Executive Producer/Writer Bruce McKenna speaks about the writing process on the new HBO miniseries “The Pacific” which starts this Sunday night. He covers the benefits of writing a series over a single 2-hour feature, making a slight jab at the classic father/son storyline which has been repeated sooo many times over the past decade. Basically describing a Steadfast Son and a Change Father (the father experiencing the greatest emotional change). He points out too that the reason you have to boil it down to a single “arc” or “archetype” is that you really don’t have much time to do too much more.

But what is really interesting (and hopeful for me, at least) is that he promises that this WWII series will not cover the same tired ground. I don’t know, but for me, watching the trailers so far, it really seems like it’s going to be the same ‘ol storming the beach, soldier falling in water, gunshots penetrating the icy surface, and shot after shot of war-weary faces. McKenna says that The Pacific will take an intimate look at the psychological effects of the war and perhaps even dive into “negative” characters and explore their darker side. Spielberg himself, apparently, even requested that there be “no blinking” and that they depict the amoral depths these soldiers had to experience.

Here’s hoping Sunday pays off.

The ever-brilliant Melanie Anne Phillips elaborates on the math behind the Dramatica theory of story. Essential to any understanding of the theory is the concept that the story mind represents an internal model of our outside world. Externally, we have Mass, Energy, Space and Time. Internally we have Knowledge, Thought, Ability, and Desire. Mass equals Knowledge, Thought equals Energy and so on.

Knowledge bends our thoughts in new trajectories because of what we know, just as Mass in Space bends energy (such as light waves) along the vectors of its gravity….It take a lot of thought to make a little knowledge, just as a little bit of knowledge can generate an awful lot of thought. Now… isn’t this interesting… That relationship between Knowledge and Thought is the same as the relationship between Mass and Energy in Einstein’s equation: It takes a lot of energy to make a little mass but a little mass can generate an awful lot of energy.

This is something that must be read several times before it can be fully comprehended. Additionally, it’s important to note the great effort she makes in explaining that while on the surface these mathematical equations may seem stifling or antecedent to the magic of story, deep down the theory is elegant enough to take into consideration all manners of creative expression.

Scott recalls a post from his archives regarding the conflict between structure and heart:

Don’t get me wrong. Format is important. Style is important. Structure is important. As I noted above, it’s a good idea to learn fundamental screenwriting principles. But it’s not like by mastering screenplay format, style, and structure, you will necessarily write a great script. In other words…Screenwriting is not about widgets. In order to write a great script, you have to find the magic.

Totally, totally agree. In my comment, I tried to explain my understanding of how both heart and structure co-exist:

I’m totally obsessed with story structure and story theory, but I could not agree with you more. Worrying about the exact number of scenes or hitting all “fifteen” beats is so backwards to the writing process in my opinion that I think it stifles or at least hinders a great many voices. This, of course, coming from someone who considers the Dramatica theory of story extremely beneficial to writers. Structure is not breaking successful movies down into their similar plot points. Rather, it is a holistic look at the story as one meaningful “whole.” That “whole” must come from the heart, otherwise it truly will be a “hole”.

And if you think otherwise, you’re an a-hole, LOL.

StoryFanatic has its own Twitter feed now.

The impetus for this came from the growing realization that most of the “news” and/or site updates that I’m personally interested in have been coming more and more from my Twitter stream rather than my RSS subscriptions. That, in addition to the sad fact that most people don’t get RSS (at least most writer-ly types), yet completely understand “following” someone on Twitter made the transition a no-brainer.

Starting yesterday, any article, link, series, and movie review that is published here will also appear in the aforementioned Twitter account. If you want to be kept up-to-date on everything that goes on around here, and you prefer Tweetie over Fever then start following.

Please note that I will not turn this into a obnoxious link spam account where I set up keywords to dump all “screenwriting” and “screenplay” news. At the most there will be maybe eight items in a single day, depending on whether or not there really is anything worth linking to as far as the world of story goes.

And for those still interested in RSS, those feeds will still be served.