Every event implied by the previous description,
including every line of code Mark must write, every
gathering happening across campus, every student
who plays Facemash, every relative hotness vote
they cast, and every roommate cheering them on
or reacting with disgust are part of that story.
The filmmakers use plotto tell us that story. We
can’t possibly see every line of code, every game of
Facemash, every campus activity interrupted and
enlivened by the new Internet sensation. So spe-
cific events and elements are selected and ordered
to present the cause and effect chain of events that
enables the audience to experience and understand
the narrative. Our engagement with the story on-
screen is enhanced by the nondiegetic elements the
plot layers onto this specific sequence of selected
events, including a pulsating musical score and
occasional titles announcing the time as the phe-
nomenon spreads.
And, of course, the story and the plot overlap.
Every event explicitly presented on-screen, and
every diegetic sound generated by those events,
qualifies as both story andplot.
The relationship between plot and story is
important to filmmakers and to the audience. From
the filmmaker’s perspective, the story exists as a
precondition for the plot, and the filmmaker must
understand what story is being told before going
through the difficult job of selecting events to show
on-screen and determining the order in which they
will be presented. For us as viewers, the story is an
abstraction—a construct—that we piece together
as the elements of the plot unfold before us on-
screen, and our impressions about the story often
shift and adjust throughout the movie as more of
the plot is revealed. The plots of some movies—clas-
sic murder mysteries, for example—lead us to an
unambiguous sense of the story by the time they are
done. Other movies’ plots reveal very little about the
causal relationships among narrative events, thus
leaving us to puzzle over those connections, to con-
struct the story ourselves. As you view movies more
critically and analytically, pay attention not only to
the story as you have inferred it, but also to how it
was conveyed through its plot. Understanding this
basic distinction will help you appreciate and ana-
lyze the overall form of the movie more perceptively.
To picture the relationship between plot and
story slightly differently, and to become more
aware of the deliberate ways in which filmmakers
construct plots from stories, you might watch a
number of different movies that tell a story with
which you are familiar—for example, Walt Disney’s
Cinderella(1950; screenwriters: Ken Anderson et
al.), Frank Tashlin’s Cinderfella (1960, starring
Jerry Lewis; screenwriter: Tashlin), Garry Mar-
shall’s Pretty Woman(1990, starring Julia Roberts;
screenwriter: J. F. Lawton), Andy Tennant’s Ever
After(1998, starring Drew Barrymore; screenwrit-
ers: Susannah Grant, Tennant, and Rick Parks),
and John Pasquin’s Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and
Fabulous(2005, starring Sandra Bullock; screen-
writers: Marc Lawrence, Katie Ford, and Caryn
Lucas)—all of which rely on the basic story struc-
ture of the well-known fairy tale. This sort of criti-
cal comparison will enable you to see more clearly
how the plots differ, how the formal decisions made
by the filmmakers have shaped those differences,
and how the overall form of each movie alters your
perception of the underlying story. When James
Cameron planned to make a movie about the sink-
ing of the HMS Titanic, he had to contend with the
fact that there were already three feature films on
the subject, as well as numerous television movies
and documentaries. Moreover, everyone knew the
story. So he created a narrative structure that was
based on a backstory, a fictional history behind the
situation extant at the start of the main story: the
story of Rose Calvert’s diamond. That device, as
well as a powerful romantic story and astonishing
special effects, made his Titanic(1997) one of the
greatest box-office hits in history.
Through plot, screenwriters and directors can
provide structure to stories and guide (if not con-
trol) viewers’ emotional responses. In fact, a partic-
ular plot may be little more than a sequence of
devices for arousing predictable responses of con-
cern and excitement in audiences. We accept such
a plot because we know it will lead to the resolution
of conflicts, mysteries, and frustrations in the story.
Literary adaptations have inspired the movies
since they were invented and remain a vital source
of movie narratives. For example, over 250
movies—many of them masterpieces in their ownELEMENTS OF NARRATIVE 143