Do you have a story to tell?

Did you stumble upon a precious artifact on an archaeological dig in Jerusalem’s City of David? Did you visit an ancient mikveh in a Jerusalem neighborhood? Do you know where the graves are of soldiers who fought for the War of Independence in 1948? In Beit Lechem, have you visited the Church of the Nativity? Or in Jerusalem, have you prayed in the Great Synagogue? On a more somber note, have you visited any of the kibbutizim where hundreds of civilians were massacred by Muslim Jihadists on October 7, 2023?

Hmmm…There’s a story here…

The Women who Saved the Dagan Hill – an article, appearing in Ha Mizrachi

Combining the genres of drama, memoir-true story, and historical epic, a documentary is yet to be made about this stellar moment in modern Israel, based on the antiquity of bygone eras, linked to Jerusalem.

“During the protest, we uncovered man-made shafts in the ground. We called in archeologists to investigate it, and it turns out these shafts were part of an ancient aqueduct system built during the second Temple era, to bring water to Jerusalem – an incredible feat of engineering. The discovery gave us strength; it drove home that these hills belong to us, to our people.” E. H., (appearing in Ha Mizrachi, Chanukah Edition 5784)

Hmmm…There’s a story here…

A Happy End, by Iddo Netanyahu

“The Erdmanns’ life in Berlin is tinged with denial. Not only does acclaimed physicist Mark refuse to admit that his marriage to Leah is coming apart at the seams, but it’s also 1932, and the Erdmanns are Jewish. Family friend Dieter urges them to heed the signs of impending danger and leave while they still can, but Leah considers the city’s cultural scene — and her love affair with Dieter — to be her life. Will the Erdmanns choose to seek an unknown future in America, or will their refusal to see the writing on the wall lead them to stay in Berlin and face certain tragedy?” (from Playscripts)

Hmmm…There’s a story here…

The Accomplices, by Bernard Weintraub

“Based on actual events, The Accomplices centers on Hillel Kook, who arrives in the United States at the beginning of World War II, fresh from the underground resistance to the British in Palestine. Under the alias Peter Bergson, he leads a small group of activists seeking aid for the rescue of Jews in Europe. Bergson is shocked to find his efforts blocked by both the Roosevelt administration and the Jewish establishment.” (from Playbill)

The following films have two features in common: They all deal with the Holocaust, and therefore, they are stories of the Jewish people BEFORE the birth of the modern State of Israel, with Jerusalem as the ancient, Biblical, eternal capital of the Jewish people.

For the writer, these films are a turning point in understanding how historical epics can shape a nation and a people through film. Each story employs the genres of memoir-true story/historical epic/drama.

Genres: Drama, Historical Epic, Memoir/True Story

Premise on imdb.com: A Polish Jewish musician struggles to survive the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto of World War II. The Premise Line is the spine of the story, whether the medium is a 400-page novel, a 110- page screenplay, or a 120-page stage play. It can be a marketing tool, but it also keeps the writer focused. Part of the Premise Line is the Inciting Incident, an external event that causes the Hero to engage in action and conflict. Okay – So, what’s the Inciting Incident of The Pianist? It’s when the father of the pianist’s family reads the armband decree that is written in the Polish newspaper for all Jews.

The Desire/Goal of the Hero is to survive the purge against the Jewish people, not only in Warsaw, Poland, but in all of Europe. So, the Premise Line should have read: When Wladyslaw Szpilman, a lauded Polish Jewish pianist and his family must wear Star of David armbands and face a mounting amount of antisemitism in 1939 Warsaw, Poland, friends conspire to help him buck the Nazi regime. The Hero is Szpilman; the Inciting Incident is when the family finds out what they already know about the beginning of the fate of Polish Jewry, and the Desire/Goal of the Hero is to buck the Nazi regime.

In the Premise Line, the genres should be apparent. In Memoir/True Story, the Hero’s name can be used, whereas in other Premise Lines, the Hero’s name should be left out. When the Premise Line is clear, the rest of the story can take shape.

So, what could have been done with this story to make it more compelling and high concept? The Hero’s Character Arc was questionable. He is impatient and professional and famous in all of Poland. He’s a hard worker, a perfectionist, and the show must go on even with bombs going off. He does not understand the full impact of what lies ahead for himself or his family. He is ensconced in the world of art and creativity, and he has a fondness for a non-Jewish woman. All of this is shown to us in Sequence 1 of the story. What we don’t see are his psychological or moral flaws – What could have been added: He doubts that the Jewish people will survive this nightmare, and yet he sees himself as somewhat different; spoiled by an adoring public; not with a proclivity to help his fellow Jew; somewhat self-centered, at loggerheads with his brother, who is ready to fight with the partisans for the freedom of his people.

