Introduction to the Special Issue on Media Writing

The forces behind this special edition on media writing were the series of discussions among members of the University Film and Video Association's (UFVA) Script Caucus about the impact of new technologies, new delivery systems, and new resources on the way writers tell stories and the way we teach students about characters, narrative, and story structure. We decided it was time to examine how the existential angst of the twenty-first century, the technology, and the rise of reality media have challenged the creativity of writers. What emerged from this scrutiny was an eclectic and thoughtful mixture of articles about how writers organize stories, adapt stories, and deal with marginalized characters as well as how current media can embrace older theories in ways that make the writing fresh and relatable to contemporary audiences.

Among the most powerful discussions we have as writers is the one about structure. The three-act structure in screenwriting seems ingrained, and according to Joseph Campbell, the structure of our storytelling itself is archetypal: a hero's journey with a beginning (an inciting incident or departure, Act I), middle (a road of trials, Act II), and end (the hero returns with lessons learned, Act III). Perhaps ancestral observations that days, seasons, and lives also seem to have a beginning, middle, and end help to make three acts in our storytelling seem natural. For these reasons, linear, three-act structure may not be easily relinquished. Yet writers are well aware of the many successful departures from this structure in theatrical films. In "Beginning, Middle and End of an Era" in this issue, Richard Allen argues that the principles of dramatic structure we have preached for so long may be overdue for renovation. Games and newer media experiences are changing the way audiences sense and appreciate narratives as well as the ways writers might construct them. Alternative script structures with interlocking stories, unusual plot constructions, and scripts with ensembles of important characters rather than a single, driven protagonist seem to be more popular than ever. Allen's observations are insightful and intriguing. He suggests that our newer technologies inspire writers to shape dramatic content in ways that may be naturally connected to an audience's instinctive impulse toward experience, inviting writers to explore lateral, indirect, oblique, and non-chronological structures.

I have to comment here that where I grew up in the Deep South, the telling of a story—or a "yarn"—was less structured and more often a meandering road, with detours and backtracking through family histories, droll descriptions, and incidental comic moments before coming to a conclusion or even an abrupt, unresolved end because the cornbread was "a-fixin' to burn." Depending on the talents of the kitchen table raconteur, these detours could be even more delightful than the main highway, especially if the narrator arrived at some sort of a destination before an audience got cranky. Except for the actual story content, my mother, my great-aunts, and Quentin Tarantino share a similar structural style.

In "Conquest or Connection: Power, Patterns, and the Gendered Narrative," Mary Dalton argues that women's lived experiences do not fit comfortably in the traditional heroic journey narrative, but that biology, social conventions, and women's work create a circular perspective. Reading this article, I was reminded of the differences between the experiences of linear time, which measures time in one-directional segments, and archaic time, which is a continuing series of biological cycles in harmony with universal rhythms. Western linear time is irreversible and goal-oriented. In archaic time, moons, tides, and seasons wax and wane, never completed, forever developing. In linear time, the world is finite, and life's tasks are not an arrangement of repetitive rituals to be experienced, but a progression of milestones to pass and jobs to finish. Women's lived experience is an interesting place to reconsider story structure, especially since women are beginning to have more prominence as the creators of cultural narratives. Cyclical structures may also emerge more naturally in an era where change seems immediate, and yet familiar human troubles continually wax and then wane...