ADVANCED SCRIPTWRITING - THE BIBLE OF STORYTELLING PART 001

1. Intro Common : Welcome to this first part and this tripartite series in screenwriting. My name is further killer. I'm a writer and director. I've written seven screenplays, 11 place. I've directed 20 theater productions and two feature films. My ambition for this series is to teach you screenwriting, to give you the tools you need to create stories that will be compelling, that will make the audience laugh or cry and sit on the edge of their seats, which is the purpose of all storytelling. This course is divided into three parts. This is the first part. The first part, we will talk about all the aspects of storytelling that are common to all the characters. In the second part of this series, we'll talk about the aspects that are specific to each individual character. Then the third and last part of this series, we'll talk about the modus operandi, the process have to take everything you've learned and to create a compelling story. So in this first part of the series, we've talked about everything that is common to all characters. We will be addressing your story from a helicopter perspective. What is the world, what's the conflict? Was the theme. What is the premise? Everything you need to address to make a compelling story? Without much further ado. Let's get into it. 2. Chapter 1: Theme: Welcome to Chapter one, purpose and the theme. Theme, and why is it so important? Theme is the universal relevance of your story, the takeaway, not the message. We will talk about this later, but the subject. You can say that the theme is the universal relevance of your story. The subject plus your take on that subject, your very truth On that subject. And what is the subject of your story? Well, you can ask yourself this question. You take your story. If you tell your story to someone living in Bangladesh or Bombay, or Seattle, What can they take away from your story, regardless of their gender, their ethnicity, their age? That is your subject. Whether it'd be love and death for the difficulties of marriage, whatever it might be. Then you add to that subject, your take on that, what you consider to be true about that subject. That is the theme, the subject plus your take on that, your truth, and not what you think should be true, what you'd hope to be true, but what you really think to be true about this subject, that is, your theme, subject, your take equals theme. Why is this so important? Well, because that's the essence of your story. You can ask yourself two questions. What's the story? And what's the story really about? What's the story really is about? That is the theme, your theme. And the only truth that audience is interested in is your truth. Are they aware of this? Mostly, not mostly. Most of the time. We don't leave the movie theater to thinking about the theme or the theme was great. But it's there. That is what affects the audience emotionally. Otherwise, there would be no point in telling stories. Hamlets would only be a story about the Dane prints. And for all of us who aren't Danes and the warrant princess, that story would be irrelevant. But Hamlet is not about being dean or being a prince or royalty. Hamlet, this bad revenge that is relevant to all of us. We, all of us have wanted to exact revenge, shopper someone. And maybe we also have revenge is something that we all as humans have to deal with all our lives. And that's the universal relevance of Hamlet added to that, of course, Shakespeare's take what he believes to be true about revenge, is revenge always bad? Is revenge always good? Is it good, similar time, what are the consequences or revenge? That is, the theme. A good theme, like a good story, always has as a subject matters something that is vital to survival. In the end, all good storytelling is about survival. And it hasn't always have to be about physical survival. It can be emotional survival, it can be sociological survival, it can be spiritual survival, but it always has to do with survival in any way, shape, or form. And that is what a theme deals with. Both on a macro level, on the micro level, revenge, take hamlet yet again is something that is vital for us as individuals. For us as a collective. We will always have to deal with, and that is why we still perform Hamlet 400 years after its conception and will continue to do so the 400 years to come. And because also, of course, it's brilliantly executed. It has character and plot, which we will talk in detail about later. But for now, we're sticking with theme. And that is your foundation for your story. It's like when you build a house, you want a strong foundation upon which to build your entire structure. And that is what theme is. Without theme or would a week theme. Your entire structure will not be as solid as it could be. A theme is not something that we arbitrarily stick onto the story, acute line or something acute message and then the, the story is your story. The story, the concept of your story is the theme. And how this plays out is that what we do as an audience? We are constantly paying attention to your characters. What are they doing and what consequences duties, actions resulted. We're constantly looking for the causal link between actions and outcomes. And that is the way we learn. And that's one of the reasons why we humans started telling stories, learning survival skills. Humans were the only animal that exist on all continents except Antarctica. And why is that? Well, not because we're the strongest where it kind of weak animal physically. I learned that the chimpanzee, although being half the size of a human, is twice, has twice our strength, they could rip us to pieces, were not the strongest, but we are the most intelligent for better and for worse. And that has led to our ability to spread across the globe. We, an animal is very bad at adapting to new circumstances. If you put a chimpanzee on Greenland, they will not be able to survive. We can, because we can learn, we can adapt strategies. We can live in the rain forests and we can live on Iceland, and we can live in the mountains, and we can live by the sea. And that the reason why we can do that is that we can change our attitudes or behaviors or modus operandi. And we do this with information. And information is in essence stories. Neurobiologists have found out that the way we humans process information is by stories. On a micro level. Eric, he hates the red mushroom and then he died. Don't eat the red mushrooms. That's information that follows the classic three-act structure. And we will talk much about structure later on. One did something that had an outcome. And there's a message, there's a key learning to be taken away from that. That's, Hamlet works in the exact same way. Of course, infinitely more complex than my story about Eric and the mushroom. But still, there are actions. And to these actions there are consequences. That is the theme, that is your theme. What happens in a good story is that your character, your protagonist, tries to solve a problem. I spoke about that briefly in the beginning. That what a story is, in essence is that someone, your protagonists and other characters in the story have problem, a big problem. Insoluble problem, and the dangerous problem that is vital for their survival doesn't have to be physical survival. It can be emotional survival, social survival, spiritual survival. But in some way, shape, or form, this problem is vital to them. And it has to be solved. But it can't because it's an insoluble. The reason why the protagonist will, most cases, the audience will find out later on in the story. That's when we discovered the reason why the problem was insoluble was in the character herself. It wasn't a protagonist. He or she employed the wrong modus operandi. So what happens in a good story that your character has this insoluble, dangerous, vital problem. That seems insoluble. He or she tries to solve it with a modus operandi. That's not working. It fails. Hence, your character tries to solve the problem again. Now with a new strategy, which is not, might be better, but still not perfect. So this might give it temporality. Temporarily, might be a good, Give your protagonist some kind of win, some kind of advantage, but ultimately, it will also fail. So your protagonist employs another strategy which will not succeed, at least not completely until the very end of your story when your character finds out. The reason why my, my problem was insoluble was that I was employing the wrong modus operandi. This is the right modus operandi. Now, for the final fight, for the final push, he or she tries to solve the problem, phases the antagonist now with the correct modus operandi and finally triumphs. Or if it's tragedy finally fails because he or she fails to adopt the correct modus operandi. What is the correct mode is up around it. Well, that's up to you. That's your truth. On the subject matter. What do you feel to be true about failure and success in regards to your subject? That is the correct modus operandi according to you. And that is the only truth in which we are interested. If there is an objective truth, if there is such a thing, we're not interested in that. We're interested in your truth. If we agree, we will think your story is great. If it's brilliant to execute it in other areas. If we don't agree, we don't, we will not like your story. In essence, storytelling is a collective discussion about what is truth, what is the correct behavior? And discussion is that you propose an idea to ask an audience. You say, This is what I think is true and you embody that through a physical process, fiscal actions, which we call the story, actions, which has consequences. And if we agree, we might use your story as part of our canon. For instance, like we use Hamlet, that's part of our canon. Hamlet helps us define what is true about revenge. Here in my native Sweden, we have Astra linger in her stories about PyPy long stocking. They have helped us define what is true in relation to child rearing. How should we raise our children? She has proposed to us how to do that, how to look, how to view children in relationship to adults. And she did that through these stories. And that is what storytelling is. You propose an idea how to live. How should we conduct ourselves in the world to be successful both on an individual level and on a collective level, how should we advance our chances for survival, both as an individual and collective? That is what storytelling ultimately is about. All stories are about survival. Then you might say, well, if I take a silly high-school comedy like American Pie, That has nothing to do about survival. I would say, yes, it does. It has all to do with survival. There are bunch of high-school nerds trying to get laid. Procreation, that's the basis for existence. People getting laid, well, that is survival. So even if you have a comedy and you might think it's a silly high school comedy. Ultimately, it's about survival. It's something sex, extremely, extremely relevant to all of us. So regardless, if you make a comedy, or a drama, or tragedy, or a sci-fi horror or what have you, your story ultimately has to be about survival. You getting a Irving Berlin, he wrote over a thousand songs, hit songs, amongst others, White Christmas. And someone asked him and said, How do you write a hit song? And he said, there are three parts to writing a hit song. Number one, you find something that is deeply personal to you, personal and important to you. In that subject, you find what is universally relevant, what is the theme? And then you take that theme and you dress that in specific circumstances. For instance, if you take Bon Jovi is hit Living on a prayer. It's about Tommy and Gina told me used to work on the docks and Gina was waiting tables. Now, I haven't worked in the darks. I haven't waited tables. But I have been John, I have been I had aspirations. I've had my salad days being young and poor and dreaming about an endeavor. And we all have been there. And that's why we can relate to live it on a prayer. It's not about someone living on a dark or someone waiting tables. It's about being young, having aspirations, not being sure if these aspirations are going to come to fruition or not. That's what living with prayer is about. That's why we can relate to it, and that's what your story should too. You should find, the more you can find something. As Irving Berlin says, something deeply personal to you that you find to be true, important to you, and which you feel might be important to other people as well. Then you find your universal relevance in that. What can all people in the world living in Bangladesh or Bombay, or Seattle, woman or man, or whatever gender you prefer, what can they relate to? That is your subject, then you find your truth about that Soviet, not what do you think should be true, but do you really think to be true about that subject? That subject plus your take is your theme. Now, you take that theme and you dress that in specific circumstances. Your story. Your characters, the way they act, the consequences they reap from directions. Thus your theme. So when you know your theme and you know your thematic story, you have the basis for your story. The outline for the story and theme and concept isn't very same thing. For instance, take Crimson Tide, a movie with Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington as opposing characters. They are use officers on a US nuclear submarine. Now they get a message that is interrupted and all communication fails. But the part of the message that they received said that the Soviets, this is during the Cold War. The Soviets might have launched missiles against the US. Now, if that is the case, there are only chance of saving the US is launching their own missiles in order to try to hit the Soviet missiles and thus saved us. However, if the Soviets did not launched in the sides, then they themselves might start World War II. So a dilemma, right? And of course, the two antagonists propose different ideas. Gene Hackman says, his character says that the least bad option right now is to launch our MS sides. And there's the Washington's character. Of course, it claims the opposite. The least bad option is to not launch arm insights. And then of course, the conflict ensues. And why is this interesting? Because neither of them are bad people. Neither of them are evil. Neither of them hate evil intentions. They want the best for themselves, for their loved ones, for us and for the world. They only have different ideas as to how to go about reaching this. The harder you make it for the characters to decide they're harder. You make it for the audience to decide who's right, who's wrong, who's good, and who's evil, the more interesting your story will become. As George Bernard Shaw says, drama is not the struggle between good and evil, is a struggle between evil and evil, a dilemma. The harder that dilemma is, the more interesting the story becomes. Once or the cramps, That's four-story. There was a group of friends go to Thailand and they tried to smuggle drugs. Leaving Thailand, one of them gets caught, the others don't. Now, their friend who got caught, he faces ten years in prison. Now, if they also would acknowledge their guilt, his sentence would be reduced and they would also get a sentence. And at the same amount. This is an interesting question. What kind of sentence would we, would you except for a friend. So say he spends ten years in a Thai person and you spend none, but you know that you were guilty too. Okay. What if We admit to our guilt and we get to spend one year in prison and he also gets one year. Would you do that? Well, it was a good friend. You might. Now, if it's two years. Two years. Well, if it's a really, really good friend, three years, it's getting harder now, right? And this is where you want to be. If we acknowledge our guilt and we get to spend nine years, we'd have well, then there's no point, right, because 910 years that does differ. But there's something here, I would say at least for me. The 23 years, five years, I would say, well, fibers, then he might take ten because 510, that's not such a huge difference. But around 23 years, that would to me constitute a very hard ethical dilemma. Would I sacrifice three years in order for him not to spend ten? And that is where you want to position your characters. And that is where you want to position the audience in that hard, hard, ethical dilemma. Should we do this or should we do that? Just like in Crimson Tide? Thus, the audience, I have to be aware of your theme. Know they don't know. Bettelheim, an American psychologist. He wrote a wonderful book called The Uses of enchantment. And he talks about the psychological power of the fairy tale. He says that when you tell a fairy tale to a child, the child is rarely if ever aware of the theme. The takeaway, the story. And they shouldn't be because they don't yet possess the intellectual resources. And the experience is necessary to process the theme. But they can do that subconsciously. For instance, if you tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood to young girl, she can listen to it at a 100 times because she is capable of processing that theme subconsciously, not intellectually. If you would, to tell the little girl that Red Riding Hood is really about your future romantic life. You will become a woman and you will meet man if you're so inclined. And some of them will be Wolfe's, some of them will be bad guys, and they will be attracted. You will be attracted to those guys. And most of the time, you will fall for that and you might end up in trouble. But most of the time you will end up with a good guy, a hunter, who will kill the wolf at this symbolically. And that is the way your future romantic life will be most of the time. Now, if you tell that to the girl, she is not ready for that information as of yet, intellectually, but subconsciously, she can process that. And this is what a story is. It's a, a, a metaphor for life. And it's, it's like a computer game. It's like, you know, when pilots train themselves with simulation, the story is a simulation of life, is the preparation. And that is why we are enticed by stories at all ages, but especially so when we're young in our teams because the stories are roadmaps. And if it's a good story, it's a good roadmap that, at least from a subconscious level, trains us, prepares us for the future. Ordeals that lie ahead. The biggest ordeal in life, the biggest transformation, the biggest rite of passage in life is that going from a child to adult through the teens, leaving our original family in order to find a mate and start a role. That's the biggest transformation that any human being does. And that is why almost all folk stories, almost all fairy tales are about this transformation. The young boy or girl leaves home, finds a mate, and starts a new family, ending up with half of the kingdom and winning the prince or the princess. That is what a fairy tale is. It's preparing the child for that great-great-great transformation. Not doing so in an intellectual level, but on a deep subconscious level, giving the kid tools and a roadmap for the road ahead. And this is same with all good stories. They teach us something about life and not the specifics of that, and not on an intellectual level. But if you take that, your truth on life, your roadmap, and then you embody it through