7 Day Screenplay: A Complete Guide to Writing Short Films

1. Course Introduction: Rolling. Remarkable. I always wanted to make movies but didn't know exactly where to begin that process. I didn't come from a creative writing background. And I guess that's a little intimidating for a beginner, especially if you're surrounded by other experienced writers. But at the end of the day, whatever it is that's telling you not to move forward with the process. It's all just fear and mental noise. Hi, my name is Jason Georgiana. Or independent filmmakers would have passion for storytelling. Okay, so in this class, I'll be teaching you how to write a short film in seven days. That's gonna be our class project. A lot of this course is based around my own experiences as a writer, director, and producer over the past 16 years. Of course, is laid out over a period of seven days, so adolescents don't feel too overwhelming. Also, at the end of each day, you'll need to complete some homework before moving on to the next day's lesson. Make sure to download the course workbook before you get started because it contains all your homework, key vocab, lesson summaries. So after seven days and a little bit of homework, we will write a five to ten page screenplay together. Some of the skills I'll be teaching you how to generate ideas, how to create compelling characters and plots. But most importantly, how to put all of those pieces together to write your own short script using a program called Celtx. This course is for beginner to intermediate students who are looking to start the creative writing process. But also for intermediate learners who want to improve their storytelling skills. All you need to get started is a working laptop or PC and make sure to sign up for a cell texts because you'll be using that program to write your scripts. We've put a lot of heart and soul into designing this course for you or can't wait to get started. I look forward to seeing your scripts and feel free to post them in the class project section. Thanks again for joining us. See you there. 2. Day 1: Finding Your Story: Alright, so welcome to day one. Today we're gonna talk about finding your story. So this is going to be a day full of ideas, full of finding ideas, and most importantly, understanding what the heck we're really doing here. So our day one goals are really to understand what story is. We're going to use some key vocabulary to describe story and different elements about story. We're going to identify theme and message. Then we're going to apply what we've learned for the day towards our worksheet one where we're going to create some ideas and also something known as a logline. So let's get started. Very exciting. 3. Day 1: Story Purpose: So story purpose, why are we even doing this? Well, it goes without saying that story has a variety of different important functions in our world from the dawn of time, potentially, it's been argued that story has been used for Survival, teaching, and learning. I have this great painting on the right-hand side here by Sir John Everett milliamps. It's about a man telling his children a little bit of a story. And I like it because it really describes what storytelling is really about and its functions in our world. It creates emotional reactions. But why would we really want to be doing that? Well, maybe I create a story about how one time I touch the hot stove and I wasn't able to go to work the next day and I started crying and had to go to the hospital. We have to fabricate stories in order to teach us lessons potentially, but also sometimes just to entertain. We all like, well maybe not everybody, the Marvel movies or superhero movies. If you're a fan of that genre, we all love a good cry. It's incredibly entertaining to watch and listen two stories and even read about them. So I'm talking about story in general, from novels to television to screenplays. Stories are incredibly entertaining as well. They can be windows into the soul, the interior life of an individual, or maybe a subject we don't really know much about. I mean, there's a lot of those stories going around lately about people around the world. Amazing rock climbers that climb these incredible mountains without a harness. This is a film called Free Solo documentaries are great for this really opening up worlds that we didn't really know about infection. It's really interesting because fiction stories allow us to dive a little bit deeper into worlds that cameras can't really go. If I'm looking to understand the interior life of what it's like to be a screenwriter making their very first short film. What does it like to go through that for you, for the family, for your kids, for your coworkers. What does that struggle about? We can write a story to really talk about those feelings as emotions, and hopefully talk about themes and messages. And it really just helps to expose us into worlds we didn't know about. We never knew about also known as world-building. So things that come to mind are Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, things of this nature. It's a way, a window, a window into the soul is the way I like to put it. So in short, I always tell my students to be poetic and be emotional. That can be one of the most difficult things to do as a writer is having access to your own inner interior voice, your emotions, how you feel. Orson Scott Card said one story is worth a thousand. Statistics are abstractions when it comes to having an emotional impact on people. Meaning, if we were going to talk about war, I could give you a million statistics about how many people get injured by war, the numbers involved with destroying rain forests. But if I tell you a story about a little boy that lives in a village in the Amazon jungle that encountered a group of wealthy industrialist, log farmers in the middle of the woods chopping down his home. How would you feel about that? You would feel a lot different and connect it to that story than you would if I just gave statistics about the ecological disaster in the Amazon jungle. Stories are really vehicles for driving emotion, but why we're driving a motion to get us to care. And a great storyteller can make us laugh or cry. Think about the last time someone told you a funny story or something sad. How did they do that? How did it make you feel? A lot of this course is about understanding the emotional mechanics of storytelling, because that's what we're trying to do. If we can't feel anything, then we don't care. Let me emphasize that, that we connect through story, through emotion, by emotion as our vehicle. Make us feel what you felt or how you feel in this moment, even taking this course, how do you feel? Are you excited? We want to try and tap into that. So we're really like emotional engineer's. We create these little vehicles called stories to engineer emotions. And that's what we're here to do. If you can't make me laugh, cry, feel curious, you have failed. As a storyteller. Think about the last time someone told you a terrible story. What was that like? How did you feel? Oh, I can't wait for the story to be over. So boring. Oh gosh, Here Comes Frank. He has the worst, worst stories. Well, we want to avoid that when we're gonna go create our own stories and we will learn how to do that in this course. 4. Day 1: What is Story, Theme, Message?: What is story? Well, story is narrative. A narrative is a way of presenting or understanding a situation or series of events that promotes a particular view or set of values. We're gonna go into this a little bit more. But promoting a particular view or set of values really has a lot to do with theme and message. It's a means of promoting or creating a vehicle to promote particular views or sets of values. It's a representation in art of an event or story. According to the screenwriting one-on-one book by film crit Hulk, a great narrative is four things. Number one, it has to be compelling to the audience. And remember, we talked a lot about emotion. Write compelling. Why is this compelling? Why do I like this story? Number two, economically told, meaning, don't waste my time. Whatever you do When you're telling me a story. I don't care if you had an egg salad sandwich in the middle of the car accident? If it doesn't have anything to do with a car accident, leave it out. Just tell me about the car accident. If you told me Well, I went to a deli the other day and I ordered a egg salad sandwich and then I got out and then, oh my gosh, I got into a car accident. What does the egg salad sandwich, the restaurant have anything to do with getting into a car accident. However, if I said to you, I was driving my car and I reached down for my egg salad sandwich and I got into an accident that is very important to the story because it is the reason I got into the accidents. So don't waste our time. Number three, it has to feel real either in terms of emotion detail or texture. We already talked about emotion, but we need the world or whatever we're talking about to feel real. So when we're writing, we want to make sure that things are researched well. We want to make sure that the people in places that were describing and exploring feel quote unquote, real, so that we can connect with them. Number four, it has to speak to some thematic truth that you recognize in the world or in yourself. Sometimes both can be connected, right? You can realize the truth about your own self that connects to the world at large. Many people know what it's like to feel lonely. So what is the solution to loneliness? How do you feel when you're alone? What is the truth about your particular circumstance that you want to convey to the world? Find your, why. You want to find the reason that you're telling this story. Why are you telling me why are you sidelining me in the middle of the hallway. To tell me your story about what you did on the weekend. Is it important? Is it funny? Is gonna make me laugh, Great. Make me laugh. So we have to find some kind of reason, a Y, as to why we're doing this. Narrative storytelling is about choosing a theme and sending a message. Or films are loaded with theme and sometimes 99% of the time a message about this theme. What is a theme? A theme is a general topic. Think about it as something we'd like to discuss. So you get up on the podium and you say, Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to talk to you today about love. And then someone raises their hand and the audience they said, Well, what do you wanna say about love? You say love conquers all that is your message. That's what you want to say about your theme. That is your truth. So think about this. What is your truth? You've lived on this planet Earth long enough to download and watch this course. So in that time, what have you learned about what it's like to be human on this planet, Earth. There's gotta be something. What do you know a lot about? What themes is your family in the military? Maybe they know something about freedom. What about sacrifice, immigration or your family, a group of immigrants. What about family? Family itself is a huge theme. Loss, love, corruption, greed, politics. There's lots to discuss in this world. And when we walk out of that theater watching your film or we read your screenplay. What we discuss is the message, hey Joe, what did you think about that film? Well, I thought it had a lot to say about the current state of politics in our country. What did you think about the message? Well, it seems to me that etc, etc, etc, whatever message we get from your screenplay is the why, why are we doing this? Keep in mind that message is often subtext, but sometimes actually stated by character. Children's movies are big on this. When we go to see a Pixar movie or an animated film for children. A lot of the films that are geared towards younger audiences have messages in them because they're meant to teach us something about the world. 5. Day 1: Aesop's Fables and Tips!: A Aesop's Fables, children's stories, perfect examples of storytelling with theme and message. The tortoise and the hare message. Slow and steady wins the race. What is the theme? Taking things for granted or underestimating people? A lot of the stories that Aesop created were created to deliver a message. And other stories, the ant and the grasshopper. What's the message? Fail to prepare. Prepare to fail. It's about a group of ants that spend a lot of their time working to prepare for the winter. Because when the winter comes, the harvest is down and food is scarce. When winter time comes and the answer prepared and they have all their food harvested. The grasshopper comes along and says, I'm cold, I have no food. What am I going to do? The story teaches us the value of hard work and planning, preparing to anticipate disaster. Another great one is the fox and the goat. The message, look before you leap. Meaning before you go do something, maybe look at it pretty carefully and it teaches us the importance of careful, clear and critical thinking. You'd be surprised. Children's stories can be adapted. For adults. Maybe they don't use cute cartoon characters. But instead we use politicians or industrialists or chess players, something lofty or perhaps kings and queens. Some tips on message. If you're looking for what, I want you to keep it as personal as possible. What do you have to say about the world around you and how does it connect with your own experience? I want you to make it real. Don't give me a false message that you don't believe in. No one wants to go up on a podium and say, I believe in this kind of you don't want that. You want to make it real because it's real to you. Make it believable, meaning relatable. Do I believe you? I hear you. I feel that it's real, but do I believe you believe ability has a lot to do with whether someone can relate to that experience or that feeling, that emotion. Be simple. Think Aesop, don't make it complicated. For instance. Well, what I really think about greed is that sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. Generally it's bad, but sometimes it's good when we need it, but not all way too complicated. Keep it simple. It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Done, simple. Take it, print it, start writing. Remember that theme has a lot to do with understanding what your messages and your voice is the message. Lots of people write about love, greed, politics, war. There's a million stories out there. But what you have to say about that theme makes it, you makes it unique. Keep that in mind as we go through the course. 6. Day 1: How to Find Ideas, Themes, Messages: So step one, for theme and message, I've got a couple of interesting tips and ways to go about this. Like I said, I'm not big into theory, but we do need to understand what we're doing here. This isn't much theory as it is practice. We have to understand the vocabulary before we start writing about these things. So what I want you to do is use your theme and message to create something called a logline or a one-sentence summary of your film. This is also known as an elevator pitch, meaning the time it takes for you to tell me about your films, about the time it should take to ride an elevator. I get in an elevator with a buddy. Hey Jim age. And what's her film about? Oh, yadda, yadda yadda. It should take one sentence, maybe max two. So how do you create this logline? Well, number one, start with the prompt my story is about, and choose your central theme. Then add your message. For example, Hey Jim, Good to see you. Hey Jim, I get to see you. What are you up to these days? Oh, right in the film. Now, what's the film? You have the logline I do. Here it is. My story is about love and that love conquers all, admittedly, not terribly unique, but delivers the example. Speaking of examples, Here's a few more. The matrix is about individuality and the power of belief. Toy Story is about friendship and how meeting new people can help us grow as individuals. Breaking Bad, very serious, very, very, very serious. Television show is about family and what we would do to protect them. Easy. Star Wars is about family and the power of love to heal all wounds. Note, as I mentioned before, you can have the same theme, but entirely different messages. Here's Breaking Bad by Vince Gilligan, 2008 versus Star Wars. George Lucas, 1970s seven. Lucas wrote about the making of Star Wars. Friendships, honesty, trust, doing the right thing, Living on the right side and avoiding the dark side. Those are the things that was meant to do. Themes, our friendship, honesty, trust. You might be wondering, could there be more than one? Certainly. But for short films, I encourage you to stick with one. These are longer narrative films or TV series. But for short films, keep it simple. How do you find an idea, theme, or message? I get this question a lot. What should I do? How do I begin? Well, one method is engaging in research or History. Lot of documentaries out there, lot of magazines out there. There could be an unexplored area of personal interest. A music genre perhaps that you'd like, like jazz or a specific branch of rock and roll. I made a documentary like that a few years ago. What about war? What about local politics or climate change? What do you care about? Is another great way of looking at this. Newspapers, magazines, books, anything you can find. Another great thing that you can hone in on as an idea for your film is personal. Moments are memories that express a certain truth growing moments. Short films you want to choose. One. Is there a specific moment in your life that you'd like to dramatize that meant something to you. A bad breakup, divorce, maybe moving to a different city or school, losing a loved one or a pet. The first time you met your girlfriend, your wife, your husband, first time you had a child, the first time you got the news that you might be having a child, the first time you learned the difference between right and wrong, what is your truth or what is the truth you'd like to explore? What is your passion, what excites you? There's got to be something maybe you like photography, maybe you love travel. What about travel? What do you have to say about travel? What if a great, great, powerful tool for generating ideas? What did the sky was made out of ice cream? What if my dog could talk? What if my best friend was an alien? What if there was life after death? What if my life was a computer program? Or here's a pretty good one. What if dinosaurs existed? Sound familiar? It should. It's called Jurassic Park. Whole franchises have been built upon. Great. What if in fact there is a Marvel Studios show called what-if, if you can believe it, that was released in 2021. A very, very powerful tool to generate ideas for your film. 7. Day 1: Conclusion: So congratulations on completing day. What do we have an idea or subject that you're passionate about? If so, congratulations. If not, use, what if we talked about central themes? So what is your central theme or themes, and why is this story important to you? The y has a lot to do with a message, right? It's not enough to just say I'd like to talk about politics. Well, what about politics, right? What's your message? Thinking about specific emotions is very critical to this. The moment you had a breakup is significantly different than your first day of school. Those emotions are different. Congrats for completing day one. You can now head to your workbook to complete the worksheet one, and we will head into day two tomorrow. Good luck. 8. Day 2: Goals and Character Basics: K and the immortal words of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. All righty than welcome to day two, part one, we're going to talk about character Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, be in one of my favorite films of all time. One of the greatest characters ever written, in my opinion, super-duper, funny. If you haven't seen it, I would advise that you check it out. So today we're gonna talk about character. Make sure that you've completed the worksheet exercise for day one before moving on to this day, I am so so thrilled to have you back. Welcome to day two. Let's get started. So let's start with a day one review. At this point, you've understood the basic storytelling principles, why we make stories generate them. In the worksheet exercise for day one, you have generated five what if ideas. You've identified your central theme and message to create a logline, one note about this, you may not feel so good about your logline. That's okay. We can always revise it. You never know. You might be out on a walk with your dog or laying on the beach and you say, Oh wait, I got a way better. What if, it's fine? My goal here is to teach you some mechanics, to understand story, and some basic things you can do practically to generate some ideas if you don't have them already. But really, I want you to do your best. If you do your best, you cannot go wrong. Also, very important to have is a great attitude. Just stay positive even if you don't feel so good. Keep moving, keep moving ahead. Don't think so much. Just do our goals for day two. Or to really understand character mechanics, we're going to be using some key vocabulary that we need to understand, which will also help you down the road as well. When you talk about character with your friends and professional screenwriters that you will meet in your illustrious career as a storyteller, screenwriter, producer, filmmaker, director. Whatever you may choose to be, you will apply character mechanics to your story. And then at the end of day two, remember each day there is a worksheet. You will complete Worksheet two, which is a character summary, very, very exciting. These are the fundamental, and I mean fundamental capital F questions that must be answered first. Before you write anything. Number one, who are these characters? To? What do they want? Both externally and internally? Why do they want this thing? Number four, how do they go about getting it? What stops them? What are the consequences if they don't get what they want? So today is all about diving into each of these six elements to understand a little bit more about how we design a character. We don't just throw a character into a story for no reason. Every character is designed for a reason. And we're gonna go into that today. I use a lot of examples from the show, Breaking Bad for a couple of different reasons. This show is near perfect in terms of character study and design. So we're going to talk a lot about Walter White, the main character in Breaking Bad. If you have not seen the series, I highly encourage you to watch it. When I was doing the research for this course, I tried to find something that was great in terms of character. There's a lot of great characters out there. And all of the things that we're going to discuss today apply to those characters. But Walter White is exceptionally good for the purposes of this course and understanding character and these six basics we need to know in order to design a great character like Walter White. 