Fact, Film and Fiction: The Timeline
Blake Snyder talks about how to structure a film to guide the anticipation of a viewer, in his book on scriptwriting called Save the Cat. Snyder argues that the timeline of a film should have a certain order of events, like the ‘inciting incident’ in the first quarter of the film, ‘false victory’ in the middle of the film, ‘all is lost’ in the last quarter of the film, and ending with a ‘high tower surprise’. Snyder has developed an elaborate system with fifteen beats in the logline of the film. Whether the story is based on true events or completely imaginary, how the narrative is composed with rules reminiscent of a harmonious musical composition, will determine if you can retain the attention of the reader or not. The same is true with creative non-fiction. How you introduce a certain event and at what point in the story and the pacing will determine whether the narrative will be interesting for the reader or not.
In the summer of 2024, some of you might have noticed a social media uproar after the financial success of a Malayalam film based on true life and the aspersion of how the protagonist of the true life story was exploited by the narrators. As the Malayalam film Aadujeevitham (The Goat Life), based on Bennyamin’s eponymous Malayalam novel, garnered financial success, there has been social media uproar about the equity of financial distribution of profits, among the stakeholders of the story. The story is based on the true life experience of Najeeb, a Malayali man who was misled by a Bedouin from the arrival terminal of an airport in an Arabian city, to work as a goatherd in the desert, and the horrid experiences Najeeb faced, his survival in the desert and eventual escape.
Some people on social media claim that Najeeb, whose true life experiences formed the basis of the narrative, in the novel as well as the film, is an equal stakeholder in the film”s financial success. The social media warlords think that Bennyamin the novelist, and Blessy the filmmaker exploited Najeeb, in choosing to tell his story, without sufficiently remunerating him financially. But Najeeb appeared in front of the media in response to the social media uproar and confided that he has always been grateful to Bennyamin and Blessy for bringing out his story, for the people to read it and to see it on screen.
The social media controversy has been sparked by the fact that the film is a financial success. If the film was a box office failure, I don’t think anyone would have argued that Najeeb is liable for the financial failure of the film. Bennyamin, as the one who interlaced the fabric of the storyline, came up with a justification on social media that the novel was not exclusively set on the experiences of Najeeb, but was strung together based on the experiences of many people who faced similar hardships.
A complex tripartite relationship between fiction, film and fact has arisen here. The social media warriors raised the ethical issue, that the film and the fiction are based on facts, implying that the film revenue had to be shared with Najeeb as the victim or the witness of the fact. This question can be more acute in the context of creative non-fiction. In my opinion, the narrator is not in any way liable to the protagonist or the witness. The evangelical logic is misplaced when you ask how the creative non-fiction writer is helping the witness. On the other hand, it is the witness who helps the narrator with facts to narrate it for the making of the artwork.
In the case of creative non-fiction, this tension between fact and narration demands urgent attention, as the narrative is closer to reality, without camouflages, unlike in fiction. The faculty of imagination which is a necessary part of fiction is absent in non-fiction. How can one narrate non-fiction with the same anticipation and excitement as the narrative in fiction? John McPhee who is an exemplar of the artistic genre of creative non-fiction, thinks that the non-fiction narrator should play around with the timeline. Even when you are writing the factual reality most truthfully, you should decide at what point in the narrative you will reveal certain events or surprises. The narrative timeline is totally up to you as a creative non-fiction writer.
In a story in The New Yorker titled The Encircled River, John McPhee writes about his experience of having encountered a grizzly bear during a journey along a river. The story ends with the encounter with the bear and survival. But, the actual encounter with the bear was right at the beginning of the journey, but McPhee held it back, to be revealed at the end of the non-fiction narrative. McPhee reveals his process of structuring creative non-fiction, in a book called Draft No. 4.
Coming back to Bennyamin’s Aadujeevitham, a non-linear narrative structure has been employed, to generate anticipation in the mind of the reader. The novel starts with a scene in which Najeeb’s identity is ascertained by a Bedouin taskmaster, Najeeb’s former employer or slave owner, in a prison. Throughout the narrative of the novel, the reader is addicted to two anxieties. Will Najeeb survive the desert? Now that Najeeb’s former employer has recognized him, will he be dragged back to the goatherd life that resembled hell, in the desert? The play with the timeline changed the narrative for the better and created anxiety in the reader. You can surmise that drama can be added to creative non-fiction if it is composed in a non-linear manner.
Latter-Day Herod And Documenta Kassel
(A Novel Way is a series by John Xaviers Arackal which is about reading contemporary life through books, especially novels. John Xaviers Arackal is an arts professional who is serving as a Programme Officer of the Arts Practice programme at the India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore.)