a fiscal story, you give it an example. The reason why is that our brain can understand abstractions, but our feelings cannot. We cannot respond emotionally to abstractions. If you give an intellectual lecture about how to live life, we might take away something intellectually, but we can never respond emotionally. And data with white becomes harder for us to employ that knowledge in our own lives. We have to be emotionally engaged in something in order to really learn it. And a psychologists have found this today, the more emotionally engage the student, this more able he or she is to learn. So you can say story is an example of Your truth. For instance, in Sweden, tabloids, they always run an article with two sub articles. They have a big article and then they have the small article. And the big article might be, well, last night, a 150 thousand households in Southern Sweden lost the power double bond. That's the overall picture. Then they run the small piece beside that, and that is the personal piece. And now we're going to meet the glutamyl peptides on how, how was she affected by this power cut. That little piece. That's your story, the big article, that's your theme. So you find out what's the universal relevance of your story? What's the overarching story that is true for all human beings or at least most human beings. And then you take n here I have an example. For instance, like Shakespeare does in Hamlet. This is what I find to be true, but revenge. And this I find to be true for all human beings. Now, let me give you an example. There was a prince and Denmark, bloody, bloody, bloody blah. That's your story. That's your example. So the more you know your theme, the bedroom story will become n. Of course it works, vice-versa. Working on your story. Will inform you as to your theme, your take on that subject. And that's one of the reasons we write. We write to find out what we believe to be true. But something. And sometimes you might know that beforehand and sometimes that might evolve during the process and sometimes, and that of course, is ideal when you work on something. And you realize that my thoughts on this and my take on this is actually different or at least somewhat different than I thought initially. And that is a definition of a creative process. If you leave the process with an end result, which is exactly the same as you thought it was gonna be initially. Is that a creative process? Now, it's art. It's only creative process if the end result in some way, shape, or form differs from what you thought initially. And that is what's fun in creating in the creative process that we, we, we change. As your characters do. We changed to the story? The more you change, the more you get affected by the story. More interesting story you will create. Alright? Okay, to continue. When you look at a theme, your true from the story. It's important to realize that a Truth is not a dichotomy. The truth is not a decision between two opposites. For instance, we have covered a cowardice and encourage. Your character is choosing between cowardice and carriage. That is not a thing because that's not true. That's propaganda. For instance, there's a bank in Sweden, cold sweat bank. And longtime ago, they had the paper sent out to young kids admonishing them to save money in the bank, of course. And there are two characters, and one was called waste and one was called save, very, very pedagogical comic strip. Now, of course, save, as her name implied, saved all their money. And as a result of that, her life was a paradise. Everything worked to her advantage, was nothing bad about her choice. Waste, on the other hand, as the name implies, wasted all their money. And as a consequence of her life was miserable. And there was nothing good to be sad about her choice. That's not theme, that's not true. It's propaganda. Because truth, as we know, always carries its own dilemmas. Truth always carries the price. For instance, commercials. Advertising works on propaganda, saying, if you buy our pill, you will lose ten kilos in a week and you don't have to exercise. Wonderful, right? That's not truth. And we know that's not true. That's propaganda. Truth would, for instance, be if you work out and diligently and if you eat well, have a good diets, you might lose ten kilos and the year. That's true. But it comes with a price. And that's the difference between a message propaganda and truth. The theme that the message propaganda has no price to be paid in order for the victory to be one. And we all know that it's a sweet lie, but nevertheless alive. So coming back to our theme, Aristotle, the Greek, ancient Greek philosopher living in three to four to 322 before Christ. In his book, The Nicomachean Ethics, he says that a virtue is not the total opposite to advice. For instance, the virtue of courage is not the total opposite of cowardice. A virtue is the middle point or the balance point between two vices. So for instance, courage is not the opposite of covered is the opposite. The true opposite of cowardice is foolhardiness. The midpoint or the synthesis of these is courage. So you have covered this and at the very end of the spectrum, you have foolhardiness. And then courage. Courage is the balance between being either a coward. For a foolhardy person, courage is the balance in between. Same thing, take a being generous. Being generous is not the polar opposite of being stingy. The polar opposite of the stingy is being wasteful. So Jen being generous is the synthesis or the balance or the midpoint between being stingy and being wasteful. Now, why is this important to us as storytellers? Because a good theme, a good thematic story, which then informs your story, will be about your character first, embodying the first vice, moving to the second vice, ultimately ending up with the virtue. For instance, you character might start being a coward. And then moves, learns, as I've been talking about, learns eventually from failing and failing and failing or not succeeding completely. But I have to change my modus operandi. And then in most stories, changes all the way to the polar opposite and becomes foolhardy. Now, this is the way it's going to be. And that might give some initial success, not complete success, but some success, but eventually that will fail too. This will lead to a period of desolation. There are bits we're going to talk about that. When we talk about structure. He or she doesn't know what to do, everything is lost. I tried that and I tried its opposite. Neither of them worked what to do. Eventually, if the storage star and successfully, he or she will find. It's the midpoint, is the balance point. It's the synthesis. And employing that synthesis between those, those two vices, he or she will ultimately. There you have your story, the structure of your story in a nutshell, starting and your thematic story will inform your story. For instance, if we take this story, a character starts out being a coward and tries to solve his or her problem. Being a coward, be not wanting to engage in direct confrontation with the opponent. Always trying to play safe. Eventually that will fail after several attempts. Now, he or she turns to it, it's very opposite becoming foolhardy, reckless, doing whatever it takes with other thought, but consequences which might give it initial benefits but ultimately failed to them after a period of desolation feeling all this lost, all hope is vanquished than he or she will find out and try it. The courageous being courageous is not being the coward and not being foolhardy either, but the balance and then she will fail. Now you see, you've got the structure with the story. What you now need to do is to find the physical events, the fiscal actions that embody this thematic story. And that is so much easier than starting the other way round, starting with physical actions. Trying to find out what the theme of your story is. Not to say that it can work in both ways. Of course, as I've said, working on your story will inform you as to what you think to be true about your subject. So it's not one direction process. It works, It's an iterative process. It works in a circular fashion. But still, the better grasp you have of your thematic story, of your anti, first anti-thesis and your second I'm tied thesis and then your synthesis at the easiest comfort to plot your story. And I would encourage you as an exercise, take this thematic story though proposed going from cowardice to foolhardiness, eventually moving to encourage. See how many stories, how many films stories have you read or seen that you think embody this? And can you come up with a short story that fulfills the thematic story? I bet that you will find it quite easy to come up with a story based on this dramatic story. And that is what I would advise you to do when you work on your stories. Try to come up with a thematic story as soon as possible, which of course is open as always, to revisions. And from that, then you try to find a fiscal situation, fiscal story that embodies that thematic story that exemplifies this thematic story. Yet again, I mentioned that story is an example. Your characters are examples. Something that you find to be universal. The stronger connection you have between your theme, your truth, and a fiscal events of the story. The more engaged we will be. Will we know this intellectually? No, we will not. Audience will never leave the cinema thinking or talking about, oh, I love the theme, bloody, bloody blah. They will never do this. But that is what will affect them emotionally, provided that all the other parts are in place, which we will talk in detail later on in the series. But I really want you to emphasize the extreme importance of theme. A theme also has to do with purpose. What is your purpose for telling your story? And of course there's no right and wrong answer. But I would advise you to ask yourself, is, Why must you tell the story? Steven Spielberg says, in order to make a film, he needs to have a burning desire that only this film can satisfy. So what is the burning desire within you that only this story can satisfy? The more you can feel them, the better the chances are that we as an audience, are enticed by your passion, by your enthusiasm. We as an audience can never be as passionate about your story as you are. It's impossible. If you are passionate ten, we can add Tmax, be passionate eight. So if you're passionate to, well, we will not care about your story. You will have to really, really be passionate about telling this in order for us to feel, well, I could spend two hours eating popcorn watching that. That is so important. What is the burning the side within the, what, what kind of relief would it give you? The purpose? You should ask yourself this, what kind of this story? What could that teach you and the audience? How could your story empower you and audience? How could your story inspire you and the audience? How could you store it, comfort you and audience? And how could it cleanses you and the audience? Aristotle, he says, that the purpose of a drama, or specifically tragedy, is to cleanse the audience of negative emotions. He called it catharsis. And a cathartic experience when we cleanser ourselves with negative emotions. And you have felt that when you've seen a film or read a book that engage you, you left the cinema, or you turn off the television set or close the book. Feeling relieved. That is catharsis. And how do we go about bringing that about? Well, we're going to talk about that in detail. But one of the most important points of that is one of the most important parameters in bringing about the tarsus is having a solid theme. Your take on that subject matter. The universe of irrelevance should ideally be a take which is at least some degree nu. If for instance your take is revenge and you say, well, revenge always leads to disruption. There's nothing wrong in that. You might, you might say, Wow, I don t think that's always the case. But if you agree, revenge always leads to destruction. Den, you have to accept that it is not a new tech. It has been said over and over again. And I think for good reasons. But ideally, you should be able to make a case for a take on that universal relevance, which offers at least something new. Something that is, that would be interesting to say, well, revenge always leads to destruction, but, or you're adding something to do that, that makes it interesting. It's like you read a good book and find out all the author he or she has take on parenting. That is maybe not entirely new, but there's a new take on it that would entice you to read the book. Same thing with your story. And yet again, this might not be explicit, but if you have a take on something universal which is at least to some degree nu, then you stand a better chance of creating a story which will entice me and engage me in integrated way. So what the audience ultimately wants from a story, we want to be entertained and we want to learn something. The Roman poets who Rachel, he said that great drama, a great story should, should fulfill two purposes. It should be in Latin with Taylor and bulky. And a T limb means useful. We shall learn something. I should learn something from the story which I can use in my life. It should be vital for my success as an individual and our success as a collective. It should be, it should be useful. Second one is dual key, and that means enjoyable. It should be enjoyable, it should be entertaining. A pleasurable experience, a great story. Takes those boxes, it's useful. It teaches me something, or at least reminds me of something that is vital to my survival. Physiologically, sociologically spiritual, or what have you. And it is engulfing. It's entertaining. I forget about time. I forgot about my daily problems watching the story. If you can take those boxes, you have a great story. Okay? So what I want you to do now is to ask yourself these questions. But the story was, Why must you tell this story? What is the burning desire? What do you find to be the universal relevance of your story? What's the subject and what is your take on that, that is your theme. How can you move your character from the first device to the second vice and ultimately to diverge, you hear the German philosopher, he says that the world evolves according to what is called the Hegelian dialectic. We start with the anti-thesis, and we move from that anti-thesis to a nother anti-thesis, eventually ending up with a synthesis. And as we talked about, as Aristotle talked about The Nicomachean Ethics, we start from the advice. We start from your protagonist employing a bad modus operandi, eventually failing so many times that he or she has no other option than to change her modus operandi, eventually failing so many times that she has to change your bonds of rounded to the correct one. Working like this, you will work from the inside out and you will grow your story organically. Or course, you could store start your story by writing, accumulating scenes and pages. But the reason why that rarely works is you end up creating Frankenstein's monster. You have these different scenes which might be linked thematically, but most of the time it will not. You will end up with one scene that giving this perspective on life than another one giving this, it will not be a coherent whole. So that is why I would advise you to start from the inside out, also plotting which we'll talk about later on, start from the whole storage from a holistic perspective. Start from the nucleus of your story. Okay, so now we have talked about Themis and why is this so important? And what I think, why? I think it's so vital that you start with a good appreciation for what your Themis is, the story. Now, when you have this, we're going to move on to the next chapter. And the next parameter is story. And that is the most important one. The emotional response of the audience. 3. Chapter 2: Response: Why do we read and write? To feel less alone? Cs Lewis. See how we make the people laugh, cry, and sit on the edge of the chairs. Car Lumley, the founder of Universal Studios. Welcome to Chapter two, response. The emotional, intellectual, and physical response of the audience, and hence the Giant Re, or your story. A good story doesn't take place on the screen, or on the paper, or on the stage. A good story takes place in the minds, hearts, and bodies of the audience. Everything we do in a good story aims at certain reaction within the audience. Theatre comes from the Greek word, which means not the stage, but that's where the audience is seated. And that means that the most important part, the most important person or persons in telling a story. That's not us, the audience. A good story, a good piece of art is nothing without a viewer, without the spectator. That completes the story. A good story is like a good joke. Joke is dependent on the listener feeling in the black, filling in what the punchline leaves out. When the punchline counts, we, the audience are forced to. Ahad, that means that, and that creates the laughter. Without audience. A joke is nothing, and vice versa. If we don't need the audience to tell a joke, the joke is nothing. Good art is like good communication. It always demands some form of interaction. The more you interact with your audience, the stronger you communicate, and vice versa, the less you interact, the worst you communicate, if at all. And that's the difference between communication and information. Information as well. Dictators like Mao Zedong was speaking for six hours as a noun, no interaction. The only reason why people listened to him is because if they didn't, they got shot. Communication, on the other hand, is engaged in a call and response with the audience. It's like artists standing on a Wembley Stadium and going alone and pointing to microphone at the audience. And we go. That is interaction, or when the well-known core is when the singer stop singing and points to the microphone, microphone at us and we complete the lyrics. It's like an, a gospel song. When you have a leader, let's say hallelujah. And the core is response, hallelujah. That is, would a good story is, we are, the core is leader and the audience cores filling in the blanks. For instance, if I say 246810, that is information that is not interesting to you. It is a bit more interesting if I say to you, what is two plus two was three plus three is four plus four. I force you to interact. It's not the most exciting story ever told. But still, it's much more interesting than when I told you 468. That's what you always want to do. And we're going to talk much more of this when we talk about inflammation distribution, which is key to creating communications. But for now, suffice it to say that the goal of your story is not what happens on the page or the stage or the screen. The goal is what happens inside the audience. This is so vital in order for you to tell a good story. And this is one of the hardest things to learn. When people start writing. I think it's for good reason. We end up on focusing on what's on the paper and not thinking about reflecting on how this will affect an audience. Unless of course you're writing jokes because then you know that this has to effect. So think about all that you're writing as if you're writing a joke. It hasn't had to be a joke. It can be poetry, it can be tragedy. But always have in mind, how will this affect the audience? How do I hope to affect the audience