One of the issues I have with Green Zone is the fact that it makes a complex situation too neat. In its effort to get across a political point — that troops on the ground were deluded about WMDs with tragic consequences — scriptwriter Brian Helgeland whittles off the edges of an organic situation seething with complexities and ploughs a linear story through the middle of what’s left. Compare and contrast with The Hurt Locker, scripted by Mark Boal, which is ripe with the kind of detail that could only come from someone who’s immersed themselves in the realities of America’s presence in Iraq. Which isn’t to say that Helgeland’s script is free of such complications — but his insistence on getting a point across makes the film weaker than its Oscar winning peer.

I’m reminded of what happened when Africa was mapped. The straight lines on the map of the continent bear no relation to any geographical or social realities in the continent itself. Rather, the territory was literally carved up by chaps back in London looking to parcel the land into manageable chunks. Never mind that much of Africa traditionally works along tribal lines, where different cultures co-exist in the same territory, and there are rivalries and allegiances between them. What mattered was imposing a British model of governance, which to this day continues to be responsible for some of Africa’s problems.

As with Africa, so with the territory of the imagination. We might start out with ideas of doing a tale that has such a point to make, certain beats to reach, a specific conclusion to get to. But in the actual writing of that story, I’d almost view it as a failure if it hasn’t grown beyond the scope of that initial treatment into something bigger, better, and ultimately other than what was initially conceived. To expect otherwise is to have a reductionist view of the writing process, and that would be — for want of a more suitable technical term — bloody silly.

I’m writing a screenplay at the moment and continue to be surprised and delighted at the differences between what I’d written in the treatment and what I’m writing in the script itself. And it’s a liberating experience. I’ve discovered a vein of comedy in one character I hadn’t anticipated that helps leaven what could otherwise threaten to be ponderous. I’ve realised that a lot of the opening material works better as a continuous sequence, which presented particular technical challenges that were a worthwhile struggle to take on. I’ve found that one sequence I breezed over in the treatment is a key beat in the story, and found a way to deal with it using sound and image rather than resorting to dialogue. All of these challenges were implicit in the material, but were only fully realised in the moment of writing.

The reason for this is the distinction between what Alan Moore calls ‘high altitude mapping’ — that phase of writing in which ideas assemble and coalesce into themes, image systems, and so forth — and the actual matter of writing the script word-by-word. In the first, you’re laying out the pieces in a dissociated way, which is a different experience from the first person perspective you get writing the setences sequentially. There’s yet another layer of perceptions to be experienced if you arrange a script reading (ideally with actors), and discover what it’s like to inhabit the viewpoint of just one character. That can be very instructive; you’ll discover times when your character wants to speak when they don’t at the moment, other times when they need to say something other than what’s written for them, and so on.

None of this should really be a surprise. After all, a screenplay is an immensely complicated dance between different viewpoints. Sometimes the audience is experiencing situations from the perspective of a protagonist. Then of an unrelated character. Then a neutral stance might be taken on as a new location comes into view. The cumulative effect is what makes a story distinctive. And, in my experience, I tend to trust it when that gives rise to stories which are less organised and linear than the writer had originally envisaged. Otherwise, you might as well stop at treatment stage, admitting that you’re going to have no further original thoughts about the story.