翻译练习：剧情驱动与角色驱动

罗伯特·麦基老师在中国编剧界有着举足轻重的地位，当初我去南锣鼓巷游玩，在那里的一间小书店一进门最为显要的位置上，就放着他老人家的那本编剧圣经《故事》。这其实是一个系列，后面他还写了一本书叫《对白》。去年，麦老又出了一本新书叫《角色》。

《角色》目前还没有简体中文版，我试着翻译一下其中讲角色驱动和剧情驱动的章节，这对于无论是编剧、导演还是普通观众大概都有学习和思考价值。看完之后，也许在剧本评审会或者是剧情讨论中，大家可以少吵一点罗圈架。

《亚里士多德之辩---角色对剧情》

（Aristotle debate, Plot vs. Character）

来自《角色》第一部分第二章

剧情驱动和人物驱动这两个词是电影评论家在 20 世纪中期发明的，用来区别好莱坞电影和欧洲电影。或者以他们的视角来看，用于区分大众娱乐和艺术精品。不久，书评人开始以类似的方式区分严肃文学与畅销书。再比如外百老汇最初是百老汇的试验场，但到了 20 世纪 60 年代，纽约戏剧界沿着第四十二街划分了一条艺术与金钱之间的界限。这种模式在伦敦西区的传统舞台和边缘地带的先锋派之间的英国戏剧中重现。再过几年，美国电视分为付费订阅和带广告的免费节目两类，于是流媒体为成人观众提供的角色驱动艺术作品，对上了商业电视网为家庭观众提供的情节驱动娱乐节目。

The terms plot-driven and character-driven were invented by film critics in the mid-twentieth century to mark the difference between Hollywood movies and European cinema—or in their view, between mass entertainment and artistic sophistication. Soon after, book reviewers began writing in a similar vein about literary novels versus best sellers. Off-Broadway originally served as a proving ground for Broadway, but in the 1960s the New York theatre world drew the line between art and money along Forty-Second Street. This pattern repeated in the English theatre between tradition-bound stages in the West End of London and the avant-garde on the Fringe. Years later, U.S. television divided into subscription- versus advertisement-funded programming, pitting streaming’s character-driven art for adult audiences against the commercial net.

亚里士多德的排名

Aristotle' ranking

这种划分有一个古老的血统。在他的《诗学》中，亚里士多德按照创作难度和对作品的重要性，将戏剧艺术的六个组成部分从上到下依次排列为：（1）情节，（2）人物，（3）意义，（4）对话，（5）音乐，（6）场面。

This divide has an ancient pedigree. In his Poetics , Aristotle ranked the six components of dramatic art from top to bottom in terms of their creative difficulty and importance to the work as (1) Plot, (2) Character, (3) Meaning, (4) Dialogue, (5) Music, (6) Spectacle.

他相信一点：为了创造和打动观众的更强力量，和角色相比，事件需要更高的艺术性。他的观点绵延两千年不绝，但是自小说《堂吉诃德》开始，小说演变成了讲述故事的主角。到 19 世纪末，作家们在写作上逆转了亚里士多德戏剧艺术排名的前两名位置，宣称读者真正需要的是令人难忘的人物。他们声称，情节中的一连串事件，只不过是作家展示其人物的晾衣绳。

He believed that events demand greater artistry to create and impact audiences with greater power than do characters. His opinion held sway for two millennia, but beginning with Don Quixote , the novel evolved into the dominant storytelling medium, and by the end of the nineteenth century writers about writing reversed Aristotle’s top two, declaring that what the reader really wants is memorable characters. A plot’s string of events, they claimed, is simply the writer’s clothesline to display his characters.

这一理论将情节设想为身体和社会层面上的行动和反应，而将人物限定为意识和潜意识领域内的思想和情感。事实上，这四个领域是相互影响的。

This theory conceives of plot as actions and reactions on the physical and social planes, while it confines character to thoughts and feelings in the conscious and subconscious spheres. In fact, these four domains are mutually influential.

当一个人物目睹一个事件时，他的感官会即刻将其传达给他的头脑，因此这个事件几乎是在他的外部世界和内部世界里同时发生。反之亦然：当一个角色做出决定，并且采取相应的行动时，这个内部事件就变成了外部事件。外部和内部事件在感官中流畅地流动，从一个层次到另一个层次，从内部到外部再回到内部，彼此相互影响。将情节的定义局限于外部行动，就会错过在一个人的生活中正在发生的绝大部分事情。讨论情节驱动与人物驱动的辩论是似是而非的，自亚里士多德列出那张清单以来一直都是如此。

When a character witnesses an event, his senses convey it to his mind instantly, so that the event happens to him internally at virtually the same moment it happens externally in his world. The reverse is also true: When a character makes a decision, this internal event becomes external as he puts it into action. External and internal events flow fluidly through the senses from level to level, inside to fluidly through the senses from level to level, inside to outside and back, each affecting the other. Restricting the definition of plot to external actions misses the vast majority of what happens in a human being’s life. The plot-driven versus character-driven debate is specious and always has been since Aristotle made his list.

