Jeff Kitchen, Author/Screenwriter/Instructor: These 36 dramatic situations are every element
that is in any story anywhere and a lot of people said that's insane.
I could come up with way more and they tried to come up with a list and they couldn't even
get to 24.
They were like actually it's better than I thought.
Film Courage: Jeff can you give us an overview of the 36 dramatic situations?
Jeff: The 36 dramatic situations is really a brainstorming tool.
It works with elements that are common in storytelling like madness, disaster, ambition,
those types of things.
It was created by an Italian playwright named Carlo Gozzi in the 1700s and it was endorsed
by Gerta and Schiller and on the strength of those endorsements that hung around for
about 150 years until a guy named George Poulty turned it into a book in 1916. and then it
picked up some steam again but it's it's unknown by many people and i've met a lot of people
who said they had the book but could never make heads or tails out of it it's it's basically
what Gozzi said was that all stories consist of these basic 36 human emotional conflicts
and there are things like ambition madness conflict with a god the necessity of sacrificing
loved ones and it's very similar in nature to the periodic table of elements in chemistry
where you know carbon hydrogen all that stuff so with the periodic table of elements you
could describe anything in this room quite completely from one point of view like this
table is carbon hydrogen oxygen whatever all the elements that are in it you can describe
it quite completely from that one point of view that's only one point of view but that's
getting right at the elements that are in it and in storytelling it's the same thing
where you can say okay this story has madness conflict with a god vengeance taken for kindred
upon kindred and there's different so different active elements in any given story which is
useful because it helps you when you're starting out with a story where you can like for instance
let's look at your derrick story idea again so we'd be looking at what would be let me
just get my book here because
it's easy to go down the one sheet oh great for these so here's a list of the here's a
list of the 36 dramatic situations just listed simply so looking at it in terms of Derek's
story so deliverance rescuing or being rescued crime pursued by vengeance pursuit disaster
revolt daring enterprise the enigma the riddle or the mystery obtaining madness he may be
like losing his mind as being pressed into this dilemma into like what do I do here i'm
in love with her she's offering me a life of adventure but I have to betray my most
core values but are those core values based on something that were real or was I snookered
into guarding criminals I don't know i'm losing my mind these are all just story possibilities
some of it is like some of what I was doing were elements that are already active in the
story idea before it's even touched you want to see what you've got it's like taking inventory
like what are the elements that are already active in it and there may be a lot more than
you thought there were which is good self-sacrifice for an ideal all sacrificed for a passion
the necessity of sacrificing loved ones is gonna have to give her up rivalry of superior
and inferior that's always a good one because it's so subjective of like who's the superior
and who's the inferior and it's completely point of view sensitive and it can even flicker
back and forth of who has the upper hand in any given situation discovery of the dishonor
of a loved one if he's finding out that she is you know a criminal obstacles to love is
very active in this story but sit before it's even touched and enemy loved falling in love
with someone who turns out to be your enemy or enemy love can be fascination with an enemy
or coming to understand your enemy or falling in love with your enemy that kind of thing
ambition is very central in this story because Derek is stuck in this rut and he has ambitions
for more but he doesn't know how to get there and she may awaken ambition in him or he may
have a curious lack of ambition like why don't I care that i'm stuck in this rut or why do
I care that she's dragging me down this weird road so it can be the very absence of one
of these situations like you if you look at a character's ambition it may be that their
ambition is wildly out of proportion and getting them in trouble or they could have utterly
no ambition which is out of proportion for a given situation it's curious i'm like why
does this person genuinely not care which way they go is so it's like it can be the
presence or absence of these things too that can be suggestive these are really suggestive
elements for brainstorming so you can see that some of what i'm doing here is as i'm
going down the list and i'm thinking about this story it's helping with the what if i'm
seeing what is already there before the story was ever even touched the elements that it
showed up with and what if his ambition to forge a wildly new life for himself with her
is something that explodes in him like he's realizing how dead his life had been before
because he was just even though he was dissatisfied with the job in many ways he was still just
nose to the grindstone numb plotting ahead and he's like how did I ever live like that
for years and years I couldn't go back to another second of that i'd blow my brains
out it's like yeah she's trouble but I can't go back to nothing I can't go back to an emotional
vacuum anymore I kind of stuffed myself into that to forge ahead but I don't fit in that
room anymore
conflict with a god that's always interesting because it doesn't necessarily have to have
any kind of connotation any kind of religious connotation it conflict with god suggests
a religious connotation but it's just any time there's something going up against a
bigger power it could be you versus the neighborhood bully it could be trying to get you know something
done against city hall so that it's these are very flexible the less literally you take
these the more actual use you can make make of them so you want to have a poetic or metaphoric
frame of mind as you look at these you don't want to be stuck with their actual definitions
at all if you look at one of these things even if it's not a valid chain of logic that
you look at one of these things and it gives you 10 ideas those 10 ideas are what's important
this is just a catalyst in chemistry a catalyst is something that you throw into a chemical
mix and it creates a reaction even though the original catalyst stays the same so even
if this triggers makes you think of something that happened to you as a kid which makes
you think of a weird possibility for your story which triggers dynamic possibilities
for the ending you've been stuck on it doesn't matter how this triggered a chain of thought
that got you there their job is to throw gasoline on the fire and trigger stuff and that's that's
its only function really it's just a brainstorming tool it's just to expose you to the elements
that are already active in your story even if you hadn't noticed that already and to
expose you to possibilities that you wouldn't have thought of in 20 lifetimes things that