9. Day 2: Who is Your Character?: So number one is really who is your character? What we mean by that is we need to give our character a profession like what do they do? A job or something that describes their role in life. Okay. Pick anything. It's creative writing, high school chemistry teacher. That's the case of Walter White and Breaking Bad. The hit man for higher. That's John Wick, police detective John McLean and the die-hard series, great character, archaeologist, fighter pilots. You name it. You got to pick a job. What do they do day to day? We're trying to bring these characters to life. What makes them so special? Are they good at it? Note that all the examples above are people that are very good at what they do. Ultra-wide is a very, very good chemistry teacher. In fact, he's so good he probably should have done something else with his life, which is basically what the show is all about. John Wick is an unbelievably gifted hit man. John McLean is a great police detective and of course Indiana Jones, one of my favorite characters of all time, is a superior archaeologist. This is also known as traits. The high school chemistry teacher who cooks meth to earn extra income. Very good at this. It's his superpower. A gangster who needs therapy to overcome his anxiety. Tony Soprano in the Sopranos, make sure your answers to all of these questions that we're gonna go through today are as creative as possible. You can tweak them later. What does my character want? This is vital. Characters must have, must have two things. One and external. Want something objective, not subjective, that they want to accomplish in the story itself. This is objective, concrete, plot based too. An inner need, otherwise known as a central flaw, something they need to fix. Internally. Something you need to learn how to remove. This is subjective, abstract, and linked to your theme and message. And we will go into this more. This is really just a summary of the elements we're going to talk about today. This external wants must be objective. Buried treasure, solve the murder when the basketball tournament, whatever it is, it's usually plot based, tied to character as well. Most mysteries are like this, right? We have to solve the murder, who done it? We have to be the bad guy. We have to find the criminal example, Walter White Breaking Bad. What does he want? Well, he wants to make money. He needs money. Or Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean wants buried treasure. Easy. Keep it simple. Additional examples. 12 years a slave, he wants to escape, bondage. Inglorious ********, Quentin Tarantino, external want to end the war. That's what we're doing here. To hunt Nazis, Raiders of the Lost Ark, to capture the arc, a holy treasure. Lord of the Rings. To destroy the ring of power, you name it. Each character must want something that is objective. And we need to understand that. Or else characters are just wandering around the screen on your page doing whatever they want. Tips for creating a great external want. If you're struggling to understand, okay, well, what should I do? What does my character wants? Make the want just clear and understandable. That's the primary thing you gotta do. Kill the shark, the monster, rescue the princess, protect the village. The simpler, the better. I'm telling you from experience. If it's a complicated want and we don't understand, we get confused. And if we get confused, we start to lose interest in your story. So make the motivation clear and understandable to the audience. And does it make sense? A rich person may want more money, but why? A loser that lives alone in the basement of his parent's house may want to prove something. So he learns about a dance competition. And he's motivated to be something. It's best if multiple characters want the same thing. This is also known as interested parties because it creates conflict between all of the characters. Steven Spielberg who created the extra terrestrial Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, things of this nature, loves interested parties. In fact, one of the greatest interested parties films of all time. His film called jaws. A monster movie. Or everybody in the story is concerned about hunting and killing this dangerous shark that is attacking the local residents of the town, escaping a haunted house. Everybody wants to do that. Everybody wants the Olympic gold medal. Everybody wants to win the boxing competition. Everybody wants to win a competition. That's probably why there's so many competition movies out there because everybody wants to win them. It's a great way to drive interests for all of the characters. In your short film. 10. Day 2: What Does My Character Need?: What does my character need? Big tip here. Characters don't change. They are revealed. Everybody listening to this right now in the world and people we know has potential to be great or potential to be evil as well. And the objective of the story is to reveal character. They always had this potential within them. But we needed to remove something called a character flaw in order to get there. When we talk about heroes, what is a hero? What does a hero to you? Think about that. Ask your friend, What is a hero? Most of you would say someone that sacrifices for the greater good. A man running into a burning building to save a random victim is her ROIC. Because this person has suppressed their own selfishness to save the life of another individual. This is heroic. What that means is we take the central flaw away and our character is unmasked. So most stories begin with a character who needs to remove this thorn in their foot. And once they do, they can walk with balance, good form, composure. They become her ROIC, figuratively speaking, of course, by the end of my story, my character is courageous, virtuous. So in the beginning of my story, my character must be a coward. Great example of this that comes to mind is the Wizard of Oz. Of course, we have all these characters, like the lion who is cowardly, the cowardly lion. Ironic. It's funny, but ultimately truthful. A lion has to regain his heart, but he always had it. We need to understand that about our characters. Which also means we have to understand this ultimately about ourselves. These virtues that we choose make us heroic, we'd become more courageous. In fact, the Stoics, the Greek Stoic philosophers, believed that heroism was largely defined by increasing our virtues as individuals. So in order to become more patient, if we're presented with an obstacle that tests our patients, and we pass that test, we become more virtuous. Our reward is virtue. And we'll find that in stories we're going to place a lot of obstacles in order for our character to learn and grow, but most importantly, become revealed. So the story is an engine to explore how we, as humans fix, remove this vice or don't. Some stories are about how we don't move them. Guess who those people are. There, the villains, because they don't change or are revealed to be any worse than they were in the beginning of the story. In fact, most villains start as seemingly heroic. And we reveal that there treacherous and deceptive and terrible. And all of this is to say that it's connected to our theme and message. We're creating these characters to teach us something about the world around us or to reveal something about the world. Because through our character, if they learn, John learned how to be a hero by sacrificing his selfishness to become selfless. I liked that and I relate to that and I wanna be like that too. So some messages are better to have loved and lost than never to a lumped at all thinking about message. So therefore, a character, we have the message, so we need a character to carry this flag. The character must learn how to love. In the beginning, our hero maybe is apathetic, lacks empathy. And he must literally learn to love through action and obstacle. Obstacle and intention will learn more about that in the coming days. So to summarize, an internal need must be a vice or virtue. But remember, the character doesn't really know that this is a part of their fabric. I don't necessarily know that I'm a coward. But through the circumstance of the story, it is revealed that I'm not. I have to face my cowardice. I have to face the fact that I'm not such a great dad or girlfriend or boyfriend, whatever have you. And I learn how to be more honest or selfless. My suggestion is to pick one to focus on. If my character is skeptical about the world around them, untrusting of people, then by the end of the story, they have to trust. If they're scared, they become more courageous. All of this is based on theme and message, which is the point of the story. Or example here is Walter White from Breaking Bad and 2008, great character case study. Interestingly enough, Walter White goes from good to bad. His downfall is his hubris or excessive pride. So it goes from a Great oil loving man down a dark path. He goes from virtue to vice. But why? If I am an untrustworthy person or I am a terrible boyfriend or husband, How did I get there? Why have we decided to arrive at this point in the story? That's something to do with backstory. So when, when you're creating your character, think about why. Why is this person greedy? Why is this person prideful? Why do we feel guilt, greed, dishonesty? What happened to us that made us this way? What made me not want to live anymore? No, forget it. I don't want to date anybody. I don't want to go on dates. Forget it. I don't believe in love. Why? Well, your backstory created this and we need to fix it. And that's why we're telling the story. I'm going to teach you how to correct your love life. Not literally, but for the purposes of your story, you have to identify what the backstory is. Something made you that way, made this character this way, and we need to fix it. So ask yourself, why is my character this way? What happened to them in their life that made them so bitter about the world around them. What chain are they dragging around the past? What part of them can they not let go of? And how do we get them to let go of it? The film is the moment they change for the better or worse, is the point of the story. This is why you're telling me this. If I came up to you to say, Hey, remember Frank. Yeah, Frank, I remember Frank. It's kind of a jerk. Yeah. Well, guess what happened to him this weekend? He is no longer a jerk. He is the Reverend of my church. You go what? Yeah. Let me tell you the story and then I get into we have a backstory of a guy we know that is not a great guy and he reveals himself to be a pious pre, something happens in his life. The changes in, changes revealed for the better. Example, my boyfriend cheated on me, therefore by character flaws and inability to trust people around me. Well, we need to fix this. We're going to learn how to do it. I'm used to doing things on my own. I don t need help. Let's tell a story about how you need help and the power of collaboration. And the message being collaboration can lead to success. There is no I in team. Easy, easy stuff. Walter White's character flaw is pride created by his backstory. Something happened to him in his early career that made him bidder. In the story brings out his excessive pride. It's backstory was related to being a chemist and he was cheated over by his partner. He holds onto this. So he needs to feel proud again. So he chases pride. Events of the story drive him to reveal his real true inner nature as an evil, prideful villain. His moral compass points towards vice, not a virtue. Got some other examples here. Of course, we've already discussed Walter White's transformation, revelation, if you will, for modesty, caring, loving husband to excessive pride or hubris. But the other hand, I chose Iron Man from 2008, Tony Stark's transformation or revelation, whatever word you want to use, I like revelation because I believe character is don't change the art revealed. Walter White was always evil. Tony Stark was always a hero. So what is revealed as either their true vice or virtue. I hate to keep repeating things, but that is the nature. Of the learning process, do we want them to become more heroic or villainous? So ask yourself, what is my character's true inner nature? Who are they really? Were they always evil and we didn't know it, are always heroic, but we're too blinded by their character flaw to see it. What human condition do you want to explore in your character? Tony Stark goes from kind of a jerk to a hero. Jason. I don't know which vise I should choose to start my character off. Well, here are seven to choose from. ****, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, the seven deadly sins. Of course, Walter White falling into number seven, pride is the downfall of many. A great man, woman, and child sometimes. Choose one if you're having trouble. Tips on your inner needs. Again, just make it clear and understandable. This has a lot to do with making sure on your worksheet that you write this down. So reading all my characters too greedy, cold-hearted, cowardly, Eric, whatever it is, vengeful, just make it clear and write it down in the worksheet for today. Make the flaw relatable to the audience. Do you get those motivations? Why would this character be lazy or arrogant? Do we know this person? Have we seen this person before in our daily experience? The hypochondriac, the person that thinks that they're always sick. So connect this to your experience. What do you want to say to the world? And the more personal the better. So what does it like to be lonely or depressed? Is your character depressed or lonely in the beginning of the story? What is the message or solution so that others can learn and understand more about their journey through your story. What did you learn about your experience? About that moment in your life? And again, short films being a distillation of a moment in your life where you grew just a little bit. I trusted too much potentially and was hurt by someone I loved. But what did I learn? Fixing or not fixing this central flaw, removing it is the point of your film. It's to teach us about how to become heroes or villains, or how that even happens. How does someone become a great father? How does someone realize that lying to get ahead isn't the way to go? Film story. Storytelling is a vehicle for change. And proving. Message and theme about our lives is a window into what it means to be human. When we're faced with adversity, what's it like to be a firefighter? Sacrificing your life where people you don't know. Sometimes I like to say you want to have them be a weak fish in the beginning of the story and then become a strong fish in the end. We got to turn our characters into heroes or villains, if you prefer. So establish this early through action. We must show signs of the character flaw, for instance. And we're gonna do this through the plot as well and subsequent exercises, an absent father who's late to his sons big game and hook, proves to us that our father figure is not a very great dad. He's a bit selfish, cares more about work than his kids. Here's more about being an adult than having fun and enjoying the moment. Moments he'll never see again. How about a lawyer who always lies in the film liar, liar. We have to fix this because lying gets them ahead, but ultimately becomes his downfall. We're gonna do all of this in the coming days. When we start talking about our plots. 11. Day 2: Conclusion: So we come to the end of day two, and here's our checklist for part two. A little bit of a vocab review. We've identified clear wants, needs, and motives, inciting incident for character. We've talked a lot about character revelation, what that means, traits and moral compass. Keep in mind, this is really just foundational learning. At this point, we will apply these elements in the worksheets. So what do I want you to do is head over to the workbook, completing the day to worksheet. And we'll see you back here tomorrow for day three. 12. Day 2: Motive: Number three, why do they want it otherwise known as motivation or motive? I've got news for you. No one does anything in this life without motive. And almost everything we do is actually motivated to avoid pain. You might be saying to yourself, What, how could that be possible? Well, think about it. I get hungry. So I'm motivated to find food because if I don't, I'm gonna go hungry. I am motivated to put on my shoes every day because if I don't, my feet are really going to hurt. Every single thing we do is about avoiding some form of quote-unquote pain or fear. Everything. I go to work because I don't want to be fired. I go to work because I don't want to lose money because I need to pay for by bills. I buy a TV because I might miss that favorite show of mine. Motive is fascinating and the reason they want what they want or you want what you want, is driven exclusively by fear or pain. And this is created by a strong backstory. So you have to ask yourself, what is your character's greatest fear? What is their source of pain? This will definitely help you establish your motive. Murder mysteries are so easy to produce because motive is the most interesting part of the story. Every murder mystery is what? A murder. Okay, well, why? The motive is what we explore? So have a look at this. This is a breakdown of Walter White's external and internal needs combined with motive, just think about why. And if you don't know why, look for the fear. So Walter White wants money, great. But why? Because he is afraid for his family's welfare after he passed away from cancer. If he dies prematurely, they don't have enough money. And they're going to be poor. We're gonna be left without money to survive. This motive comes from fear. But he needs to feel proud because he secretly fears he might look like a coward and Loser to his wife, son and peers due to his backstory. So this is internal need. He wants to feel good every time he does something bad, he feels great, selfish. Every single step of the way. While his motive was great, I need to make more money. The means to which he does this are obviously questionable. So remember, the want and need both need a motivation. Why should he change for the better or worse? Batman? Easy one, external want? Let's fight the bad guy of the week. Motive. Well, he's afraid that these people were murdered or maim innocent lives, like his own parents, which is connected to his backstory. He can't stand injustice. His inner need, getting revenge, guess what? That's wrath. Seven deadly sin. That's his central flaw and we're trying to remove it, but it never gets removed. Batman has been telling stories since the sixties. Motive. It's a fear of letting go of his past, that he'll forget the memory of his deceased parents who are murdered tragically as a boy, the scarred him, his backstory is what generated this quest for vengeance and wrath. The central flaw, theme and message surrounding this is done in film, comic books, cartoons, everything. Why do they want what they want? Why am I chasing down this bad guy week after week? Because who's going to stand up to them? Cops aren't doing anything. So I'll do it. I will become a vigilante. But we'd like Batman because he's fighting bad guys. We don't connect with the external want. We connect, relate to their motive for wanting it. If we can understand or empathize with the motive, we're going to like them, just like Batman. We got to take down this bad guy because he's going to eliminate the whole city with a bomb. I'm in. Motive is driven by fear or a need to move past pain. Backstory. So always ask yourself, why does this person want this? And how important is it? I might want a muffin in the morning. And my motive is, I'm hungry. But it's not the strongest want in the world. But I may want the muffin to give to a homeless family near me because they may start. I go to the shop and I realize I have no money. I tell the clerk I don't have any money, but there's a family next door that needs some extra muffins potentially, because they're going hungry. We're going to like you a little bit because you're standing up for these people, standing up for justice, trying to do something to change, to become more selfless. If the motive is bad, we hate them. Look for fear or pain as a motive. If I'm going to harm somebody because I want more money. We don't like that. It's common sense, but we liked the protectors. And we'll get more into this later when we talk about how to engineer this. So for now, again, absorb, take notes on these things and it'll all make sense in the worksheets when we actually apply what we understand here. Other examples include providing for our families, like in Breaking Bad. I liked that. I liked what Walter is trying to do. But boy, he's doing some pretty ugly things in order to do it. Being a good role model, liar, liar, or seeking justice, being accepted, saving the world. These are all great modus in order to establish this motive. If to remember that we don't change overnight, we have to go through some stages in order to get there to learn and grow. You could argue that your short film, five or ten pages, is a window into one of these obstacles. Having passed this one moment or obstacle, they're getting closer to what it may not tell the full story. But it gets us pretty darn close to becoming a heroic character must have something they want. We know that objectively trophy a prize. And this motivates the story and also brings about their revelation or transformation, which indeed is your message. It's the point of the story. So they're a concrete reflection of their hopes and dreams. If I'm an archaeologist, I want a very, very famous prize piece that's sought after by kings and queens all over the world. The Hope Diamond or a hidden treasure. Money, everybody wants money. It's reflection of their inner desire, driven by ****. I want something, I want that brand new TV. I want new clothes and new shoes, and I want a better job. I want more money. So let's tell a story about how you actually don't need those things to be happy. 