intellectually and, or emotionally or physically? This defiance, of course, the John Ray of your story. And a good story can evoke many feelings and many different forms of responses. But what's the primary emotional response you want to elicit in the audience? That is your laundry. For instance, if we are hoping to scare the audience most of the time, of course, well, it's horror. If we hope to make the audience laugh most of the time. Well, of course it's comedy. And if we hope to make us cry most of the time with the summertime. Well, of course it's a it's a drama. Now, of course in the drama, you can have funny moments. In a comedy, you might have sad moments, but the primary emotion you hope to elicit from the audience that defines your john Ray. Then of course, you might hope to elicit an intellectual response. You might hope to create aha moments for the audience. One filmmaker, which i and I think many, many others believed to create both intellectual and emotional responses in the audience is Christopher Nolan, who's films are both intellectually engaging and emotionally engaging as well. And of course, there are films that are mostly intellectual engagement and mostly, mostly, and some things are most visually engaging, physical engaging in an action movie where maybe there's not a whole lot of intellectual discourse going on at, but it's Justin Brown by a bomb and the sound and the music and effects. It's a physical sensation of Washington. I like being on a roller coaster. And regardless of which, the more, the stronger responses you elicit from the audience, the stronger your story will be. Now, doing this constantly for two hours or 1.5 hour. That's hard. That's really, really, really hard. You can think of it this way. Your stand-up comedian and you're trying to make the audience laugh for 90 minutes. You must have enough jokes to make the audience laugh from 19 minutes. That is what you're trying to do as historical. And yet again, it doesn't need to be comedy. It can be horror, drama, but you want to engage the audience emotionally every second. On the way for 90 minutes. That's hard. As one side is inherited to Bob Butler. The revenue. He says that making movies easy. And of course it is. You can take up your iPhone making movie. It will be bad. But it's easy. Technically these days. Making a good movie. He says, That's hard. It's really hard. And making a great movie. That's a miracle. But the more you focus, the sooner you focus on what you hope to be. The intellectual and, or emotional and or fiscal response of the audience. The stronger your story will be and the better storyteller you will become. Because that is ultimately the goal of everything we do on stage, on page, onscreen to engage the audience. If we don't, again, Sheldon's, it's often, often. That is the purpose. Yet again, think of it this way. Theater comes from TR, from the Greek word, meaning the stats with the audience, without the audience were nothing. There are many examples of this. The Russian theater director, you began a Buxton goal when he directed theater. Always placed an imaginary member of the audience. Next term. When rehearsing, he looked at this imaginary member to see what he or she was feeling and responding to what was happening on stage. Hans Zimmer, the brilliant film composer. He says that he creates for himself, but also for an imaginary number of dahlias equals Doris. Doris, he was a member of the band playing in England and 80s. And times were tough. Margaret Thatcher was in power and it was a lot of unemployment and poverty. And which he saw. Doris is a woman living in the UK in the eighties and low-income. And she has two teenage boys, which are just a handful. But once in a week, she gets take her hard earned money, plunk it down, and go to the movies to get them experience which she cannot have in her own life. And he creates not only for himself, but also for her what he hopes that she will experience. You should do so as well. I would advise you to do as Hans Zimmer does, create or find an imaginary member of the audience or to think of people you love or friends or family and create your story not only for yourself but also for them. What do you hope that they will gain by reading and watching your story? What feelings, experiences do you hope that they will get, that they will not get in their ordinary lives? That's one of the reasons we create art. To enrich ourselves, not economically, but spiritually, emotionally, to become, to make our lives richer. That's why we create art. How do my life become richer by creating this? How do I hope that the lives of my audiences will become richer by partaking or what I create, we might fail. We might fail miserably, but we should always have that as a goal, trying to enrich ourselves and the audience. Goldman, famous screenwriter who wrote, amongst others, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He says that the audience knows, the rest of us are just guessing. This is, of course it's a $10 thousand question. What does the audience want? What do they want? And if there was an answer, no, Hollywood will be making nothing but blockbuster movies than a gazillion dollars. And they don't nine out of ten Hollywood movies, not, not French independent movies. Hollywood Louis, nine out of ten, don't make their money back. So obviously, even Hollywood doesn't know. Most of the time. As William Goldman says, the audience knows. If you would have asked the audience, the movie going audience in 1976, what do you want to see next year? They would say, Well, we want to see jars too, because that was the hits of 1976. Now, what was the hits of 1977? Well, it was a strange space opera about some laser savers and the talking dog, some force thing. No one would have said in 1976 that they wanted to see that in 1977. The audience doesn't know what they want either. No one else. The only thing you can do is to do something that you feel. This is what I would like to see and which is not yet created. George Lucas said when he created Indiana Jones, that why did they make these movies? Because he wanted to see them and no one else was making them. You're terrorists and financed Monty Python's holy grail. No, sorry, Life of Brian. If finance life of Brian, he put up, I think four or £5 million to finance it. And when they asked him, why did they finance life of Brian, he said, I wanted to see the movie. And that's the best reason you can have for creating art. Because you want to see it. And you hope that someone else will to see it too. But that's not a given. But you can never expect. The more you try to speculate. What do they want to do? Market research. The lesser of a chance you stand or creating something that's succeeds, not only artistically, but also economically. No one knows what the audience wants, but you know what you want. That's a very good starting point. I'm James Cameron, women, men, he made avatar. There's a sequence if you've seen Avatar at when Jake in Nigeria is a first date, so to speak, when they fire on these bluish dragons and they fly around and you can see their romance. It's budding in that scene. It's quite a long scene. And he got notes from the executives who said that you need to cut this gym because it's too long and it doesn't advance the story. And he said, You're completely right. These are good notes. It doesn't advance the story, and at least not in such a way that it merits such a long sequence. But he said, I want to see it. And I bet my money that other people will want to see it as well. And that's the way you should bet your money. Not that i'm I think I don't care for this, but maybe they do. I want to see this and I bet my money that at least there are some people don't want to see it as well. And I think you have felt this. You can you can smell with something made out of speculation or when it's made from the heart. Now, just because you make it from the heart doesn't guarantee success artistically or financially. But it's a prerequisite. It's unnecessary condition, but it's not enough. So we only have a negative guarantees in this business. There are no positive guarantees. If you do this, you will succeed. There are only negative guarantees. If you don't do this, then you will never succeed. If you don't create from the heart. If you don't create out of integrity that this is what I want, is what I like, then you will fail. There are tons of examples. Can point to many Swedish movies where they had everything in place. They have the big stars was based on a big concept. One filled by gangsters. Stars and they have a miss sweden, the pretty girls, they had everything in place and they were just waiting for the cash to rake in the money. An abysmal failure. While the most abysmal failures and sweetest cinematic history. You can never, never speculate. That's the best way to destroy your movie. People will tell you how this works. This doesn't work. This is what the business wants, this is what the audience. Well, no one knows. You know, the more people try to convince you that I know, the more that they do not know. As William Goldman says, the audience knows, the rest of us are just guessing. Pixar says. To this lesson, we have included 22 rules from Pixar in movie making. And they say that one of these rules that Pixar has is that keeping in mind what's interesting to you as an audience, not as a writer, because they might be very different than this is an important distinction. Just because you want to do something doesn't necessarily imply that you want to see it. For instance, you might love art house, you might love seeing artist, but you feel that, oh, I really should do an action movie because that's what's going to sell. Or you might love action movies, but I feel I'm making art house to a piece of the critics and that's the wrong way to go about it. But have also had this distinction in mind. What do you want to see us an audience, not what you want to do. They might be different. Remember what George Lucas said? I want made indiana Jones because I wanted to see it. Your terrorism financed by for brand because it wanted to see it. So you are your first audience. Create, not from the perspective of the creator, but from the perspective from you. As the audience, the first audience member may feed on the audience member, hopefully not, but at least the first audience member. So summing up, number one, the ultimate goal of everything we do, every word you put on paper is to create a response in the audience, intellectual, emotional, or physical, or all three of them. That is our goal. Now, in order to do this is might be very good to create a reference. Nothing is created in a vacuum. So your story and your process will benefit from lining up with the grades that I walked through beforehand. And to do so, we're moving into the next chapter. Number three, reference. 4. Chapter 3: Reference: Joss in space. That was a pitch for the film Alien. Romeo and Juliet on board the Titanic. James Cameron's pitch for Titanic, a theme park for resurrected dinosaurs. Steven Spielberg's question to Michael cryo-TEM. Welcome to Chapter three, reference. It's very important for you to create a reference for your story. And for two reasons. The more you can align your story with different other kinds of stories. Films, plays, novels, what have you? The easier it is for you to communicate what kind of story it is. And this is very important when you try to sell your story through financier's. It's through matures, or when you're trying to attract team members. If you make a film or if you make a theater production, what have you? So it's very important in that regard. But first and foremost, it is important for you as a creative tool. It will help you, it will guide you. Nothing is created in a vacuum. All art is standing up on the shoulders of older art. The Roman comedy writers Claudius and tendencies, they took their plots from a Greek comedy writers and the non-zeros. And their plots in turn were taken by Moliere and later writers. All art is built on the ruins of old art. The same thing goes for architecture. Baghdad was built on the ruins of Babylon. Cairo was built with material taken from the Great Pyramids of Giza. Everything is created not in a vacuum, but from what is preexisting. And the more you can align your sales has made before, you lessen the risk of trying to invent the wheel and new. There's so much to be learned from what has been created in this genre, in this type of story. And you're also less than the risk of repeating something, oh, thinking that you have event that something really knew, which was made 60 years or 70 years ago. There's the saying that talent borrows, a genius steals. And the French writer or Maria Bosack, he said that when young writers steal from us, that's they pay homage. That's a complement. We want them to do that because we did the same. And that's the way art evolves. You take something and not by taking, I don't mean you copy it, but you are inspired by your, influenced by, you might take the underlying structure or certain way of creating a turning point. What have you? And then you make that your own. I'm a good mathematical formula is saying that all creative endeavors is like making a recipe. You take 1 third of your own stuff and 1 third, research or borrowing from what has been done, 41 third imagination. And then, you know, that makes that kind of stew that will create what is new, what you have brought to the world. So there are only so many stories. Italian writer George palsy, he claimed that there are 36 situations. Blake Snyder claims that there are ten sound claim. They are to Joseph Campbell, which we'll talk about more when we talk about structure, he says that there's one, the monomyth. Well, regardless of how many, we all know, there's just, there's just a finite number of stories structures. The rom com. We all know, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again. And then all romantic comedies folded structure. It doesn't have to be born. Garlic can be boy, boy, or what have you. But the fundamental structure is the same. The more you can study what has been done before. At the better chance you stand of creating something that's new, original, and at best improving on what has been done before. So study, study, study the kinds of stories, plays, books, movies that has been done before in this genre that you are writing. A tip I would like to give you is to create a playlist on Spotify or if you make a tape or what have you when music that you think fits the tonality of your story. And then you can listen to that playlist on repeat while you're writing. And why is this so good? Because that will weed out the sessions that are not in line with the tonality of your piece. And B, if will, guide you subconsciously towards what is. And as Freud taught us, are subconscious, It's what rules our lives. And the same thing with the creative process. Constantin Stanislavski, the great acting teacher and an actor and director who founded what we now call as the psychological realism that the dominant acting tradition in the Western world. He says that the goal of all art is to reach the subconscious. That is where it happens. If your art is merely an intellectual products. It will leave the audience is cold. It has to come in some way, shape or form from your subconscious. Stephen King, he calls it the subconscious. The boys in the basement. And he tries to order them into giving giving him something. That's that's the goal. You're trying to get your boys or girls in the bailiffs to do the work for you. And we're going to discuss later on methods and techniques for that to happen. How do you create something new? Well, as mentioned, nothing is new. Nothing new under the sun, as the Bible says. But most of the things that are created, that are considered new or a synthesis of two existing phenomena. For instance, when alien was made. Now we have seen many, many, many films about monsters in space. Then it was completely new to our jaws in space, or how you can have that. When Jurassic Park came, that was entirely new. There were films by dinosaurs before. They were films about theme parks before, but none about theme parks with dinosaurs them. So you're taking two existing phenomena and you're putting them together to create that perfect storm, to creating that unique attracting factor that the sum of the whole becomes something that we think is new. So think about how you can take existing phenome and put them together and find something that feels like it's new and fresh and interesting. So I talked about setting up a playlist on Spotify because music is so powerful and music speaks directly to our subconscious. And bypasses then select another way to talk to your subconscious and get the voice and debasement to speak with Ximen Qing to get to work is to create a mood board. That is, you take images, physical or digital, and you put them into a collage. And these images are, might be representative of the characters or to situations or the Mu years, or just the tonality of your story. You can have that, put it up on a collage, physical or digital, and just look at it when writing is to inform yourself subconsciously of the world that you are creating. So these are ways to work with your subconscious. The more you can align yourself with what has already been done, not to copy it, but to expand upon it. The greater chance you stand up creating something that will not only be good, but also new and fresh and interesting. So summing up, please, I would advice you create a playlist on Spotify or somewhere else where you collect music that you think is the tonality of your piece and you listen to that while working on your story to create a moodboard, look at it. And another good way is what paddy chefs good Did. He brought, amongst others, taxi driver. And what he did when he was writing, he wrote down his theme on a piece of paper and taped it to the typewriter was in the old days. And when writing, he had a theme in front of his eyes all the time because he said that they wanted everything he wrote to pass through the theme. So that's another way to keeping a reference going. I would also like to urge you to collect one or two or three stories, films, plays, books, which you feel are a good reference, solid reference for your story. And look at them, read them several times. And just to get influenced by them and not copying by just looking what worked, what didn't work, and why does that work so well there? And that's a good creative tool and be a very good selling tool. The more you can define two potential buyer. What your story is like, in what kind of vicinity is your story existing? The greater chance provided, of course, that you have a great story, the greater chance of attracting other people through a story. Alright? So we've talked about theme, we've talked about response and our talked about reference. Now we're coming down to the actual story and the basis of the story, the nucleus is what we call the concept. In Hollywood, the same concept is king. And what is a concept? Well, we'll talk much more about that in chapter four. 5. Chapter 4: Problem: Welcome to Chapter four, problem concept. So what does the story in its essence? Story in its essence is a problem. A person, several persons have a problem, a big problem, a problem that is almost insoluble. And the story is just the written account of how they are going about