These flaws should come to haunt him by the end of the story, when he witnesses unspeakable and vile cruelty on the part of the Nazi regime; the suffering and tragedy of so many lost relatives, etc. But the script left out those moments, so critical in storytelling, where the Hero is causing others pain in the beginning of the story. He is jaundiced and terribly ill. But he rebounds without comment. An ally character’s dialog would have been appropriate here.

If this Hero is near to perfect in the beginning, and at the end is also near to perfect, but all the wiser – this barely scratches the surface of the Hero’s journey. He’s back to playing the piano, which is his soul. This part of his character is beautifully portrayed, as is the scene with the Nazi high commandant Christian man who gives the pianist his coat to wear. And the understated subtext between the victorious Russian/Poles and the Nazis: The Pole asks him why he’s wearing a Nazi coat. He responds: “Because I was cold.”

The Nazi commandant who has humanity and respect for a Jew and saves him from the cold- We could call this a Double Reversal. But we are not shown this Nazi commandant from the beginning of the story. He would have been a formidable Opponent and this addition would have deepened the conflict and increased the Narrative Drive exponentially.

For, it’s not that audiences of 2002 did not know how it all worked out in the end that matters in great script writing, but it’s that Character Arc that the Hero exhibits that gives audiences a memorable experience. That said, Adrien Brody’s remarkable acting garnered him an Academy Award. But a somewhat predictable story of survival amidst horrific odds could have been raised to outstanding and remarkable storytelling with just a few additions to the story line.

Genre: Memoir/True Story/Drama 3-Minute Short Film
This is a brilliant short film that won many awards. I’ll break the script down into its Story Beats. In just three minutes, all of the Story Beats are there! Please note that dialog does not carry a story, whether it’s a film, stage play, or novel. What carries a story are value systems and moral choices. This film only has seven lines of dialog!

Premise: When a young Nazi boy discovers a young Jewish girl in hiding, he rebels to fend off her capture.
Designing Principle: A boy’s courage when he goes against the norm can overcome oppression.
Theme: Repression cannot stifle human courage.

The Hero’s Psychological Weakness: Repressed and beaten down. We are shown this when the adult Nazi smacks the boy across the face and knocks him down and then smashes the unicorn with his boot.
Moral Weakness: None. His Nazi friends run when they hear a noise, most likely to inform the adult Nazi that a Jew might be hiding. He stays to investigate.
Need: Freedom from tyranny

Inciting Incident: A noise comes from what appears to be an abandoned room.
Desire: He wants to save the Jewish girl.
Plan: He hands the Nazi the porcelain unicorn in his hand and shamefacedly says he’s sorry, as if he stole this from the room. He does this to deflect from the Nazi suspecting anything strange.
Opponent: The Nazi commandant
Climax/Battle: The elderly German (Hero) in the present time hands the elderly Jewish woman (little girl) a box. She opens it and it’s a porcelain unicorn.
Self-Revelation: The two of them sit together and smile, both of them liberated and free from repression.
New Equilibrium: None needed.

Open with Story World and use the technique of the Memoir/True Story, where we start with the Battle/Climax and then do a Time Jump into the past. The present time or Ordinary World: greenery, blue skies, well-kept lawns; comfort. Segue way through a window to Time Jump: Germany, 1943. Abandoned room.

Young German boys, Nazi regime, in a room that has been abandoned – cigarettes in ashtrays, dishes. Most likely the people inside were hauled off by the Nazis.

0-24: Present time. This is right before the Climax/Battle scene. An elderly German approaches with trepidation the outside door of a well-tended, if not quaint, home. He hesitates, looks at the doorbell. He looks at the curtained window.
24 – 2:27: With the window as a segue way, Time Jump to Germany, 1943 screen overlay.
The following lines of dialogue are spoken:
Hero: What is that?
Jewish girl: It’s a unicorn.
Hero: (looking at the Jewish girl’s yellow star on her sleeve) Never seen one up close
before.
Jewish girl: (touching the Jewish star) Beautiful.
Hero: (hearing the Nazis coming) Get away!
Hero: (after the Jewish girl hesitates) Get away!
Important note: The Jewish girl is shocked that the young Nazi boy would actually be attempting to save her, so she hesitates to move.
Hero: (to the Nazi Commandant) I’m sorry.
2:27 – end: Time Jump to present time, back to the Climax/Battle scene: As the German man is losing courage to ring the doorbell, the Jewish woman slowly opens the door.
The next scene is inside her house. She opens the box and it is a shiny porcelain unicorn.