13. Day 2: Methods: How do they go about doing it? Super important, okay, So your character wants something right? Money, escape prison. To be a parent, to defeat good and evil, to slay the monster or whatever have you. But you've got to ask yourself, how is this person doing this? These are known as tactics, methods, methods to your madness. These could also be known as your superpower. Superman defeats evil geniuses and super villains via the use of his superpowers. It's interesting. But at its core, it's just a guy fighting evil. What's the difference between that? And a police detective in your local town solving a crime? Well, the difference is their tactics. What are they doing it? So what is your character good at and not just good? Great. Are they Superintelligence like Sherlock Holmes, cunning, creative? Are they the fastest gunslinger? Are they creative about the way they approach their job? Is this a story about the best chess player, a better survival experts? The way or method of character uses to achieve their goal makes your story very unique. There are a million and one monster movies out there, but the way we track it down is interesting. So some examples of tactics, of course, graders to the Lost Ark. I'd like to say Indiana Jones is great because he uses muscle. And dad smarts. Dad smarts are something I like to call skills that aren't necessarily super, super intelligent, but they're clever. Indiana Jones is a clever guy or as a national treasure. Another archaeologists played by Nicholas Cage, uses intelligence and cleverness. Although Indiana Jones, his cleverness is a bit more dad like we all know this, the dad that comes up with a clever way to tackle an obstacle. But most of the time, let's just say Indiana Jones uses muscle and bronze, punches guys out, right? A man's man in the classic sense of the word, both characters are archaeologists, but use different tactics to achieve their goals of attaining rare and precious artifacts which are there external goals. Other references includes Sherlock Holmes versus poor row, right, two detectives but totally different tactics and methods. Breaking Bad again. Walter White, using his superior genius, intellect to cook and manufactured drugs, his method, his superpower in order to reach his external goal of becoming a millionaire to support his family. Note that the creative method or means of achieving a boring or well-worn goal, making money. Super simple and boring is immediately made more interesting as a result of these tactics. Show that comes to mind if you haven't seen it is Queens gambits a show about chess players? How boring of a topic could that be? But guess what? One of the highest rated shows of all time. Because our characters tactics are interesting to watch. The writers are creative with the method or how of that character. How many detectives are there? Batman, Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Inspector Gadget, loop n, Blade Runner, Jessica Fletcher, millions. But their methods are all different. Their motives are also different as well. 14. Day 2: Obstacles: We know that their methods are pretty cool. We've got a great external wants, got some internal needs are going to deal with. But the only way they're going to achieve any of this is by creating a great obstacle. What stops them from getting what they want? They want something, money escape. You want to be a parent. Ask yourself who or what is preventing this character from getting what they want? You need this. If you don't have it, you've got no conflict at any level. It can be a person or circumstance. So bad weather versus a villain or a monster, right? It could be something hidden, could be abstract. The choices your character makes as they are tested by these obstacles will determine their fate. Final vice or virtue. At the end of the story. I don't learn anything. If I'm not tested. I don't become more patient. By facing circumstances that don't test my patients. We always do this in our lives. I have to be more patient. After you fail to be patient, waiting in a traffic line, honking their horn and getting aggressive and then you get arrested. I have to be more patient. These are tests, life tests. And we design these in our own story. So the obstacles are known as central conflicts and cause your character to reveal themselves. I mentioned this before. I mentioned it again. The obstacle is the way Marcus Aurelius, this is very important. The obstacle is the way to finding more virtue. We do not become more patient, friendly or less greedy unless we are presented with circumstances that test this virtuosity. Obstacles, central conflicts are used to directly challenge your character in order to test them, to test their virtue. These tests move characters in the direction that you want them to go and we'll reveal their ultimate heroism. Examples could be family law drug dealers. In the case of Breaking Bad, we construct obstacles. We put them in the way of our character and they grow or don't grow based on them when they're faced with these tests. If I came to you with a briefcase of money and you didn't know me. And I said, here's a million dollars in exchange for your soul. This is a test, a virtue test. Whether I pass or fail, it will determine the type of person I become. A lot of villain backstories have a lot of tragic circumstances surrounding them. The key to a lot of the Batman villains, Victims of tragic circumstance that turn them into evil people. These conflicts are usually the opposite in value to the ones your character possesses. So for instance, if I'm trying to learn more about tolerance of an intolerant person. Well, maybe I set up a bunch of circumstances or scenarios in my film that directly test tolerance. So if I'm intolerant towards younger people, guess what I'm gonna do in my film. I'm going to have my character interact with a bunch of younger people. Think about your own growth, how this works, right? How did we become more patient? How did you learn what you needed to learn how to make a bad choice and become more selfish. Sometimes when we fail tests, we actually learn that we have to be more patient, right? Boy, I didn't pass that test, but next time, next time, I'm going to do differently. Look to human nature. A couple of examples here from Breaking Bad, the law, the drugs, the family. You can write from each or any of these central conflicts to generate your drama or your conflicts. Don't be afraid of it. That's all I'm going to try and help you engineer it in the next days. Worksheet. Any one of these can prevent water from getting what he wants. For the purposes of our short film, we will choose one. 15. Day 2: Consequences (Stakes): Let's start talking about consequences. This is a very, very critical part of any screenplay. Keep in mind, this is not a ranking as well. It doesn't mean this is the sixth most important element. All of these elements are important when talking about character basics. So this one, if we had to rank it, is pretty important. I would place this at number one or two on one of the things you should think about when you're writing your store, because stakes essentially determine what happens if the character doesn't get what they want. One way to put this is to phrase it as loss of, if you're having trouble figuring out what we're sort of bedding for. And by betting, I mean, think about a poker game or a card game where you put something up to bet width. If I said, let's place a bet. I'll bet a can of Coke versus the keys to my car. There's a big difference there. So usually what we wanna do is make sure that the stakes are very high or high as possible. One of the things you could do is look at your central conflict. Remember we said maybe just stick to one. For instance, if it's a monster, the monster runs loose in the world. Well, guess what's going to happen? A lot of people were probably going to get hurt, right? So our lives are at stake. Or possibly in another story, you go to jail or you lose your job. These are high-stakes. Low stakes would be something like, well, I'm late for work, but no big deal. If I'm late for work, if I'm late for work and I get fired, those are pretty high stakes. So if we said we're traveling from Los Angeles to New York by car. Big deal. If I said we need to go from Los Angeles to New York by car because if I don't make it by Tuesday, I miss my daughter's wedding. Those are pretty high stakes and you could maybe craft a pretty funny little script about that. So keep in mind that stakes are very, very important and will propel interest in your story. What is at stake is a very, very fundamental part of the strength in terms of narrative purpose of your story. So let's look at the central conflicts in Breaking Bad once again, but with the perspective of conflict. So let's check out the central conflicts of Breaking Bad. Once again. The central conflicts can then determine what the stakes will be if Walter White loses against these central conflicts. So let's look at the law. If he loses the battle, let's say with the law, he will go to jail, so he must win. For drugs, he might lose his life, which is death. And for family, he might lose his own family, get a divorce. So look at your central conflict or your primary conflict and ask yourself, what is it stake for my character if they lose? You phrase this as loss of to define the stakes, Walters, conflict with the law or indirect opposition of his goal. His want is external, want to producing drugs, for instance. 16. Day 2: Conclusion: So just a recap of all these questions that must be answered first when you're looking at your character. And once again, in no particular order. Are these primary questions. Who are these characters? What do they want? External and internal? Why do they want it? Motive and motivation. How do they go about getting it? We talked about tactics. What stops them? Central conflict, remember, maybe just choose a one for your short film. And most importantly, what are the stakes? What are the consequences involved? Looking at Breaking Bad? Once again, these are the answers to the questions. And in fact, what you could do is look at the show Breaking Bad and see if you can determine these on your own as an additional exercise. Number one, who are these characters? Walter White is a high school chemistry teacher who was diagnosed with cancer, cooks drugs in order to provide for his family. What does he want? What do they want? External, internal, Walter White wants to make money. Needs to feel proud internal. Why do they want it? Walter's afraid of being a coward to his family and friends, and it's also afraid of leaving his family without money after he dies. These are fears. Remember, in order to find the motive, look to the fear, both motivate his internal and external goals. How do they go about getting it pretty easy? Walter cooks drugs. What stops him? Central conflicts, Walters Family, the law, drug dealers. These provide really strong central conflicts that define his character journey, otherwise known as a character arc. What are the consequences along the way, Walter could die, loses family, or go to prison? If you can answer all six of these questions about your character halfway there. So as a little summary and checklist of today, we've discussed who the characters are, what they want, why do they want It's how do they go about getting it, what stops them? And consequences, along with a list of our key vocabulary for review. All of these, again, are contained in the workbook for day two. This is a great point to stop right now if you need to take a break, we're gonna go ahead and go into day two, part two to continue our discussion on character. So feel free to take a 15 or 20-minute break. Let this all soak in and I'll see you right back here for part two. 17. Day 2: Let's Build Your Character!: Okay, so welcome back to part two. We're going to start talking about how to build or shape your character to make them a little bit more believable, we set up those foundational pillars in part one, very, very fundamental parts of character, but that doesn't necessarily bring them alive. We know why they're doing things. We understand the stakes, what they do, but we're not designing robots here. We gotta design to real people. It's gotta be believable. So let's get started by talking about Ralph Waldo Emerson. It's got a great quote here. People don't realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. Meaning that most people do things that reveal who they are, the way they see the world is a real definition of how they approach the world, how they approach other people. And that's what we're going to try and do here. In the next section in part two. Today, we want to make characters interesting, not likable. There's a big difference between that. I think a lot of people, when they're writing stories, screenplays, whatever have you. They often think, well, I want people to like my character, but that's not necessarily true. We don't find them likable, we find them interesting. There's a lot of evil characters we really like, like Darth Vader, very interesting character with an interesting background. If we don't find them interesting, we won't care what they do. In part one, we talked a lot about external goals, getting buried treasure, getting the new job, getting married, whatever it is that you've set up with your character. We're not really going to care unless we make the character itself interesting. Got some examples here like Edward's scissor hands or Big Lebowski, Iron Man, Walter White. These are interesting characters, subjective of course, but I find them particularly interesting. What I'm really trying to say here is character first and plot second. A lot of the questions I get asked by students surround the notion of, should I be working on plot first or character? I would argue that character would be first. Even with a well-worn concept or a plot, an interesting character can drive your entire project. Think about detective stories, Sherlock Holmes versus Batman versus poor row, Inspector Gadget, Ace Ventura, the girl next door. Guess what? These are all murder mystery plots. But what's the difference? Interesting characters, some very serious and dark versus very charming, very intelligent, very clever, very funny, very girl next door. How obvious Can you get? All of this is going to be broken down today into four main pillars. These are the four main pillars of character that we really need to understand when we're designing your character. Number one, we really covered in part one, character wants, internal needs, motivations. Next, we're going to talk about character inciting incident. This is the ignite or this is the spark that lights the fire for the character's motivation, inner and outer. We've talked a little bit about that in part one because we talked about backstory, that thing that ignites the desire, the need to enter the story. When we do, number three, we're going to establish a character revelation map. Sounds very complicated, but it's actually quite easy when we get into it. This is going to directly address transformation or change. We talked a little bit about that again in part one, actions from vice to virtue or the opposite. And of course, the all-important character traits. This is a very important pillar because this is the one that's going to bring them to life. These are the elements that make characters interesting, and that's the goal. 18. Day 2: Review and Inciting Incident: Let's talk about number one and again, in no particular order. These are all fundamentally important when designing a character. Because remember, when we're writing a story, the audience has no idea about how we're doing this or why are all these numbered elements that we need to make characters? They're just reading your story moment to moment. It's a little bit like building a car, right? We don't really know how the car drives, how it's engineered, but it works, right? It turned the key and it works well. These are the elements that make it work in no particular order. You need the ignition, the tires, the window, the engine transmission. They all work together in tandem. So number one is a bit of a review from day two, part one. I want to make sure character has an external want, right? Trophy. They want to win the big tournament. They want a wife or husband. They want that brand new car. Makes sure that, that is very, very clear at the beginning of your story. But also make sure that character has an internal needs, something abstract they need to fix, right? It's like a thorn in their side. And this could either be virtuous or nefarious, bad in nature. A lot of that is driven by the backstory, something that happened previously to them. In your story. Example we'd like to use is a person who went through a bad breakup previous to own your story takes place. That person says, I'm never going to date anybody again, I hate people, leave me alone. This is something they need to fix inside of them that they don't necessarily need to understand. Also make sure that there is a motivation for both this external goal and internal goal. The internal, what is really driven by that backstory, right? That hidden, that hidden ugliness, that character flaw we need to fix. Make sure you identify and are clear about where that comes from. Inciting incident. This is a word that gets thrown around a lot in storytelling of any kind, screenplays, writing novels, the inciting incident creates a motivation for the character to act. This can be a moment that happens in your present story or is generated by a backstory not yet revealed. This is a moment, an incident That's emotionally charged, that sparks or ignites a character to do stuff. It drives them. What motivates them to pursue what they want. For instance, I show up at your work and I said, Hey Fred, I found a buried treasure map last weekend. Let's go get it. This is an inciting incident that ignites a flame within me to get what I want because I need money really badly in order to support my family. Makes sure that this charge spark also ignites the desire to fix something internally. We'll get more into that a little bit later. But for now, understand that this is a singular event in our character's life that has never, ever, ever happened before. Because of this moment, this person will never be the same again, which is connected to ultimately theme and message. We talk a lot about this in storytelling, where my professors at 1, What asked me, Jason, why are we starting the story here? Why are you writing this script now, in this moment in this character's life? Well, it's because this is the day that this character's life changes from what it was before. They were living their life until once upon a time, suddenly something happens that suddenly is your inciting incident. We often refer to this as a status quo. I live my life the way I've been living it for the past 50 years until suddenly someone comes up to me and says, Hey, have I got an opportunity for you? That's a suddenly moment that has never happened before. There's three types of this inciting incident. And I want you to choose only one. There's something called a magic call. This is a moment that magically seems to appear that forces a character to begin their journey. Number two, the protector or volunteer situation, which is a moment that forces a character to do the right thing. They are called to action to protect or volunteer. Someone's got to do something, they show up to do it. Number three is a very popular one. The victim, this inciting incident is usually in the form of a tragic situation. Terminal illness or death in the family or friend, that forces a character to act. Murder mysteries. For instance. Some popular examples. In the matrix number one, the magic called Dios computer screen automatically starts messaging him. He's been living his life day-to-day, lonely, isolated until one day, suddenly magic call, hello Neo, number to Steve Rogers volunteers to join the army out of a sense of profound duty he has towards God in his country. And number three, the victim. Of course, Walter White, being a prime example of this, Walter White is diagnosed with terminal cancer, a life altering event that changes the trajectory of his character. Want you to make a note about this. The inciting incident is usually an emotional event that asks us to join the character on their journey towards vice or virtue. 