What is the premise?
Download 0.98 Mb. View original pdf
|
| Casablanca Rick has regained his idealism and sacrificed his own love for the sake of someone else's freedom and a higher cause. Good writers know that revelations are the key to plot. That's why it's so important that you take sometime to separate the reveals from the rest of the plot and look at them as one unit. Tracking the revelations sequence is one of the most valuable of all storytelling techniques. The key to the revelations sequence is to see if the sequence builds properly. 1. The sequence of revelations must be logical. They must occur in the order in which the hero would most likely learn of them. 2. They must build in intensity. Ideally, each reveal should be stronger than the one that came before it. This is not always possible, especially in longer stories (for one thing, it defies logic. But you want a general buildup so that the drama increases. 3. The reveals must come at an increasing pace. This also heightens the drama because the audience gets hit with a greater density of surprise. The most powerful of all reveals is known as a reversal. This is a reveal in which the audience's understanding of everything in the story is turned on its head. They suddenly see every element of the plot in anew light. All reality changes in an instant. A reversal reveal is most common, not surprisingly, in detective stories and thrillers. In The Sixth Sense, the reversal reveal comes when the audience discovers that the Bruce Willis character has been dead for most of the movie. In The Usual Suspects, the reversal reveal comes when the audience discovers that the meek Verbal has been making up the entire story and that he is the terrifying opponent, Keyser Soze. Notice that in both of these movies, the big reversal reveal comes right at the end of the story. This has the advantage of sending the audience out of the theater with a knockout punch. It's the biggest reason these movies were huge hits. 36 But you must be careful with this technique. It can reduce the story to a mere vehicle for plot, and very few stories can support such domination by the plot. O. Henry gained great fame using the reversal technique in his short stories (such as "The Gift of the Magi, but they were also criticized for being forced, gimmicky, and mechanical. Download 0.98 Mb. Share with your friends:
|