwine, morphing the characters and arriving at a shocking conclusion.  It’s a great story to deconstruct, because it has such a powerful structure.  Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to do my favorite thing in the world.  Hate on the story-gurus.

Robert McKee

First we have Robert McKee.  He would probably say, that first the author had to figure out what kind of story he wanted to tell.  In this case, a story about a man changing into a monster.  Next you have to fit it in a specific environment.  In this case, an elite police squad in Brazil.

It’s at this point that I call bullshit.  No one can write a story in this backasswards manner.  At least I can’t.  For example, why the hell would you want to tell a story about a man changing into a monster?  To amuse yourself?  To win an award?  Cause it certainly can’t be because you’re at all interested in that idea. It’s so generic, and has been done so many times before, there would be no purpose.  And why the hell would it occur to you to set in Brazil?? That’s just random.

But lets assume that’s the case.  Well it still doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t provide a good motivation for creating the story the way it is.  There is no way an author sat down to tell a story about a man changing into a monster and ended up with this complex narrative, set in such a dynamic backdrop, and involving so many interesting characters.  They’re just unnecessary.  If this is how stories really are made, then the really good films would be 15 minutes long, and anything that reached an hour would be full of unnecessary boring ass shit!  Okay I’m done here.  Next!

Syd Field

Next we have Syd Field, who seems to believe that the point of a screenplay is the end.  The ending is what decides everything that comes before it, and without it, all of the buildup means nothing. To write a screenplay in this way, you’d have to start at the end, and add on elements until you reached the beginning.

Again this is crap.  I’d say anyone who really knows their ending, or thinks it is the whole point of the story, is going to write the most boring, contrived screenplay ever, and the only point of any scene will be to lead the audience to the next scene and the next and the next, until they get to the final scene, in which they are so shocked by the beautiful ending that they choke on their popcorn and die of euphoria and kernel asphyxiation.  Writing this way would never cause someone to create the nuanced twists and turns of Tropa De Elite.  After all, you’re just trying to get to the end right?

An Alternative

So what then?  Well, now allow me to unveil my ultimate theory on story creation.  I used to believe writing was all about the emotional moment, but in that case films would simply be a series of vignettes, every scene trying to capture something new.  But this doesn’t necessitate a plot line of any kind.  So here is my revised theory:

First you find a world that interests you, then you find what makes that world unique, then you explore emotional moments that bring out the contradictions and contrasts of the world you’re exploring. From this perspective, the creative choices in Tropa De Elite start to make sense.  The authors got deep into their subject matter, found out what made it unique, and pinned down that struggle into a single plot line punctuated by emotional moments between characters on the outskirts of that world.

The meaning of the story is discovered in the environment, not before the environment is created.  The ending is simply the culmination of the events, and the completion of the intertwining of events.  It allows us to see everything that has happened in perspective, to really get our hands around the thing, but it is not the whole point.

I’m getting really worked up here.  I should really write a screenplay.