Joi Foley School Of Film: Screenwriting 101.
'Whose story is it' is not so much a rule of screenwriting as it is a requirement. It's a technical thing, like a building's foundation, or ingredients in a recipe. Determining whose story it is gives you, the writer, the ability to focus every element of the story, and it gives the director (who could be you or someone else) the ability to create appropriate and useful shots. It's a filter through which you can make clear decisions about what is relevant to the story, and what is not.
It's not related to HOW you write your story, as in, if you use voiceover, metaphor, flashbacks, dialogue, etc. No matter whose story it is, you can use any number of conventions any way you please, and they can be extremely effective.
I don't know if you've seen it (but if you haven't, you should), but the film Life Is Beautiful is a good example of this. In that film, it is Roberto Benigni's character's story, but at the end, his son has a voiceover giving the story's coda. This is acceptable because the voiceover serves a purpose, and it's a logical voiceover. The son, who was a major character and caused all of Benigni's actions for most of the film, is telling us what happened later, and how he feels about his father.
In Goddess, you can have Dirt give a voiceover at the beginning, but you either have to change what the voiceover's about, or you have to change the rest of the film. If it is Sean's story, then the voiceover cannot just be about Dirt and her brother, it has to be about or include Sean, or it has to not be about anyone specific (ie - she could say something universal, like 'we all have memories from our childhood of imaginary worlds we created...', or she can set up the place & time, like 'it's been a hard few years in our town, with lots of unemployment, businesses closing down, people moving away...', etc.). What she says has to be put through the 'Sean' filter- how is each line of the VO relevant to Sean's story?
For example, the whole story of Edward Scissorhands is framed by VO of Winona Ryder telling her granddaughter why it snows in their little California town. It's Edward Scissorhands' story through and through. Ryder's character is important, but we don't see her as often as we see Dianne Wiest's (her mother) character. Yet, she is telling the story.
Because, again, you can use any conventions you like, but knowing whose story it is helps you decide which convention or conventions will work best. Edward Scissorhands could not tell the story himself, because he's not that kind of character, so the writer chose a character that could. It had to be Ryder's character, as opposed to one of the neighbours or her little brother or a documentary film crew, in order for all the elements and scenes in the story to be relevant to Edward Scissorhands.
It's also not about who your protagonist is. Whose story it is and who your protagonist is can be two different characters. As a writer, you would then use whose story it is to develop your protagonist. This is why you can have multiple protagonists (as you do in Goddess), but it can never be more than one person's story.
A good example of this is the movie Psycho. The protagonist completely switches in the middle of the movie to multi-protagonists. The story is not theirs, however; it's Norman Bates'. How each of the many protagonists is seen, how they develop, what they say when they speak, etc., is all decided upon based on what will create and further Bates' story, as well as keep the plot cohesive. Multi-protags are possible in Psycho because the story is just one person's.
Hitchcock then created shots that were actually from Bates' point of view, which of course led to one of the most iconic sequences in film history. However, whose story it is is not about point of view. Hitchcock used POV as a convention; it was HOW he wrote the story, and it was what he, as the director, used to create atmosphere. In the case of Psycho, whose story it is lent itself very readily to a direct point of view, but in other films, whose story it is, and whose POV you see things from are different.
Again, look at The Goonies. As we discussed, The Goonies is Mikey's story, but, like the second half of Psycho, it has multiple protagonists. The movie isn't written or shot expressly from Mikey's point of view, but it is Mikey's story because every element and every moment are relevant to telling a story about Mikey. Had it been Chunk's story, for example, the amount of time spent with Chunk would have increased, and the amount of time spent underground with the other kids would have decreased. When we decrease the time with the other Goonies, whole scenes become irrelevant. As a kid, my favourite part of the movie was the scene when Troy gets shot off of the toilet in the country club bathroom because the Goonies are banging on the pipes in an effort to call for help. If it was Chunk's story, that scene would be completely cut because we wouldn't be following the action underground as closely. What would replace that scene would most likely be more time with the Fratellis, as they move the bodies, as they argue, as they think about how to make Chunk tell them where the other kids are, etc.
