Writing Tip: Confession as Narrative Device

Comparing confessions of the Protagonists in The King’s Speech and The Silence of the Lambs reveals how important they can be.

In writing my book The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling, I have had an interesting experience making connections between disparate cinematic stories. Sometimes movies from considerably different genres share the same narrative device with a similar story function.

For example, it occurred to me that the drama The King’s Speech and the thriller The Silence of the Lambs both feature a Protagonist character making a ‘confession’ to a Mentor figure: Bertie to Lionel / Clarice to Lecter.

By confession, I mean a scene in which one character reveals a deep inner truth which has up to that point in the story been hidden, shrouded in the recesses of the character’s psyche. Sometimes that shrouded state is a conscious act of the character’s will. Sometimes it is an unconscious instinct to protect one’s self from judgment. But in all cases, when a character confesses this inner truth, bringing it forth into the light of consciousness, the moment represents a significant turning point in the character’s psychological metamorphosis.

Consider this scene in The King’s Speech.

By this point in the story, Lionel has gained Bertie’s trust. The scene is framed around a B.O.B. (Bit Of Business) — Bertie finds himself distracted by Lionel’s son’s model airplanes. In this moment, Bertie confesses two dark secrets from his past:

• How his first nanny in effect abused him as a toddler… pinching him to make him cry… withholding food from him as punishment. As a result, Bertie developed some stomach issues, a physical manifestation of the psychological trauma created within his psyche by the tyrannical influence of his nanny.
• How his brother Johnny, hidden from view to the public due to his epilepsy, died at the age of thirteen. In revealing this backstory, we can see in Bertie’s face both a sad tenderness in remembering his brother… and a fear that Johnny’s medical condition looms as a threat to Bertie (“I’m told it’s not catching”.) He also identifies with Johnny (“And he’s… different”) as Bertie — due to his stuttering — is ‘different.’

This confession fits the overall tone of the story: A drama featuring two principal characters and the evolving bond they develop. Subdued. Reflective. Leading to this exchange:

Lionel: What are friends for?
Bertie: I wouldn’t know.

Perhaps the single most profound moment in Bertie’s confession. For my sense is what Lionel takes away from this confession scene is two things:

• Bertie has survived psychologically in large part due to courage he doesn’t even know he has.
• Bertie’s trust in Lionel affords him the opportunity to challenge Bertie in ways the future King has never had to face.

It all leads to this pivotal scene:

Lionel as Mentor could never have probed, prodded, and provoked Bertie to proclaim, “I have a voice” had Bertie not confessed some hidden inner truths in that previous scene.

Compare the confession scene in The King’s Speech to this critical turning point in The Silence of the Lambs.

The tone is entirely different, not a drama, but a thriller. There is the ticking clock dynamic as Clarice knows that at any second, her desperate ruse in flying to Memphis to extract some clues about the Buffalo Bill case from Lecter will be discovered. There is also the underlying tension that Lecter has known all along that the key to Clarice’s psychological breakthrough is precisely this confession. He knows it. And as much as Clarice wants to avoid the truth, she knows it.

The basic facts of Clarice’s confession are compelling:

• Sent to live with her uncle who owned a sheep and horse ranch in Montana
• One night, she hears a “strange noise… some kind of screaming… like a child’s voice”
• She goes to investigate and peering through the window of the barn, she witnesses the slaughter of the spring lambs
• She tries to free them (“I opened the gate to their pen”), but they don’t move.
• So she picks up one and runs away.

And that is the breakthrough moment: “I thought if I could save just one… but it was so heavy… so heavy.”

It was not a lamb Clarice was trying to save. It was her father. He was ‘slaughtered’ like an ‘innocent lamb’ by two robbers when he stumbled on them stealing a television from a store.

The screaming of the lambs which Clarice hears in her nightmares over and over again is the symbolic screaming of her father as he is being shot.

What Lecter realizes early on is Clarice is in a deep state of psychological Disunity and she is in need of some sort of redemption. Hence his line in this scene:

“And you think if you save poor Catherine (Buffalo Bill’s current kidnap victim), you could make them stop, don’t you. You think if Catherine lives, you won’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs.”

Clarice has been repressing this hidden truth for years. Lecter — her Mentor — knows she has to go deep into her psyche to confess this suppressed truth. And by exhibiting that courage, she will find the strength to do this:

Not only save Catherine Martin, but slay Buffalo Bill, symbolic retribution against the two men who killed her father.

Two confession scenes. Two totally different tones. Similar narrative function: To have the Protagonist confront deep inner truths and as a result lay the groundwork for their psychological metamorphosis enabling them to face their respective Final Struggle and emerge a character approaching Unity.

Takeaway: Look at the current story you’re writing. Does your Protagonist have a confession scene? If not, is there some aspect of their backstory which needs to be brought into the light of consciousness and could become the basis of a confession scene?

A confession is a narrative element with a lot of story potential. In fact, I’m just making a connection to a pivotal confession scene in The Shawshank Redemption…

Can you think of any other confession scenes in movies? Feel free to share in comments.

UPDATE: Check out this confession from Seasone 1, Episode 8 of The Bear.

Filled with exposition. I would argue it works because it represents a key point in Carmy’s psychological journey where he’s acknowledging some harsh truths about what he has faced … and what he needs to face.