trying to solve that problem. That is what a story is. No problem, no story, no dilemma. Story. There are several layers of this problem. Just like an onion has several layers as Paraguay and puts it in Epson's play. So we have the outer problem, the big problem, than we might have more problems on the relationship level. And then we have an inner problem. That is, there's integral just to the protagonist and the other characters. And all these layers of these problems, of course, are interrelated. The inner problem is related to the outer problem and vice versa. And in order to solve the algebra problem, the protagonist has to solve his or her inner problem. And trying to solve the other problem serves as a catalyst for the protagonist to try to solve his or her inner product. So this is extremely important. And when you study good movies that you love, study how the inner problem and the outer problem is related. The ending. If the end of the story is a positive outcome for your hero herein, then he or she manages to solve his or her inner problem. Leading to solving the outer. That might be, ideally, the greatest endings is when you are able to solve this at the same time. For instance, in Star Wars episodes for a New Hope, which came in 1977. Luke Skywalker's inner problem is that in beginning He's immature. He doesn't want to adopt the philosophy of the Jedi that Obi-Wan Kenobi tries to teach him his restless and merely interested in the technical aspects of the universe. The algebra problem is of course they trying to defeat Darth Vader and the evil empire. Now, at the very climax of the movie, when Luke Skywalker finally succeeds in shooting that laser beam entered extortion pipe of the death star. That is where they went. And in doing so, he manages to solve as in they're an algebra problem. At the same time, his inner problem is solved in the way that he hears Obi-Wan Kenobi, his voice telling him, use the force, Luke, famous words leading him to flip up the sites that he had been looking through. Trusting his instincts more than his technical gear. Thus, Which does is of course solving their problem in and in so doing, he is able to hit the target and destroy the Death Star and hence the evil empire. This is what you should strive for when you create a story, the climax should ideally be confluent in the sense that by solving the entire problem, you are at the same time solving the outer. So you can see that the story starts with the inner and outer problem that are merging. Ideally merging in the climax. And that will create an ending that we'll have as very strong impact on the audience. Alexandre Dumas, the French writers said, the secret to storytelling is to make your heroin suffer. And of course that's true for heroes as well. James Cameron says that you have to put your characters through how you have to put them through a huge ordeal. We don't want to see people succeed easily. We want them to succeed if it's, if it's good characters and you have made us invest in your characters, then we want to see them succeed, but we never want them to succeed easily. It has, it has a great effort for an extended period of time and at a great cost to your characters. That is what we want to see. Someone once said that no one is interested in spending time and money watching a story, telling them that life is worthless. But we are very much interested in spending time and money to hear that life is hard. And that's something very different. Life is valuable, but life is also hard. And that's what a good stories tell us. The good stories tell us that we all will face problems in their life, many of which are not huge problems, but some of them will be. And how do we learn how to deal with this problem? Well, we humans have developed a tool, and that tool we call stories. So that is where the story is. It's a visualization on how you can solve different problems. For instance, rom coms, they are tools for solving. How do I go about meeting a mate and continue the story of humankind? And that is the story that a problem, a challenge that we all or others, most of all choose to face. And we learn from the rom coms. You might say, oh, it's just entertainment. The reason why it is entertainment is that it involves character trying to solve a problem which is relevant to all of us. And we've talked about that when we talked about theme that the problem, the subject matter, or the story has to be relevant. To reiterate here when we talk about problems, the problem at its core has to be irrelevant. For instance, in a ram caught finding a mate, that is irrelevant, problem, irrelevant challenge to most people. In Hamlet. The problem deals, the thematic core of the problem deals with revenge. And that is something that we all have to deal with. Whether we exact revenge upon another or not. We're still all have to deal with the emotions, the desire to adventure ourselves, and probably other people's desire to avenge them against us as well. So non-problem nor story. When does the story start? The story starts when the problem starts. Before the problem has started, you have no story and that is why you should always strive for to start the problem on page one. If you look at good stories, they almost have an opening, a prologue, which gives us the big problem. In this story universe, for instance, the beginning of Star Wars episode for a New Hope. It starts with Princess Leia ship being abducted by Darth Vader's larger ship, and Princess Leia is captured by Darth Vader. Now, this is huge problem for the student for this story universe, because the center of good has been captured by the Center of evil. Now, that is a problem in any universe and then has to be solved. Then most stories cut away from the problem, the big problem in the universe, to the world on the protagonist or hero or heroine. There, we face our protagonist at odds with something. He or she has a problem, a normal world problem, which relates to his or her inner problem. Now, this is the way storytelling works. You can say it's about karma, that you will reap what you sell. So what happens in a good story? We have presented the big problem in the world, cutaway to the original world, to the world of the protagonist. Then when we meet him or her problem, their lives, their lives might be entirely in this array. Most of the time it's not. Most of the time their lives are functioning pretty well, but they are experiencing some level of dissatisfaction. For instance, in the rom com, we usually meet the hair, we're under heroin. If it's a heterosexual, wrong calm. They're going about their lives, are pretty, pretty happy, but not fully content. To some level this satisfied. For instance, in Nottingham till we meet your grant who has a very picturesque boutique in Nottingham. Feel this hip burial London, living with this crazy roommate, his life is in pretty good shape, except for the fact he lacked some mates. He doesn't have a girlfriend, and his friends are trying to set him up with friends, but they fail. Meaning and Julia Roberts, character movie star, her life is fantastic. She's a movie star. He's making a gazillion dollars. Except for the fact that her partner, played by Adam Alec Baldwin, is somewhat dominant towards her in some way, shape, or form. She is not fully content. Now, the reason why our protagonists are characters experienced these problems are because they have some form of misconception. They have made some form of mistake, unbeknownst to them. This is what Aristotle, the Greek philosopher living in 384 to three-to-two before Christ, states in his seminal book, the first book on storytelling. Which one you should absolutely, absolutely read. Aristotle's Poetics enter in that book. He states that what, what's central to the character, especially the protagonist, is his or her, Hamada. Hamada is his or her mistake. Misunderstanding, misconception leading to his or her problem, initial problem in the world. So for instance, if you look when we meet Luke Skywalker after introducing the big world problem, there are for either has abducted printed layer. Now K2 via the droids that Princess Leia sense from her ship, R2D2 and C3PO, that eventually ends up with our protagonist, luke Skywalker. Now, his life is not in this array, is a farm boy, is leaving work with arms brew and his uncle. But he has a problem and he's very dissatisfied because he wants to become a pilot. He doesn't want to stay farm boy for the rest of his life. And of course, that is a problem which to which most people can relate. Not especially growing up on a farm, but wanting to leave your initial circumstances, going away to the big city, breaking the mold. And his uncle forbids him. He says You have to stay another year for next year's Harvard harvest before you can go to Pilot School, which is looks big dream to become a pilot. So he has a big problem. He has a desire which is quenched, which is hindered. And what we know implicitly, subconsciously as an audience is that, that problem will be linked to the bigger problem. Here's the desire to become a pilot will coincide with the problem of Darth Vader trying to take over the galaxy. Now, his problem here is cost to some extent by his inner problem. And it's inner problem is some aristeia, his mistake, this misconception. And as I mentioned when we meet Luke Skywalker in the beginning, he's the immature, he's rash, He's temperamental, use basically a child. And that is what at least to some degree, causes his initial problem. The initial problem can also be caused by cultural causes. For instance, here, when, when his uncle forbid symptom become a pilot. So we also have our initial problem caused by our upbringing and the cultural values that we inherit. But to some degree it has to be caused by ourselves. And that is what story is. It's essentially karma. Oscar Wilde puts it this way. The meaning of story, he says, is that the good, gather reward and the bad get through it, come up, It's alright. Now, looking at Star Wars, we have the inner problem. We have the unbeknownst to our protagonist. And this is important if the protagonists knows that his or her initial problem is caused by her inner problem or Marsha, then we don't want to have a problem because he or she would go about solving that problem right away. So that causality is unbeknownst through protagonist and what happens when he or she is thrown into the adventure, the world of adventure. Eventually he or she will discover that my initial problem was saw a caused by my inner problem. I am Artha. And that is linked to the outer problem. In order to solve the outer problem, I have to address my inner problem. And in that way, the story, how heinous and horrible it might be to the protagonist, is the best thing that happened through protagonist. Because it's the only thing that will help the protagonist solve his or her inner problem, thus, also solving the initial problem. A good problem. A good problems have to be at least experienced as insoluble. If a problem is easy, that's not a problem, right? I'm hungry. So let's go to the diner across the street. That's not a problem, or at least it's not a problem worth writing home about. The problems have to feel to some degree insurmountable. For instance, take Kung Fu Panda movie where the very, very athletic pool ping, the panda bear has to face the fiercely trained and skilled martial arts snow leopard Tyler. Now, that is insurmountable problem. I mean, how can this untrained fat panda even think of defeating the fierce Tyler? That's a good problem. And that makes us interested How the heck is this problem can be solved? Now, had pooping been fiercely trained, meeting, Taylor has furiously trained. Well, then you see you feel that your body is. That's not an engaging problem. We want the protagonist to be the least capable person of solving the problem that he or she is facing. Or at least be outnumbered. In Hamlet. Hamlet is alone. Basically. He has a friend, Horatio and his girlfriend in which he loses. But apart from them, he's entirely on his own against the entire Danish court. Luke Skywalker has a couple of friends. He has a mentor and a form of Obi-Wan. Kenobi has his friends are two droids, R2D2 and C3PO and eventually Han Solo person, ****, he's on his own. And that's what you want. We always want David versus Goliath. If it's Goliath versus Goliath, we don't have a problem. For instance, the story of three hundred, three hundred Spartans that tried to defend against that 10 thousand Persians that came with Xerxes army. That's a good problem. That's a really good problem. But 10 thousand Spartans meeting and 10 thousand Persians, that's not a good problem. So we always, always, always want your protagonist to be facing insurmountable obstacles. Looking at stories. This way, this is an easy mistake to make, is to start the story before the problem starts. Many screenwriting gurus and teachers nowadays tell you two, you must present your characters. We must get to know your characters before plunging them into the story. This is completely wrong. You should store started story right away. By a introducing the problem in the big world. If you have such a problem. And then introducing our character, trying to solve his or her initial problem right away. That's what you're trying to try and start. For instance, if you look at the brilliant comedy bridesmaids, our protagonist, she was forced to let go of the business that she loved and she can't pass that store without feeling immense pain. That is a problem. And we start that right away, right away. And as that is where we engage, if you don't have a story, sorry if you don't have a problem, I cannot engage. And why? Because storytelling, as mentioned, in its essence, is a model for problem-solving. This is the reason why we, humans tell stories. Because we're the only animal that exists on five out of six continents. We don't exist on Antarctica. But apart from that, we exist in jungles, on Iceland and Greenland, in rainforests, in deserts. We exist for better or for worse in all kinds of habitats. And why is that? Well, because in comparison to other animals, we can adapt. And how do we do that? Because we're quite fragile animals. A ship and see, which is maybe about this size, has twice the fiscal strength of a strong man. A chimpanzee could terrorists apart easily. So we're quite fragile, were quite weak. Physically, we're not that fast, we're not that strong. And still we are managed for better or for worse, mostly for worse when I was to dominate this planet. And y, because we were able to adapt and to, and we did that by learning about the new environments and how to adapt to them. And we did that via stories. Stories are ultimately about survival, they are ultimately about problem-solving. And this is how we learn. And it doesn't have to be fictional stories. Neuroscience tells us that the way we humans process information is via stories. It can be micro stories. It can be. Jonathan ate the apple from that carts and he went ill because the apple is in that cart or bad. Now, that's the story with a beginning, middle, and end. It has a takeaway, is something that we can learn, which is ultimately about our survival. It's about some problem-solving. Uh-huh. Okay. Initially he was feeling good. Then he ate an apple from that cart and he went ill. So don't eat apples from that cart. It's the same thing when Hamlet. It's just that Hamlet is infinitely more complex. But at its core, it's the same thing. It's a model about problem-solving and the problem-solving and how it is, of course, revenge. How should we humans deal with the universal emotion of revenge? Should, is it always wrong? Is it always right? What's the price of revenge? And when and where and how should you, if you should, event, how should you do that? What are the mistakes you can do? That's what happens is about. And revenge is something that's extremely pertinent to our survival. It's about life and death, both on an individual level and on a collective level, right? So the story starts when the problem starts. So how do you go back? You want to create a story. How do you go about, well, you can do it the wrong way starting well, this can happen, this can happen, this can happen. But the easiest and best way is to start with a problem. You have a character server characters there are facing a problem that is almost insurmountable. Now. That's where the story starts. Now what the story is. It's the account of your characters trying to solve that problem. And of course they don't try and right away because then the story has ended. So they try something and it doesn't work out. Then they try something new. And that didn't really work out at all. That was a horrible mistake. Now, they might find themselves in even worse situation than where they started because they're attempts to solve the problem had been unsuccessful. Maybe they try something that there was success. Partly it didn't solve the big problem, but it may be a solid part of the problem is bringing us closer to the solution of the entire problem. And so they are triumphs and their tragedies. There are winds and there are losses along the way, making the character coming closer and closer to the solution of the goal. With the eventual setbacks in a good structure story. And we're going to talk about structure later on. There are some places in the story where you almost always have big setbacks and we're going to talk about them later. There are some places where you usually have the big triumphs and problem-solving. That's where it is. And the story ends. A good story o sounds with the problem being solved or not solved? Definitely. So in the end the problem is solved Definitely or not. So definitely in the end, your protagonist wins definitely or loses definitely. After which there is no point in trying to solve the problem or the problem doesn't exist anymore. For instance, in Star Wars Episode four, New Hope, thereof way there has been thrown away into space. Def star is obliterated. Problem is over. Hence, the story is over. Or in Hamlet. He succeeds in killing Claudius and bringing down the corrupt Danish government. In the process, he dies. After which we don't have a problem. And even if it were to exist, how many of his dad, so he has lost opportunity to address that problem. You always want the story to end on a definitive note. The problem is no more or to the possibility of solving the problem is no more. Nikolai Google, the Russian writer, he says that there are two kinds of stories. The first story is that someone leaves town for an adventure. The second kind of story is that the stranger arrives to town. These are the two kinds of stories. They can be mixed, for instance, in Dracula by Abram stalker. The first part is Jonathan Harker leaving for Transylvania to meet the Count Dracula. So that's someone leaving town for an adventure. In the second part, direct luck comes to London. Now, that is a stranger coming to town. Or if you're from Draco's perspective, someone leaving on a journey leaving Transylvania. The Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp, he says that there are two council heroes is the searcher hero and the victim hero. The searcher here is someone who sets out to save someone else. For instance, Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Episode four, he's a searcher here along with Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi because they're