When I was learning 35mm, one of my teachers gave us this good, albeit cryptic, tip about filmmaking: There are a million right ways to do something in film, but only one wrong way. I think that's really the core of this discussion. When you know whose story it is, you can do anything you want to craft that story and that film, and it will be a good film. If you ignore that every movie is one person's story, not matter what you write, the movie won't be good.
It's not related to HOW you write your story, as in, if you use voiceover, metaphor, flashbacks, dialogue, etc. No matter whose story it is, you can use any number of conventions any way you please, and they can be extremely effective.
I don't know if you've seen it (but if you haven't, you should), but the film Life Is Beautiful is a good example of this. In that film, it is Roberto Benigni's character's story, but at the end, his son has a voiceover giving the story's coda. This is acceptable because the voiceover serves a purpose, and it's a logical voiceover. The son, who was a major character and caused all of Benigni's actions for most of the film, is telling us what happened later, and how he feels about his father.
In Goddess, you can have Dirt give a voiceover at the beginning, but you either have to change what the voiceover's about, or you have to change the rest of the film. If it is Sean's story, then the voiceover cannot just be about Dirt and her brother, it has to be about or include Sean, or it has to not be about anyone specific (ie - she could say something universal, like 'we all have memories from our childhood of imaginary worlds we created...', or she can set up the place & time, like 'it's been a hard few years in our town, with lots of unemployment, businesses closing down, people moving away...', etc.). What she says has to be put through the 'Sean' filter- how is each line of the VO relevant to Sean's story?
For example, the whole story of Edward Scissorhands is framed by VO of Winona Ryder telling her granddaughter why it snows in their little California town. It's Edward Scissorhands' story through and through. Ryder's character is important, but we don't see her as often as we see Dianne Wiest's (her mother) character. Yet, she is telling the story.
Because, again, you can use any conventions you like, but knowing whose story it is helps you decide which convention or conventions will work best. Edward Scissorhands could not tell the story himself, because he's not that kind of character, so the writer chose a character that could. It had to be Ryder's character, as opposed to one of the neighbours or her little brother or a documentary film crew, in order for all the elements and scenes in the story to be relevant to Edward Scissorhands.
It's also not about who your protagonist is. Whose story it is and who your protagonist is can be two different characters. As a writer, you would then use whose story it is to develop your protagonist. This is why you can have multiple protagonists (as you do in Goddess), but it can never be more than one person's story.
A good example of this is the movie Psycho. The protagonist completely switches in the middle of the movie to multi-protagonists. The story is not theirs, however; it's Norman Bates'. How each of the many protagonists is seen, how they develop, what they say when they speak, etc., is all decided upon based on what will create and further Bates' story, as well as keep the plot cohesive. Multi-protags are possible in Psycho because the story is just one person's.
Hitchcock then created shots that were actually from Bates' point of view, which of course led to one of the most iconic sequences in film history. However, whose story it is is not about point of view. Hitchcock used POV as a convention; it was HOW he wrote the story, and it was what he, as the director, used to create atmosphere. In the case of Psycho, whose story it is lent itself very readily to a direct point of view, but in other films, whose story it is, and whose POV you see things from are different.
Again, look at The Goonies. As we discussed, The Goonies is Mikey's story, but, like the second half of Psycho, it has multiple protagonists. The movie isn't written or shot expressly from Mikey's point of view, but it is Mikey's story because every element and every moment are relevant to telling a story about Mikey. Had it been Chunk's story, for example, the amount of time spent with Chunk would have increased, and the amount of time spent underground with the other kids would have decreased. When we decrease the time with the other Goonies, whole scenes become irrelevant. As a kid, my favourite part of the movie was the scene when Troy gets shot off of the toilet in the country club bathroom because the Goonies are banging on the pipes in an effort to call for help. If it was Chunk's story, that scene would be completely cut because we wouldn't be following the action underground as closely. What would replace that scene would most likely be more time with the Fratellis, as they move the bodies, as they argue, as they think about how to make Chunk tell them where the other kids are, etc.
When I was learning 35mm, one of my teachers gave us this good, albeit cryptic, tip about filmmaking: There are a million right ways to do something in film, but only one wrong way. I think that's really the core of this discussion. When you know whose story it is, you can do anything you want to craft that story and that film, and it will be a good film. If you ignore that every movie is one person's story, not matter what you write, the movie won't be good.