Comments on: Screenwriting 201: Gaming the Audience

By: David

David — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:02:23 +0000

I've thought of a couple more examples of non-linear plots: L'année dernière à Marienbad, and La Moustache. In these examples (both French surrealism, oddly enough) time is not so much branched off into parallel universes as it loops back on itself like a skipping record, perhaps even existing only subjectively. And Triangle hasn't been released yet but it looks to be a variation on this as well.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 19 May 2008 05:29:43 +0000

I think the example you cite in “Lost” would constitute parallel storytelling, insofar as the perspective of each character represents an individual timeline, but it still adheres to a single plotline. That is, we see the sequence of events from different points of view at different times, but the plot points still form a linear chain of events.

Only when different events occur at the same place and point in time (like the beginning and end of Donnie Darko, for example, or the alternate version of 1985 in Back to the Future II, or even the hypothetical endings of Clue, Wayne’s World or Run, Lola, Run) does it really constitute two or more timelines. Those are all the examples I can think of at the moment.

By: Scrupo

Scrupo — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:09:36 +0000

PS That was weird you mentioned Jessica Fletcher as I did the same over in the Lost forum on Sucks 2 days ago. I suggested she’d be the perfect person to solve the mystery of the O6′s story from an outsider’s (within the show’s reality) perspective.

By: Scrupo

Scrupo — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:07:30 +0000

“Lost” has done the parallel sequences several times, most notably at the start of Season 2 when Locke, Kate and Jack’s entrance into the Hatch is told over multiple episodes from each character’s vantage points. A minor event in one vantage point (you can hear a muffled scream) as Jack enters the main lab)is further explored in another (In Kate’s perspective we see that the muffled scream is her trying to warn Jack but she can’t be heard over the music blaring in the room. Later in the season we’d get even more on this same sequence from Desmond’s perspective. Of course this is just one example of this structure from “Lost”. There’s an entire youtube video showing everything that happened prior to the crash from well over a dozen characters’ perspectives: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ILPnh4mOKo

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 17 May 2008 01:26:49 +0000

*I said that on rare occasions plot was not linear. The only time (that I can think of, anyway) that a plot is not comprised of a linear sequence of events is when parallel sequences of events take place. Hence my tagging of Back to the Future. The audience experiences the events of this movie and its sequels in a linear way, since we follow the events in the order that the central character Marty McFly experiences them; in that sense, there is a temporal linearity to the story, albeit a subjective one.

But taken in their entirety, the events depicted don’t form a line of cause-and-effect happenings. There are two versions of certain periods of time, which branch off due to alterations to a specific moment in the past; some of these timelines are “corrected,” relative the narrative, at least, but one cannot plot the events portrayed onto a single timeline.

Of course, it goes without saying that this kind of paradoxical timeline is absurd; there can never be more than one version of a single moment, so the variations that cause alternate realities to branch off are impossible. But I’m willing to turn a blind eye for the sake of the movie, which, paradoxes aside, is a brilliantly structured movie, and exemplifies gripping storytelling at its best!