Screenplay Tips # 10: Non-Linearity

Lucy V Hay
Non-Linearity is big news in the spec pile Id venture for every ten specs I
read, at least three will be non-linear. When I say non-linear, I mean the beginning,
middle, end will not necessarily be in *that* order. Famous non-linear movies
include Pulp Fiction, Memento, Twelve Monkeys, The Bourne Supremacy, Slumdog
Millionaire and Premonition. Non-linearity sometimes finds its way into TV specs
particularly of the supernatural genre usually in the form of flashback.
I love non-linearity. Done well, it can really add a new dimension to a story.
But unfortunately the majority of specs in the pile do not do non-linearity well.
Instead, the structure of the story becomes very confused, even hopelessly disjointed.
The reasons for this are four-fold:
1) Scribes are attempting to run before they can walk. Traditional three act
or sequence structure (or its variations) may seem deceptively straightforward, but if
they were, then there would NOT be literally thousands of specs out there that make
no sense. Add non-linearity as well and a scribe just totally blows a readers mind.
2) There is no throughline. A reader needs to know WHAT is present and
WHAT is past and WHY were travelling between them, else the different time
threads have no impact and everything that goes on just seems very muddled. A very
good example of a recent throughline is Slumdog Millionaire: Jamal is asked a
question in the game and then he remembers the answer and HOW he knows it the
game acts as an anchor. In Memento, the main plot goes BACKWARDS, but the
sub plot Sammy Jankis goes FORWARDS. In Premonition, every time Linda
wakes up, she has something new to go through regarding her ordeal of the week from
Hell a bit like Groundhog Day, only NOT funny. In short, there needs to be
something anything to ANCHOR people in the story, a REASON why its not in
the right order.
3) Flashbacks need their own structure. If you watch The Crow or The
Bourne Supremacy, you will notice the flashbacks all ADD UP together to form their
OWN story. Flashbacks dont always have to do this, but it really helps otherwise we
just dont know why were seeing these fragments of the past. Other times, flashbacks
need to answer something that is seen in the PRESENT, ie. the oldy but goody
flashback of someone REMEMBERING something that happened because they see
something similar in the present, a staple of crime drama, though this is not to be
mistaken for the version. CSI made the version popular ie. detectives rewrite
what they THINK happened and we actually see a character do something crimerelated, even if they didnt.
4) The story in question does not need to be non-linear. Whilst a scribe
should always do whatever they want, Im of the opinion there is a LOT of non-linear
specs in the pile that do not essentially NEED to be non-linear and could work FAR
BETTER in a traditional method of structure. If we consider all those uber-famous

non-linear movies, they all have a specific reason STORY-WISE for using nonlinearity; in comparison then, when I ask a scribe if their spec NEEDS to be, they
frequently cant answer why other than saying it would look cool. Yet we all
*know* story is king/queen, not looking cool.