"Cracking" Sorkin...

I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip when I realized something that may have helped my in developing future stories (particularly features)...

It is possible to imagine that perhaps Aaron Sorkin begins developing his stories by figuring out the backstory, then throwing us (the audience) in at the Inciting Incident and moving on from there.

Here's what I mean:

His first hit, the play -- and then movie -- that made him famous, is A Few Good Men. It is, in essence, a mystery: Did PFC Downey and LCpl Dawson murder PFC Santiago? Or were they simply following orders from their superiors, and therefore did the superiors (in essence) murder PFC Santiago?

The story then unearths facts, doling out bits of backstory which lead LTJG Kaffee and LCDR Galloway to take action until the issue is resolved.

In The American President we meet the president and watch him fall in love with Syney Ellen Wade and deal with his re-election issues... But in dealing with his re-election we learn a great deal about his past as a president, and the romance reveals more about his past as well as Miss Wade's past.

This trend of learning more and more about characters' pasts continues with The West Wing and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. (I'm not familiar with Sports Night, but a writer friend of mine who is confirmed that this criteria applies there, as well.)

So my proposal:

We get an idea for a movie we want to make: A character/the tone/genre/basic premise, just whatever it is that makes us go "I want to write this movie", then we do enough research (I'm talking about a day, maybe, not a month or a year) and come up with the backstory for the situation. Just the relevant events that lead up to the Catalyst or Inciting Incident.

The benefit?

We learn (a) who the major players are and (b) what unresolved character issues they have going into the story.

Blake Snyder mentions in his Save the Cat! books the "6 Things That Need To Be Fixed" as a tool for setting up Act I and keeping Acts II and III from getting boring. If you know the important history of the main characters of your movie, you can more easily figure out what 6 things might need to be fixed over the course of the next 120 pages.

Mind you, I'm not talking about painstakingly crafting an intricate history that takes 120 pages or more to write. I'm talking about 1-3 pages of highlights that sort of fleshes out the world in our minds. Not a TV series bible, but something that can be written in a day.

Take a look at the history of the fictitious Studio 60 and see what I mean.

Now, if you've seen the series you see how those basic building blocks blossomed into 22 episodes. You also see how Sorkin doesn't lay it all out in the pilot episode, but casually doles out bits of it, tantalizing us with arguments and conversations between characters that we have to figure out for ourselves (one of Sorkin's brilliant techniques). Several episodes in he might actually show us some of these key events through flashback, but the story moves forward based on the backstory, even if we aren't given the whole picture just yet.

I have no idea if Sorkin does this intentionally.

But perhaps we might! :)

I haven't tried this yet, but it seems entirely possible to develop a film this way:

1. Get the idea for the movie (however detailed or sparse that idea comes to us).
2. Do enough research on the topic to inspire a 1-3 page backstory. (The more I research Sorkin's work, the more I get the impression that a lot of his research actually goes into his stories, barely altered, if at all.)
3. Begin moving the story forward from the point of our Inciting Incident, having our characters act on the events that the audience is not yet aware to solve the problem that started the movie off.
4. Move the characters forward through the story while revealing the most important aspects of the backstory simultaneously.
5. Lather, rinse, repeat until the problem is solved.

The reason I think this approach might work better than simply coming up with the Inciting Incident and trying to create the story from there is that creating the backstory allows the creative part of the brain to do its thing unrestricted. If you're trying to create the frontstory, the pressure's on. But if all you're doing is tinkering with the backstory, then you're just playing.

Then once you have the backstory, you look at what you've created (or "lifted from reality" as the case may be) and see what shape that suggests for the frontstory. What issues exist? What events would have to occur to resolve those issues? How do the preexisting biases created from those past events jade and color the characters in the Present? What possible deeper pasts may be inferred from the events of the backstory?

As always, this is just another possible tool I have unearthed in hopes of making screenwriting easier. Maybe it works for you, maybe it doesn't.

I hope it helps a little, anyway. :)