writing principles

A few guiding principles behind these stories . 

Scenarios have to deal with identity; potentiality; life as opposed to narration; creating something (art / love / fate) beyond the mere logic of getting born – existing - and dying. Stories fundamentally oppose existentialism to predestination i.e how can the characters shape their destinies ...or how do they have to submit to pre-ordained logic?

The resort to double-plots reciprocates the experience of film spectators witnessing an invented plot: it places boxes within boxes. I'm not too keen on doppelgangers though: this may be too contrived, a bit of a gimmick.

On narration. It can be used to go beyond simple plots, and instead convey the experiential idea of the world as multi-directional, complex. Simultaneous (and ultimately revealed to be related) happenings. Multiplicity cf. "the thin red line” where the film keeps cutting to naturalistic close-ups smack in the middle of the apparent main plot (the human war going on). This deeply moving stance by Malick could be described as a stand against Tarantino’s gimmick of trivial interludes designed to illustrate how “cool” his characters are.

It is more interesting to frame a plot element -such as a murder- within a context, showing how
1) it derives from a succession of conditions
2) it affects the rest of the characters
3) it doesn't affect other, unrelated elements that go on. You could for instance cut to workers on their lunch-breaks catching the sun in a car-park, utterly oblivious to what is happening behind the trees.

Sense of thriving community to reposition the (would-be main) plot within a more complex -and therefore not necessarily relevant- setting (cf. the "Nena" synopsis).

The danger with a certain school of story-telling is that it conceives and presents every detail as necessarily meaningful and relevant -as if everything featured during the course of the narration has to complete the puzzle. Take the prime example of “Hot Fuzz”. I found it so methodically crafted I had no problem second-guessing the scenes that were to follow and its ultimate resolution. That is to say, “if character “A” does this at this stage, you can bet he will do that later on.”

Real life is not like that. The world out there could not care less what happens to us; it only takes notice when our personal story has interpersonal consequences. It is our subjectivity that assigns importance to our personal fate. More often than not, the rest of the world is by and large unaffected and indifferent.
In this respect, it may be more realistic to include random, unrelated interludes that don’t necessarily have to fit within the plot structure –and that hint at the heterogeneous nature of life or the world.

In a diegetic (i.e. plot-related) perspective, red herrings are also great fun: they signal to viewers that not everything is necessarily what it seems and must be interpreted in a single way. Bear in mind that unpredictability is precisely the essence of joke punch-lines.  

Structuring a story gives an edge to details.

The rearrangement of the narration, if done in a non-conventional manner, also serves as a message in itself: for instance starting with a result and showing the story as a flash-back, how we came to the establishing “first” scene. This can convey the sense of ineluctability, of the character’s impotence. On the other hand, adopting a conventional chronological progression could be said to promote existentialism i.e. your actions define you. (On the same subject, one could also reflect on how some religions perceive human lives as predestined...)

Narration as a distorted portrayal of reality: satire, fantasy...

The journalist reports,
the artist expresses,
the ideologue conveys.