Genres: Drama/Historical Epic/Memoir-True Story

Premise –
The Zookeeper’s Wife is the account of keepers of the Warsaw Zoo, Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who helped save hundreds of Jews and animals during the Nazi invasion of Poland.

As a writer, it is important to know your genres because each genre embodies special story beats. Biography or Memoir-True Story are not really genres, but for the screenplay writer, they are a methodology of how to write a story that is “based on true events.”

Unfortunately, the scriptwriter for this story did not employ the format of Memoir-True Story, which therefore resulted in loss of Narrative Drive, a.k.a. Ho-Hum story line. A fix would have been the following: Start with the Story World of 1944 Poland and show the city bombarded by relentless explosions and chaos; shrieks of despair; buildings in rubble; Nazis in the city on tanks and long lines of Jews dying in the infamous Ghetto.

Also, show the serial heinous murders of some 20,000 Polish Intelligentsia by the Nazis. Go to the beginning of the Climax/Battle scene whereby the ruthless Nazi (former distinguished zookeeper) comes to the Warsaw Zoo and pulls the Hero’s (Antonina’s) son away and we hear a gun shot. Then do a Screen Overlay that says: Five years earlier.

The writer then should move forward from 1939, with Antonina’s Story World of wild animals, some living in her house; Rhyz’ pet pig; the orderliness and compassion of the zoo staff; the husband and wife synchronicity. This is broken by the Inciting Incident, which is the bombing and execution of their prized animals. Instead, the script writer shows the Jews being rounded up as the Inciting Incident. This is not the Inciting Incident and for audiences who came to see this story, it is a fait accompli- We already know that the Jews were rounded up. It’s predictable, to say the least.

To understand the mistake inherent in this script, we must look at the Designing Principle of the story: Human compassion for the greater good can override the immediate desire to flee when one’s life is in danger. Here we have “righteous Gentiles” who were ready to risk their lives to save Jews. The question needs to be asked: Why?

If we think the answer is because the Hero was compassionate, we miss the point of this story entirely. What Antonina and Jan saw was the crumbling of Polish society that they knew intimately and lovingly- They were not only zookeepers, but zoologists; research intellectuals; artists; lovers of animals. Much worse, they knew the value of their Jewish friend’s insect collection: thousands of rare species; they knew the value of their Jewish friend’s famous sculptures. In a horrifically short period of time, all of this was destroyed by a brutal fascist regime that used the Jews as their scapegoat.

Furthermore, the fascist Nazi regime’s ultimate goal was to murder all the Poles and/or turn them into slaves, for their racial ideology stated that Poles/Slavs/Jews/Catholics were inferior to the Aryan ideal. This is symbolically shown to us by the obsession of the Nazi Opponent former zoologist to cross breed animals so that he could create a modern “Aryan” hunting animal to increase Hitler’s great enjoyment of then hunting them down and killing these animals. All of the aforementioned Story World was overlooked by this script writer, but it was key to the motivation of the Hero and her devoted husband to become defiant and hide as many Jews as they could; fight in the Partisan Movement; devise extremely dangerous methods to get the Jews out of the Ghetto.

The script writer chose an Opening called the Community Opening, which plays in about 1% of all scriptwriting. It’s a slow opener; it shows a group of people laughing, socializing, life is beautiful and enchanted. And then, boom! Everything falls apart with the brutal realities of war. The problem of using this Community Opening with this particular story was that it was boring and predictable because worldwide audiences know what happened in Warsaw, Poland and in many corners of the world in 1939. It was a poor choice of opening this Story World; it made the audience feel that they were being preached to and/or manipulated.

The Hero, Antonina never had the Nazi zoologist with his hands all over her, almost raping her. This was not in Antonina’s journals, which contained very personal information. There never was a young Ghetto girl who was raped by the Nazi soldiers in Antonina’s journal. So we have to ask, why did this script writer put these irritating and non-believable add-ons to the plot, which was rich with so many other important elements that could have been included. This script writer took the Drama genre and made it the focal point of the story line. Intimate Opponents and Character Web; intense Moral Argument that blows in the Climax. But not for this story – Wrong decision, and audience irritation bears it out.

For, the Nazi Opponent is executing prized zoo animals; he feels empowered; his Jew-hatred is on the table. If he wanted Antonina, he would have taken her and raped her. Okay, he was fascinated by her beauty, but that was all. It took the audience off the Narrative Drive and was not believable. The young girl raped and bloody: The Nazis would have murdered her. Her “recuperation” took the audience off the Narrative Drive.

