Action vs. Drama

Question

I've read somewhere that "drama" means internal conflict while "action" means external conflict. I realize nothing is this clear cut, that action protagonists often have internal problems also, but it seems like a fairly good guideline.
The reason this comes up is that I'm thinking about what I like to write and about some of the comments here (on MWSM) that seem to make an internal "problem" a mandatory starting point for a protagonist. I like stories where the main character, living a fairly normal life, suddenly has the floor pulled out from under him/her. Some of my characters have internal problems, but many of them are just trying to regain their footing and get back to normal.
Is a character "flaw" always necessary? It seems artificial to me to require something like this when the protagonist is already having his/her family kidnapped or (more to the point for my stories) he/she turns the corner and steps into a new world.
This reminds me of a quote by GK Chesterton in "Orthodoxy." (Yes, I know, I have a million reasons to quote GK Chesterton (sorry).)

..."Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central.

Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world."
...
To me "Lost in Translation" would probably fit into the "psychological novel" category only going by what my brother says, I haven't seen it. "Happy Accidents" (on the other hand) would fit into the "fairy tale" category even though it's not what you'd call a "traditional" action movie and there are a lot of psychological elements involved. I guess what I'm trying to say is that something externally important is happening. "Milagro Beanfield War" is another of my favorite movies.

I'm tired. Just some thoughts and questions. Hope some of it makes sense.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I've read somewhere that "drama" means internal conflict while"action" means external conflict. I realize nothing is this clear cut, thataction protagonists often have internal problems also, but it seems like a fairly good guideline.[/nq]
I think exactly the opposite is true of the word "drama" what, after all, does the word "dramatize" mean? It means to "externalize." To render conflict, theme, thought, concept into external activitivies specifically activities that originally could be seen on a stage in the form of drama.
In any properly rendered story, all those explosions and fire fights and things going boom are internal problems they are simply metaphorical representations of those thematic or emotional issues they represent things they are not simply things unto themselves.

That's what differentiates stories from real life.

In real life, when there's a landslide it's just a landslide. It is what it is it doesn't represent something else. It has no "story purpose" it doesn't pay anything off or set anything up, or complicate anything, or stand for anything or, like the the boulder that rolls down the hill and crashes into the swimming pool in "**** Beast", it isn't a metaphor for anything.
It's just a landslide.
In your movie, you're putting in that landslide, or turning that ocean liner upside down, as a way of exploring something having to do with your characters because having them get divorced, or having go to a particularly nasty party in a living room simply won't accomplish what you need to do won't get out of them what you have to get out of them won't have them face what they need to face to reveal what needs to be revealed.
The story needs to be played out on that particular landscape but even as you do it you have to realize the living room in a story is just as much fantasy - just as "make-believe" as the landscape of landslides and inverted ocean liners and things that go boom. They are all invented metaphorical and thematic realms chosen and invented by the writer for dramatic and metaphorical purposes. Not real places. Not real people.
[nq:1]The reason this comes up is that I'm thinking about what I like towrite and about some of the comments ... family kidnapped or (more to the point for my stories) he/she turns the corner and steps into a new world.[/nq]
I think you may be looking at it from the wrong perspective. It is not a question of having "flaws" per se. It is a question of one person often having two needs that can be at war with one another.

You speak about someone having his family kidnapped and it brings "Ransom" to mind which is a prime example.
Mel Gibson plays a fundamentally normal guy. His kid is kidnapped and he wants to do the right thing the expected thing. Because he *is* a normal, average, conventional guy everyone expects that he's going to pay because, of course, that's what everyone would expect him to do. The kidnappers have said, repeatedly - if you don't pay we're going to kill your kid. And everyone tells him to pay. But as the story unfolds, he comes to believe that the minute he pays, his kid will be killed that the only hope he has is to not* pay but to do that would go against everything he is his fundamentally *normal nature.
And that is the conflict in order to save his son, he has to become what he is not.
And that, perhaps, is how you should look at this notion of internal conflict a war between conflicting needs character needs to be normal, to be respected and do what everyone expects him to do but he needs to save his son (and he knows that only by not paying will his son be saved).
And the story allows that internal war to be played out externally.