19. Day 2: Revelation: Let's talk about character revelation. Character revelation, remember that characters are revealed. They don't transform, but this revelation is really based on the internal need we're talking about a character becoming heroic. It must be present in the character or else we don't know why you're telling the story. Remember our stories are like little nuggets that contain the seed of heroic journey, message, theme, destiny. We have to learn something here as people, as the audience. I think we really forget about that as makers, as writers. You don't just write to write. We write with purpose and intention. What are you trying to do? What did we learn here? What's the point of you telling me this story? We have to establish what this character needs in order to feel complete or hole. It's almost like there's something missing. And we can phrase this as opposite forms of vice, virtue, or a character trait of your choosing. You can phrase it as going from a coward to courageous, and you can write these down. What do you want your character to go from scared to strong? Last time we talked about weak fish, strong fish, isolated to connected. It's all connected to the theme and message. You want to teach people how to be more courageous, more selfless. Well, here you go. Here's a person I'd like to tell you about. Their name is James, and they go on this terrific journey towards selfless sacrifice and heroism. And this is the story. You can pretend like you're up on a podium and you're telling a story about someone, you know, what's the point of the story? Why did you tell me this? Once we've chosen our direction or general direction. Okay. I got a guy. I want them to be scared. And by the end of the story, you want them to be courageous. We got to choose our compass here, right? Character revelation is a little bit of like a compass, a moral compass. At the beginning of your story, they are selfish and by the end, we've got to make them selfless. This is the goal. And the way we do that is through the plot, things have to happen. Decisions have to be made. And that means that the character has to make active choices. And by doing so, they make greater and greater progress towards becoming selfless through these obstacles, which do get larger and larger and larger as the plot progresses, things become more complicated and we can look at these as tests. We talked about that great Marcus Aurelius quote about the obstacle is the way this is what he was talking about. Even in life. In order to become selfless, we have to go through certain tests to become more selfless. Whatever you choose as your moral compass. Have this in mind. This is also known as character development. If you hear this word, this phrase tossed around. Remember we look at this as character revelation, also known as character development. Those two things are synonymous. Character development or character arc is a real life thing. It happens, it happens to you, it happens to me. We learn, we grow as people. So if you look at that, how do we change? I think of yourself, how did you become more cooperative? How did you become more patient? It's a big one for me. Stories move us to change our values, our virtues for better or worse. Can you be over protective as a parent? What happens there? That's a film called Finding Nemo. The parent is so attached to Nemo that the parent must learn how to let their kids go and be independent. It's a story of change that we can all relate to. A character acts according to their moral compass as it changes through your story. So what does this mean? That means I've got a firefighter and his job is to save humans from burning buildings. They're going to act that way. This character we would expect to enter buildings to make decisions to save lives. This is the definition of here was, and this is also the definition of why we like people, because they do positive things in the world. We don't like Mother Teresa because she's bad towards children. We like her because she's great towards children, the poor, the needy, the hungry. And there's a reason why, because these heroic people are doing heroic things in the face of great obstacle. It's very simple to understand in terms of story. If you want your character to change, you have to put them through obstacles. And this can only be done by placing them there yourself as you design it. Number four, okay, so pillar number four, character traits. This is a really important one because this is what makes your character come to life. I think we can all understand the other pillars very carefully and critically. But how do we make them interesting? This is the Main objective, right? We don't want to make them likable, want to make them interesting, which actually gives us a lot of creative flexibility. Instead of carrying about whether they're doing good things or bad things, whatever it may be, we just want to make them interesting. Characters have something called personality traits. You and I have them. This guy is lazy, this guy is a fast talker, a slow talker. This person is funny. They're quirky, they are clever. They come up with creative ways of overcoming obstacles. They use their hands instead of their head. These are character or personality traits that are really just expressions of their inner nature or their character flaws. If I said that this guy over here, Frank, is a very greedy, selfish person. How would you expect that person to act? Traits make characters interesting, even if they all have the same job. So I could have five different police officers, but each one of them looks and talks differently. And what happens is if you put those same police officers in the room together, conflict will occur. You ever heard this thing? Good cop, bad cop. This creates conflict and the revelation we're looking for. A really popular thing that you might see in police detective stories, like the good cop, bad cop scenario is that one cop is trying to be proper, buy the book, and another cop is inherently a little bit more evil. His moral compass is skewed. And by putting those two characters together, this creates interesting drama. This is a film called Training Day. You might want to check out to see an example of this in action. Another example could be a control freak, right? Someone that in the beginning of our story likes to control everything. This is their inner flaw, the thorn we need to remove. But how do we do that? We can do that by creating obstacles. But remember, obstacles can also be people or circumstance. You might say, okay, we've got a character that is inherently controlling. So what do we have to do? Well, we have to put this person with another individual or circumstance that gives them a sense that they're controlled, nature will be confronted or challenged in order to make them less that way. Great, we have that. And then so what, how do we make them interesting? Well, maybe the control freak expresses this as being a neat freak. Everything is clean, controlled, orderly, put in plastic bags, made into little lists. This is a character trait. It's an expression of who they are inside. How about a self-absorbed detective? That talks really fast as a character trait. This is known as the TV show Sherlock Holmes. If anybody's seen that with Benedict Cumberbatch, his job is detective. Great. But he talks really, really fast. He talks fast because his mind moves fast. And he looks down on other people because they can't keep up with him. Makes him interesting. Other examples includes likes to spend money or maybe somebody that's thrifty or cheap. Very neat, very messy, foul mouth, extremely polite, clean, bossy. These are the things that make people come alive. Think about people you know, around you. Man, John. He's so cool and collected, even though he is a politician or a mayor or whatever, have you. Being late all the time? Interesting. Sometimes I think the best character traits are in direct opposition of what the person does. A lazy police officer, a lawyer who lies. This is a film called liar, liar. But be specific. And maybe actually peculiar. If you can, elements that will bring your character to life. A comedian who's depressed all the time, really just tried to avoid cliche. For instance, you don't want a cop that drinks because it's a cliche or something that we see a stereotype. In fact, we like characters that break the stereotype. We'd like a weak character, like a hobbit who's extremely courageous, someone that's short and kind of weak, but has a huge heart and can change the world even though they're a meter tall. Or we'd like characters that challenge the stereotype that's unexpected and works a lot. A chess player who drinks a lot, because we think chess players are prim and proper and follow the rules. This is Queens gambit, of course, a gang member who loves to dance, ballet, be creative. This is creative writing or trying to create interesting characters, not likable characters. These character arcs, remember, we want our character to change, are really defined by a clashing of different circumstances, characters that reveal our inner nature of our main protagonist, our main character, right? So fireworks really happen when scenes involve two different characters with conflicting traits or moral compasses. Were looking for conflict, not the easy way out. Talked about this a little bit before, but an arrogant pilot teams up with an honest partner. A bad mother is confronted by their innocent child, a messy roommate and a clean roommate, whatever you want. We have to place your character in direct opposition with someone who is really the opposite of your character in Breaking Bad, we have Walter White who was a very bad individual place against people that are very good, especially the people in his own family. But we grow by association with others that teaches this right through obstacle and conflict. We learn about ourselves because others show us the way. Here's an interesting character study. If anybody knows the film fantastic beasts and where to find them. This is a character called Newt. Scratch Manders, scream ender. Very obvious character traits. Character traits are he's shy, He's socially awkward, timid, academic, speak softly. And his disconnection that he feels and the distance he carries towards other people and humans is really his character flaw. Makes them socially awkward, timid, shy. It's an expression of the way he feels towards other people because he really only connects with animals. He needs to learn how to love humans or connect with them a little bit better. Throughout the course of the story. Many characters have this character flaw, but the way in which it is expressed is very unique. There's a lot of characters that feel disconnected between the people around them in our stories, but the way it's expressed can be different. Sherlock Holmes isn't really good one because he really doesn't like other people because he looks down on them. So he treats them a little bit more aggressively, shouts them down or makes them feel stupid. But he's still disconnected from other humans. Socially awkward, talks fast, can make you socially awkward. 20. Day 2: Interesting Character Tips and Conclusion: I've got some tips now for creating an interesting character. You might want to look at. Number one, we like characters that are really competent, write that have a skill or superpower? There are methods. Think about Sherlock Holmes, very intelligent queens gambit. She's a genius chess player, the fastest gunslinger in the West in our cowboy movies. To, we'd like characters who are victims of circumstance. Something happens to them in their past, loss of family, terminal illness, bullying. I use the term like loosely. So we like characters who stand up for justice as Savior's. Protecting people, that man, detectives, lawyer driven stories, dragon slayers, whatever have you. We like characters who volunteer. They sacrifice their own lives to help others despite the overwhelming odds. We'd like characters that violate stereotypes as we discussed before, and neurotic detective or a genius janitor. But to do this, we use unusual traits. Breaking Bad. Walter White once again has everything. He's got clear wants, needs, and motives for everything. A very clear backstory that generated his nature as a bidder, prideful person. There's character change or revelation. The obstacles and central conflicts. The law has family drugs. There is an inciting incident in his life. He's diagnosed with terminal cancer and he's got really cool traits or superpowers. Highly intelligent. He's a genius chemist. He's orderly, he's clever, diabolical. In essence. He's perfect. And that's what makes him interesting. Kurt Vonnegut said, be a sadist. No matter what or how sweet and innocent your characters make, awful things happen to them in order that the audience see what they're made of. What we're talking about. Here is obstacle, change, revelation. Your job as a writer is not to make it easy for your characters to get what they want or to change, you have to make it really, really difficult. And the more difficult you can make it, the more interesting it will be to watch your character transform or reveal their inner true nature as heroic or potentially evil. We come to the end of day two, and here's our checklist for part two. A little bit of a vocab review. We've identified clear wants, needs, and motives, inciting incident for character. We've talked a lot about character revelation, what that means, traits and moral compass. Keep in mind, this is really just foundational learning. At this point, we will apply these elements in the worksheets. So what do I want you to do is head over to the workbook, completing the day to worksheet. And we'll see you back here tomorrow for day three. 21. Day 3: Goals and Intro to Story: Wow, So welcome to day three. We're going to talk a lot, a lot about structuring your plots. Day 12, we covered everything from what if ideas, central themes, messages, and log lines. Day two, which was a big, big day, talked about character, how to create interesting characters. What does that even mean? What type of elements we need to consider when designing and building our characters. So at this stage, you should have completed and thoroughly worked on your worksheets for day 12. These worksheets are very, very critical to moving into our day three work. And remember the core structure is laid out so that all the worksheets will work in tandem with each other before we go into the scripting stage. So today we have a couple of goals. One is to understand basic story or plot mechanics. We will use some key vocabulary. Learn a little bit about that, some new terms for you. We'll apply some plot mechanics to your story. And of course, we have the worksheet for D3, which you will complete in order to create your first story outline. So let's talk about story or plot. There are multiple formats to story, but there's one story structure, skeleton, if you will. Despite the genre, love comedy, horror, thriller, suspense, structure is the same. Meaning there's always a beginning, middle, and end. Always, always, always. If you're missing any one of these, it won't work. Once upon a time, I went driving down to the beach. I met my wife there. I saw her. She said Hi. I said hi. No ending, terrible, terrible, terrible story. Don't tell that story. And please don't write it for this course. The length is not important. In fact, the less time you have meaning a short film, the less elements we need. The more time you have more pages, the more elements. Talking about plot and story. Making short films. Although you might say to yourself, I've got an idea for ten narrative feature films. Well, start with one short film and see if you could do that. Because it teaches you a lot about how to be precise, accurate, clear, brief. A lot of commercial directing is like this. How to send a message very quickly, clearly, concisely and accurately. Story, otherwise known as plot, is a blueprint or a map. Your character will follow in order to explore your theme and message. It's a map where we can place some obstacles in the road, bumps in the road for your character to overcome. This is different than characters. Characters can be obstacles that can help us or hurt us. But plot is the stuff that happens in the story. Get it right. 22. Day 3: Story Mapping and Plot: Talked about moral compass. How do I get my character to go from selfish to selfless? All these little dots here, you have to do with plot, their tests, their obstacles, things that happen in the story, challenge the character. And if they pass the tests, they become more selfless. I like to call the story mapping. I love this. I love this stage because it's super fun and creative. And there's a couple of tips and tricks you can embrace in order to create a great story map or plot for your character. At this point, we've designed a great character, but they need to do stuff. They need to be thrown into the world, right? So each story Check Point or point on the map is called a beat. It's a critical moment that changes the direction of the narrative. Kind of like this picture I have on the left, things go left and right and up and down, but it's never straight, right? So for instance, if we have an inciting incident which is a critical life-changing beat or moment. For the character. It will force action early. It's a starting point that will move us in the direction we need to go in order to accomplish what the character needs and wants primarily in terms of our plot, It's a want buried treasure. Kill the monster, solve the crime. Let's look at some other major B points. Shall we? I didn't want to order these Story Map points, but they are extremely important. And we need to hit each of them. And there are nine we need to discuss. The first is a setup, which also includes an inciting incident. We have a call to action, a break into act two, which is defined by a major choice that the character makes that I'd like to call major choice one. Based on this, we have a midpoint which is really characterized by a bunch of complications that happen. This then gets us into a break. For act three, or a major choice to crisis, followed by a break into act for that is also defined by a major choice number three. So three major choices. A climax or showdown. And of course, the catharsis and resolution. These are the nine key Story Map points I'd like to discuss today that are critical for your story to work. They all come in order. But I like to place them as stars on the map destination points we need to get to. And this is our map, a chart. What we have here is an outline of your short film. And on the x-axis we have time, the time it takes to watch your film from beginning to end. And drama on the left, going from low-intensity to high-intensity drama. So the goal really is to carry us through time, your short film from 0 to nine or ten minutes. And as we go along time, guess what? Drama increases. It must increase or your story will be terrible. It's not interesting, it's slow, it's boring. Want to avoid that? That's why you're here taking the course. We'll show you how to do that. For short films. It looks like this. Take nine to ten minutes as our final destination. So at the beginning of our story we have 0 to two. The middle is defined by three to 89 to ten. Again, this is rough, this is loose. I'm just trying to show you how plot is supposed to perform across time and how it's going to be broken down into our various star key map points. So in our setup, which is usually 0 to two minutes, we're gonna go from low-intensity to high-intensity. It's an emotional section of the film that'll hook us and bring us into the story. It should propel us into act one, act two, act three, and finally act four, different sections of your film. Now, keep in mind the audience has no idea what any of this is, but you do. We're building a car here. So we need to understand what we need in order to build the car are rising action line looks like this. So from our setup or high-intensity emotional charged moment, we ground ourselves and low-intensity or the status quo, the beginning of our story, you could start your film at that two-minute mark there, where it says Act One and arise from there. Setups could be optional, but in any event, we need that red line to rise. How do we get that to happen as we move through our story, while we do that with our nine story points, if you put them there, the action line will rise and get more intense, dramatically speaking. And each of these nine points falls in the subsequent sections, setup act 1234. We'll talk all about that today. And remember, at any point you can pause the video, you can go back. You can double my speed, although I don't recommend it. Study these very carefully. 