trying to save Princess Leah, a victim here, or is someone who has plunged into a problem addressed at them and they're trying to save themselves. The oldest stories in the world come from ancient Sumer, which is present day Iraq. And it's the story of Inanna and this historical Gilgamesh. And the store is historical and she's a goddess, Isis. Not to be confused with terror, sect. And she is faced with a task of submerging herself into the underworld to meet her sister, Irish gal. And in order to gain power, to gain strength, which she would that strength. Which is gained at an incredibly high cost and add a lot of pain. She can emerge from the underworld stronger than before. The second kind of story is Gilgamesh. His story, Gilgamesh is a ruler. In rook. He's rash and he is immature. And he meets a friend called Enkidu, who is a trickster. And they are party boys and partaking in different kinds of ventures. And eventually the side to go up to heaven and tied to take, to take out and kill the bull and have a great patriarch and heaven. In doing so, Enkidu dies. And in returning, he has to mourn his friend. And after this venture, you becomes a wise and mature ruler. So you can say that the two kinds of stories that we have ADD is essence, is the personal. Someone going down into the underworld. And of course that hasn't, doesn't have to be physical place. It can be psychological place. And in doing so a meeting the monsters down there, There are able to emerge if they do so successfully with the new power, with new strength than they had before. The second counter story is someone Going to the heavens and having their ego adjusted, coming down, having the eagle count come down to size and thus becoming a more mature person. The archaea typically feminine story and archaea typically masculine story and Dustin hasn't had to do with the protagonist having to be masculine or feminine. But just as the archetypical difference. And if we connected with Freud's theories about the human psyche, we see the, in Freud's theory we have the psyche has tri-part it structure. We have the ID, the basement, subconscious, the underworld so to speak, where we harbor our secret desires and our dark desires. What Freud's disciple called loose dies young. He called that the shadow. That is all the stuff that we possess in our psyche, which we are not proud of, which we don't want other people to know, or resentment or hatred or desire or envy. All those kinds of feelings are part of what June color shadow. They are to be found. These monsters, so to speak, can be found in the underworld, in there, it in our subconscious. So whenever a hero is forced to go down into the underworld and we're going to face the monsters inside. It's going to be externalized. But on a psychological level, on a mythological level, our characters are facing their own demons and emerging triumphantly. If they do so, they will be stronger for it. The second kind of story is when we go up into what Freud calls the super ego, we have the subconscious, the id, the ego, and the super ego. And the super-ego is our police, our moral authority that's trying to control and keep the ID and the monsters and the forces at bay. And we go up there and try to mitigate the influence of the, yeah, super ego. For instance, at the end of matrix, the first film, they are ascending to the heavens trying to mitigate the influence of the, all the machines that Agent Smith represents in aliens. Ripley and the Marines are going down into the colony LV 426 that are going into the underworld. And then they're going to face monsters, which on a psychological level, mythological ever are representations, representations of their inner monsters. They're in their desires in There's fears and desires. And thus, you could say essentially that's what story is. Your hero is going to go down into the underworld, either voluntarily or being forced into another world. Or he or she is going to go up into the world of the super-ego up on a mountain, either voluntarily or forced to. And if they emerge triumphantly, They will be all the stronger for it unless mentioned previously. Then if they manage to solve the algebra problem, if it's a good story, they will do so by first acknowledging and solving their inner product. In a good story, what's the difference between the end and beginning? The greater the difference, the greater the distance between the end and the beginning, the greater your story will be. This also applies to your story on a micro level. The greater the distance between the end and the begin in the scene, the greater the scene will be. For instance, if this thing starts with your characters, two characters planning to get married, and it ends with them breaking up their engagement and one of them storming off. Now, this is a basis for a great scene here. If it starts with planning to get married, and it ends for planning to get married. You don't have the same basically because nothing has changed. In a good story, in a good scene, the mortar situation changes from the beginning to down. The more interesting your sort of story and the more interesting your scene will be. In a good story. All the events in the story are causally related. They are related by cause and effect. In a good story, nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything that happens is related to everything else. So the story is your protagonist and the rest of the characters trying to solve their problems. And these problems have to be in some way, shape, or form, linked to one another and they have to be mutually exclusive. For instance, Luke Skywalker OB ones can, no one can. Obvious problem is that they're halfway there, is trying to rule the galaxy. There are waders problem is linked to that and it's mu, mutually exclusive because he wants to rule the galaxy. And that is linked to their problem. And it's mutually exclusive. Either Luke Skywalker and her friends with or Darth Vader wins. There are no other options. So when you set up your story, you want to set up your characters so that their desires, their problems are at odds with one another. They are linked to one another. And they are mutually exclusive. Only one party can, when the problems are extremely important to the character solve. It's matter of life and death, that the characters be solved. It's like you put your characters in an MMA cage, martial arts cage. And one of them is going to get themselves beaten to a pulp. And the other one is going to succeed and there are no other options. Does what a good story is. We didn't want to be there, but we want to see people be in that situation. So coming back to causality, everything, we've talked about that and everything is in the story should either bring the protagonist closer to the solution of the problem or farther away. It neither helps or hinders their triumph. And tragedy is when some losses, but everything that happens is about your character trying to reach his or her goal every step on the way. It's an intermediate goal leading up to the solution of the big problem, the overarching problem. For instance, if we make a film about we're trying to rob a bank. Now, that's the end goal. At every scene. Every event is about solving an intermediate problem along that way. For instance, the first problem might be we get to collect a team, okay? And then we have to face different challenges in putting together that team. And we will do so at some cost if we succeed. Now, next problem, we maybe need weapons. We have to solve that intermediate problem. It's going to cost us something. Next problem, we have to see where the guards coming, where are they? What are they? Alarm systems. And that will come at some price for us to, at some cost to get that information. So everything we do are solving sub-problems along the way to solving the problem. And sometimes we will succeed and sometimes we will have setbacks. If we only succeed all the way through, It's not going to be exciting. If we only fail, we're never gonna get closer to the problem. What we want in a good story. We want our characters to ultimately succeed. They might not, but we want them to. And along the way, they will sometimes when, sometimes lose. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. The saying goes, and this is something in the story. It's like in a good sports game. We don't, even if we root for one of the teams, we don't want them, like in a soccer game to get ahead with five to nil in the first quarter and then lead tend to nil because that's not exciting. So we want them to be a head and then the opponent Themis ahead. And then our team has a head and then the opponent team. And we want this kinda ECG to kind of seesaw effect until the very end. And in the very end, we want. In a good story, there's a counter movement. As your characters, as your protagonist approaches the solution of the problem. Meanwhile, the opposition is growing harder and stronger and more fierce. In the climactic scene of the goods story, your protagonist has never been closer to the solution of the problem, but his or her problems have never been more dire. For instance, if you look at Star Wars Episode four, in there, climactic scene, Luke Skywalker's and his fellow rebel soldiers are fighting over Death Star trying to kill it. They have never been closer to the goal. At the same time. There are problems have never been bigger because now the Death Star is approaching the Rebel Base. Soon. The rebel base will we be within shooting range of the Death Star. So soon they might be obliterated. And that is what you want in a good story. The closer your protagonist gets to the solution of the problem, the stronger, more insightful and more scaled your protagonist becomes, the stronger your adversary becomes. There are two good movies you can watch the study. This one is the mummy is a remake of an old movie where the mommy has awoken from his tomb in the desert. In Egypt. He has lost all his limbs. And so he takes limps from people he meet. And the more limps he collects, the stronger he gets. At the same time as our heroes, getting stronger and stronger, stronger in order to defeat him. In the film, animated film, the monster house, the house, the haunted house, becomes increasingly stronger. The more of the story progresses. At the same time as our heroes are growing increasingly stronger and more insightful. So it's like a poker game. When you bet, you want, you want the bats to continually increase. We want the problems to grow stronger. Even as, as a protagonist are getting closer to the problem, the problem is getting harder and harder and harder. That's how can a parallel movement we want? In the end, if our characters are able to solve the problem, they do so at a much higher cost than they initially hoped for or even imagined that they ever would have to pay. For instance, if you take Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, the beginning, Romeo, Juliet, when they first meet, they have a big problem because they are instantly in something, they fall in love. And they feel instantly that this is the one that I want to spend the rest of my life width. They know that their families hate one another, completely hate. They want to kill each other. So that's a big problem. That's an insurmountable problem, that's an insoluble problem. However, it will get worse. Because in the beginning, neither of them thinks or hopes or knows that in five days to come, we will kill ourselves in the crypt in order to be with ourselves together. They could never have imagined that will happen. That they would have to pay prize of their lives in order to win the struggle staying together, but that is what they ultimately will pay. In the good story, your characters will pay a much heft your prize for winning than they initially anticipated. And what that does is that forces the character to change. In the beginning of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo, like Luke Skywalker, he's an immature boy, is rash, is immature. And five days later, he's a strong and mature man. And how did he become that? Well, by trying to solve a problem. As the saving Luke Skywalker ends up as a almost a jet that we're not completely, as we will see in the films to come, but much, much more mature man and Jedi warrior. Danny was just a couple of days ago when the story started out. And that is what you want in a story. And we're going to talk about that when we talk about character, character transformation. And ultimately that is what a story is about. The problem is a catalyst for bringing about character change. The more your character changes from the beginning to end, the stronger your story will be, the strong euro characters will be. Because ultimately that's what the story is about. It's about characters trying to solve problems. And in so doing, they will have to change. I talked about the inner problem. In order to solve the problem, the character has to change he or she has to change her modus operandi, his or her point of view, the way he or she looks at the world, looks at himself, how he conducts himself in the world. These are things that he or she has to change in order to solve that problem. And as I'm sure you're thinking right now, this is the way we operate in the world. Einstein says that any problem is insoluble at the level it was created. If you remember, we talked about the protagonist, the character's initial problem being caused by themselves, on the notes themselves. Let's still cause sponsored by mistake. They've made by misconception in how the world works, miss conception and how to operate successfully in the world at some level. Now, as they are forced into the story or choose to embark on the adventure voluntarily, they will eventually discover. My modus operandi is not working. Talk about that. We're trying to solve the problem can continuously failing. Or if we succeed, we're succeeding only partially. Or if we succeed in solving a intermediate problem that brings about another problem. And in so doing, eventually, the character will realize that the way that I have been operating in the world is not successful. In this struggle. Eventually he or she will realize, this was my mistake. This, I thought the world was like this, but it is like this. Now, I will change my behavior, my modus operandi, my way of trying to solve the problem. And if he or she does that, then he or she will have a positive final outcome. He or she will solve the problem. It's the same thing you're trying to solve a math problem when you're at the school and you couldn't solve it because you didn't have the right mindset. And when you learned how does a hard, this is the way you address a problem, then you could solve it, right? And this is the way we are all worth. We face problems in their lives that for some reason we can't seem to shake off. Freud talks about this psychologically. We will face the same problem over and over again in life until we learn how to solve it. And solving a problem means that in the words of Einstein, we have to elevate ourselves to another level in which a problem is solvable. No problem can be solved at the level which was created so that your character has created the problem unbeknownst to himself or herself. At the same level that she's experiencing the consequences in order to solve this. And thus, it is insoluble. In the words of Einstein. He or she has the elevate themselves to another level. And how does he or she do that? Well, by embarking voluntarily or involuntarily on the adventure, which will expose to them the error of their ways. Because now they're trying to solve the problem and they don't succeed. But eventually they will understand. This is how you do it. 6. Chapter 5: World: Welcome to Chapter five, world. What is world in the storytelling sounds? Well, it's a universe of the story. And you might say, well, the universe is the same for all stories, right? Because there is only one universe. Well, some scientists feel that there might be multiverse, this might be. But apart from that theory, there's only one universe. Well, that's true. But still every story will have a different interpretation of our universe, and that will be the universe of that story. It might be like in Star Wars, were in Lord of the Rings, that it's set in a galaxy far, far away. Or in the case of lots of rings that it's a different universe altogether worth. It's partly. So still, even if you make a family drama, you will create a universe that is to some extent unique to your story. And this is like every sport, every sport will have a playing field, but it may be up of grass or concrete or hard wood, but it's still gonna be unique to that sport. The basketball court doesn't look the same way as a football field or a golf golf course. They share the same specifics, but they are different and integral to the way that the game is played on that arena. For instance, if the story is set in a family, in a family home, you won't have a James Bond movie played out in that scenery. For instance, if we are on top of Golden Globe, Golden Gate Bridge, as we are in the climactic scene of a View to a Kill, that won't be the setting for a family drama. The world and it's setting is integral to the story and the nature of the conflict and the nature of the problems of the story that you're telling. The story, the universe of your story, the world of your story is also a representation, a metaphor for the world at large. Shakespeare talks about this, that even a small stage becomes a representation of the universe at large. And you can take, for instance, titanic, where the ship becomes a metaphor for the society. In each society, as on Titanic, you have the upper-class and you have the lower class in steerage. And you have two people trying to raise themselves up to the upper class. For instance, rose and her mother, by her roses marriage to Caliban Hartley. They're trying to raise themselves from steerage up to the upper class. And then you also have the independent artists, for instance, played by Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, that are able to transverse the different worlds as artists always are in any given society. So the ship or Titanic becomes a metaphor for society at large. And when you create a story, this is what you should aim for to create a world. Universe, which becomes a metaphor for the way you see the word at-large. We talked about this when we talked about theme, that it's your view on how the world works, which becomes your theme. And your view on how the world works will become the store universe set than this very physical place. And set the sign, which is how we create the world of your story, is very powerful method to create, to communicate character. For instance, there's a horror movie called The actresses Emily Rose. And when we first meet Emily Rose to possess young woman, we follow the father to extra sisters, was trying to cure her. And we are introduced to Emily Rose at the sentiments he is. And we're anther her room. And in the hard wood, the walls, there are deep claw marks. And we realized that that little fragile girl sitting on the bed has caused those claw marks. She is processed. Now the actress playing around with the rows just have to sit there and brewed. And the core marks are doing the job. As the example, fantastic example of how to set the sign, how the world is communicating character. Another great example is the movie Fight