An Emotional Breakdown

After my wife received a beautiful letter, I wanted to follow suit and wax poetic about the power of story and emotion. I also show how an emotional breakdown of a film can be a powerful tool.

What is This Guy On About?

My wife and I love to break down story. She has her masters in literature (Indigenous People’s Literature, to be specific), and I dabble in screenwriting, as some of you may have guessed. When we discuss story, or why we did or did not like a story, the conversation is always informed and interesting.

The other day, my wife received a thank you card from a student, and I wanted to share it with you.

I wanted to share it with you because it reminds us of the power we are harnessing when we, as in me and all of you beautiful writers who read this, sit and work the keys. When we create worlds and characters out of our imagination, and try to tell a story that will resonate.

I can promise you this guy ignored some “don’t climb things” signs. You know why? They didn’t evoke an emotion! Photo by Ameer Basheer on Unsplash

Here’s what Melvinne had to say:

Before this year, I thought stories were just stories: beginning, middle, end. But in your class, I learned to look at the margins. At what isn’t always said. At the way a single word can carry sometimes more weight than a paragraph.

You teach that conflict isn’t just in romance or in dramatic speeches. Instead, it’s in history, perspective, in who gets to tell the story at all. You don’t hand us answers, you ask better questions. And yet somehow that feels more respectful; that you trust us to do the thinking.

You read romance, not because it is easy, but because you understand that emotion has structure, vulnerability is built, revised and crafted with as much care as any arguments.

Because of your class, I started noticing patterns everywhere: in books, in arguments, in the stories people tell, even in myself. Maybe Humanities is just that: learning that everything has its own layers, that meaning hides in repetition and silence, and that looking closely is its own kind of courage. And maybe good teaching isn’t telling us how to think, but showing us how to look and trusting us to see.

Thank you for being such an amazing teacher.

-Melvinne-

Story Contains Power

All communication contains power. We don’t realize it; we don’t think about it. That’s why I feel my wife has an amazing job at times. Youth can be such a mirror to reflect humanity back and remind us about what we’re doing here.

Because we forget.

When you sit down to write a story, you want to evoke the magic of the ages and resonate within people’s very souls.

That’s not an embellishment. That’s not fluff. That’s the honest goal. When I wrote my book The Five Cursed Kingdoms: The Stone of Despair, I wanted this story to deeply connect with people who feel that they can do great things, even if they are just flawed people. That we all get these calls toward something bigger than ourselves, and we can answer those calls. That we’ll grow on the path. Ready or not.

For the right reader at the right time, that might be the boost they need to stand tall and face the world.

That’s the power we have.

This guy wears his hat the same way a hat stand wears a hat. Not how I’d do it, but it makes a cool photo! Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

My wife watches the endings of movies (ones she’s already seen fully, she’s not a complete psycho). I can’t do this. I need the full journey to lock me in. Not her. She just watches 15 - 30 minutes of a movie and sobs with the beauty of the transformation she witnesses.

Great cultures throughout history revere stories that evoke emotion. Heart ache, fear, love, inspiration, sadness, and so much more. We as a people are built to feel huge feelings, and we’re given the tools to help people do just that.

Emotions Change Lives

We know that, but it’s nice to step back and remember just how prolific that statement is.

I was listening to a podcast called Hidden Brain, and in this one episode, Shankar was interviewing someone studying awe.

Switzerland knows how to evoke awe. Photo by Melina Kiefer on Unsplash

That person took some youth from the inner city, who had never left that city, into the wilderness. Think of vast mountains, trees, rivers. The kind of landscape that, when you fully take it in, leaves you nearly breathless.

These young men all described a feeling they’d never experienced before. A feeling of both being so small, yet part of something huge and beautiful. The feeling was awe.

Suddenly, so much of these young men’s life experiences had new context. Their world, which was all encompassing in their lives, was seen for the first time as a microcosm. It didn’t change their lives on the outside, but on the inside, there was a new spiritual layer that never existed before.

I can’t remember the first time I experienced awe, but it’s one of my favorite emotions. I never thought about how powerful it can be.

Story Isn’t Plot; Story is Emotion

I can’t express this enough: plot is simply a path that helps explain why a character experiences emotion, and moves from big emotional moments to new big emotional moments.

The plot will annoy people if it doesn’t make sense, but people will hate it when emotion doesn’t make sense.

Why are our heroes having casual chats with their enemies?? WHY! Photo by Tycho Atsma on Unsplash

Let’s take apart a movie and tell it from one emotion to the next. Let’s go through an Emotional Breakdown together. I was originally thinking of this while watching 1993’s Jurassic Park, but I thought better of it. Instead, I went with something that I felt was compelling and emotional, but not some grand adventure or super hero movie. Something where the emotion immediately beckons you along for the ride. Something created this decade.

I chose Banshees of Inisherin. If you haven’t seen this yet, go watch it. It’s a great allegory and a fun, off-putting movie to watch. If you have seen it, well, let’s track the emotions. Spoilers ahead. Want to skip to my thoughts about it? Skip on down to the next photo!