In sum, Story World of Historical Epic was overlooked here. Drama genre and branching off and unbelievable character webs were front and center. The writer missed the opportunity to show Polish “beautiful and artistic” society destroyed forever juxtaposed with the destruction of Polish Jewry; Polish Intelligentsia were murdered…Oh! What opportunities were lost with this script! Righteous Gentiles who were willing to die in order to “do the right thing,” yes, this was a redeeming factor about the script and the movie. Still worthwhile for that fact alone. Antonina, Jan, their workers, their children: True unsung heroes.

Genres: Memoir/True Story/Drama/Historical epic

This is the epic story of war from the perspective of the Hero, a German Jewish 14-year-old teenager caught up in WWII. The Hero’s story of survival in a world gone mad with the backdrop of the Holocaust is but one of the themes running through this story line.

The Character Web is crafted so that we see the horrors of the war through the eyes of the Germans, the Nazis, the Hitler youth, the Russians, the Poles, the German Jews, the Polish Jews, German army foot soldiers, and German society through the eyes of the mother, whose daughter gets pregnant to donate the baby to the Fuhrer and make their family roots more Aryan…

To pull off the Character Web so brilliantly, the script goes beneath the “skin” of all the characters. The weakness/need and moral choices that each character has to make deal with one of the central dilemmas of WWII: Ideologies people had to buy into or fight against in order to survive. The use of subtext in the dialogue, whereby the character never really says what he means leads to an avoidance of conflict, but then an implosion of conflict as the plot moves forward.

The Story World was one of the most authentic ever put to screen: Land, tools, technology, man-made buildings, structures either showing extreme poverty and suffering, or extreme power; the looming and grandiose Third Reich symbols and the institutionalization of the human psyche; the dumbing down while ostensibly seeming to educate – The Lodz ghetto, with the dying Jewish populace amidst a Nazi bureaucracy; train protocol; trolly protocol; army protocol, etc., all displayed with an accuracy down to the tableware and the machinery; the clothing; the murders in plain sight.

All of the structural beats were spot on: The Inciting Incident; the 12 sequences; the mid-point, all leading to the Climax/Battle scene in Sequence 11, right on the mark.

The powerful opening scene is a Brit Mila, the Jewish ritual circumcision that every male child is to have, according to the Torah and Avraham’s covenant with the Jewish people. The Hero has to then hide his Jewishness/circumcised dead give-away self throughout the story. The last scene goes straight back to the first scene and deals with the theme of the covenant of circumcision leading to freedom and redemption. I’m avoiding “spoilers” for anyone who has not seen this film, but the story line self-revelation moment, both to the Hero and the audience is epic and powerful.

Story World, which mirrored the flaws and the Character Arc of the Hero, was a large part of the evolution of the story. It echoed the chaos, the destruction, the slavery of mankind at one of the world’s darkest moments.

French film with English subtitles
Genres: Drama/Historical Epic/Thriller

Premise according to imdb.com: A faithful retelling of the 1942 “Vel d’Hiv Roundup” and the events surrounding it. I would re-write this Premise: When a young, Christian nurse is caught up in the 1942 “Vel d’Hiv Roundup” in France, she risks her life to provide help and care to the mass of Jewish humanity destined for extermination.

I would change the Premise for the following reasons:

First of all, the audience comes to this film already knowing the ending of the tragic serial murder/genocide of the Jews in all of Europe during the rise of Adolf Hitler and his henchmen. So, to call this film a Holocaust story set in France does not do it justice. The genres are Drama/Historical Epic. What the writer added were elements of Thriller by transcending the usual story beats found in the Thriller genre.

Hitler as the Main Opponent remains a hidden Main Opponent by letting his henchmen and Nazi army of puppets and evil barbarians do his dirty work. His flawed and pathetic character are portrayed by showing him a slave of the drug needle; a music connoisseur, particularly Wagner – music to play in the background while plotting the destruction of European Jewry and or millions of Russians, Poles, Gypsies, mentally disabled, priests, political adversaries; his family is so very loving and he is a kind and devoted uncle and so reserved and elegant.

Hitler’s story world is juxtaposed to the story world of the French Jews: poor, patriotic (many had served France in WWI), acculturated, etc. Then there is the Hero of the story – a young, Christian nurse, the daughter of a pastor, who is swept up in the barbarity of this epic story.

Her character arc is brilliantly laid out for us: She begins as a novice and ends as a war weary, emotionally scarred righteous Gentile, whose love and caring were a paradigm for all the non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews. The doctor is the Point of View character, a Jewish man who certainly knows his own fate, yet a brave man who stayed with his children to protect them as much as humanly possible.