Club. Were in the beginning you have Ed Norton's character living in a neat department and his, he is furnishing it with them ikea furniture, and it's very neat. And that is his persona. Young Kroger stage young, the disciple of Freud, as I mentioned earlier, he said that there are different parts to our psyche. And the part that we show other people when you go to work and when you meet other people, you show your persona. And that is the image that you want to present to the world. Usually, not always, but usually we want to present the character that is the Lebanon and funny and charming, which we all are. At least some extent. That is your persona. So this apartment represents his persona. This is the character that he plays in the world. Now, if you've seen the movie, you know that there are other forces at work within him as there are in me and you, and all human beings that ever lived. And these different archetypes reside in different parts of the psyche. Jung said we have the persona and then they said we have the mentor. That's the Gandalf, figure it as the y's part of herself. And then instead we have the anima and the autonomous. And that is, if you define yourself as biologically male, you have a female part of your psyche. If you define yourself as a female, you will have a male part of your psyche. So there's the animus, which of course will be represented externally by the characters love interest. And then we have, as I mentioned earlier in the chapter concerning problem, we have the shadow. This is the basement and this stuff, all the things that we don't want other people to see. Now, what is the shadow in Fight Club and how is that represented? Well, if you've seen the film, you know that he when he sets his apartment on fire, unbeknownst to him, he moves into a shade, the house, run down. How's Ricky house in the neighborhood? It's really, really run down. And this is his basement, so to speak. This becomes a metaphor for his shadow. This is what he looks inside in his basement. So we left the persona. Now, we're going into the subconscious. And you can see every story in this way that the original world that we meet in the first quarter and the story that is our characters persona. Then we leave that persona and entered the subconscious. And we do so when we entered a special world, which we do about one-quarter into the story. And we'll talk much more about structure in the following chapters. So now we're in the basement, then our characters, usually from the basement towards the ending of the story, travel all the way up to the super-ego, the top of the mountain. And then eventually coming back to his and her original world, the ego. So looking at a storytelling from a Freudian perspective, we see that the character starts in his or her ego, travels down into the ID, into the basement, the subconscious, where the monsters are and what its pressures are. As in any good folk tale, you know that if there's a dragon somewhere, There's always gold. And if there's gold, there's always a dragon. Bummer. It's the same thing in life as you know, all the things that are good and important and pleasant in life are always guarded by a dragon. It might be, I want to have great apps. Well, the Gordon dragon, the dragon that regarding that treasure is that you'll have to make physical exercise and diet. Huge part of your life. For instance, meaning and mate. Creating a career. All will be guarded by dragons of different nature, not dragons per se, but in some way shape or form representations of obstacles that are trying to prevent us from reaching the goal. Yes. So we start in the ear, in the ego of the ordinary world, traveled down voluntarily or involuntarily to the basement in order to secure to gold. And then we have to defend that to the super-ego. Eventually, if we are triumphant, coming back to our ego, our original world. All the richer for it. When I'll talk about characters, I will talk about Hades. Hades in Greek mythology is the god of the underworld, and his symbol is the cornucopia. The symbol are plenty. And that is when you entered the underworld. And if you're able to emerge successfully, you always bring treasure with you. And you notice from your own life, whenever you've been in a hard time and the dire straits, maybe I've experienced depression. You've always, if you have emerged, which I think you have because you're sitting here listening to this, you have all the stronger for it. You have gained something. That's the thing. When your hero or heroine emerges from the basement, emerges from the underworld, he or she is stronger for it. She might bring a physical token, fiscal pressure, but she will always bring a psychological treasurer with her. For surviving the underworld. There's the American saying goes, and there can be no breakthroughs without the breakdowns. That's the same thing here. If your character doesn't break down, he or she will not change. And if he or she doesn't change, he or she will not be able to solve the big problem of story. When we talk about we have the original world, then we have the special world going down into subconscious. The special world is always in some way shape or form, a mirror image of the original world. It might be in the hyperbolic, might be an exaggeration of the original world, or it might be a contrast. And the characters and the special world are always to some degree a mirror image of the characters in the original world. They might be exaggerations or they might be contrast. For instance, if you take the wizard or loss, we start with Dorothy and her farm in Kansas, and then she's swept away with the tornado into the wonderful world of arts. And it's a mirror image of Kansas. It's just more colorful. It's, it's, it's, but still it's cancerous. Thus the rest of them different way. It's the way we dream. When we dream, as you know, we dream about stuff that we have experienced or will experience. But still we are using parts from our lives, but they are presented in a larger than life fashion. It's still your own life, but it's through a looking glass, it through a kaleidoscope which distorts the proportions and stuff like that. So it's a mirror image, distorted image, and exaggerated image, but still a representation of your daily life. And that is what the special word lists. This distorted image of the original world of the character and the character is in coming to us. Dorothy meets with three characters. And if you've seen it, you know who these are? The Tin Man, lion and the Scarecrow. And these are mirror images of her three brothers back in Kansas. So when you create your story and trying to create worlds, see how the normal world in special world inhabitants are. Each world can be mirror images of one another, either an exaggeration or a contrast. Let's look here at some, some films and see how this mirror image works. And before that, let me tell you that in any functioning story, excuse me, you can see that there are two physical worlds that are colliding. For instance, the Wizard of Oz. We have counselors and we have ours. In Titanic, we have the ship, and we have the c, we have the iceberg, the ice sea. And with two physical worlds, then we have four teams. So we have four teams that are in some way at odds with one another. In a game, in a fight, in a struggle, which takes place in these two physical worlds. Now, let's look at some examples of this where you can see the two worlds of physical worlds and the four teams. Okay, let's start with the first example from Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl. If you look at the physical world, the physical locations, ordinary world is the world of Port Elizabeth. This colony in the West Indies. The special world, the mirror image of the ordinary world is the C is toward IGA. For two guys, the mirror image of Port Elizabeth, because it's Port Elizabeth is the capital of the Navy and the society, high society, sort2 guys to capital for pirates and all the low-life and criminals of this universe. Then we also have the cave. Which the thresher is captured. And if you look at the special world, the special world starts. Or characters entered a special world somewhere around the one-quarter mark of a story. Twenty-five percent. In a story. Somewhere, there are characters entered a special world, and they stay in the special world up until the three-quarter mark, up until the 375% of the story. But in the middle of that, around the mid point mark the story as they move from one part of the special world to another. So they move from outside the dragon's layer into the Dragon's Lair at the midpoint. And in the third quarter of the story, from the midpoint to the three-quarter mark, our character is in what you could call the dragon's layer. And of course, this is metaphorically speaking. It doesn't have to be a dragon per se, doesn't have to be a layer per se. It's a mythological metaphor. We're inside the world of the bad guy. If you've seen Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl, you know that after the midpoint or heroes enter, amongst others, the cave. And that is dragon's layer because the treasure, the haunted thresher, that is where it is and this is where it, Captain Barbosa is the king. Okay, So these two worlds are mirroring one another. If we look at the four teams in this film, we can see in the ordinary world, we have the top and the bottom. At the top, the most powerful people in the original world, the ordinary world. And Port Elizabeth is the soldiers, the dignitaries. Elizabeth's father and Commander Arrington, to whom Elizabeth is engaged to marry. That is the dignitaries, that is the upper echelon of the ordinary world. The bottom of this world. We have Will, who is just a blacksmith, who is deeply in love with Elizabeth. Now, she is out of his league socioeconomically because she belongs to a different class. But still, she is, has little power in comparison to her father being a woman at this day and age. She has little power over her fate. Which of course we will find out in the course of events that eventually this is something that she will, she will amend. These are two worlds that are at odds with one another because Elizabeth's father doesn't want her to marry a simple blacksmith. So there's a conflict between them. There's also conflict between Will and Elizabeth because she wants him to stand up and make a claim for her. But he realizes his place in the world is just a simple blacksmith. He cannot hope to win the hand of a lady like Elizabeth. Now, in the special word, we have two teams there as well, which are mirror images of the teams here. The mirror image of the dignitaries and the officers important Elizabeth, that is the mortal pirates led by Captain Barbosa. They have been affected by a curse. So they, they cannot die. And they are basically undead versions of themselves. They took the ship, the Black Pearl, from Captain Jack Sparrow, who is now the mirror image of Will and Elizabeth and the special world, because he is now powerless, because he has been robbed, has been stripped of his ship and his crew. He's living pirate. He's not one of the undead pirates. We have the undead pirates who possessed the power at sea. And in TORC2 guy and then the cave. And then we have the living pirates who are the lower ecologic. So thus we have the mirror image, we have Elizabeth, we have tort to go and to k. There are two fiscal worlds and also the sea between them. Then in ordinary world we have the upper echelon officers. And then we lower epsilon. Will Elizabeth, the officers mirror image and the special world that's Captain Barbosa and the immortal pirates, the undead pirates, Will and Elizabeth, mirror image and the special world as Captain Jack Sparrow. It's now so you have four teams that are part of the ordinary and the special word, and they're all at odds with one another. They're also in some weight, weight in conjunction with one another. For instance, command the Norton and Will are trying to say Elizabeth and will and Jack Sparrow are there sometimes working in concert at will and Jack are working in concert, but they are also at odds with one another because Jack, he lasts for. Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is constantly facing the dilemma wanting being in love with whale, but also wanting that sexy pirate Jack. And of course Jack is in conflict with Captain Barbosa, but to some extent working with them and Barbosa and will there also the odds and chromatin, Warrington and Jack Sparrow, they're also at odds. You see these four teams. They are working partly in concert, but also in opposition to one another. So if you compare this to, for instance, soccer, you say, this is a soccer game with four teams on to fiscal courts where they might run around and play the game a different, different fields. So that is the big, one of the big differences between storytelling sports. You're mainly to fiscal world. So of course he had to see those places. And you can see that the special award of this divided into G2 guy and the cave, and k being the dragon's layer. The immortal pirates don't control for UGA really, but as part of the pirate world in which we are immersing ourselves. So the ordinary world is the world of order, the world of society and the British Navy, and the special world. This is the opposite. The world of pirates are breaking the law. And when our characters, when your characters in the story leave their original world and travel through the universe of the special world. They will pick up things, they will learn things that will prove vital to them solving the big problem. What is Elizabeth and Will's big problem? Initially, their initial problem is that they're in love with one another, but being from different classes, they can never married. It's an insoluble problem. You cannot solve that. We talked about that in the previous chapter. The problem has to be insoluble. Problem bid that will is just, maybe he's just a bit rash, but otherwise they're perfect one another and their respective parents loved put down two together. We don't have a problem, but this is insoluble. It's impossible to solve this problem, alright? But fortunately for them, they will be thrown into an adventure which initially looks like the worst thing that happened to them. Elizabeth is abducted by the immortal soldiers, sorry pirates. They're going to cut her throat in the dungeon so that her blood will cleanse them from the curse is a huge problem. This is the worst thing that ever happened to Elizabeth. Now, we'll twill Elizabeth being kidnapped. That's the worst thing that ever happened to him. So they are not grateful for this adventure. Initially in the end they will be. Because what happens here and wheels problem is of course, that he's in love with Elizabeth. He can never have her. And you also hates pirates. He hates them because his father was a pirate and he has done everything he can to not become like his father, like many sounds do. Eventually, of course, ending up being just like our fathers. So he's cast into this adventure all the while being in the world, the pirates working in tandem with Jack Sparrow and sometimes at odds with him. He is picking up skills and modus operandi and ways of thinking, ways of perceiving things that are priority. He's becoming and he doesn't know it and they might not like it. But step-by-step by step, he is by osmosis, picking up, slowly becoming a pirate himself. And that is the way when he returns at the end, if you've seen this movie, you will know in the climactic scene of this film, he, and in concert with Elizabeth, saves Jack Sparrow from being hanged by means that a blacksmith would never use. But in a way that the pirates would. Elizabeth Gordon from a very innocent young woman, having no experience with the world whatsoever, emerges a feisty, powerful, strong woman that is, in the end, able to decide their own fate. She started out being engaged to marry commander Arrington and being tied into this very tight course. Let, of course, a wonderful metaphor for what her situation in life was. In the end, when she and in concert with will save Jack Sparrow. She declines command and orange ones that offer to marry her and chooses will instead. And her father says, you made your choice. Are you sure? Because he's just a blacksmith. And then she says, No, he's a pirate. And that is the transformational or arc or both. Her. And a will. Now, they didn't notice from the outset, neither did we. But this is the point of the story. This is the lesson saying that we need these people and probably we as an audience needs to learn. We need to pick up some pirates, things in order to operate in the world. We shouldn't become like Captain Barbosa. We shouldn't probably become even like the X barrel. But some of the things that Jack Sparrow does, we might need to live successfully. And this is the moral of the story. And this is what happens when your character, all the people and obstacles that your character faces will change them. Like it has in your life. All the people you have met and all the obstacles you have faced have changed, you have made you, if you've survived them, it has made you stronger. