Story is structure

What's the story? #4 - why storytelling will always be the key to building great brands.

"Story is structure" is the premise of the 1979 book 'Screenplay,' by Syd Field. It became a bible for generations of screenwriters – in how to tell a story on the screen. Or anywhere else, for that matter. 

He argued that every great screenplay should follow a specific three-act structure. To illustrate his point, he uses the screenplay of the classic 1974 movie, Chinatown, starring Jack Nicholson as LA private detective Jake Gittes. 

In a nutshell (spoiler alert):

Act 1 - Set-up: introduce the central characters and their world, then throw a spanner in the works. In Chinatown, Gittes is hired by a woman to investigate her husband, who she believes is having an affair. Then the husband is found dead.

Act 2 – Confrontation: the lead character(s) needs to figure out how to get the spanner out of the works, and faces a lot of challenges in doing so. It climaxes in the greatest – sometimes seemingly insurmountable - challenge. Gittes digs deeper and discovers a world of corruption, incest and murder, while at the same time falling in love with his client. Then discovers that her rich and powerful father is behind it all.

Act 3 – Resolution: the lead character takes a deep breath, bites their lip and embraces this challenge, and it all ends happily, or – like in Chinatown – unhappily ever after. To save his client (and lover) Jake has to get his her away from her father, and… 

‘Screenplay’ is not exactly up there with the discovery of penicillin, as Field didn’t discover anything. He simply took a model that stories have followed since cavemen first grunted them around a campfire. He then dissected it with surgical precision, to show how all the parts worked together.

Great advertising often follows this model too – whether it’s a Superbowl spot, Instagram reel or LinkedIn carousel.  Just look again at classic TV ads, like John Lewis Christmas ads, such as Monty the Penguin: https://lnkd.in/eciDcT_F Budweiser, Puppy Love: https://lnkd.in/eijSuWgn and Stella Artois, Last Orders https://lnkd.in/erYKKZ8n among many many more. 

And, before you ask, you can apply it to static ads too – print, OOH or digital: Set-up (the scene/context), Confrontation (the twist) and Resolution (the pay-off - campaign line or brand claim). 

Syd Field’s approach has often been criticised for being too “structured”, and for restricting creativity. Kind of painting by numbers. But even Picasso had to start somewhere. And plenty of great screenplays/movies don’t follow it. Ads neither. But, humans are hard-wired to connect with it – in Western society at least. 

However, what are rules made to be? 

Exactly. 

But, before you break them, first make sure you understand what they are. Jake Gittes fatal flaw was that he didn’t. As his colleague says to him at the end: “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.”