One thing that changes everything

In my introductory essay I spoke of the idea of a story as a machine, where moving one part of the system could produce a drastically different end result. Ayn Rand discussed this in detail in a fiction writing class which was held in her living room that later became the basis of her book "The Art of Fiction." Her focus was on the idea that in order to achieve a certain end result a specific groundwork must be built in advance.

She used as an example the first meeting between Howard Roark and Peter Keating:

In the published novel Roark sticks to his principles and refuses to acknowledge his expulsion from architecture school setback or gauge his expulsion against Keating's graduation with honors from the same school. He shows a quiet confidence which can be mistaken for rudeness or arrogance while Keating seems entirely unsure of himself or his future.

In her rewritten excerpt Roark is much more polite. As a result of this Roark does compare his own expulsion to Keating's graduation and shows just a hint of fear about the fact that he may not come back from this setback. Keating's confrontational nature with Roark comes off as confidence against Roark's lack of strength in his conviction while in the other version it just underscores Keating's own insecurities against Roark's strong convictions.

Rand pointed out that the Roark of the rewritten version could not handle the stress of the later events of the book and would give up his struggle far too easily. This would effectively kill the story. But what about cases where a change like this wouldn't necessarily kill the story so much as create a new one.

David Morrell's novel First Blood stayed in developmental limbo for a long time with every major leading man in Hollywood turning down the role of Rambo. Ironically the character did not receive the first name of "John" until a young actor/screenwriter named Sylvester Stallone finally did take the role as well as take up the task of cleaning up the script which had become a mess by this point.

To be fair a number of factors kept this film from happening. The novel covers a cat and mouse game between a small town sherriff and a mentally unstable vagrant, but if the story really was that simple adaptation would be easy. Both men are portrayed as mirror images of each other both decorated veterans (Will Teasle receiving the second highest honor of Distinguished Service Cross, John Rambo receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor) with their biggest difference being how each did or didn't reintegrate into society. There is a big focus in the novel on the idea of fathers and sons, with a number of key elements of the story resting on this theme, but there is also a large focus on what goes on in a man's mind as opposed to what they make known to the rest of the world.

The way the novel was structured was so that it was up to the reader with whom they sympathized. A great deal of this was based largely on the aforementioned internal dialogue. Each man did questionable things but the internal monologue made each man's actions a bit more sympathetic. This is one of the hardest things to capture on film and as a result it would really only be likley to treat the film as one sided while the other side was drastically simplified.

As a result, the script that finally made the book filmable used a technique like the one from Rand's class. In the book Rambo had essentially made into an unstoppable killing machine by his time in Viet Nam and he winds up mercilessly killing a large number of innocent deputies and national guard members. Stallone's Rambo still understood enough to maim but not kill most men he encountered. It's hard to look at Stallone's Rambo as anything other than a hero when you can see how easy it would be to kill everyone in his path yet he uses enough restraint to avoid killing almost any innocents.

It's a slight shift to the character that changes the whole story. Rambo doesn't do anything drastic until after being provoked enough that anyone would respond. Instead of killing first and possibly never asking questions, he lashes out hard, but always makes it clear that all he really wants is to just be left alone. By the end of the story Rambo isn't just a wild animal who needs put down, he's a man who's had a hard life who deserves a real chance at redemption who will eventually get many.

If you have a singular goal for a work of fiction the initial groundwork is very important and something which needs to be done, and done in a very specific way, but there have been a number of largely commercial undertakings that show just what can happen when you're ready to see what happens when you change one small foundational point. Mark Steven Johnson's Daredevil film changed from a story of love and revenge to a story of a man brought to the breaking point by an all consuming feud. And if you're willing to brave the world of comparing theatrical cuts to directors cuts and scouring director commentary you can find dozens of other examples of such changes. Who knows sometimes using this technique can be the thing that turns a good story into a great one.