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This movie starts with Pádraic, on a lovely island, with an actual rainbow in the background when we see him first. He’s smiling. He’s happy with his life. But when his best buddy Colm is ignoring him, that happiness is replaced with a mix of confusion and concern.

The concern turns to perplexity, and then to rage. His friend is being an ass, and its coming out of nowhere. Pádraic is apologetic, he’s searching, and then he’s hurt.

Because he’s hurt, he’s snappy with other characters, and brooding at home. When next Pádraic is at the pub, he’s melancholic. Meanwhile the other character’s emotional states are not static, but stay within a specific range. Siobhán is often shocked, angry, or exasperated. Colm is resolute, he’s very matter-of-fact.

As the plot continues, Pádraic gets drunk and is pretty bummed, but also chatty, yearning for the connection he’s suddenly lost. Then, at the mention of his sister naked, he’s surprised, galled, annoyed, exasperated, a whole slew of fun emotions.

The next day, we get this beautiful moment where he’s relieved and amused. He thinks it was all a prank, and confronts Colm. Pádraic is almost jovial. He’s searching for answers, but he’s doing so from a place of confidence, his expectations of the situation clear.

Shortly after this, he will be perturbed at his sister’s loneliness. Then, dealing with Colm once again, he moves to miffed, determined, sad and angry combined, and then lashes out. It’s a great moment. Colm actually feels bad for his actions, which just upsets Pádraic. When Colm becomes apologetic, this causes Pádraic confusion. Unfortunately for them, Colm’s emotional state returns to disinterested.

Still with me? It’s bizarre to discuss the emotions of a film. These had to be inferred through action and context in the script, but if the writer is doing their job correctly, anyone should be able to track and easily understand how and why a character could traverse these emotions.

Pádraic is very sad as we move forward, and then Colm raises the stakes. This, for Pádraic, is very uncomfortable and bewildering. He moves from that to troubled, baffled even. During a dinner later, he’s mopey, even pissed off.

Doing errands, he’s impatient, and ends up getting his ass beaten. Colm, weirdly (and so excellently), is concerned and caring in these moments, but still resolute. Pádraic is rattled. His pride is wounded, and he sobs. The range at which he’s upset continues to deepen as he fails to solve the problem.

Then Pádraic gets drunk and belligerent, outraged, which he instantly turns to fondness, followed with an apologetic caution. This baffles Colm. Pádraic is incredibly uncomprehending.

Then comes the finger. You know what Pádraic feels here? Sad and concerned. To throw a wrench (or a finger) into the dynamic, Siobhán’s annoyance and exasperation hits a boiling point, and she ends up pretty hurt by an ordeal. She’s crying at night, and Pádraic is helpless to console her. He lacks all ability to.

We play in this area for awhile, and I won’t list the ebb and flow of Colm and Pádraic’s emotions, but we’ve established their ranges, and are doing a great push and pull between them, each character trying to get what they want from one another; their friendship and care between them a barrier to doing that. But things go worse for Pádraic, and he has to bury a friend…

Now the grief is palpable. Maybe he’s been going through the stages of grief this whole time! But now he’s deep into the darkness of it. Now we see his self loathing, his rage. He becomes livid, determined, spiteful. But also… resolute. Sad. Regretful. And he remains resolute as the climax happens, and the resolution lands. Pádraic, after all that, is a sad, resolute man. Perhaps he has some acceptance, but he’s lonely, uncaring, unable to find his happiness any longer. Colm, for his part, is oddly remorseful, thankful, even chatty. But in the end, both characters have changed.

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As the credits roll, this guy is thinking to himself, “What the fuck did I just watch?” Photo by Peter Zhan on Unsplash

Parting Thoughts

That is such a clear journey in so many ways. You can see The Shape of the Story. You can watch a character stuck in a situation he didn’t choose, and all the myriad ways the emotions of that experience came to play.

By the way, I in no way set out to find a thousand different words for different emotions. I wasn’t trying to be cute or clever when creating that little breakdown. I wrote down, simply and methodically, the best emotion that leapt to mind in the moment while watching the scenes.

Scripts are blueprints of an emotional journey. If your script isn’t getting the traction you’re hoping for, consider an emotional breakdown of the characters, and in each scene, ask yourself how anyone knows, truly knows beyond all doubt, this is the emotion your character feels. I read a lot of scripts, and I’m often guiding readers to the emotional journey of their characters.

Oh, shit. Hey, Mel, we forgot to add the grief basin inside the en suite. We’ll have to delay satisfaction until that’s sorted out. Photo by GN Group on Unsplash

After all, our goal with a script is to maximize the emotion a reader or viewer feels when experiencing our story. Anything less, and we’ve failed. It’s a simple goal, but a damn challenging one. Michael Arndt calls these the internal stakes. These emotions need to ring true, and they need to be on the page from Fade In to Fade Out.

That’s it for this week. Happy writing!