23. Day 3: Cause and Effect: Let's talk about the single greatest heartbeat of narrative filmmaking, storytelling of all time, cause and effect. In my classes, I talk about this all the time. If there's one thing you take away from this course, it should be cause and effect. Narratives. Stories are driven by cause and effect. I'll say it over and over again. You guys can go in the comments section and say, he always says cause and effect, cause and effect, good. If anything, put it on a little note, tape it to your board, your computer, and always remember it. 99% of stories fail because they don't have this. Think about the last story that you were told that was boring. I'll make one up right now. I was driving along to work. I got into the car, I bought a bottle of water. I went back to work. I picked up the phone. I went to the meeting and met with Jake. Jake told me I'm fired. I said, Cool, I went back home, I took a nap. Terrible story. Nothing was driven by cause and effect. So what we have to do is think about words like but or therefore, for instance, I was driving to work. I looked down at my phone, it's said I was fired. Therefore, I got into a car accident. Therefore, I injured my neck. Therefore, I had to go to the hospital for my boss called. There has to be consequence to cause and effect like dominos. Do not use words like and, and so, and then, and then, and then, and then there is no, And then in narrative storytelling, there's only but, and therefore, why? Because, and, and so don't generate causality. So simply put, cause and effect is what drives or pushes your story forward. It's the fuel in your car. It's what gets you from point a to B. Without it, your car won't drive, your story will be terrible. Here's a great example, a good example. John stays up late playing video games. Therefore, John misses the bus to school. Therefore, he fails his class. Therefore, he gets kicked out of school. Therefore, he joined the military and therefore he goes to war. Story, bad story. John stays up late playing video games and then he calls his brother to talk about life. And then he goes to sleep, and then he wakes up to go get breakfast. And then he takes the bus to school where he meets Jane. And then they talk about video games. Awful. I know people like this that tell me stories like this, and they're awful before they even get off the ground. So what we're doing is creating kind of a chain, links in a chain, this is your story. It's the essence of storytelling. To connect the links. You have an inciting incident, which we talked briefly about before. For character, call-to-action, midpoint crisis, climax, showdown resolution. All these story points which we will get into today. And if one doesn't work, it breaks, it's boring. It makes no sense. We don't want that to happen here, so we'll make sure that it doesn't. 24. Day 3: Setup: So let's talk about the first section of your film, the setup. In this setup we are going to contain the first plot point, the inciting incident, the first star. This should occur before act one and be placed in the 0 to one-minute mark. The setup. This is about your first impression. First impressions are really, really important in filmmaking. If you watch Netflix, if anybody watching Netflix here, watching the first minute to three minutes of your show or film will largely determine whether you continue watching that show or film. Man, it's gotta be good. Here's two exceptional setups to take a look at the matrix in 1999, the opening sequence, the opening setup, contains an inciting incident that is phenomenal. What is phenomenal mean? Phenomenal means emotional. Your goal is to ground us in emotion. I don't want to know anybody's name. I don't need talking. Just hook knee in visually, emotionally make me care and feel something quick. Give us a teaser, a setup that's gonna make me want to watch the rest of this for shorts. Make sure it occurs very early. Get to the point. Made me curious. It could be a question. Number two, Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981. Amazing opening sequence that tells us everything we need to know about the tone, the theme, the world of the film. Incredibly important part of your story. We want to put the inciting incident for our character. There. We talked about three magic call, protector or volunteer or a victim. So make sure to establish one thing right before this. Establish a little bit of the daily status quo before it happens, this has to occur, right? We're kind of living our day, day to day and then a knock at the door. Number one, magic call. Hello. Is this Susan? Yes. I'm sorry to report, but you've been fired. Magic call setup beginning quick. We also phrase this as this. So once upon a time status quo until suddenly, once upon a time Jane was brushing your teeth until her nose started to bleed. So actually in ancient storytelling, the inciting incident was a deus ex machina event, or a character was in so much pain that the gods would literally come down and intervene to change the course or direction of this character's life. Please God do something. Zeus would come down with a lightning bolt and make something happen. Keep in mind that you can only have this Once. It should not get you out of anything. If you want to have a magic moment, jack and the Beanstalk. A goblin shows up, a genie, whatever you want. Make sure it only happens once in the setup. On the right-hand side, kinda funny image here I'm going to ask you which form of inciting incident is this, will give you a few seconds to decide. Do you think this is number 12 or three? Could be one or three victim. Poor guy going to get attacked by some kind of monster. Or it could be number one, until suddenly a monster appeared out of the blue and his screen. Guess what? It really doesn't matter. As long as you have an inciting incident. You could, as an optional device, create your setup your hook seen with inciting incident and go straight to a title card. You'll see this a lot for our scenario here, we'll call it computer virus and then we continue with the rest of the story. This is optional, but you'll see it a lot in short-form filmmaking. Certainly in feature films, you have a great opening setup and then cut to titles optional. I got some tips for his setup. Don't use dialogue right away. Maybe use visuals to communicate the story and set up a status quo first, right? Let's just see what the world looks like. Let's get used to these characters. I'm coming in cold. So take it slow in terms of what you're showing us or what kind of information you're giving us, but makes sure there is an inciting incident and use one of the three to pull us into the story emotionally, make us care, and then optionally place a title card after the sequence. Make sure this section is short. You've only got one or two minutes. One, preferably. I like to put my inciting incident within the first page, the first thirty-seconds. People don't have time. They want to get to the story quickly. I would never tell you stories. I said, Well, I woke up one morning and I brush my teeth and I made some breakfast and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it gets to the point. I woke up in the morning and my phone went off and my boss called me and said, Where are your light? Well, it's better. For short films, the scene should last one minute or less. Again, keep emotion in mind. Are you trying to scare us, make us laugh, make us curious, whatever it is, angry, sad, makes sure you have an emotion in mind. What are you trying to do? 25. Day 3: Call to Action: Once we have that inciting incident established in the setup, we gotta get to the first call to action in act one. Based on this inciting incident. What does the character do? We gotta get to the second in the story, or the character is called to action during act one, what are you gonna do about it is the way I like to look at this beat. Okay, so they got to call, phone call a magic genie lamp, an invitation to a fancy dinner, or what are they going to do about it? Your character has to respond to this or actually be called to action. So this moment is defined by a moment that will attempt to solve the inciting incident issue. If there is a monster, our protagonist has to do something about it. When they learn that there is a monster. It's really important to remember it. Character motive. Why would this character choose to act? What's the reason or not react? You have to think about this really critically. Write. The inciting incident causes our hero to be called to action. They have to do something about it. Famous movie Jaws. In the setup of the film, Steven Spielberg is very particular about his setups and inciting incidents. We have a victim, a woman that is tragically attacked and killed by a shark. The other thing to note here for call to action that I wanted to mention just briefly is the fact that once they get this call, once they're aware of the inciting incident, there is some time it will take for them to figure out what to do. That's what we're talking about by the call to action. So our sheriff doesn't really know about the shark, setup, the woman that's attacked, but he gets a call. When he arrives on scene to investigate the attack. He has to make a decision. Well, he doesn't do that immediately. It takes some time. And that time it takes for him to arrive at a careful decision will bridges to the next checkpoint or map point, which in and of itself is a critical decision. 26. Day 3: Act Breaks: The major choice, one, this is the decision to act upon the action that he is called upon to do. He has to do something, make a choice about what to do. So let's talk about this act breaks and scenes themselves. Narrative film is a series of acts broken into sequences, which are made up of scenes that contain beats, which we talked about previously. These are plot points. All our Story Map points are beats. An act break is a point of no return for your character. And it's the only way I want you to look at this. It's defined by major choice. That dramatically affects the character for better or worse. Choices. Action, pro action. Proactiveness. Going from one to two is also known as break into two or break into. If you ever hear this, but it should be a point of no return. Some act break examples include gladiator from 2 thousand soldier, that is a wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit. When our character escapes death. He ends up retaliating against the army that he's a part of and is a point of no return. Walter White's inciting incident is being diagnosed with terminal cancer. And he makes a decision to cook meth in order to make money. Although there are usually three to five act Briggs, it really doesn't matter how many there are. As long as your characters making critical choices about their lives. In ways that make sure there's no way back from that moment in the story moves forward. Because if there's no way back, we get worried. Oh man, what is this person going to do now? Can they move back? At any point you have to ask yourself that question. 27. Day 3: What is a Scene?: What's the scene you might be wondering, well, these are the building blocks of filmmaking. Talk about scenes that are really many stories and action through conflict in a unity of time that affects character or plot, or could be both at once. A short film could be one scene. But its purpose is either to move the story or character forward. If it doesn't do, either, you got to cut it. So at every stage you ask yourself, what's the point or purpose of the scene I just wrote? Beats, of course, are contained within that scene, like signposts pointing the direction of story or character. Scenes have clear beginning, middle, and ends, like a mini story. And it's always driven by cause and effect. So ask yourself, now, what we've discussed are three points here. Set up inciting incident, call to action, which is then defined by major choice to act or not, that breaks us into a series of events. So let's look at this in a nutshell. All three of our first points in our setup scene for jaws, we have a scene of a girl going for a swim. Status quo until suddenly she's attacked by a shark are inciting incident. Our sheriff gets a call to action, but doesn't do anything. It gets a literal call from the local municipalities saying, Hey, there's a shark in the water may be, but he doesn't do anything until the shark attacks again, at which point he chooses to hunt the shark and we break into act two. He's called to investigate, is given a choice. What are you going to do, Sheriff? I'm calling you. What will you do here? In his choice to act will define the break into two. Guess what? All of these moments are driven by cause and effect. Girl goes for a swim, desk, X mocking a shark appears. Therefore she gets killed. Therefore, we call the sheriff. Therefore, our sheriff chooses to act. 28. Day 3: Midpoint: Here we are on our chart. We've arrived at our midpoint complications number four, which gets what should happen in the mid point of your story and is really defined by complications. The fourth, enact two things. Take a turn for the worst, they get worse, more dramatic. The mid point of the film is a low point for the character and usually occurs quite literally in the middle of your film 50% of the way through. It's a period of critical value. The changes or tests or characters, vice or virtue. Our sheriff in Jaws is testing his responsibility and duty towards the people of his town that he has sworn to protect. We need to come up or write a test. That's really going to challenge his ability to be more virtuous. At this stage, the story becomes more complicated. In terms of choice and circumstance, the choices get harder to make. Examples could include the death of a team mate, losing custody of a child, love interest in jeopardy, a bomb goes off. Things look good, but, oh, no, things get worse. Usually occurs here. Remember our moral compass. Greater obstacles, greater tests need to be created. Things have to get trickier. We're complicated. Great midpoint examples. Dark night 2008. We've caught the Joker, great. But then he reveals that there are bombs in the city midpoint. In the middle of the matrix. We think Neo is the one, but he's not, he's told he is not the one raters. The Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is lover, is killed or seemingly killed during battle, and he's depressed. A low point. All you have to do is ask yourself, how can things get any worse or more complicated for my character? Remember the Vonnegut line about making things worse and worse and worse? You don't learn through easy tests. You learn through very difficult ones. So use that creative decision or question to drive the map point for your midpoint. Don't be afraid to be dramatic. That's what we're trying to do here. Be clever, Have fun. Some tips for midpoints. Always use the principle of cause and effect. Use the word therefore OR but to generate a mid point based on major choice one. So if I choose to go out very late one night, this is my major choice one. What could I do too, but, or therefore my way to mid point complication. I wake up in the morning, it's late. Oh my gosh. I missed my flight back home. It's complicated. What do I do? Think of the worst-case scenarios or situations, or the idea of a false victory that we talked about before. We won the battle, we captured the joker, but there are things that are much worse than this. I missed my flight, but worse. I also got fired from my job because I was supposed to be into work that day. Get creative with this. This is a moment that must test the virtue or whatever it is that you've defined that they're trying to learn. Always late, always thinking of themselves so they forget about other people. Well, what could we place in front of them that would make them get that idea? Our hero must make a choice based on this really bad situation that propels us into the fourth act. So it must be emotional and drive us to the end of the story. So we've got a beat. Remember that these are moments that occur. Neo is told he is not the one. Indiana Jones is lover, has been killed. Well, what did they do? They have to make a choice. I'm really emphasizing choice because a big problem that students have with storytelling is characters that do nothing. They're passive, they don't do anything about it. Things happen, but they have to be proactive. They have to do something, make decisions about the things that happen to them. 29. Day 3: Crisis: This pushes us into a crisis for our character. They keep making decisions. As they journey along the story. They're creating the story through their decisions. But things are getting really bad. They're getting really ugly at this point. Based on that second choice. It gets worse or more dramatic. The crisis, which is sometimes confused with the climax. There are two different things. The crisis in a story is defined as a frantic series of decisions or an escalation of conflict sparked off by proactive decision to deal with the midpoint event. So whatever your mid point is, if they realize there's a bomb that's about to go off, they have to make a decision about this because the bomb will go off. This happens a lot in films. Shakespeare called this the spiral. It's very quick in terms of time. Very crazy frenetic. The resolution of whatever happens in your spiral, in your crisis point will define the conclusion of your film, which also contains the climax or the showdown. Crisis points. And films are very easy to find. They're the big war battle sequence and action movies, epic chase scenes, time crunch to rescue the princess. Bombs, scenarios, ticking clocks. The crisis is always enact three, because whatever decision they make to go from two to three, we'll define the crisis point. Great examples include Dark Knight. A bomb is ready to blow. The crisis sequence are seeing should be rapid and paste and feel like a large battle or complicated series of intertwining decisions that your character must make. In terms of the story, the conclusion of your crisis will push you into the final confrontation, the conclusion of your story. Another crisis example from Kill Bill. It's just a frenetic action scene where she fights all of these ninjas. Try and choose your favorite film and find the crisis sequence. A couple of ways to do it. Usually you just look three-quarters of the way through the film and you'll find it. Is there an action scene or something that's going really crazy, a confrontation? How does the result of that crisis then lead us to the final act? You have to ask yourself who wins or loses based on this choice, the bride will win, which will push us to the final confrontation. Okay, so a couple of crisis tips, tips to make your crisis even better for your short film. Remember, it's a crisis. It's so hard to overlook the fact that the word itself implies it should be a crisis. So make it one, make it emotional. You could do that by using visuals to drive the sequence, only using a little bit of dialogue. Remember that these points are usually frenetic, fast paced and again, emotionally charged. So make it exciting, thrilling, curious, make me want to see more. It must be fast, so keep it short. Shakespeare will thank you for it. This is a test. All these points are tests in fact, so make it really hard to pass. Make it exciting. It should ideally be related to the midpoint events. And what that means is whatever happened in your mid point will lead us, right? As the next destination on our map. We have to make a choice. There's this low point, the midpoint, that the cause and effect will bring us to the crisis. And our character has to address this crisis by doing something, making another choice. 30. Day 3: Your Ending and Tips!: That choice, choice three, will propel us into the final act. For a quick note about acts that I often get is how many acts are supposed to be. I thought there were only three. Remember by definition, an act as a point of no return. So these major choices that the character is making prevent us from moving backward. And those major choices create a new act. There could be 12. But ultimately, this is for you to design a racecar, a great working vehicle. When people go to read your script or if you end up making the film itself, no one knows about this stuff. They don't read it and say, Oh, here's the act breaks. If they're informed as a filmmaker, potentially, but most audience members, my uncle Joe, has no idea what an outbreak is or these map points or what a crisis is. Well, he does know what a crisis is, but most audience members have no idea how a film is constructed. They just know one when they see it, and that's what this course is all about. So going from F32 for our character makes a decision, wins the crisis event, whatever have you, whatever your character chooses to do, as long as they're making an active choice, will propel us into the climax, the show down, and eventually into the resolution. This usually happens at the end of your film around the nine or ten minute page or minute mark. And this is the final exam, the final obstacle, the test, which contains the conclusion of your story, the end. It has to have two elements, a climax and resolution. To map points. The climax is the highest point of dramatic tension in your film. It's also sometimes referred to as a showdown. This comes from old Hollywood westerns where the gun fighters square off with each other. It was a final duel between the hero and the villain, and whoever wins wins the story. It's the resolution is the section of your film where we need to show who wins and loses in the climax moment, the results. It's the final test for the hero. It's where they come face-to-face with who they are, what we'll define them in their character. It will most likely reveal whether they will become a true hero. The ending is so critically important to the story because if you don't have a great ending, you got little to no point in telling me the story. Anyway. I'll tell you one thing. Audiences want emotional closure to the problem, the inciting incident that you created. If a monster appears at the beginning of the film, Well, something's gotta be done with it at the end, we got to solve it here in the show doubt and the climax. So by passing the climax or the test, the final test, the hero will win something and that something is virtuous in nature. Usually, It's the point of telling the story. Hopefully this is all coming together now. They become more brave, courageous, enlightened, selfless, whatever it is, it's the opposite of where the hero starts off in the beginning of the story. It's the final exam. And if you pass the exam, guess what you win, you win virtue. That's the point. Enlightenment. You know more about the world around you. Things become eliminated. The hero is revealed. The climax is the final test, one step before achieving the virtue of selflessness. In our example, each of these little dots representing beat points, Story Maps. Here's a couple of examples of showdown from some famous movies we have once upon a time in the West. I mentioned before that a lot of cowboy movies end with a final showdown, a duel between the good guy and the bad guy. It's drawn out to the point where we get a lot of anxiety because we don't know who's going to win. Matrix 1999. The final duel between Neo and agents Smith and of course Kill Bill Volume One. Final battle. At the end of the film, this actually follows the climax sequence where the bride has defeated all of the villains, thugs, and now she's squares off with the final boss, kind of like a video game. It's the highest point of dramatic tension. We don't know who's going to win and we're there to watch it. It's usually characterized by moment where they face off with villain. Or the central conflict itself could be a tornado, be a monster. And of course, in Westerns, this is the final gun battle. The climax is super stressful. As an audience member, we don't know who's going to win and also the characters you could argue. So give us a release at the end. Once the conflict is over, we feel better. There's an emotional release. And this is known as a catharsis scene where we can come down, settled down from the cause and effect firestorm we created. If you've done your job well, the catharsis should work very well. In all three of these examples, we see that there is a conclusion, a winner smiles, a couple of tips for creating a great ending. Make sure the film has one. Don't confuse anyone, at least not at first. Make it clear that the film has a conclusion. There is a winner, this is the end. You're not David Lynch. Yet. Climax is a major test. So make it big, make it worth watching. If you're hero passes this test, they win virtue award, right? Always remember cause and effect. You'll probably get sick of me talking about it, but I do it on purpose so that I ingrain it in your mind. Makes sure that the climax scene flows naturally out of the crisis sequence, the crisis point, your resolution or catharsis should feel like a release of emotions. So make sure you give some room at the end to relax for your character. And also us, they've been through a rough ride. So right after the gun battle, maybe give us a minute or two just to calm down a little bit. Let us experience what it's like post trauma, this climax. The way to know whether you've done that job is to look at the inciting incident problem and see if it's solved by the end of the journey. Remember, back in ancient Greece, the gods would come down and create an inciting incident. They would put a monster in the middle of the town. Well, that's the inciting incident. We've got to solve it. So by the end of your story, that monster should be eliminated or has returned to its wherever it came from. This is the point of the story. It's got to have an ending. A lot of films don't have endings. 