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And that is true in life as in a story. And on a side note, the more you work the stories, the more you write stories, the more you partake in stories, the more you realize that there's no difference between story and life, because a good story is a metaphor for life. The better you become at telling stories, the better you will become an understanding of life. And the better you understand life, the better stories you will be able to tell. So for me personally and I hope it is or will be for you. If you decide to pursue storytelling, either as a career or just for pleasure, it will enrich you in ways that I guarantee you, you didn't think was possible. There's a Swedish writer assess that. Writing has made me stronger. You know, we tend to look upon creating art as something cubed, something a bit. But I know from experience, creating art is the most empowering thing you can do. It's like going to the gym or go into spirit of Jim. Mental gym. Nothing has made me evolve more than engaging in art. So I I highly encourage anyone, I highly encourage you to keep pursuing either this art form or any other art form. Because I would argue that nothing will develop you as a human being more than pursuing an article that was assigned out. Okay, coming back to the main issue. So you, your character will pick up from all the characters, even the antagonists. And I'd argue. Or the more it from the antagonist you've probably experienced in your life that you're enemies, the people that you are hate. Maybe afterwards you will realize that they were my best teachers. If you've seen a wonderful documentary, last doubts about, about Michael Jordan and his unprecedented success. I'm the coach. Phil Jackson says that for any team, in order to succeed, there is always that team they hate that I have to beat and in order to beat them, they have to learn from them. And they were facing a team. I don't know. Ramada, I can talk, sorry. I don't remember which, but they couldn't just beat it because they played so hard. They played ugly and they just couldn't beat him. So what they did, what Phil Jackson eventually did, he hired one of their players who was a real, real roughneck. It was really, really, really hard for a player. And so they learned and they started. Now they had a defensive player who was much more refined edges and now they were able to defeat their opponent. This is what happens to your protagonists. If they succeed, they pick selfing while fighting the dragon. The dragon, of course, doesn't have to be a physical ground. They pick up some of the qualities of the dragon that they need in order to defeat the ground. There's a summary maximum that says look deep into your enemy and you will find that he or she isn't your enemy. In fact, she's your teacher. Most retirement life. We don't realize that. We're just ****** at that fricking moron. But eventually we might realize that maybe he or she possesses sound qualities that I need to pick up. Becoming bigger person and in order to defeat that person. So in that way, all people and obstacles, we meet our, our teachers. And it's the same thing for your protagonist. We don't realize that at first and we curse them at first, but in the end we might actually praise them. Tim Robbins, When you play the lead and the Shawshank Redemption, he said that, of course being sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. As Android refrain his character does, is of course the worst thing that ever happened to him or course. But in the end, coming up triumphantly, he realizes that probably that was the best thing that ever happened to him because it transformed in such a way in which he wouldn't have had. And tea. Being put through that ordeal way with your character is the only way to make your characters changed it through this ordeal and it's the same thing in real life. The only way you are going to change is by where I'm going to change despite obstacles that we face. We curse them in the beginning, but in the end hopefully, we might actually be thankful for. Okay, next example, looking at Titanic. Now, what, what's the original, original world, the ordinary world? Well, of course that is the Titanic, and especially at Southampton, the port from where we leave the special world, the mirror image is of course, the iceberg and the North Sea. So there were originally world is the sort of safety at Harbor. And the safety data being at the unsinkable, first unsinkable ship in the world. And the mirror image of that, the contrast is being on a ship that is sinking into the ice cold North Sea. So these are the two physical worlds that are at odds with one another. On these two playing fields, we have the four teams. And looking at the ordinary world, we have the upper-class, primarily represented by Caliban on Hartley, this multi-millionaire. And then we have the lower-class, the third class passengers in steerage. And then we have two other teams. We have rose and her mother. They are becoming a part of the upper-class, but they are not yet part of it. The only reason they're becoming part of it is that Rose is getting married to Caliban hockey, which is important to her, but above all important to her mother. She says to him, she chastised as her daughter in the beginning saying, Do you want me to go back being a seamstress, which is her greatest fear. And of course, using her daughters married to elevate herself in society. So that's the, that's the wannabes, the upcoming in society. Then we add a fourth team, which are the artists are $0.02 represented here by Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. He's not part of the stairs really. He lives in steerage, but it's not working class as most artists, he is financially on the same level as upper-class, but what is the difference? So he's able to trend, traverse the different worlds. He can be at the dinner with the upper-class and hold this place anywhere. It can also dance with Irish people in steerage. He's able to, he is what is called what we will talk about this later when we talk about characters. He's a shape-shifter. He can cross between different worlds. So these are the four worlds we have the upper-class, we have the lower-class, we have the UPC commerce, rose to their mother, and then we have the RT sounds represented by Jack. And they are some way shape or form, working in tandem. And in some way shape or form. They're working at odds with one another. Jack and Rose are having a conflict in the beginning. And a jack is at odds with Kel it on Hartley. He is to some degree at odds with storage and rows. Is that at odds with Caliban and also to some degree at odds, at least in contrast with steerage and carried on. Hartley is have contrast with Rose is conflicts arose and storage and Jack. So as we saw in Pirates of the Caribbean, we have four teams working in tandem and in opposition with another. Performing a war played out onto physical playing fields. Alright, next example. Let's look at the movie Aliens by James Cameron from 1986. What are two physical locations? We're starting with the ordinary world that is starting out from the original world and then moving on to the ship. So lacO, that is traveling to the colony LV 426 on the planets. And the special world of course, being the colony LV 426 and the planet. This is divided yet again in the middle where we move from outside the dragon's layer. And in the mid point, we move to being inside the dragon's layer. And then yet again, Dragon's Lair. Metaphorical terms. And what happens in the first half of the special world from the one-quarter mark up until the mid point, we have our marines and our offices being, having the upper hand intruding into the colony as a colonial lords. And after suffering a severe defeat that the mid point, now, from the mid point mark up until the three-quarter mark, now, they are being dominated by the monsters, by the aliens. They are a locked inside where actually locking themselves up to make themselves secure before hoping to be rescued. So these are the two worlds that are mirroring one another. While our TA for teams here, well, we have the Marines, the Marine soldiers, and then we have the civilians represented by Ripley. The colony. We have the aliens and monsters, and then we have the colonizers. Now, the only one left being Newt. Actually there's a woman to, that's not that yet, but primarily it's Newt. You could also say we have another team represented by Burke, the capitalists, the suit, the company map. All these words. Words are at odds with one another. The Marines are to some extent that odds would Ripley, and Ripley is at odds with Burke. And Burke is that I was with her and the Marines. The Marines are at odds with the monsters and to some degree with newt. A newt is at least initially, excuse me, at odds with the Marines. She's definitely at odds with the monster. The monsters are adults with everyone. So you see these four or five teams, if you want to label Burke has its own team, are fighting it out in this war, being played out in these two physical worlds mirroring one another. Okay, Another example, Romeo and Juliet. What are the fiscal to physical worlds? Well, we have Verona and we have the Montoya. But here we're staying in Verona pretty much all the time. So here we have a situation where I talked in the previous chapter about problem. I talked to you about Nikolai Googol, the Russian writer, saying there are two kinds of stories. A person leaves town to embark on an adventure, or a stranger comes to town. A story, either we leave the fiscal place where we stay in the same physical place, but the situation is changed from the ordinary world to a new world. Not physically, but the situation has changed. And this is what we find in Romeo and Juliet. We're still in Verona from the one-quarter mark. We're still in Verona. The romeo gets sent off to Montoya in the second half. But we, as an audience still stay in Verona. But what has changed? What is the special world? Well, the special world is that the one-quarter mark Romeo and Juliet has met. They're in love and there are professing their loved one another and their desire to be with one another. Despite the fact that their parents are in a dire strife against one another. Now, this is a special world, not physically, but in terms of the situation. Okay? So these are the two worlds and what are the four teams playing it out? Well, we have on top, we have the Montagues and the Capulets. And they are adults with one another. They want to kill one another. Then we have Romeo and Juliet, a separate team. They're on the same team, and they are at odds with both the Montagues and the Capulets. Unbeknownst to them, they are pursuing their, their romance. And then we have their helpers, Lorenzo, the friar, and Juliet's caretaker. And they are adults with the parents and will turn out to be adults, would wrongly and do it as well. So we had a four teams fighting it out, a two different arenas. Now, yet again, not too different fiscal arenas, but two different arenas in the terms of the situation. Let's look at the last example, Hamlet. What are the two physical locations? This same thing here. We have the Danish court. Then Hamlet is sent off to England just like Hamlet leaves from Antoine. But still we as an audience, stay in the perspective of the Danish corked entire time. So as, in the same way as, as Shakespeare did Romeo and Juliet, at the one-quarter mark, we leave the original situation and enter a special situation. And what is that? That is that Hamlet is suspecting Claudius, his father, and his stepfather, to be the killer of his father. What are the four teams here? Well, we have claudius and Gertrude. Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, and Claudius is his stepfather, and now it's uncle. And then we have Hamlet and Ophelia. And then we have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And then we have hammers, dead father. And they are, are working in concert partly and working at odds with one another part of the time. So the questions you should ask yourself when you create your story. What are the two worlds? And they can be two different physical worlds that are mirror images of one another, the other either. And let the special world be an exaggeration or a contrast to the original world? Now, what four teams do you have collide on these two arenas. These two for teams should be mirror images of one another, just as we saw in Pirates of the Caribbean, where we have the dignitaries in Port Elizabeth be a mirror image to the immortal pirates in the world. And Will and Elizabeth having their representation there, mirror-image and Jack Sparrow. Subconsciously, the audience will pick up on this and this will create a very powerful and rich setup for your story. So the worlds, It's not something we as creating a VM when it's part, it has, it represents the world, It's a mythological symbol. It's a metaphor for the world at large, the way you see the world. And it's the playing field of your characters. And yet again, your characters forcing themselves, are being forced to traverse the region of the world and travel through the special world will pick up learnings in skills and mindsets from all the characters they meet, especially their opponents. And all the different things that will pick up the transformation they are pursuing will eventually make it possible for them to defeat their opponents. In essence, their opponents being their best. Teachers were talking about opponents, were talking about protagonists. It's time we start to deal with the meat of the story and what is that? Well, it's the characters. 7. Chapter 6: Character: Welcome to Chapter six, characters. In the previous episode, we talked about worlds. The inhabitants of these worlds are characters from a story-telling point of view. What is the character? A character is an embodiment of the theme. A certain aspect of the theme. A character embodies values, point of views, modus operandi. In the thematic discussion that the story physical ices. For instance, take Star Wars episode for a New Hope. The theme has to deal with the Jedi forces. Should we rely on the outside technical aspects of the world? Or should we rely on our inner intuition or a Jedi force? And all the characters, the major characters that we meet express different, that takes different opinions on that theme. For instance, Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mentor, of course, is the proponent of the Jedi force. He says this is the most important. Back to embody. Luke Skywalker on the other hand, he's, he's interested in the Jedi way, but it's still very much into the technical aspects of the world. Han Solo, he is more amoral, not immortal, but amoral. He really doesn't care. He wants to get him money to pay off Jabba the Hutt. And he thinks probably this all Jedi thing is a bit hokey. That's hocus pocus. These different point of views are embodied in the characters who fight it out and in the fiscal struggle. And of course, Darth Vader is a part of the theme as well. He is as Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is as potent in the force as Obi-Wan Kenobi is, although he has chosen to dark path. So these characters embodied different aspects of the discussion. We could, for instance, just have diplomatic discussion in itself and say, what do you feel about intuition as well? You could argue this and you could argue that. Now we have characters that do this. And in the fiscal struggle to win. What happens at the same time simultaneously is that traumatic discussion. We talked about that in previous chapters. How every story is a embodiment of a thematic discussion. So your characters should be, your major characters should all be an aspect of the theme. Alright? They also employ different modus operandi. Each character has a way of going about things. How does she or he tried to solve their problems? That is a character. And we see how that modus operandi changes if a does throughout the story, we talked about that. When we talked about theme, that you could boil down to theme to being, what is the difference in modus operandi? Florida protagonists in the end of the story versus in the beginning. How has she or he changed the way which she tries to solve her problem? That is, the theme we're starting out to say, this way of working is not perfect. And then he or she tries this way which might have some initial success. But ultimately, that is not the perfect way either until through failures and partial wins. Eventually. If it's a positive ending to the story, your character, your protagonist ends up with a correct modus operandi, which you think is the correct way to solve problems. And if the audience agrees, they will like your story and if they don't agree, they will think it's fake, strange. Okay? So that is what a character is from a story-telling point of view. Now, how do you create the character which the audience wants to invest in emotionally? And this is key. If the audience doesn't invest in your character, the character and the story will leave them cold. Because the way into the story, If we don't invest in the story, unless we invest in the characters. And especially so of course, the protagonist, your main character. And a very common mistake in novice writers is to believe that if only I present the character, the audience will willingly follow that character to download the world. That is not the case. It's quite hard to make an audience care for a fictional character. And you can, you can ask yourself how many people that you pass in the streets or you sit by them at a cafe, will you truly care for quite few? And they need to have certain aspects for you to invest in them. This is same thing. What kind of characters, thus the gossip press care about? Well, these are characters that possess a certain qualities. We don't need to like them. But they possess certain qualities that makes us become interested. And what are these qualities that are so crucial for your characters, especially your protagonist, antagonist as well. Well, that's what we're here to discuss. Let's start with the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who lived between three to four to 322 before Christ. In his book about rhetoric, he says that there are three qualities that a speaker must possess and Project in order for a listener to listen to him, and more importantly, earn trust towards the speaker. What are these three qualities? The first one is logos, second one is ethos, and the third run this path, those starting with logos, meaning logic, we have to understand what your character now talking about, not a speaker, but bringing it home to talk about the characters in the story, we have to understand at every given point in your story what your protagonist is feeling and thinking and why they're doing what they are doing. If we for a moment do not understand your character, why and what he or she is doing. We, we eject herself from the story. We have to understand because protagonist is our avatar in the story. It's like you play a computer game. You become part of this character. You're running around, shooting or whatever you do. And that is what happens when you invest in a character emotionally. You become that character for the duration of the story. And yet again, that is not easy. It's just not enough to present the character and hope that the audience will invest. There are certain qualities that these characters must possess in order for the audience to willingly board that ship, so to speak. And if we don't invest in the characters, the story will leave us cold. So coming back to logic, at every given point in your story, we must understand what your character, what your main character is doing. Sesame Street was the trillions program in the US. And it's very interesting from this standpoint because there's the first television show that they actually tested every episode to see what caught the interest of the kids and what made us lose them. And of course, this is true for adults as well. So what they did, they took every episode out to different kindergartens. And then a bunch of psychologists sat down and watched the kids watching the show. And what they did, They had one screen showing the show, and a bit further away they had another screen showing stuff that hopefully less interesting. Now, what these psychologists did, they monitor the kids and whenever they lost interest in the show and started watching the other screen, they know that that down the exact scene and what was taking place. And now you could ask yourself, what made the show loose, the interests of the audience? Was it a lack of funny gags? Was the lack of music, was that the lag of colorful costumes? Was it the lag of a lack of cakes being thrown into the face of people know, this is what made the show loose, the interests of the audience. They didn't understand. Soon as the audience didn't understand the actions and the motivations of the characters, they lost interests right away. Adults are the same way. Maybe we don't show our displeasure or disinterest as, as clearly as children do, but we experienced it all the same. And you can test that as well. If you saw a movie where you felt that became boring, there was because you didn't understand, you became confused. So it's hypercritical that at every single point in your story, we understand what your character is doing, why he or she is doing that. There's 1 in the story where the protagonist can leave us and do something a surprise us. And those at the very end. For instance, in Ocean's Eleven, in the very end, we realize are that's the way they did it. And then there's