And let's face it we all have such conflicting urges, conflicting needs need to conform need to do what's right. We want to be safe we want to be brave.
All sorts of "average" people face those moral conflicts all the time.
[nq:1]This reminds me of a quote by GK Chesterton in "Orthodoxy." (Yes, Iknow, I have a million reasons to quote ... in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunaticwill do in a dull world."[/nq]
Well, but Chesterton clearly ignores the alternative clearly, you can have "normal" heroes in an abnormal world "Lord of the Rings" with it's Hobbits standing in for land-loving, breakfast-loving Englishmen that Tolkien so identified with is the classic example but you can also have the inverse you can have an abnormal hero in a normal world so that we are not completely adrift we are familiar with the world and are thus able to engage in the experience of seeing the familiar by way of the unfamiliar eye of the unfamiliar hero.

A movie like "Repulsion" a woman in the midst of an essentially normal world who is gradually going mad is an example of something like this. Put her in the middle of a fantasy world we have no frame of reference but the fact that the world is so drably familiar makes it work.
On the other hand, we have many works that do exactly what Chesterton claims unfamiliar heroes in the midst of unfamiliar worlds, that seem to work perfectly well. What, after all, is the Odyssey or the Illiad or for that matter, the story of the Exodus if not exceptional and exceedingly unfamiliar people in what is, to us, completely unfamiliar and miraculous enviroments?
And yet at the heart of those stories, we find people and we find needs that are fundamentally identifiable. The man struggling to get home against all odds and against all temptation. The destiny of a war hinging on the wounded pride of a single man. The humble man, slow of speech, who finds himself chosen to be the liberator of his people.
There is no way that one would consider Odysseus or Achilles or Moses or Hercules or Beowulf or, well take most of the characters from Shakespeare's plays to be "average" characters. They are exceptional and unusual people not run of the mill guys like you and me. And often we find them in exceptional circumstances altogether different from the world we know.
And yet we identify with them. Why?
Because we identify with what the characters need with their struggles, both internal and external. Because the fundamental human concerns love, blood, honor, home, justice, the gods haven't changed.
Characters and stories that deal with those things in whatever form will touch us.
NMS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I've read somewhere that "drama" means internal conflict while "action" means external conflict. I realize nothing is this clear cut, that action protagonists often have internal problems also, but it seems like a fairly good guideline.[/nq]
Well, I don't really agree with these terms. Drama is a set of feelings raised /in the audience/ by the actions onscreen. That can be raised by internal conflict or by external conflict.
[nq:1]Is a character "flaw" always necessary? It seems artificial to me to require something like this when the protagonist is already having his/her family kidnapped or (more to the point for my stories) he/she turns the corner and steps into a new world.[/nq]
Internal conflict gives an action story more of a sense of completeness. I wouldn't say it's necessary, rather, it's simply an element which can deepen the audience's connection with the characters and story, can give it more resonance, and make it mean something.

Usenet · Answer

I'd say that "action" denotes movement through time and space, and drama may or may not be attached. Conflict may or may not be attached to action, though it is always a component of drama, both external and internal conflict.
Unless you know perfect people, all the real live people you know have internal problems, things they are not good at, things that they can't see, things they fear beyond their ability to cope rationally with, etc.

Now, if the conflict of a story can bang on those things, that makes the story resonate (independent of ACTION: in In the Bedroom, there's one struggle and one slap, I think, action-wise, but a whole lot of conflict!). That is, the external and internal conflict, both of which your story should have simply because life has them, can be interacting, that's a good thing.
We just saw the Interpreter (which rocked, whether I can spell it or not!), and they took perhaps old-fashioned, but to me still effective pains, to set up the internal and external conflict, and every scene where they collided was stronger than the scenes where they did not.