31. Day 3: Conclusion and Tips!: Here we have the overview of all our nine key critical map points. This may seem and look very formulaic to you. Again, the colors don't mean anything but trying to differentiate it for you. There's one thing I want you to take away from this is just to make sure that there is causality between all these points. The worksheet that you're going to complete will really help you understand these concepts more in, in greater detail. It's actually not that hard. It looks trickier than it is in some tips for short films themselves. And I wanted to add now that we really understand character and plotting. As you go into the worksheet for day three, keep your locations and characters to a minimum. It's easier for producing and writing. If you're stumped for ideas still moving into day three, Try to think of a single moment that defines the short film. And just build your script around that. First kiss or meeting an alien for the first time, just one moment and build a five or 10-minute short film around that moment. The other thing you can do is watch some great short films and read a lot of short films scripts. I have a link to a bunch of those on page three of the additional resources page in your workbook. So make sure you check that out. And also make sure your character is motivating the action, not just reacting to the events that you create. What I mean by that is you don't want to have stuff happen to the character. And then the character just reacting to it. They actually have to make choices that affect the plot, the map. They have to choose and make decisions. That's why we have three critical choice making points in our map points. I wanna make sure that your character is making a decision. Remember we have that with the call to action. I get a call to help my uncle who has fallen down in his home halfway across the world, I have to choose to do something about it. I might have to quit my job to go help him. I don't have any money, so I have to borrow money from my wife in order to get the money it takes to get the plane to go there, I'm making choices that affect my relationships, the narrative around me. And this is great stuff. This is what we want for our films. A couple of final thoughts here, right? Create your character first. Not really quite sure about the plot. Don't worry about that yet. I'm much more interested in seeing an interesting character that's quirky and funny, interesting, thrilling, strong, then an interesting plot. But remember that plot is not about formula. So we have these map points, but they're loosely structured so that you can work with them in the most optimal way possible. Being creative about the map points, taking your time with them. Cause and effect, a major tool, of course, aiming for emotion, not logic. Don't worry about logic. Aim for emotion. It doesn't have to make sense. No one questions Harry Potter and how people are walking through walls. It's about emotion. It's about the way it feels and looks. Trust the method and witnessed the results. If you write down these Nine Story Map points, fit them into your character, guide your character through the map points. It will work. I have done it. And you know what? Just try it. What else do you have to lose? And why are you here? If you didn't want to try it? It works like a charm. This is a system I use for my own work. And I'm extremely excited to bring it to you. For this, of course, stories have a beginning, middle, and end. In my course, it's acts one through four plus a setup. We have nine key Story Map points, cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. You structure as a guide, not a formula. Just understand that there are things called sequences. Break into two midpoints, crisis, climax. We need them in order to structure stories. I get this question all the time. How do I construct a great story? This is how you do it. You need an inciting incident. Therefore, therefore, therefore, therefore you get to an ending, you're done. That's it. It's very easy. So at this point, into worksheet 34, day three, take your time. With this. It can be a lot harder than you think because the questions are designed to engage your critical thinking about your character. What are you going to do with your character? What plot are you going to put them through in order to get them to what their goal is, which hopefully is something virtuous. Good luck. 32. Day 4: Summary and Review: Okay, Wow, So day four. Here we go. We're going to talk about the treatment. This is where things are going to get really interesting. We're going to add all of your worksheets together to design an outline otherwise known as a treatment. So far so good, right? Hopefully it hasn't been that difficult. The worksheets are designed to make this as easy and painless as possible and also hopefully fun. So at the end of Worksheet one, we generated some what-ifs, some ideas, central theme, message and logline worksheet to you've created a great solid character summary. Remember, you can always go back and revise this. You may put something down that you want to change later. You're at the grocery store and say, Oh, I've got the greatest inciting incident for my character. They shouldn't be a chemist, they should be a lawyer. Don't worry about that. Feel free to go back and change as you want. They are flexible. And at the end of day three and plotting we talked about are nine key Story Map points and some mechanics to get us moving towards a successful ending. How to do that? Today. For day four, we're going to review all of our day one through three information. We're going to consolidate our worksheets and then create a short film treatment which will be worksheet for the worksheet and the workbook itself is really designed to be used in tandem with these lectures. So make sure you're going through all of those materials. There's summaries of what we discussed. There's key vocabulary that you're going to want to reference as you write and create your short film, your treatment. So day one, we talked a lot about the message and logline. Don't tell me your story, tell me what it's about first, using your central theme and your message. Again, this is all very malleable. You can be flexible with it. Feel free to change it. I do want to make sure that you are putting things down. That's what I care about. I just wanna make sure that you do fill in the worksheets before you move to each day. Day two, we talked about are four main pillars. Character wants, internal needs, character inciting incidents. We talked about character revelation maps actions from vice to virtue, right? We have to get our character to change or reveal themselves in some way. And we talked about bringing characters to life, their character traits, elements that make them really interesting to watch. I suggest if you haven't already referring to the show Breaking Bad, to really analyze how a character can transform using all these elements that you see. And you may be asking, well, Breaking Bad, there's so many hours to develop this character model. Even for short films, you need these primary elements in order for the character to work. Even if you have a five to ten minutes short, they still have a character want a need, a motive for wanting both. They should change or transform at the end. There's always an inciting incident and they always have character traits. They're highly intelligent, they're great soldiers are geniuses, whatever you want. It's always there in features, television, and short films. The idea with this course is to think thoroughly and critically about each of these, going through them to make sure that your character has these elements. Talked about plot day three or nine key Story Map points. Chartered here along a line of increasing or rising dramatic tension. Here's the list, these setup call-to-action choices that they make, midpoints, crisis, climax, and of course, resolution and ending, which is so, so important to films. The idea here is for us to consolidate our worksheets, right? We completed each worksheet. And if you feel good about where you are with each of them, you're ready to move into day four, which is our treatment. From that treatment, we will then move into the Celtx program, part of the course where I'll teach you some tips and tricks, how to format a proper screenplay. And we will go through that on day 67 with revisions. 33. Day 4: Creating a Treatment and Tips!: The treatment is essentially a blueprint. You have all of these notes. Sometimes people don't have worksheets like the ones we have here. Well, the idea is to take all those notes and all those character sheets that people create in different systems that they have and put it down into a written summary of your film that use the Nine Story Map points and character information. Because remember, we went from an idea on day one to talking about character, day to plot day three. So we got to combine all that stuff together into something that really makes sense, that's readable. Moving into the scripting stage. Why you want to do this is to make sure that all of the information we've been working on in the past couple of days is consolidated in one place to make sure nothing is missing. This is also used to generate interest in the film for marketing and financial purposes, making a treatment is a very big part of the film making process. A lot of professionals will just want to know what your film is about. And rather than sending them a ten or even 100 page script, it's preferable to send a short summary to them to just pitch them on the idea before they go into any further discussions with you about the financing or production of the actual script or film. You'll hear it over and over again, cause and effect, right? Our example of using Bot and therefore, keep that in mind as you write your treatment. A couple of tips for this treatment. Always use cause and effect. Keep it simple. Economies your best friends. So keep the story concise and clear. It's very hard to do that, right? Accurate, clear, brief, don't add too many elements. I do this all the time. I'm working on something right now where the person is at a birthday party and the uncle is there and then the uncle speak Spanish, but everybody else speaks English. You know, it gets crazy really, really fast because we're all excited, we're all creative. Want to put everything in there. But you have to leave some room for mystery. You have to always want the audience to be left with more. And most importantly, you really want to aim and identify your key emotion. Are you making a horror short? Well, guess what? Making people laugh, unless it's a horror comedy, probably isn't the best idea. You don't want someone to watch your film and start laughing. You failed. In fact, if they do laughed, at least you're getting an emotion. But the key is if it's not working, make sure you're revising it a lot. Revise it to make sure it works and we'll talk more about that in days seven. But really getting your structure clear and defined, having a great setup or hook if you want, or just letting the story begin with the inciting incident right from the get-go can make a huge difference. Remember in this day and age, where people's attention spans are a little bit harder to pull in from the beginning. We gotta make sure we're pulling them in and never letting go. It has a lot to do with emotion, suspense, excitement. So a summary for de forte is really quite simple, making sure that we have all our ducks in a row, all of our worksheets completed. We're going to consolidate those worksheets in the workbook for the exercise in date for. And by the end of that worksheet, you will have created a written short film treatments. So go ahead and head over to that worksheet. Good luck. Keep revising it and we'll see you tomorrow for day five. 34. Day 5: Intro and What is a Screenplay?: Alright, welcome back to day five. Today we're going to talk about screenwriting basics. Let's get started. Quick recap of our last four days. We've generated some ideas, themes, and messages, log lines, solid character summary for D2. Worksheet three, brought in the nine key map points that we need in order to structure a great plot. And of course, we've consolidated all of these worksheets into number four, which is your written treatment, should be ready to go at this point because that treatment will lead us into the Celtx program that we're going to talk about the next few days. But there's a couple of things we need to understand about the screenplay format. We have to learn what a screenplay is. A screenplay is just another fancy word for script. We have to understand the five basic elements of a script or a screenplay. We will analyze a short script. And finally, to prepare us for date six work, which is actually the mechanics of writing a screenplay using these Celtx program. I'll get everybody to sign up for free to the Celtx program. That is a Cloud-based screenwriting program that is absolutely free. Screenplay is also known as a script, which is a written text of a stage play, screenplay or broadcast, specifically the one used in production or performance. We use this document in order to create a theater performance or a film. It is not the final stage in the process. This is something the audience will never ever see. What they see is the film. What they see is the play or the TV show. It's also important to know that one page equals one minute of film or screen time. Four or five pages equals five minutes. Roughly. This is a general rule, doesn't always apply, but it's pretty close. In fact, if you scan through a script initially, you should be able to see how long the films should be based on the page count. Say, Oh, it's about ten minutes because it's ten pages or 20 minutes because it's 20 pages. It could be more, it could be less, but it's a general rule of thumb. Screenplays have a very strict look, a very specific look for multiple reasons that we will go into. The main reason they look the way they look is because they need to be read often out loud. And there are rules, certain rules that the industry adheres to in order for every screenplay to have the same basic standard, you can't have one script look like a different script using different fonts formats. You may already have seen a script online somewhere. Just understand that they all basically have the same look. They're not really printed on green pages, it's always a white. We always use a specific font. There are margin requirements. Might be asking yourself, what's the big deal? I can just make this in Word. You certainly can, but it will become very, very time-consuming once you understand that we need to format margins and make it look a specific way. And using specific programs can help us save time. As we write it. You can practice screenplay writing by actually reading a lot of screenplays, both feature and short, that are available, of course, on the course resource page that's in your workbook. 35. Day 5: The 5 Basic Elements: So there are five basic elements of screenplay writing. These are the building blocks of a screenplay. These are what you will be using in order to create and write your screenplays. Number one is transition. This is applied to indicate how a scene will move from one to the other. Transitions are always in uppercase. Examples include cut two or fade into scene headings. This is applied to indicate where the scene is taking place. So bathroom, kitchen, hotel room. You format this by listening it like so. We write INT, period capital letters for interior or EXT, meaning exterior. It will then indicate the specific location and then the time of day. So for example, it will look like interior dot kitchen day. There is then the action lines. This is applied to indicate what's happening on screen from moment to moment. So example, John walks down the street. Always note that it's in present tense. We never write in past or future tense because the screenplay represents what's happening every second you watch it. So technically speaking, you're watching the present moment occur on screen. So whatever language you're writing in, make sure to write in the present tense. There's something called a parenthetical. That's number four. This is applied to indicate elements that need additional clarification, usually before dialogue, almost always. In fact, you might see two different versions. One that says R E newspaper for instance. And what that means is it is referencing an object in the scene as a character is talking about it. If I'm reading a newspaper in the scene and my line is rough day to day. The audience reading the script may not understand. Is he talking about something that he sees in the world? Or is he talking about the newspaper? If we put our reference newspaper, We understand that I'm saying this line about something I'm reading in the newspaper. Often there are directions for the actors, particularly if it needs to be whispered. So if I'm saying something to the guy next to me on the train and I say, Hey, how are you doing? I could say that out loud or I could whisper it to him. And it's important to know for the actor that's going to perform it because it's critical to the scene information. Number five is, of course, dialogue. It's applied to indicate spoken word. We always see it. We always hear it. Hi honey, I'm home. Let's get into the mechanics and the formatting of a screenplay. This is the title page. There is always a title page and it always looks like this. Don't put Tinkerbell graphics on it. Don't put stickers. Blank, white, classy, clean, minimal, great. So this is a good time to remember to download these seven-day screenplays script sample. You can use this as a reference as you go through the day's course for today. You'll need that in order to really understand what we're talking about here when we talk about the references. So what I'd also like you to do is if you can print the seven-day screenplays script sample as you go through the lecture today, this will really help you understand what we're talking about in terms of the mechanics of screenplay, formatting and writing, I always find it easier to read something that is printed instead of on a digital page, but both will work. For this example, it might just be a little bit harder for you to watch these videos and also referenced the digital scripts sample at the same time. So it might be a little bit easier for you to print this out and look at it as we discuss the different elements. 