Is a B story required?

Question

While polishing my old script, it occured to me that I didn't have a strong B story. However, I just went through a list of the top box- office grossers, and some of them didn't seem to have a B story either, so now I'm confused.
For example, take "Forest Gump." Like my script, it basically starts with this boy and shows what happens to him as he grows up. No real B story, as I understand the concept.
"Thunderheart," on the other hand, seems to be about two things: (A) Val Kilmer as an FBI agent trying to solve a murder mystery on a reservation, and (B) the FBI agent coming to terms with his own Native American heritage.
Same thing with "The Fugitive." The A story: Tommy Lee Jones' character tracks down an escaped convict. The B story: Harrison Ford's character solves his wife's murder.
With "Signs," Mel Gibson's character deals with (A) an alien invasion, and (B) his wife's death.
So what's the deal? What's a B story, and does every good film have to have one?
Lois

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]While polishing my old script, it occured to me that I didn't have a strong B story. However, I just ... wife's death. So what's the deal? What's a B story, and does every good film have to have one? Lois[/nq]
A B story is just another name for subplot, I think. I totally disagree that a film must have
a subplot to be satisfying. If the A plot hauls along without meandering, then it can stand alone, like
The Fugitive.
W : )

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]While polishing my old script, it occured to me that I didn't have a strong B story. However, I just ... wife's death. So what's the deal? What's a B story, and does every good film have to have one? Lois[/nq]
Ultimately, in any narrative, there is only one "story" in the sense that a single narrative, in the traditional sense, is driven by a single problem. In the telling of the story, we may approach that problem from the perspective of protagonist and antagonist or from the perspective of multiple protagonists, or we may illuminate the protagonist's struggle to solve his problem by showing other secondary characters dealing with the same or comparable problems.

You might call those things "B stories" but in the end, there is really only just the one story, and the way in which you choose to tell it may be linear, staying largely with a single point of view or, depending on the demands of the story it may move around and show other points of view.
In something like The Seven Samurai, of course you have the overall story of the village and brigands, but you also have the stories within the story the villager hiding his daughter, Toshiro Mifune, the faux samurai, the young Samurai who's never been through the reality of an actual "war" but all of those are really simply explorations within the larger unified story.
Now, you should also know that this "A story/B story" lingo is frequently used in TV where you will often have, quite literally, two different stories running at the same time say in a cop show, you might have the "case" story that's going to be introduced and resolved during the hour, and in addition a "personal" story which is the "B story" that runs across and will be threaded through a number of episodes.
But that doesn't have anything to do with features.

NMS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]For example, take "Forest Gump." Like my script, it basically starts with this boy and shows what happens to him as he grows up. No real B story, as I understand the concept.[/nq]
Neal beat me to a couple of points (most particularly, that b-story is really a TV term these days) but I wanted to talk about this.

Forest Gump absolutely has subplots (or B-stories, if you will). The main plot is Forest's relationship with Jenny. The subplots unspool in different ways over the course of the movie, but they involve stuff like Gump's participation in Vietnam, with his shrimp company, etc, etc etc. (It's been a while since I've seen it, so I can't be too specific).

But it's important to recognize how tightly plotted each of the subplots is, and how they tie in to the main plot (Forest and Jenny). It's much more complicated than just showing him as he grows up. Specific stories are developed, and then we're shown how they relate to what really matters (Jenny) and then another story is developed, etc, etc, etc.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]So what's the deal? What's a B story, and does every good film have to have one?[/nq]
You've heard from the best, now here's the rest.
B story: you need one if you need one. It all comes down to exploring your theme, and telling a full story instead of a half story, and if you need another story arc to make it clear, and the story arc is outside your hero's purview, then you need a B story.
If you write a tight film, and the camera stays on the A-team every second, never straying to secondary characters, and there's no flab in the story and you've said what you want it to say... Well, you don't need a B story.

I'm trying to think of a story like this and, oddly, the one that keeps popping into mind is "Titanic". No, it's not a paragon of concise story-telling, but there's so much technical stuff going on in it that there really isn't space for Cameron and his crew to pursue a B-story line. You get a whiff of development with the Captain, the Architect, and you catch scenes where it's Rose and her fiance or Rose and her mom, but none of these really develop into an arcing B storylines. Aside from the framing device, it's mostly Jack 'n Rose from start to finish. Whether or not you like this film, it's full enough with a B story.
Then take "Little Children". I'm not entirely sure why the filmmakers decided they needed a full B story with the ex-cop and his interactions with the child molester, but for whatever reason they decided they did (actually, it felt to me like they just didn't want to kill certain darlings from the book). So you get the ex-cop's whole story arc, from hater to saver. I guess you could say that there's a theme of forbidden love here, and the filmmakers wanted to show an extra-marital affair as well as something even more illicit, as well as some of the complexities of 'bonding'. Anyway, it had a definite B story.
For me it always comes back to theme. You want to explore your theme as fully as you can within the reasonable constraints of a standard-length film. Different explorations take different vehicles.

Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood
Different pen strokes...
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Is a B story required?

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