The Narrative Drive of the story was ramped up by the use of cross-cutting between the Hero and the Jews being rounded up and the Main Opponents – the Nazis, the head of the Vichy French government, their henchmen who brutally beat the Jewish civilians once they felt their antisemitic power had full backing by the regime that was now in power. The Reveal to the Audience is in play in this script in a very powerful way – We all know the horror that awaits the characters in the story – This knowledge puts the audience in the driver’s seat throughout –

Therefore, the surprises are historical and epic in nature: The firemen who acted like righteous humans when most of the world had gone mad; the actual plight of the French citizenry during the Roundup, never told with such accuracy before; the behavior of the French Gendarmes, who in many cases were as evil as the Nazis they colluded with. The historical revelations were honest and the dialog was honest, imbued with value systems and moral choices. No glossing over truth in this story.

Another great sign of a good story writer is that the message was not preachy. The characters in the travesty did NOT KNOW their end – The Final Solution is known to the audience – not to the characters. The Designing Principle, so important to storytelling, is that no matter what happens to human beings, they can somehow prevail, but there must always be those who are not afraid to come forward and “do the right thing.”

To be different, with a moral compass, in a sea of indifference – That’s the theme of this story. The writer stuck to that theme and imbued the Hero and supporting characters with this Desire Line throughout the story. All the way to the end, the Self-Revelation moment, this Designing Principle remained steady and purposeful.

And so, another story has been told about one of the darkest periods in human history – But the story was told by using transcending elements to Drama and Historical Epic. I might also add that the use of children as part of the Designing Principle was another beautiful decision on the part of the writer. The audience knows how this story ends before the movie begins, but the children carry the message even further because they are the future. So, the structure of this story was superb; the plot was written with depth and powerful Narrative Drive, the acting was stellar.

Unspeakable acts of barbarism against innocent civilians occurred on Oct. 7, 2023. Unfortunately, the moral depravity against Israeli civilians and civilians from thirty different countries has forced Israel into a war against Hamas and any other terror organization that seeks the genocidal annihilation of the Jewish people. There are therefore many stories, all difficult to write about that day and the following days…  

Hmmm…There’s a story here…

Peeling the Onion of Collective Conscience

Whether through novel, documentary, feature film, or stage play… For the Jewish people and people of all faiths and backgrounds, in Israel, the barbaric events that occurred on October 7, 2023 shall be sealed in the collective conscience of future generations. Crimes against humanity filmed by terrorists and posted to social media with glee are a particularly vile episode in the saga of the human species.

Key point for the writer: Truth-telling from the heart

The Hollywood film industry oftentimes churns out films about the Jewish people that are forgettable. It is not easy to design a story that will translate to the screen and end up a blockbuster like Exodus. 

In any case, there is a segment of the population who would prefer independently produced films that are on a much smaller budget, speak to a particular niche audience, and have a defined message to impart. No matter what the medium of the writer’s art or craft, whether it is a stage play, film, novel, or documentary, the point is that with insight into one’s soul and truth-telling from the heart, one can reach heights that never seemed possible. 

Key point for the writer: A High Concept embedded into a story idea

Although weddings are fraught with subplots and angst that it’s all going to “come off” like a calibrated marching band, a wedding is not a story. A death is not a story. A Bar Mitzvah or a christening or a brit milah do not equal a story. A pregnancy is not a story, even if there were complications and the baby died at birth. 

In addition, missing a train, which ended up getting derailed and killing a hundred people is not a story. Missing a bus, which ended up getting blown up in a terror attack is not a story. Missing one of the planes that ended up being highjacked by Islamic Jihadist terrorists who directed planes into skyscrapers, which ended up murdering thousands of innocent people is not a story. ISIS or Hamas or any other designated terrorist group beheading hundreds of human beings is not a story. A little girl getting hit by a car and surviving is not a story.

So what is necessary to create a memorable story about October 7, 2023? Or September 11, 2001? There are unfortunately a plethora of terrorist attacks to choose from. Like a detective, the writer must examine and peel the onion and get to the truth of the overriding question: “what really happened?”

Key point for the writer: Peel the onion, examine core issues, get to the inner voice  

– Create compelling characters who are living in 3-D format and who have flaws
– Craft an unlikely hero who seeks to reach his/her goal despite insurmountable odds / obstacles / setbacks / complications / revelations / opponents
– Structure 27 story beats together with transcending multiple genre story beats
– Learn sequencing and scene structure; outline before even one word is written
– Craft the fate of a nation mirroring the hero’s struggle to reach his/her goal and write the story beats, inherent in a decisive genre mix.