you never would never have occurred to you that all of a sudden are like wow that could
really tweak my third act i've been dying for something like this you know it's just
like it's it's throwing hand grenades into your story idea
erroneous judgment is very central in this story look how big it is before you touch
anything because he's like he's looking at her going am I crazy or is she like the most
exciting thing in the history of mankind or am I like ready for a freaking straight jacket
and like her too you know it's like I don't even know which way my head screwed on anymore
and like the things that i'm contemplating doing with her and overturning my job and
committing treason and blah blah I was like I don't know whether to shoot myself or run
off with her and have 20 kids like I don't know what i'm thinking anymore recovery of
a lost one is he going to get his own sense of self back loss of loved ones is he going
to lose her is he losing himself is he losing his sense of honor so these are like
you want to have a really flexible frame of mind when you look at them because you'll
get so much more out of them
it's like the wrench doesn't have to fit the bolt head exactly if it'll turn it you know
even if it kind of fits and it'll turn it that's all you need you're just trying to
advance your story or to see more deeply into it because you're penetrating into the inner
elements that constitute your story this tool is really useful when you're starting a story
from scratch because say you're riding on a bus and you hear the two people in front
of you talking and it's a whacked out conversation and you're kind of listening in because it's
so interesting and one of them says something and you're like that would make an amazing
screenplay holy crap you rush home and you're like boom oh I gotta you just go on a mile
a minute that's a great time to go to the 36 dramatic situations because you're exploding
with ideas and if you look down the list of the 36 you'd be like that's already in there
that's already in there I didn't know that's in there but boy is that potent and could
that be in there that would really whack it out in a completely dangerous way or make
it more hilarious or whatever the story is going it's like god that is pure dynamite
and it's like your head's already exploding with ideas and you're tossing explosive elements
you're playing mad scientist with explosive elements and you may hit one of them and you're
like that can't be or could it you'd be like that's scary that's truly terrifying I i don't
even dare think then but you can't get away from me you're like
okay well what if I did do that you're like so it may trigger 100 ideas it's like one
of them can give you a cascade of ideas like you can barely write them all down you're
already cascading with ideas and this is throwing gasoline on the fire you're throwing explosive
elements into the mix playing what if and so if that one idea gives you 10 ideas and
each of those gives you 10 ideas get all that stuff down on paper that's what's important
that thing doesn't mean anything it just got you thinking so it's a extremely valuable
brainstorming tool in part because you're being exposed to one complete spectrum of
ideas because where the idea originally came from Gozzi said this these 36 dramatic situations
are every element that is in any story anywhere and a lot of people said that's insane I could
come up with way more and they tried to come up with a list and they couldn't even get
to 24.
they were like actually it's better than I thought and then Schiller and Gerta both said
this is amazing and so it just hung around and it's it's just a tool it's just one complete
spectrum of ideas that you can whip out and use to trigger ideas for your story and to
see elements in it that you hadn't noticed so that you're going wow this idea was deeper
and more complex than I thought at first glance there's more going on there than I noticed
at first which is great because then you've got better material you've got more to work
with if you're doing a tv series you're like exploding with seasons and you know cliffhangers
and characters these things can suggest characters they can suggest resolution they can complicate
dilemmas but it's just one complete spectrum of possible ideas so it's not the be-all and
end-all it's not the only place to look for story ideas it's just one tool and not only
is it useful when you're starting out on an idea but it's useful to take a quick run through
the one sheet every now and then just like part way through your script you may go back
and look through it and go a crime pursued by vengeance that's emerging as a much more
substantial aspect of the story and I hadn't really thought it through yet but so it can
it can just shake things loose or help you solve things you've been wrestling with or
expose you to possibilities that might never have occurred to you or help you see that
this element is very active in the story if you hadn't noticed it yet and then when you
get stuck at different parts of the story where you're really stuck on your third act
or something going back through it can shake things loose clarify things open up possibilities
help you see things that are in it that you hadn't noticed before that kind of thing so
it's a it's really an explosive brainstorming tool and you want to have broad flexibility
with it a real sense of play not feel trapped by any of it it doesn't dictate anything to
you it doesn't say this has to be in there and even if at the beginning of the story
you were like wow ambition is right at the nucleus of this story by the time you've worked
on it for a while you may come back and look at it again and be like ambition doesn't even
matter anymore it's like I thought that was huge but it's grown and changed so much so
you're not it's it's just
it's just like getting blown in the air by explosives at certain points in the development
process to shake things loose trigger ideas help crystallize things clarify things simplify
things complicate things and that's all part and parcel of the normal storytelling process
anyway this is just some good chemicals to throw in there that are like fertilizer or
clarifying agents or complicators or clarifiers so you see it in super clarity all of a sudden
like it can take a while spend time with the story for quite a while before you get true
clarity with it like Sydney Pollock when they were working on Tootsie spent a long time
trying to figure out what the story's really about and it wasn't until it finally dawned
on him that becoming a woman made a man out of Michael Dorsey that all of a sudden it
like crystallizes like ah now I know in really simple terms that's what the story is about
and he said I went back and looked at every scene and like how does this scene work with
clarify amplify solidify the idea that becoming a woman makes a man out of Michael Dorsey
and he said it helped a lot in terms of working with the crew working with the actors his
own understanding of it and he said it doesn't mean the story is going to be good it just
means that I know what it's about that helps me so much as a director.
Questions for the Viewers:
Are you familiar with the 36 dramatic situations and do you use them when you are developing
a story?