Just the facts, Ma’am…or not.

 I’ve stopped asking people if they’re old enough to remember something that was on television years ago. Ten years ago, if you mentioned Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton, The Lone Ranger or something like that, you would have gotten a blank stare.  Now, it’s “Oh, yeah.  I saw it on 

YouTube and I really like it. I watched a bunch of episodes.”  So…remember Dragnet?

It was the first and probably one of the best police stories ever on television.  Jack Webb was Sergeant Joe Friday and “only the names were changed to protect the innocent.”  Webb starred in all of the episodes.  He also wrote and directed many of them.  The dialog sounded like it was fired from his trusty snub-nosed revolver which he was not opposed to drawing.  Anytime he interviewed a witness, he had a small notebook and a pencil and all he wanted was the facts.  If that was all he got, the show would have lasted about five episodes.

As a writer we use facts, but we have to embellish them to make a good story in many cases.  I recently received a call from a producer in Los Angeles who asked if I had a World War Two script.  I have several, so I wanted him to narrow it down a little. “It needs to be true or at least based on true incidents.”  I won’t go into all the details, but my project deals with German Prisoners of War being held in the United States and some saboteurs landed by submarine.  ‘Is it real,” he asked.  Uh…sorta.  World War Two was real.  There were German Prisoners of War in the United States.  That part is real.  Germany landed at least three groups of saboteurs by submarine on US soil during the war.  Also a real fact.  I put all the facts together and came up with a story line.

It is a true story? Not completely but a lot of the parts that make it up are right out of the history books.  Can I call it a true story?  No.  Can I say, “based on true facts?”  Absolutely. There are enough World War Two veterans still around who will remember the facts and some who may question how I treated them, but they can’t deny the thread that holds it all together.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Braveheart, look up the history of the times and see how it was manipulated to make it a better story. How about “Houston, we have a problem?” Never said in the real situation, but can you imagine the movie without it.  Unless the movie was going to get a hard “R” rating, I’m sure the actual conversation between the men and Houston could not be repeated.

Got an idea?  If it is entirely original and does not include any true incidents or persons, you can do whatever you like to it.  If it has some basis in facts, make them as true to their origin as possible, but unless you’re making a documentary you have a lot of flexibility in how you use the incidents.  

Present the truth in the most favorable light.