Exercise: Does "Personal Connection to COP" Affect Positive Feelings About Future Creativity?

Introduction (provided to both Control Group and Randomly Selected Subject Group)

Lajos Egri believed all good dramatic writing hinges on people and their relationships, which serve to move the story forward and give it life. Egri wrote that character and specifically the changes caused by character were a key part of the human experience. And Egri thought that all dramatic writing required strong characters who were in conflict. Egri went on to say that all successful dramas shared another key trait: They all had a point, a central meaning, they were all organized around one central organizing principle that he called a premise. For Egri, the premise of any work of dramatic literature could be expressed in a single sentence that is a clear statement that suggests character, conflict and resolution.

Here's a recipe for writing a one sentence statement of premise:
1) The first part of what Egri called the premise should represent character. Usually if you think about the protagonist and his or her defining character trait, you have the beginning of a premise. So, if you know your protagonist's defining trait (e.g., honesty, dishonesty, selfishness, ruthlessness, ambition, false pride, or whatever else sets the protagonist into action), try writing a single sentence statement of theme that uses that defining trait as the subject.
2) The second part of the premise (typically the verb in the premise sentence) should indicate where the dramatic conflict will come from. Think about the protagonist’s character and his or her goal and what stands in the way of that goal. For example: If the protagonist is in love and insists on seeing his love, even though forbidden to see his beloved at the risk of death, the second part of the premise might be “defies” as in: Great love defies even death.
If the protagonist is a liar and is caught in a lie, the second part might connect the trait of dishonesty to the result: Dishonesty leads to exposure.
3) The third part of the C.O.P. (the object) should indicate the resolution of the story.

To practice Egri's ideas about writing a premise, today we're going to do an exercise that will require you to analyze the movie we've just seen in class that is thematically about "greed." In Egri's view, a filmmaker making a film about greed needs to know what he or she wants to say about greed. The filmmaker shouldn't just make a film "about greed." According to Egri, the filmmakers needs to know what direction the story will go. For example, a filmmaker might crystallize the premise of their story about greed from a vast world of one sentence statements of theme or premise:
Greed leads to destruction.
Greed leads to loss of love.
Greed leads to isolation.
Greed leads to humiliation.

Exercise:

Answer the following questions considering the movie we've just seen that is about "greed."
Who is the protagonist?
What is the protagonist's goal?
What stands in the way of achieving that goal (what is the source of conflict)?
Write a one-sentence statement of premise.

For our research:

Control group gets no further instruction.

Randomly Selected Subject group gets the additional instructions:

"Egri also recommended that the one sentence statement of theme should be something the creator personally believes.

Do you think the filmmaker of the film selected for today's exercise (a movie about greed) actually PERSONALLY believed the premise, or did they just make a movie about greed that didn't necessarily reflect their personal feelings about greed?

Do you agree with Egri that the best work will result when the premise statement summarizes the theme of the film AND the author's own feelings?

Does it make sense that your work as a filmmaker will be stronger when you PERSONALLY believe in your premise?"

Metric:

Before and after the exercise ask both the Control Group and the Randomly Selected Subjects to Respond to Prompts about Creativity (presented in a Likert Scale fashion). Note: we might actually use some prompts based on Beghetto (2006):

I am good at coming up with new ideas:

I have a lot of good ideas:

I have a good imagination:

In the future, I can write meaningful original stories:


Likert, R. (1932). A Technique for the Measurement of Attitudes, Archives of Psychology, No.140

Beghetto (2006)

see also, Kaufman and Baer (2004)