Reader Question: Is it possible to develop a story from a scene?

Open forum question via comments from Rob Fuller:

Is it possible to develop a scene or scenes into a coherent story. And what sort of questions should you ask yourself to develop the scene into something bigger.

Rob, it’s not only possible, some of the greatest movies of all time started out that way. Here is screenwriter Ernest Lehman talking about how North by Northwest began in the mind of the director Alfred Hitchcock:

One day Hitchcock said, ‘I’ve always wanted to do a chase across the face of Mount Rushmore.’ Terrific, I thought, and wrote it down. He told me all the ideas he wanted to do, and I wrote them down. Lots and lots of ideas. He wanted to do a sequence with the longest dolly shot in history, taking place at the assembly line of the Ford Motor company. It would start at the beginning of the assembly line. The camera follows a car being put together before it’s driven off the assembly line and they discover there’s a body in the backseat. He always wanted to do a scene in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Somebody is giving a speech to the Assembly and refuses to continue until the delegate from Peru wakes up. So someone taps the delegate from Peru, and he falls over dead. I wrote all these ideas down, but the only idea that is actually in the picture is the chase across Mount Rushmore. I also wrote out a list of possible protagonists, like a Frank Sinatra-type singer, or a famous sports announcer, or a newspaper man or a Madison advertising executive. I decided the easiest thing for me to write was a Madison Avenue advertising executive, not because I knew any, but because I know how to stereotype him.

North by Northwest arose from a single scene: a chase sequence atop Mt. Rushmore. In fact, based on Lehman’s comments, it appears that Hitchcock’s creative process involved beginning with interesting scenes (i.e., longest dolly shot ever at the Ford Motor Company, scene at the U.N.).

I remember reading an anecdote about Hollywood’s first great producer, the legendary Irving Thalberg in which he told some screenwriters [paraphrased], “Look, just give me 5 great scenes. If you do that, I can sell the movie.” Indeed, the whole idea of a set-piece — an elaborate, big movie sequence — is predicated on this same mindset, a story with a core number (4, 6, 8, etc) great scenes.

So my answer to your question whether it’s possible to create a story starting with one scene is yes. Of course, there are all sorts of variables. You can start with a great scene and write a lousy story. You can start with a lousy scene and write a great story. And anything in between.

Your next question — about how to go about developing a story from a scene — is the rub, isn’t it? One tip is provided by Lehman. Given the idea of a chase scene on Mt. Rushmore, what did the screenwriter do? “I also wrote out a list of possible protagonists, like a Frank Sinatra-type singer, or a famous sports announcer, or a newspaper man or a Madison advertising executive.” Lehman’s instincts took him right into the scene through the perspective of the Protagonist, which makes sense for several reasons: (A) Since the Protagonist’s goal shapes the course of the Plotline, it’s highly likely that the reason the P would be up on Mt. Rushmore is tied to the P’s subplot. (B) Since the Protagonist is the moviegoer’s primary conduit into the story, it’s important to discover the P’s connection to the scene in question in order to translate that into an emotional identification with the viewer. © By focusing on the Protagonist, more than likely some sense of the Nemesis will arise; that is, if the P’s goal is this, then the Nemesis wants to prevent to P from achieving this — which leads to a natural question, “why,” which spins the writer off into a full-on bout of brainstorming.

You can also approach the scene from a plot perspective: Ask yourself how the Protagonist ended up in the situation you envision in the scene. What events could have possible unfolded to lead them there? Or at the end of the scene, where could the plot go, what possible options are there to go this way or that?

You can explore various options for how the scene can resolve itself: an ‘up’ ending, a ‘down’ ending, an inconclusive ending, a cliffhanger.

Here’s a big question I like to ask: Why is it that this story must happen to this Protagonist character at this time? It’s basically a question from a psychological standpoint that suggests the events of the story need to happen for the P to go through whatever journey they are ‘supposed’ to go on.

Perhaps someone has a specific set of questions, but my bottom line to you is simply this: Go into the story and find the animals. That is, immerse yourself in the scene you envision, get curious about it and brainstorm, and look for ‘animals’ (i.e., characters, plot possibilities, themes, lines of dialogue, talismans, etc) that pop into view.

Question to GITS readers: Have you ever written a screenplay or any story where you started the process with one scene in mind?

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