surprises. You can surprise. You can't let the, the protagonist surprise the audience before that, we have to, at every given point, B on the same level. As the protagonist. Why? Because yet again, our protagonist is our avatar into the story. We experienced the story through the eyes, through the minds, and through the feelings of your protagonist. So that's number one, logos, logic. Secondly, ethos. And Aristotle splits ethos and that is of course, ethics, morals, code of honor. And he splits ethos into three sub divisions. And the first one being from the ASIS. And then, and then eunoia. Phronesis means skill and wisdom. Your character has to, in some way, shape, or form, possess some kind of skill. Even if she or he is a klutz at everything else, he or she must have something, some kind of skill, some kind of wisdom in order for us to invest. We don't care for people who are absolutely losers at anything they do. They must have at least some kind of skill and wisdom. Number two, meaning virtue. They have to have some kind of virtue. They can't be unredeemable. For instance, it would be very, very hard for the audience to invest in a pedophile. We'll be extremely hard. Number three, eunoia, meaning that it means the Netherlands. Your character has to have some form of benevolence towards at least one other character. Or it can be a plant like in, for instance, Leon in the movie in the beginning. And we see here's a contract killer. And he only cares for one thing and that's his planet coming home to eventually or soon as a story kicks in, he will care about the little girl. But in the beginning he cares for one thing. And had we had they started the movie without him carrying for anything else but himself, we would have felt that up. I'm not going to follow this. But now he has benevolence for another living creature, which is a plant. It's the same thing if you watch hot fast. In the beginning we have the police officer who is only concerned about his career. That's only the really thing that he cares about. But he has a plant which he takes with him to his new station in the countryside in England. And that makes us warm to him. Without a plant, it would be harder for us to invest in them. Okay. From the ASIS, skill and wisdom, virtue and benevolence. Coming to the third part. Pathos, meaning some formal passion. Your character or protagonist has to have some form of passion, something that he or she cares deeply about. F, In order for us to invest. Deaf. For a story is, as Martin Scorsese says, a passive character, an indifferent character. Who character that feels that, well, I don't care. We cannot care about people who don't care. You could watch, you can look at the word character as care actor. Someone who acts upon what they care about. If your character doesn't care, you don't have a character. Super-important. Even if your character is an evil killer or what have you, they have to care about something, someone else than, than themselves in order for us to invest. Okay, So these are the three aspects that Aristotle to assess that a speaker in this, in our universe, character, especially main character, must have logos, ethos, and pathos. Alright, moving on. How do you create a character that we want to invest in now, coming back to our store to speaking about the gossip, gossip magazines and looking at what do the characters, the persons that the gossip magazines talk about? What do day process? Well, they have one or both of the following two qualities. Number one, they have something that we want to have on an extraordinary level, or at least above average. For instance, they can be extraordinarily rich. They can live in a place which were, which most people can only dream of. Or they can have power at the level that most of us will never have. That's number one. Number two is they are something that we aspire to be. And they are that at the level that is extraordinary, or at least above average, they might be more beautiful than average, more sexy than average, more fit than average. More funny than average, more charming than average. We do not care for the ordinary. In order for us to invest, your character must be in some way, shape, or form, extraordinary. And that doesn't mean that he or she needs to be good. For instance, take Frank Underwood in a house of cards. He isn't evil character, but he has a quality that we want at an extraordinary level. He has power. And we all want power, whether we like to acknowledge it or not, we all want power. Nietzsche says that the basic desire of every human being is power. Power and influence. Regardless of whether we like it or not, or whether we'd like to admit it or not. We want power. He possesses that to an extraordinary level. And that is why we become interested. He's not especially funny. It's not fun, charming. He's not a good person, but he has something that we want to have and thus we are willing to invest in it. Or looking at people that are something exceptional, There's a reason why movie stars are beautiful and sexy above average. Because that makes us want to invest in them. Um, and you can say, Well, this, this is so super important for, because met, many teachers are many screenwriting books will tell you that it's super important that if the character is good, a good person, sympathetic, and that's not true. And my point in cases, of course, Frank Underwood in House of Cards, He's a despicable character. And yet we want to follow him because he is exceptional or he has something at an acceptable level in this case power. He is also exceptionally shrewd at the level that is far above average. So this is super important. We do not care for the ordinary. And I would advise you if you feel like writing about a real person, that you know and love, your standard risk or writing something that does not appeal to an outside audience. The reason why is that there are quite a few people in the world that are that exceptional that we want to follow them. And then you can say, well, I think that all human beings are alike and have the same value and yes, they do. But as material for a story, we can only draw upon the exceptional characters except general lives. For instance, if you were to make a movie of my life, it would be exceptionally boring. That is not to say that I don't value my life and I hope that those close to me is do that as well. But as the story for strangers who don't know me, it will be tedious beyond belief. So we need to find characters that are in some way exceptional. Alright, moving on. Another way to create, to think about creating a character which is, which makes us the audience want to invest, is speaking about archetypes. Archetypes, that is what we all have. There are different parts of our psyche. We are not just one person, we have different personalities. Swiss psychologist called Boost as young. He claimed that we have all these different sub personalities. There's a part of you that you show to the outside world when you step outside the door, and that is your persona. That is, if you're a shopkeeper, you take the best where's that you have and you put them in the store window in order to attract customers. We humans act the same way. Our persona is what we project to the outside world, what we want people to feel about this, which of course, most of the time, it's true that we are funny and charming and the Netherlands and so forth. But that's only what we are, even though, excuse me. Even though we want the outside world and especially maybe ourselves to believe that these are the only aspects are my psyche. We also possess different parts of our psyche that we are not so proud of. These aspects. June cause the shadow. This is our negative aspects which we all share, or jealousy. Maybe our hypocrisy are just plain evil, desire to hurt someone else. We all share these. Hopefully. We, we enact them as level as possible. But we all shared these different energies, different archetypes. And what you need to do to create the character which, which catches our interests. Is to create something that is both universal, expresses something universal and in this case the archetype and are at the same time unique. If it's only universal, without unique aspects, it risks becoming flat. If it's only unique with no resonance to universal aspects, then it becomes interesting. So you need to create that. It's, the character expresses something universal that we all can relate to and at the same time is unique. And this is same thing with a story. We've talked about theme and concept. In order to create a story which makes the audience interested, you need to have a story that expresses something that is universal, your theme. Then you need to dress it and very specific and unique circumstances which we haven't seen before. For instance, if you take a love story, Romeo, Juliet. Now, what James Cameron did, That's an atrial story. It's universal. And it took that and place that on board the Titanic. Now, that's something new. That's something fresh. Still, the universal relevance of the story is the same as in Shakespeare's, but now he has placed it in a unique space that makes it appealing. So you need to use universal relevance and the specific, the unique way that these universal relevance it's played out. Same thing with character. Now, what are the different archetypes? Well, you can use Jim's method, but I would advise you to start with the most advanced psychological system that has ever been created, which is Greek mythology. The Greek gods, or not, some deities living their lives on Mount Olympus. The Greek gods are representatives of different aspects of our psyche. And let's look at the most important of these there. Of course. There are many, many, many Greek deities, but let's look at the most important ones, the Olympians, that the prime gods, the prime aspects of our psyche. And we're going to look at father and mother, archetypes and son and daughter archetypes. Looking at the father archetypes are three major archetypes, starting with the patriarch, the king, the ruler, Seuss, or Jove, as the Romans called him. That's a patriarch, that's a CEO of the company. That's the strong man in your family might have a grandfather or something. That is patriarchs. That is the ruler, is the king. He might be benevolent, but nevertheless is the dominant ruler and will accept no form of treason or revolution against it. Alright? The second father archetype is the tempestuous one. And that is poseidon or nets you as the Romans called them. He's the ruler of the sea and asked to see he is tempestuous. One day, it can be merry and sunshine and the glitter and the waves. And the next day can be storm that just brings semen. A ship's down to the bottom of the ocean is the tempestuous person. We are the passionate person that is governed by his feelings. Water is the elements of feelings and he feels a lot when he's happy, he's super happy. And when he's angry, he's super angry. That is at Poseidon archetype. Then we add the third one, which is technically not an Olympian because it leaves them the underworld. Hades. Hades is the king of the underworld. And the underworld of course, meaning from a psychological standpoint or ID, to talk with Freud, or a base or dark desires. The things that we don't want to acknowledge. He's not altogether a bad character because his symbol in the Greek mythology is a cornucopia. Me. He has a lot of gifts to bestow. There's a saying that we can have no breakthroughs without breakdowns. And if you have ever been in a position in your life where you felt down, maybe you've been depressed or suffered through some hardship. You know, every time you did that, you emerged all the wiser, richer, stronger. And that is, if we look at all the classic stories where the protagonist enters the underworld willingly or unwillingly and survives. He or she will always emerge. Richard, stronger and wiser. Hades archetype. Of course, the brooding one, the dark one. For instance, Bruce Springsteen talks about his father had dug Springsteen. He used to come home late at night when it's teenager and in the kitchen, completely in the dark. No no lights turn on. His father would sit there, is drinking, brooding, and he was embodying the Haiti's archetype. Okay, Moving on to the mother archetypes. Seuss is the king on Mount Olympus. He is the king of their company or their family, society. What have you? He has a queen and the queen is he around? And she is a queen in all aspects. She's, she might become IC, she might become an ice cream. If she were to be forced to choose between her children and her husband, she would always choose her husband. She chooses her position as the queen. She regards as more important than her children. She she's the mother who would leave her kids to be taken to be taken care of by the nannies, or send them off to boarding school. Why she can have a rich social life with her husband, the king. The second mother archetype is what the Greeks called the math that the Romans called the CRS. And she is the opposite of Hera. She is what we in Swedish called the bond mom. She's the one who begs all day and gives all the children treats and, and cinnamon rolls. And if she were to choose between her husband and her children, she will always choose her children. In many ways She's the opposite of here are the queen. She's that fairy godmother. You know, that you always, always smiling and loving and caring who you want to run to when you were. A problem. If you run to hear actually might dismiss you. But the main author will never do that. She is the Godmother. The third mother archetype, that is Hestia. And the Romans called a Vesta. And she is the unappreciated housekeeper. She is that person who takes care where everything makes the household run, makes sure that all the children have clean clothes, that they're almost well-fed, but no one really respect her. She doesn't get the credit that he deserved, that she deserves. Alright, moving on to the sun archetypes. The first and foremost of these are the Sun that all mothers and fathers want to have. The guy that everyone wants their daughter to marry. And that is a polo. And he is the god of light, of music and a medicine. So the modern version would be, he's the handsome guy that studies to become a doctor and sings in the choir. Who is the dreamy, dreamy boy? Every mother-in-laws dream, every mother's dream to have such a gifted and just plain wonderful guy. Now, when we talk about archetypes is really important to distinguish between archetypes and stereotypes. An archetype is not a stereotype. And what's the difference? Stereotype is a character who possesses only one character trait. An archetype is always balanced, always has a light and a dark side. For instance, looking at Apollo, the goddess of light, of music, make dreamy. He also processes dark qualities. For instance, there's a story of being the god of music. He was challenged by a phone call, the marshes in fluid plane. And of course, apollo was offended. Someone is challenging me, saying that there are better musician than me, the garden music. So they set up this competition and the deal was that the winner would be awarded the possibility of doing whatever they wanted to, their opponent. What happens, of course, they fight it out. And of course, apollo being the goddess of music, god of music, wince. And what does he do tomorrow says, he needs him to a tree and face him alive. Now, that isn't very nice. And bud, that makes him an archetype and not a stereotype. And I think that's true if we're, most artists are embodying or at least trying to embody the Apollo archetype. What is true for all our artists is that we try to support good causes and charity. But if someone challenges us, that claims to be a better artist than we might fly them alive. Hopefully not in a physical sense, but maybe emotional sense. Okay, moving on to a second archetype, which is in many ways a pause opposite, which is Aries, who the rumor Romans called Mars. He's the god of war. Warfare, of fighting. He is, in modern terms, too bad boy is the fighter, and he is someone that you don't want your daughter to marry. Unfortunately, of course, as we all know, bad boys tend to be quite sexy and interesting. So he is, and we all recognize these gay. He's the fighter. He's the, the western hero embodying the warrior archetype, the areas archetype. Moving on, we come to Hephaestus. Vulcan, as the Romans called him. He is a guy. He's the only Olympian that has a work. And he is down in his smithy, pounding away and creating all the beautiful stuff that all the gods will use. But as Hestia, the mother archetype who is unappreciated. It's the same thing with with the Vulcan. When advisors, He's never respected. He gets to marry Aphrodite. I'll talk about her pretty soon, the goddess of love. And fortunately, however, it, because he makes such beautiful things. Unfortunately, she is always unfaithful to him with Aries, the bad boy. Okay. Moving down to the fourth son archetype is Dionysus. Dionysus or backers as the Roman column, he is the god of sex, drugs and rock and roll. He's the rock star. And we all know that guy. He doesn't. When talking about the archetypes. If you create a character who embodies the day nice this archetype, he doesn't need to be a rockstar. For instance, if you've seen the movie Good Will Hunting, Stellan Skarsgard plays a math processor who talks about math being sexy. He is an embodiment of the Dionysus archetype. But it's interesting that it comes in the form of a math professor. And this is important when you create characters. You might, of course, creates a warrior that embodies the warrior archetype, of course. But it might become more interesting or more funny if you create a character where the archetype is at odds with their profession. For instance, if you create a rockstar which embodies the, the, the professor archetype. That might be interesting and funny. Or in the case of Good Will Hunting, you have a math professor who embodies the archetype of Dionysus, the rockstar. Okay, Moving onto another archetype, we have Hermes or mercury, as the Romans called him. He is the god of business and he is an comunication. If you see depictions of Hermes, he has a winged feeds because he was the messenger of the gods. And the modern equivalent would be, he's the PR guy, he is the ad guy. He is the shrewd guy, is the businessmen. Not always telling you the truth. So he can be quite cunning. But at the same time, as a communicator, Hermes is always at odds with a polo. For instance. There's a story of Hermes stealing a Polish sheep. This we can see today that people working in business and people working in the arts sometimes have an inherent distrust. One another. Businesspeople want my favorite artists people a bit flimsy and artists people might feel that people working in business or a bit shallow or something like that. That is the old archetype, a polo versus Hermes that we see played out throughout the ages. Okay, Moving on to the daughter are archetypes starting with Aphrodite, which has spoken about before, who married a firestorm, was unfaithful to width areas. Aphrodite is called Venus by Romans, and she's a goddess of love, love and sex. And she is the party or she is the headache of her father. And she doesn't sit at home and study. She's out partying with the boys. And that is who she is. She maybe she's fraternizing with Dionysus, that is, who she is. