It may seem ludicrous for me to try to avoid "fiction" while writing what is basically just fiction. As mentioned at the end of last year, I am writing a screenplay based on my recently released book When Mexicans Could Play Ball and I now realize why most feature films based on real stories are rarely ever real history, and why most screenwriter don't even try to write real history. It is extremely hard. All genres of fiction have their dynamics, structure and goals and rarely do they have much to do with telling a true story. Screenwriting like other fiction has too many wings to fly and there are too many temptations to soar that most writers simply take off. In some ways, like post-modern history, the point is to express an idea or to tell a story and how you tell it is often more important than the story's facts.
It is hard to write history in history while respecting the screenwriting parameters and the same holds true for doing it in literature, plays, poetry, documentary film and novels. One would think that an exciting true story would have all the elements to have it told as "it occurred". Surely I thought so when seeking to make a real great story, with great characters, subplots and morals into a screenplay. I knew that there were techniques to master and I needed to be conscious that the camera was an important partner, and that producers, directors and actors all become co-writers in a screenplay, but I did not fully realized that the structure of the story would be "challenged" so dramatically or that I would need "other" elements to tell a story that seemed to have all of them already.
While the writing of history has changed much in the last few decades--or at least theoretically it has--there is still a need of some kind for a narrative, characters, and information that provides a particular time and space. And most of those have to be somewhat tangible in that we know they existed and they occurred in prescribed moments and places. Modern historians often take gigantic leaps but even they know that their "histories" must be "traceable" even if its with an approach different from theirs. In other words, we can't write about something that happened if it didn't happen, nor claim that it was in New York when it was in Chicago. There are tangibles and they must be respected no matter how creative we get at. There are "tangibles" in a screenplay but the delivery is even more important in the writing than the story itself or the facts. A good screenplay has a great story to tell but it neither has to be true or real. The point to be made is the most important aspect and that is why film has at times been as voyeuristic as any other form of writing. Voyeuristic history has never really worked.
The biggest challenge with writing for film is that time and space work differently on the screen and there is little of both. Screenwriters have to "abridge" years of events and personalities, most of which are much more complicated than can be depicted on screen in less than three hours. In abridging this information, screenwriters are "forced" to take shortcuts, collapse events, and "invent" bridges, be they fictional characters, monologues, or events, to make sure not only that the action moves forward but that by the end of the film we get "somewhere". This is probably why there are so few movies based on "a true story" that can be classified as good history.
Will I be able to do it? At this stage I'm not sure. I recognize that all genres have to be written within the context of their own parameters, and that I work with less space and time than I do when I write history books or even a novel. That has to sink in, but at the same time if I'm party to anything that says "based on a true story" I have the strong urge to keep it "true". I have to decide which is more important, to keep the the story "true" in a metaphysical sense or to keep it "accurate" or factual. I imagine that I will have to negotiate the demands of both the genre and my standards as a historian. But then, the likelihood of keeping the story as I write it once the director, producer, screenwriters get it (fingers crossed) is probably pretty slim. So, I will keep trying to avoid as much fiction as I can while I write in what is a genre of fiction. Sounds silly? Probably is, but I am both a writer and a historian and the tension will always be there.