36. Day 5: Title Page: So of course we have the title page. If you've printed it out, feel free to look that over. It has very specific margins that we'll talk about later. And when we go into script writing tomorrow, there will actually be an automatic way to do this. You don't have to press the space bar or Return key a couple of different times in order to get this. It always looks like this. The title is always underlined. There is a written by could be co-written by, and then some additional information at the bottom of the page. These are the three main elements you will need in order to create your title page. I get students that submit screenplays all the time and of course they always forget to add the title page. Here are our five basic elements in the screenplay sample itself. Number one, we have the transition that says fade in. We have a scene heading, in this case, interior apartment living room morning. Of course, that means the interior of this space, which is the apartment living room. And the time of day, we need to know. Following this, we have an action line. This will tell us what is happening when we enter the room, you have to pretend that you're watching as you're writing and reading, you have an image in your mind as you're writing the screenplay. We have John Mills who sits in a leather chair reading a newspaper next to him, a cup of coffee steams from his favorite mug. In the BG. Some light jazz plays from a radio, a couple of notes here. Every time we see a new character on screen, we type their name in capital letters and we give them an age. In this case, John Mills is about 30 years old. We do this mostly for production purposes. It, let's say producer quickly scan a script. He sees characters with capital letters in the action line. He or she will know that this is the first time this character appears. And we'll count the number of characters in your screenplay in order to know quickly how many people they need to cast for the production. Even though you may not create your short screenplay or produce it, I hope you do. It's important to adhere to the rules. There are rules to this because if you are excited about screenwriting after the course and want to continue, these rules also apply to feature film, screenplay, writing, and television for that matter. A couple of more things to note. Everything is in present tense. John Mills sits a cup of coffee steams from his favorite mug. It's almost like taking a pencil in, running it down each line as you read it. And every time you run your pencil through at each line, a moment is happening on screen. You have to pretend that there's like a little TV playing in the side of your brain. In the BG, meaning background, short for backgrounds, some light jazz plays from a radio. Anytime there is a sound effect, we also capitalize this sound. We do that because the person producing the music or sound effects will quickly know that we need to add that in the editing of the film. It's proper. It's correct. It's good to do in practice because if you do produce something, It's great for your other team members to know that it looks professional. And it also lets you really display your professionalism when you're writing screenplays. It's really important that you present your screenplays professionally because when you pitch them for producing or professionals in the industry, look at your screenplay, they're gonna look to see if it looks right. So don't skip on any of this. Of course, number four is our parenthetical in this situation, John is reading a newspaper. And we know that because in parentheses it says re, newspaper, reference newspaper and goes Henry. Meaning that something he's looking at in the newspaper causes him to say the word henry. It continues. And here's another parenthetical that you'll see John continued. This is to suggest that John continues to talk in the scene. Honeycomb here runs Jane Mills. This is the first time we see James. So her character is of course, uppercase letters, capital letters. Jane then says, Is it the mouse again? This is, of course, our dialogue. And notice a couple of different things. A lot of the margins are very unison. You'll notice every time John speaks or Jane, It's all in a straight line. Even the dialogue is lined up proportionally. You'll also notice that the action lines are situated in paragraph format, whereas the dialogue lines have a little bit of room or air around them. And we do this because the actors will ultimately need to read these lines. Screenplays are not novels. If we gave an actor a page from a book, it'd be very hard for them to isolate where their dialogue lines are, right? So screenplays have to look like this because they're gonna be used for production there a production tool. So John or actor playing John can easily identify looking at this page where his lines are. It says his name in big capital letters and his line right underneath. Same for Jane. Jane can scan through. Often what actors will do is actually highlight with a highlighter, marker or pen through the whole script to identify their lines because they have to memorize them. It's very important that these elements look the way they do, because it helps all of the different members of the production understand how to create the screenplay you've written. The producer is looking at the names and the screenplay to see how many people are in it, how many people they need to cast. The sound guy is looking to see if there's any music or sound effects. The actors are looking through it to see where their lines are. 37. Day 5: Exercise and Conclusion: At this point, I have an exercise here. So what you might want to do is pause the video and see if you can identify one through five. As we've discussed here in this lecture, in terms of the five basic elements of all screenplays you will ever see. So go ahead and pause the video. Now. Number one, if you answered transition, you are correct. Fade in. We talked a little bit about this, right? This is the way we fade into the scene. It's an actual editorial addition. It fades from black, from darkness. Maybe you had a title card before this. Credits. Number two is our Scene Heading. This is an interior living room at midnight. Number three, of course we have our action. Line. Number four is parenthetical and number five, of course, dialogue. So at this point what I'd like you to do is head over to Celtx.com and sign up for a free account. This is actually the site that all of my students use in order to create screenplays. It's a really, really great program because it's absolutely free and also adheres to the rules we talked about for screenplay formatting today. And we will jump into the lesson for day six, where we actually use Celtx to format our screenplay. We talked about what a screenplay was today. We talked about the five basic elements of any screenplay. We also analyzed these five elements. Of course, at this stage, if you haven't already, please do go over to Celtx.com to sign up for a free account. At this stage, what you're going to want to do is head over to your workbook, complete the worksheet four day five. And guess what? We'll see you back here tomorrow for day six, where we begin our screenplay formatting. See you then. 38. Day 6: Goals: Holy smokes that stay. Six, welcome back. It's a screenwriting to run a dip our toes into the pool. That is your first screenplay draft. Notice that we spent all five days not writing a screenplay. It's actually the last thing you do in the process of screenwriting because so much work needs to go into preparing to write this screenplay. We've gone over them, all of these elements, all of the different worksheets that we've completed one through five, summarize the ideas or the thought process, the work, the hard work that goes into preparing to write a screenplay. It's a little like working in the kitchen. If anybody's worked in a restaurant, you have to set the ingredients up before you cook the meal. You don't really cook as you go grabbing things, as you might, chopping and preparing onions and carrots to make the soup. And then, oh yeah, we forgot about the salt and then running to the grocery store to go get some more products and coming back and it doesn't work that way. At least, I don't advise or educate in that way. You may have a different system after absorbing the course information here, but I encourage you to just trust this process. Work with me, work with the system. This is the system I use to create my own work that has been distributed, that has been sold, that has screened, that has won a competition or two. This is designed to help you. It's designed to streamline the process. I know everybody is excited and they just want to jump into screenwriting. Let me just write the screenplay. Well, unfortunately, if you do this work, if you do this prep work, by completing the worksheets thoughtfully, your script will be way, way, way better. 39. Day 6: The Unfortunate Case of Mr. Mills: So in the course material pack for today's lesson, we have the unfortunate case of Mr. Mills screenplay written by yours truly, for the purposes of these seven days screenplay course, I highly suggest that you print this out if you can. If you can't, it's okay. It is a highly instructive and designed exercise in order to use it in conjunction with Celtx for us to create a final screenplay. We will be using this screenplay sample for the purposes of our exercise in order to apply the five basic elements of screenplay formatting that we discussed the other day. So please go ahead and download this in the Course Resources page. What you will find is a properly formatted script that we will use today in order to replicate what is written here. So the goal for today will be to write this screenplay exactly as you see it in the Celtx program. Everything that we do today will give you all the tools you need to create and format your own script or screenplay, which also applies to feature length screenplays, should you want to go into that area. So we're going to learn a quick and easy way to screenplay format your short film. And without further ado, let's get started. 40. Day 6: Sign Up for Celtx!: Today we're going to begin with our Celtx demo. This is actually the practical day where we will work through the Celtx program together in order to write and format a sample script. If you haven't already, please go ahead and sign up for Celtx. I also have a link to it in the additional resources page of the workbook. It's completely free to do so. And all that's required is a working e-mail address. If you find that you're interested in something more advanced and would like to purchase standalone script writing software other than Celtx. I've included information about some of the options that I recommend professionally in the Course Resources page in your workbook. 41. Day 6: Setting Up Your Profile and Project: So once you login for the first time, you're gonna be instructed to set up your profile. So let's fill in some details. I'm going to choose script writing as my focus. My experience is, well, I'm just getting started. So let's select that. I work alone. It's just me. And I can skip this section right here. Okay, so for our first project, we will select film and TV, which is actually defaulted at the top here. Alright, so let's put the unfortunate case of Mr. Mills for our title. It might take a few seconds to load. And you'll be dropped right here onto the landing page. So at this stage, it will take us directly to our script formatting, but we want to go over a few things first. So go ahead and click on the top left-hand side of the menu bar to go back to the main page. 42. Day 6: Celtx Layout: Once you log in, you'll be directed to this landing page. And let's head into the navigation layout. So to get started, we're going to have a brief look at the layout page. What you'll see in the left-hand column is a page navigation menu that includes, among other things, your archived projects management page, and some video tutorials that can actually help you understand Celtx a little bit better. You'll also see a trash bin that we will return to you when it's time to remove projects from your account. The top menu bar here contains some resources and links to their blog and community resource pages. But probably the most useful bit is your account tab that allows you to upgrade to Celtx Pro or change elements associated with your account, like email and password settings. Personally, I've never had to fiddle with any of these other additional settings like Cher or blog, but feel free to explore a check them out if you find them useful. 43. Day 6: Quick Navigation Tip: Celtx should automatically open your project, revealing a host of new options and tabs. Don't be alarmed. You don't need 80 per cent of them. For now. A lot of the tab features on the left-hand column have nothing to do with writing or formatting your script. Celtx offers lots of production related resources that fully unlock with the paid versions such as visualization tools like storyboarding or index carding. Pretty cool stuff, like making a schedule or cast and crew notes. But again, we're just here for the writing portion. So let's have a look at that. If for any reason you get lost within the menus, just click this back arrow in the upper left hand side of the program to go back to your main landing page. From here, just click your project name and it will lead you back to your formatting window. 44. Day 6: Upper Menu and Formatting: In the top column are some familiar and not so familiar editing elements that allow you to export, print and import projects. Here are the usual copy and paste elements. If you are familiar with word processing, apps like Word or Pages. But to be honest, the only features I use to print, import, and export, I've never had to dive into these other menus. But again, have a look around. See what can I help you? What can, what can be. Up to you? Right below this menu bar is a secondary menu bar associated with the formatting of your script will be using this a fair amount. So let's get familiar with it. So right here, these should all look familiar to you from our day five coursework and worksheet, we have scene heading, action, character, dialogue, parenthetical, and transition are five main screenplay elements. Amongst a few others like act, shot, or text. The only ones we will be using are those five we mentioned in the previous day. And those are the only ones you really need to, the immediate right, or some formatting options for the text itself in case you need to bold, underline or italicize texts. So text is quite proud of the quick menu to the right, to which you can navigate between different written and production elements of your script. Most important one we want here is the title page. So let's go ahead and dive into that for our first formatting lesson. 45. Day 6: Formatting Your Title Page: So by clicking on the title page button under the quick navigation menu, you can see we can format the title page with all the necessary authorship information you need, including title, author, and additional information at the bottom. So let's go ahead and title our project. You can place yourself as the author and leave the bottom blank if you like. And when you're finished format and click the tiny arrow on the quick menu to return to your main page. We can move along with the formatting for the rest of the script in this demo. 46. Day 6: Screenwriting Demo: Okay, so at this stage we're ready to write. So let's get started using the PDF provided. Go ahead and pop that open or print it out for best use of this exercise, I recommend you print out the PDF in order to follow along with this demo. What we're going to try and do today is replicate the formatting elements in Celtx. If we can achieve that, you can write anything your heart desires. Very exciting. So for Celtx to understand what we want to format for, we need to cycle between the five different screenplay elements by pressing the Tab key. As we do this, notice how we are cycling through the different formatting elements in the secondary menu bar. The only one we want is transition. So hit the Tab key until you arrive at that option. Okay, great. So you'll notice that the cursor has moved to the right most side of the page to place our transition. That's exactly where we want it. So let's simply type fade in. You don't need to trigger the Caps Lock key to do this as Celtx takes care of this by auto formatting text according to what you have already triggered or selected for the formatting. At this stage, click the return key, which will trigger your formatting back to Scene Heading here. So Celtx assumes and correctly so that you want to start a new scene after a transition. So let's go with the flow and continue formatting. Let's type the letter i. What you see now is what Celtx guesses you want here, which is interior INT. A little drop-down menu appears, which allows you to automatically generate the full command. If I were to type the letter E, then Celtx would guess, I want an exterior setting. For now we want i for interior. So then press Enter to execute the command. So we'll write apartment living room. Also note that Celtx is automatically capitalize the word for us. We need to identify the time of day as well. So let's add day. Okay, So hitting the Return key toggles us to the action line, one of our five formatting elements we've previously discussed. This is accurate as we need to begin the action of the scene. Need to type John Mills 30s for our next bit. And a quick note here about formatting rules. Every time we see a new character on-screen, we need to capitalize their names. Remember that we do this primarily because it is an easy way for producers to count the number of characters in the film or play. For production purposes. Primarily, it lets them know how many people will need to cast. After this, anytime you use the character's name, you can lowercase it. Next to his name, we see in parenthesis his age. This also lets us know mostly for production sake, how old the character needs to be for casting purposes. It's also really helpful to know if this is a child or adult in the scene. Continuing with sits in a leather chair. Please note that the tense we always use is always, always, always present tense. We never write sat on a leather chair, or we'll sit in a leather chair. Why? Because what we're writing is happening in the present moment as we watch it on screen. So makes sure in whatever language you're using the tenths that you use is present and no other. We continue writing until we get to light jazz, which as you notice, it's also capitalised. We do this to let the editor or sound production crew know that we need a sound effect here. They'd like to gray bar your scene heading so you can easily see them as you read your script. But don't worry, it won't print that way. Finishing off the action text, we will press the Enter key. And it automatically takes us to another action line which we don't want. So we're going to continue to cycle through all of the elements by pressing Tab until we get to character type John, and then hit Enter. So in order to enter a parenthetical, we need to hit Tab key once more until the brackets show up. Now we can place our parenthetical read for reference. And what it says here is John will say his line, Henry, while looking or referencing the newspaper he's looking at. It's a useful bit of formatting, but helpful for both the actor and writer. Once you're done hitting the Enter key will now allow us to place dialogue, which we'll do here. What we need to do next is add another action lines. So do you remember what to do next? Pause the video and see if you can format the next two lines of the script based on what we've done here already. Go ahead and pause the video now. So to continue, you'll notice that when we enter the enter key, Celtx things, we want more dialogue which is incorrect. We want action. So we need to cycle with the Tab key in order to get there. I'll hit the Enter key once more and continue on formatting our script. What you should notice is that a lot of our formatting requires the tab and enter keys. If you make a mistake, you can go into the Edit menu and click Undo or use the quit command, command Z to undo your mistake. Alright, so you might be wondering at this point, what happens if a lightning bolt hits my computer and I can't save my project. Well, don't worry. Celtx is a Cloud based program, meaning that your changes are saved every second. So if something does happen, your computer dies or there's some kind of accident, your project will always be safe and sound. Alright, so at this stage, you should continue to format your screenplay until you get to the headline for the newspaper in boldface. What I'm gonna do in the next video is show you how to format. That's elements. 47. Day 6: Additional Formatting: At this point we arrive at the headline for the newspaper in bold. In order to bold this text, we just highlight it by clicking and dragging to select the texts we want to be in bold. Then with the text selected, we click this tiny little b, b icon in the secondary sub-menu in order to bold it. So one last note in the upper right-hand tab, you'll see a little percentage. This allows you to zoom into the script. Should you need a little bit more space when working? Remember, we don't want to make any texts larger because that would mess up our formatting. What I really love about Celtx is that it properly formats your scripts so we don't have to worry about proper margins or spacing in another word processing document. If we were to do the same thing in Microsoft Word or some other similar piece of writing software. We would spend hours formatting rather than writing. With Celtx, you can easily create a script without having to stop for formatting purposes and it's free. So there we have it. Congratulations on creating your very first page of script. In the next lesson, we're going to take things a step further so we can export, print, delete, and start multiple projects. So we'll see you there. 48. Day 6: How To Save and Export Projects: When you're finished with your script, you may want to print or save it to your computer. To do this, we simply hit the file and print and download PDF option, which pops open and additional window. From here we can print by pressing print or save it as a digital file. Before saving or printing makes sure the title page and script option is turned on before doing this step. If you don't, your file will be printed or saved without the title page, which is very, very important. So make sure this is selected. Go ahead and download your file to your desktop. And boom, here it is. If you did this correctly, you should see both the title page and main body of your script. And just a quick note here before we move on to the next lesson, I'd like to make sure that everybody did save their project because in the next lesson we're actually going to delete it. So I wouldn't want anybody to do all this work. We delete the project and you're sunk. So please do make sure that you're saving and exporting this PDF accordingly. Thank you. 49. Day 6: Creating More Than One Project: Okay, So creating more than one project, this is a little tricky. On the home screen. We simply hit the Create button in order to create a new project screenplay. Let's go ahead and click Create. But wait. Okay, so Celtx is telling us I've reached a limit on the number of free scripts I can create in Celtx program. At this point, you can either upgrade to the paid version of Celtx or do a little clever hack or a work-around. One of the issues with the free versions of Celtx is that it caps or places a limit on the number of projects you can create. They do this in order to encourage you to purchase the paid version, which is really great, that allows you to have an infinite amount of projects. So here's my little clever hack. Celtx is telling us that we actually need to remove a project to create another one. The way we're gonna do this is actually to delete this project, but don't freak out there is a method to the madness. Just hang on and follow these instructions. So let's go ahead and delete our script project by toggling the box here. Then pressing the little trash can icon above. Here. At this point the project has been moved to the trash bin located on the left-hand side of the menu bar here. If we try and create a new project, Celtx again says, no way to fully delete a project from Celtx. We need to empty the trash bin. To do this, we enter the trash bin if you haven't already, by toggling it on the left. Checking another little box, and then above clicking the X button to permanently delete the project. It will ask you if you're sure, just click Yes. Now, if we try and create a new project, it will allow us to do so. I'll go ahead and title this project action film. But hang on. This really isn't very helpful. We just deleted all of our work. So what if I want to keep working on both projects and I can't afford to remove any of them. These are great questions. Unfortunately, the answer is, without paying. Celtx will never allow you to work on more than one project unless you upgrade. But if you've got a little patience, we can make it work. As we know, Celtx will allow us to create a second project. So what we need to do is something called archive. In order to restore the previous project, I'm going to show you how to do that in just a sec. 50. Day 6: Importing Projects: So what I'll do here is export action film by selecting File, Print and download PDF. Then I'll click Download. And this will allow us to save the project to our computer. So once this is done, I've got this digital version right. I'll return back to my main page by clicking the back arrow. Next, I'll move to the process of deleting the project by checking the little box next to action film and clicking the little trash can icon. I'll go into the trash bin now. Select the option on the left. Click the little checkbox next to action film, and then pressing the X button to permanently delete the project. So by doing this, we have now created room for a new script, a second script. So at some point, if you want to return to your old action film from a couple of weeks ago, me to re, upload it. So select film and TV, and this time select, upload an existing script. At this stage, we will direct cell texts to upload the old PDF version of action film. If it was successful, you'll see a little green arrow under the words file uploaded. Then click Create Project. Celtx will then open up your old version of action film and you're off and running. So remember, in order to store multiple projects, just export them as PDFs as you would and re-upload them as necessary. If this is really too tedious, you can upgrade to a paid version of Celtx that allows you to just make an unlimited number of projects or purchase screenwriting software listed in the course resource page. And this allows you to save an unlimited amount of projects as well. I've also included my version of the unfortunate case of Mr. Mills as a finished PDF so you can double-check your work. That's in the Course Resources page that comes with this course. And in the next lesson we're going to have a look at the treatment to understand what we need to do to translate a treatment into a script. See you there. 51. Day 6: Working with Treatment: So at this stage, we have a good understanding of our tools, both in terms of formatting rules and the software we use to execute these formatting rules. Now we're going to look at the treatment and begin our script. We're going to use the treatment for my short film through fire, she calls as a roadmap to creating our script. So you'll find it helpful to reference that treatment and Story Map as we continue the exercise. So let's take a look at those. Here. We have the treatment and the Story Map. Great. This will be analogous to what you've created for your own story. And the process is exactly the same. So I'm about to start writing my first draft. In order to do so, I'll have a look at my treatment as a basic roadmap. I'll also reference my other worksheets as well so that I have a clear understanding of where I'm going. So it's a bit like taking a hike with a map. These worksheets are intended to help us along the way so we don't get lost. To begin, I see that I need a setup with inciting incidents, so I'll work on that first. 52. Day 6: From Treatment to Script: Okay, so we know where we're going. We also know that this scene shouldn't take too long to set up. Do you remember our rule about how much screen time it would be if my setup was oh, let's say half a page. That's right. So if you guessed a half a minute, you're correct. Your setup shouldn't be more than this, so I'll keep that in mind as I write. It's handy to know where you need to be in the script as you work along. For instance, you know that you need to be about 50% of the way through your script, roughly five minutes of a ten-minute film to reach the midpoint, that would be page five. So keep that in mind. You don't have to be strict, just be as close as you can. It sounds crazy, but it does work. And all movies from short to feature length contain this type of storytelling structure. It's like a skeleton. Trust the system, and it will work for you. In the next section, we'll cover some screenwriting tips to keep in mind as you work through your first draft. If you've done your job, your short film will work guaranteed. I've also included a version of the script to download that points out our main key story rules and Story Map points. You can see it here where all of my points land within the script and hit right where they need to be for the film to work. When I was writing through fire, she calls, I knew about these Story Map points and intentionally created them. It's funny because the audience has no idea that they exist. So this is really where things get creative. This is, after all, creative writing. But we're not Ernest Hemingway. And you know what? We don't have to be. Remember, this is a script and not the final result. Have fun with it. The film is the final results. So as long as our script is solid, meaning it works, makes sense and it's clear, we're doing great. So this is the basic step that you're going to take as you look at your worksheets, as you look at your treatment and your Story Map points to translate those elements into the written page. Take your time, Have fun, we've got another data go. So what I'd like you to do is step into your own draft now. And we will see you back here when you're ready. Not everybody is ready to step into day seven immediately. So feel free to work on your draft over the next few days, if you like, and when you're ready. We'll see back here for days seven congrats. 53. Day 7: Goals and What Now?!: I'm really excited. This is D7. I'm a little sad. Gotta be honest with you. This is gonna be our final hours together, but I'm never that far away from mu, given the collaborative nature of this platform. If you need to reach out for comments and questions, this platform, it makes it possible for us to interact. If you have comments or questions. This is the revisions and creative writing tips day. Hopefully you've spent a lot of time revising your screenplay, looking at it for errors, typos, mistakes, all that good stuff. Hopefully, you're still in a good mood. The screenwriting course and by nature, screenwriting itself can be a very isolating experience because it's just you staring down your laptop, your pen and paper. I want you to stay positive throughout the process. This is supposed to be fun. You signed up for this course to have fun to learn. And you should pat yourself on the back. Because any kind of steps you take towards learning something new should be applauded. You've taken your first steps, baby steps, but they are steps. It's an important part of learning. Anything new. I love stuff like this. I really love jumping into the fire. I don't know about a new topic. I think it's really, really fun to do, and I really hope you've enjoyed this journey so far. So let's step into our day seven work. We're going to talk about revisions in creative writing tips. Here's our review, my gosh, day one through six. If you can believe it, we've done it. We generated ideas, characters, plots. You have a great treatment. And of course, in our last few days, we have learned about Celtx formatting, how to save export, Import Projects, little hacks. And hopefully what you're looking at is your first, maybe second, third, fourth, fifth, formatted, professional looking screenplay or goals today are pretty simple. I'm going to evaluate your draft for weaknesses, weaknesses in the chain. There's gotta be a few. I'll find them. Find them for you. Can identify some weak spots in order to evaluate them, to change them, and to ultimately re-write your screenplay for a new draft. You're never done with version one. There's hundreds that could occur potentially. So now what you're like, Great, I think it's good. Not sure. What do you do. We've got to start rewriting. We have to evaluate your formatting, your plot, your character, and overall structure. We're looking for cause and effect. Of course, a big one. And we're going to talk a little bit about feedback tips. This is a really important parts of the process. And actually it gets pretty simple now because we know what great storytelling is. We know what to do with our characters, what they need with the plot needs. So we're going to look at things like our mind nine story points here. Does my character have a want? Is it clear? Is there too much? 54. Day 7: Evaluating the Basics: Step one is really just evaluating the basics, right? How long is my script? Too long? I wanted to make a 10-minute short, ten pages and it's 60. Sounds pretty awesome. It sounds like you've got a great idea, but is it short? Isn't loan? Is my script properly formatted, right? Like the basics? Does it have the right margins? Did I follow the rules of proper formatting? Remember that's very, very important because if you continue this journey in professional screenwriting, you don't want to send your script out for professional evaluation. And someone says these margins are all wrong, or you just wrote a screenplay in Times New Roman font. You don't want that. Other things are due. You have a great, What if it's there? Great, what a fear? What if dinosaurs really existed? Isn't that great? Have identified a theme and message. Is there a y here? Do I have a great why? Why am I doing this? By the way, I might add here at this stage, it's okay. If your y is, I'd like to scare people because I like doing it. Your y is I'd like to entertain the audience. Perfectly valid. What emotion am I trying to engineer? Am I scaring anybody with this? Laughing? Here? Is anybody laughing? Am I crying instead of laughing? Both are good, as long as you have an emotion. Hopefully, the intent follows through in the script itself. But hey, maybe you started writing something serious and it's really funny. That's great. Maybe you should run with that. Are you excited? I know what's really hard. I know this is very difficult. At times. It can be. We always, always are our own worst critics. That inner critic in your head, I'm sure you've never written anything before. It's not very good. It's not as great as the godfather. You sure about that, but what if it's the other way? There's another voice in your head that could say this is great. What I've found is if my attitude is positive, as I write, guess what? I feel great about the work, I get excited. So having the right attitude in the screenwriting process is very, very, very important part of the process. Even before you write your mental attitude going into it can go along way. Take great care in what you're doing. Take great love in what you're doing. Another thing you might want to consider is have I seen this idea before? If I have, how can I make it different? That's totally fine. You can have a model for your screenplay that you've seen before. And by model, I mean the format, horror. Maybe you have a different monster, a monster you've never seen before. And that's the great idea that you have. Another thing you might want to consider is, especially if you're excited about it, is would it be simple enough to produce if you had this ten minutes or 15 minutes screenplay, could I make it? I actually make this thing. It's really, really important to think about moving into the next stages of the rewriting process and even the writing process in general. Alright, so step two is really evaluating your character using the techniques we discussed in our lessons. So does my hero have a clear want, need and motivations for both? Is there a conflict, central conflict? Remember, you might just want to choose one. It could be a monster. It could be the circumstances, something that's preventing your character from getting what they want? If so, and that's all true. Are there consequences or stakes? What are they? And are they serious? Does my hero having great inciting incident at something happened in the beginning of the short to create the fire or the engine of the story you're telling. Are they a victim, a savior, or they call to action, one of the three. Remember, choose one. What's my characters superpower? And they don't have to like shoot laser beams through their eyes. I mean, what is their method or tactics they use to overcome the central conflict? Are they good at something? Termination, character traits, skill sets. I think a lot about role-playing games. In gaming, you have these different traits the character possesses. Some are intelligent, some are strong. Think about it that way. Like you're designing a game character. If you'd like to play games. Is my character different at the end of my story than at the beginning? And why? Remember, we're trying to reveal something about the character. They are different at the end of this short or the story. A longer story, if you like, is the inner need for change created by a strong backstory? Is it something we understand? Something that might lead to part two or a longer version of the film itself. Really important to make sure that they're making active choices to get us to the end. They're not just reacting to things that are happening to them in the story, but they're choosing to do things. What are they doing? It's really helpful to think about it in terms of a character that is actively making changes in the world around them? Are they digging for buried treasure? Are they driving to go meet a friend to confront them? What are they doing? What choices are they making? Is your character even interesting? Very important. Do they have interesting character traits? Wow, that guy is really, really clever. She speaks a dozen languages. Interesting, smart. 55. Day 7: Evaluating the Plot: Step three, of course, is evaluating the plot because I think evaluating character is a lot more important than evaluating the plot. Equally important, but maybe skewed a little bit towards character. Big one are my nine map points present and clearly defined. Clearly defined meaning you can locate them in your script. And are each of those points linked by cause and effect? Does one create the next? Do my scenes, Dr. character and or plot. If not, remove them. Now I'm not saying you can't have a character Hangout. A great example that I often get is the beginning of the movie Pulp Fiction, where they're talking about cheeseburgers and McDonald's in the car. It's the first scene in the film. And some argue, Well, what's the point? What tells us a lot about their character? We have a gangster talking about going to Europe. And instead of going to fancy restaurants and museums and experiencing the culture, he chooses to go to McDonald's. What does this tell you about the character? It tells you everything you need to know. If you're seeing doesn't reveal character or plot. Remove it. Big one, is there a clear beginning, middle, and end? Great. Should be easy if you've done your job. Another big one is my ending confusing. Do I get it? Do I understand what happened here? Want to create that chain reaction, making sure all the points are there and strong. If we don't, the chain breaks, we're looking for those weak points. 56. Day 7: Conclusion, Tips and Final Words: I've got some rewriting tips and these are five great tips for rewrites that I use myself. Just keep it simple. Try to remove things. Be a minimalist in a way. Just do as much as necessary. Don't pack it full of information. An audience can only really be spoon-fed information a little bit at a time. You can't jam things down their throat so to speak. If it's too much, we become full, we get sick. So keep it simple. Don't go for complicated plots. Aim for characters first, don't make them too complicated. Just keep it simple and powerful. I would encourage you just to create a simple story even if it's not the greatest, at least you did it. Remember emotion first, character second, and plot. Third, emotion is very important. What's the point of having your character or a great plan? Oh, I got this great plot. Yeah, Well, it doesn't thrill me at all. It doesn't make me laugh or cry. So who cares? Stick to your treatment and map points. If you get lost, if you're reading the script, you're like, oh my gosh, where do I go from here? That's what the worksheets are for, that's what your treatment is for. You should also understand their character motivations. So if characters are acting, you can ask yourself, is this within my character's nature? If they're a greedy character, they're not going to be giving, all of a sudden. They're going to act in line with their moral compass, their inner nature. But we're trying to push the needle, revise the worksheets as needed. If you find that you're working on your script and you go, I don't really have a great motivation here. I don't really understand this. Maybe you need to go back in your worksheet and work that out. These worksheets are a bit tricky and difficult because they force you to confront what you need to make your script work. Because writing is rewriting. And you want to feel good about what you're doing. Trust your vision, and have fun. Stay true to the idea and believe in yourself. I'm telling you that attitude is really everything. If you have a great fun attitude going into writing, the result will be clear. It will be fun to the audience. They will see that you enjoyed creating this thing. It comes through in the work. Every great artist agrees with this. If you put your passion, your heart, your soul, you've done your best. It will show a million times over. So have fun and believe in yourself, even though there might be some self-doubt along the way. Stick to it, pushed through the fact that you're even taking this course is a great sign that you're already on the way and probably 99% ahead of everybody that wishes they did write a screenplay. Big one that I get asked a lot is tips for dialogue. You might have dialogue there. Oh gosh, even I have problems with the dialogue and I go over it extensively as I work on my own projects. Well, dialogue is really about subtext. So try and layer your dialogue. So the true meaning is really underneath it. You don't really want to say things on the nose. You want to be clear, accurate about what your character is trying to say, while being a bit clever about what that character really means behind that sentence, for instance, in The Godfather, It's really great line. He says I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse, which really means I'm going to kill the guy if he doesn't agree with me. It's a perfect example of subtext. It's a clever way instead of saying, well, I'll kill the guy unless he doesn't agree with me. He says something dark, sinister that points in that direction. Another thing I'd like to do, whether I am not sure whether the dialogue is working or not, is I put an action verb next to the dialogue to see if it's moving. It has purpose. So ask yourself, what is the action behind the line? This also helps actors. If the actors will perform it, they may ask, why am I saying this line? If it has a action behind it, it's valid. So someone says you look awful. They're bullying character. Or I was up late last night in defense of this line. So you look really awful while I was up late last night, they're defending themselves. You might also want to note, it's actually a little bit of cause and effect, right? People are responding to the previous line. You want to use dialogue to reveal who your character is. We talked about Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction in that opening scene. If you haven't seen it, What does it say about his character? Dialogue? Either pushes character or plot forward if it doesn't do, either, cut it out. Another great way to look at dialogue or to create dialogue is two, create a misunderstanding or assumption. This always leads to conflict. A great clip from The Marriage Story in the section for D7. In fact, all of the clips you're seeing here are located in the day seven section. If you'd like to see those clips. Inaction. Character in marriage story says you're being so much like your father. Don't compare me to my father. I didn't compare you to him. There's all these kinds of misunderstandings that occur that are very true to life. One of the hardest things we can do is covering exposition number five or explaining plot details. We need to do this by coding it in a little bit of sugar, as we say. What I mean by that. Well, in a lot of science fiction or fantasy, There's a lot of world-building that occurs in Harry Potter. How does the magic work? How do the spells work? How does the force work in Star Wars? So here in our example, in Star Wars, Obi-Wan explains the force in backstory to Luke, but we can swallow this explanation through the action of Obi-Wan showing him a shiny lightsaber. Wow, cool. The alternative is for Obi-Wan to just sit there and dry oily. Explain what the force is without visuals. So try and find a way to show, don't tell us about the world without just dry exposition because it's quite clear that you're only telling us this information because the audience needs to know. So just a final word I'd like to congratulate you for coming on this incredible journey with me. I've learned a lot creating the course for you and I hope that you have really enjoyed taking it with me. I'm so very proud of you for getting to this stage and beginning or continuing your screenwriting journey. So thanks again for being here and having a great attitude going into the coursework. We have a great Q&A section down below and we're never far away from you to get a hold of through the fabulous invention that is the Internet. So thanks again everyone for being here and hopefully we'll see you again in one of our next courses.