一个人物不会成为一个活生生的角色，除非一个事件将他的行动和反应带入生活中去；一件事情不会成为一个有故事性的事件，直到一个角色引发或经历了它的变化，或者同时引发和经历这种变化。一个不受事件影响的人是一个孤立的、无生命的、静态的画像---最好挂在墙上；一个没有人物的活动就像在大雨落在大海上 --- 一个重复的、琐碎的、没有参与性的非事件。为了深入理解这种区别，我们需要定义术语。

A role does not become a character until an event brings his actions and reactions to life; an incident does not become a storied event until a character causes and/or experiences its change. A person untouched by events is a stand-alone, unlived, static portrait best hung on a wall. An activity without a character is like a rainy day on an ocean—a repetitious, trivial, uninvolving nonevent. To understand this distinction in depth, we need to define terms.

角色、剧情和事件

CHARACTER, PLOT, EVENT

角色是指定出一个虚构的人物，这个人要么导致事件发生，要么在某人或某物导致事发生时做出反应，或者两者都是。

Character names a fictitious being who either causes events to happen or reacts when someone or something else causes them, or both.

情节指定了一个故事里事件如何安排。因此，一个没有情节的故事是不存在的。如果它是一个故事，那么它就存在着事件的模式，也就是情节；如果它是一个情节，它就呈现出一个事件的模式，也就是一个故事。无论故事多么简短，所有讲故事的人都会构思在谁身上发生了什么事，以此设计事件。

Plot names a story’s arrangement of events. A plotless story, therefore, does not exist. If it’s a story, it has a pattern of events, aka a plot; if it’s a plot, it lays out a pattern of events, aka a story. No matter how brief the tale, all storytellers plot what happens to whom and thus design events.

当一部小说跨越时间而来，它可以用千变万化的方式来讲述，可以用背离经典形式的方式来讲述：视角的转移、事件动态汇聚、事件按因果关系进展、多重故事嵌套、倒叙、重复、省略手法、写实的、奇幻的---所有这些都取决于什么最能表达作者的意图。但无论一个故事的事件为了激发好奇心做了多少设计，读者和观众最终都得靠角色才能被定住，然后才能欣赏故事。

As a work of fiction performs through time, it can be told in countless variations and departures from the classic form: shifts in point of view, events clustered thematically, events progressed causally, stories within stories, flashbacks, repetitions, ellipses, the believable, the fantastic—all depending on what best expresses the writer’s vision. But no matter how a story’s event design entices curiosity, readers and audiences are ultimately anchored to the telling through its characters.

这两个定义的共同术语是事件，所以让我们精确地定义事件：字典上对日常事件的定义是有事发生。然而，在一个故事中，如果事情发生却没有改变任何价值，那么这个事件就没有意义。例如如果一阵微风吹过，重新排列草坪上的落叶，事情是发生了变化，但这个事件没有意义，因为它没有带来任何价值。

The term shared by both definitions is event , so let’s define it with precision: The dictionary definition of an everyday event is something that happens. In a story, however, if what happens changes nothing of value, the event has no meaning. If, for example, a passing breeze rearranges leaves on a lawn, things change but that event is meaningless because it’s valueless.

对讲故事的人来说，价值的定义是人类经验中的二元对立变化，它可以从正面变为负面，或从负面变为正面。从存活到死亡，从正义到不义，从快乐到痛苦，从自由到奴役，从善良到邪恶，从亲密到冷漠，从正确到错误，从有意义到无意义，从人类到非人类，从统一到分裂，从美丽到丑陋，可以这么写出一张几乎无穷无尽的列表，上面都是赋予生活意义的两极转变。因此，讲故事的艺术就是通过赋予事件价值而使得它具有意义。

For the storyteller, value is defined as a binary of human experience that can change its charge from positive to negative or negative to positive: Life/Death, Justice/Injustice, Pleasure/Pain, Freedom/Slavery, Good/Evil,Intimacy/Indifference, Right/Wrong, Meaningful/Meaningless, Human/Inhuman, Unity/Disunity, Beautiful/Ugly, and on goes the virtually endless list of the polarized changes that charge life with significance. The art of story, therefore, makes an event meaningful by imbuing it with a value.

举个例子，如果发生了什么事情，导致一个角色对另一个角色的感情从爱（+）变为恨（-），这个事件就变得有意义了，因为爱/恨的价值从正变为负。反之，如果一个事件导致一个角色的财务状况从贫穷（-）转为富有（+），这个变化同样有意义，因为贫穷/财富的价值经历了从负到正的运动。

For example, if something happened that caused one character to change his feelings toward another from love (+) to hate (−), that event becomes meaningful because the value of Love/Hate changed its charge from positive to negative. Or the reverse: If an event caused a character’s finances to pivot from poor (−) to rich (+), that change becomes meaningful because the value of Poverty/Wealth underwent a movement from negative to positive.

因此，一个有故事性的事件，是角色的生活中某个价值发生的变化时刻。变化的原因要么是该角色采取了某个行动，要么是该角色对他无法控制的外部事件做出了某种反应。无论哪一种，该事件都逆转了他生命中的价值取向。

A storied event , therefore, is a moment of value-charged change in a character’s life. The cause of this change is either an action taken by a character, or a reaction by a character to an event outside his control. In either case, the event reverses the charge of a value at stake in his life.

题图：《蒲甘日出》

题图创作者：和菜头的小肉手

AI算法提供：Stable Diffuion

关于Stable Diffuion的详情，请参考文章《介绍一下Stable Diffusion》

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