Give Me a Dramatic Truth or Give Me Death!

One way to create a story that rings true is to create characters and situations that embody a dramatic truth. What is a dramatic truth? I teach that drama is an anticipation of an outcome. A dramatic truth arises from an issue of human need being acted out. Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz wants to find her way home; the Tin Man, a heart; the Scarecrow, a brain; the Cowardly Lion, courage. Rocky wants to be somebody. The Velveteen Rabbit wants to be real. Harry Potter wants to fit in. Each of these characters embody a dramatic truth that they act to resolve or fulfill.

To understand the dramatic truth of a story, a character, an environment (Kansas as well as Oz ring true) is to have a compass to what words to use to suggest the truth of those story elements. I very often read scripts where characters have a role in a story's plot, have a presence in scenes, but the characters and plot events represent no dramatic truth. A man is 32, stocky, handsome. These details suggest character types but no reason to care about the characters. They are literal truths, not dramatic ones. Such stories can offer resolution, but it's like a bowl containing the ingredients of a cake instead of a finished cake. Such stories and characters are not fulfilling. I most often see this kind of presentation of literal truths about characters in the beginning of a story. It makes the beginning scenes the weakest part of a story.

A recent Japanese film, After Life, directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu, speaks to this issue of characters representing dramatic truths. This artful story has a simple opening. Two young men are talking. One complains about an old man talking incessantly about sex for three days before he 'chose a vacation with his wife.' They reach a rather forlorn office and a manager comes in and mentions they sent '18 through' the previous week because of the worker's diligence, but, this week they have a heavier load. Then, as a bell rings, people enter from the fog into the building. It's a simple, beautifully staged scene.

The people are then individually called into interview rooms and we learn that these people have died. As we cut between different interviews, we get the answer to the 'why' of this place. Each person has three days to choose a memory that they will take with them into the after life, and that memory will be filmed and ready to take with them within a week.

What memory will they choose?

The question offers a look into the dramatic truths of their lives. What single event had the most meaning to them? The story is staged so the audience gets to share the dramatic journey toward these answers. It's a dramatic journey for reasons that soon become clear. Some people can't, or refuse, to make up their minds in the three days they have to make a decision. This naturally puts pressure on the people doing the interviews and a story's audience.

When a story's audience has internalized the tension over a story's course and outcome, that audience desires to experience the journey toward a story's resolution and fulfillment. I call this narrative tension. When an audience desires and needs the completion of a story's journey for the relief of narrative tension it offers, that story will hold the attention of an audience. Every element of this film is designed to naturally and quietly draw us into this story's world.

One of the first people to be interviewed is a man who only has bad memories. He adds that if he'd lived longer, he only would have accumulated more bad memories. This is the dramatic truth of his life.

A young man quickly wants the rules of the road set out. Is there a hell that people are sent to? When he learns the answer is no, he responds that he has no intention of choosing a memory.

It becomes apparent that an old man is also struggling to pick a memory. He wants diaries to help him decide, pictures of his past life.

An old, old, moon-faced lady who seems to be deaf goes out collecting leaves, nuts, etc. from the grounds of the land surrounding this place. She asks why there aren't any flowers. The interviewer answers that they bloom in the spring, a revelation that even this place has seasons. It comes out that the old lady has regressed and sees the world as a nine year old. A subtle, potent dramatic truth about her that is unexpected.

It also comes out that the people running this facility have video tapes of people's lives they can use to help prompt people to chose a memory. On his video tape, the old man watches himself speak about a dramatic truth of his life, that as a young man he wants 'evidence' that he's been alive, that his life has had meaning.

We continue with other interviews. The man with painful memories realizes if he just has to pick one memory, he won't have to remember all the other painful memories of his life. This scene is staged from behind the man, with the camera on the faces on two interviewers to his left and right. The image is beautifully composed. It is the job of the screenwriter to suggest dramatic truths that lend themselves to being acted out in a potent, visual ways. Scripts that lack revelations of dramatic truths become recitations of what things look like. It's not a question of being overly descriptive, but of choosing words and images that have the maximum impact on a reader.

Two interviewers, a young man and woman, join the old man struggling to pick a memory. As the old man watches scenes with his wife from an arranged marriage, the look on the face of the young man interviewer tells us there's something significant about the woman on the screen. The young man then asks the manager to be taken off the case. This sets up a major, heartfelt revelation. This young man was once engaged to the young, vivacious woman the old man married when he was young.

The old man finally makes his choice after viewing a moment in his life spent on a park bench bantering with his playful wife about how often they will go out to watch movies. He apologizes for taking so long to make up his mind and we get another major revelation. The interviewers are people who couldn't choose one memory to take with them into the after life. Until they decide, they must interview others. The dramatic truth of this situation is that listening to others long enough eventually leads these interviewers to make their own choices.

As the dead choose their after life memories, their memories are filmed. The film making is on a par with a low-budget film, adding to the charm of the story. Cotton balls pass for clouds. Cherry blossoms glide around the moon-faced old lady. An old woman has to teach a little girl a dance for her favorite memory. When the memories of the week are filmed, the deceased file into a viewing room to watch them. Meanwhile, the young male interviewer goes to take the video tapes from the old man's room. He finds a note from the old man explaining that he came to realize the young man was the fianceee of his wife before she met him. He explains in his note that his wife clearly cherished the memory of this young man. That through meeting this young man in the after life, the old man came to understand the meaning of his life and the time he spent with his wife.

The young man protests to another young woman interviewer that he deeply regrets that he never had the easy familiarity that the old man shared with his fianceee, and that this wounds him deeply. The young woman then shows him the memory that his fianceee choose to take into her after life. It's the two of them sitting on a park bench, the young man stiff and uncomfortable. The young man is clearly amazed that his fiancee choose this memory to take into the after life. He says, "I searched desperately inside myself, for any memory of happiness. Now, fifty years later, I've learned, I was part of someone else's happiness. What a wonderful discovery. You, too, someday will find this." She insists she won't ever leave this place, because to leave this place would be to leave the memory of her love for him. The young man vows he'll never forget her.

He asks that he be allowed to take into the after life his realization about his young fiancee. The manager of the facility then affirms that they'll make an exception and let the young man take his realization of what he discovered about himself sitting on that park bench on the set of the old man's memory. That memory is then filmed.

The young man then sits in the viewing station with the young woman. His filmed memory includes his looking out and seeing the people filming his memory, including the young woman. When the clip finishes and the lights come up, the young man has disappeared, moved on to the after life with his memory.

We end with another group of the newly deceased coming in out of the fog and the young woman, alone, practicing the questions she needs to ask until she hears the door to the interview room open.

This film is great, joyful, rich storytelling. What makes this movie special aren't big effects or beautiful Hollywood actors or lavish sets, but a simple journey into the hearts of the story's characters and the dramatic truths found there.

That is a story where each character has to come to understand the dramatic truth of their lives before they can pass on.

(This article appeared in ScreenTalk, The International Magazine of Screenwriting.)

©2001-2008 Bill Johnson