We didn't care about Riggs in Lethal Weapon because he was a mad dog, we cared about him because his way of expressing his grief for his wife was to be a mad dog. Leaving the audience guessing which choice he would make at every critical juncture.
I suspect what you are choking on is elaborate psychological explanations that slow down a story and choke the dialog with exposition. But good old fashioned flaws and weaknesses are in every human, and if you don't exploit them, I can't see how your story will contain compelling characters.
JMO!
Mysti

Usenet · Answer

I think both of these are wrong statements:
[nq:1]The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The[/nq]
[nq:2]sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic[/nq]
will
[nq:2]do in a dull world."[/nq]
a fairy tale puts perfectly normal desires, goals, and conflicts into fantasy settings. A sober realistic novel of today puts those SELFSAME items into a realistic setting.
Again, JMO,
Mysti

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I think exactly the opposite is true of the word "drama" what, after all, does the word "dramatize" mean? ... into external activitivies specifically activities that originally could be seen on a stage in the form of drama.[/nq]
Thanks. I've filed your post away in the "NMS" file. I'm finding (again) that even stupid questions can result in useful responses here.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Internal conflict gives an action story more of a sense of completeness. I wouldn't say it's necessary, rather, it's simply an element which can deepen the audience's connection with the characters and story, can give it more resonance, and make it mean something.[/nq]
I'm re-thinking my characters and realize that every* one of my protagonists *does* have some kind of internal conflict so this must come naturally in story telling. I think I'm getting hung up over terminology here. And there are certain movies (and stories) that I find boring because *everything seems to be internal.
Thanks for the post.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I suspect what you are choking on is elaborate psychological explanations that slow down a story and choke the dialog ... are in every human, and if you don't exploit them, I can't see how your story will contain compelling characters.[/nq]
I think you're right on both points. Thanks for the post.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]In real life, when there's a landslide it's just a landslide. It is what it is it doesn't ... hill and crashes into the swimming pool in "**** Beast", it isn't a metaphor for anything. It's just a landslide.[/nq]
While I agree with your overall point (all the interesting stuff I snipped), I have to say that the boulder in "**** Beast" is very metaphorical. It comes crashing down, out of nowhere, and Gal is very very lucky it doesn't take off his head. Same way that Don Logan comes out of nowhere into their happy retirement existence and Gal is very very lucky that Logan doesn't kill him or at least get him killed.
The interesting thing I find about life is that it's largely self-fulfilling on a metaphorical level: if you want your landslide to be just a landslide, it will be. But if you take something as a "sign", sooner or later you'll discover what it signifies.
Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood
Burden of Schemes

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I've read somewhere that "drama" means internal conflict while"action" means external conflict. I realize nothing is this clear cut, that action protagonists often have internal problems also, but it seems like a fairly good guideline.[/nq]
What the **** it's just words, right? Sure.
[nq:1]The reason this comes up is that I'm thinking about what I like towrite and about some of the comments here (on MWSM) that seem to make an internal "problem" a mandatory starting point for a protagonist.[/nq]
A problem with what? Seems to me like a "problem" is a conflict between two things that can't coexist. I can't be poor, eithical and in possession of a nice car all at the same time. My "problem" is that my desires, my values and my reality don't all square with another. So if this character has a problem, what are the opposing forces? And who says there has to be more than one force within a person. Did the guys in First Blood, The Breakfast Club or Alien have internal problems? Were they all filled with internal conflict?
[nq:1]I like stories where the main character, living a fairly normal life,suddenly has the floor pulled out from under him/her. Some of my characters have internal problems, but many of them are just trying to regain their footing and get back to normal.[/nq]
Is the floor pulled out by chance or fiat? Or is it somehow the result of the character's choices? I think the shock is much more interesting when it's rooted in something the character did or didn't do. The guy in Witness had his world turned upside down because he asked too many questions. The guy in The Fugitive got sent to prison because he asked to many questions. The family in Mosquito Coast nearly got killed because they chose to stay with a maniac.. Always suffering as a result of their own choices. Always having to choose between backing off and pressing forward. Act II: Which will the character choose? Act III: Will it work?
[nq:1]Is a character "flaw" always necessary? It seems artificial to me torequire something like this when the protagonist is already having his/her family kidnapped or (more to the point for my stories) he/she turns the corner and steps into a new world.[/nq]
Did I not just explain this? I think the term "flaw" is dangerous because it connotes that a judgement has been made. That is, your "flaw" may be my nobility. You may see hatred of money as a flaw, but I may see love of money as a flaw. Instead, look at the "conflict," which stems from the mutual frustration caused by opposing forces. It's neutral as to which side it correct.

Action vs. Drama

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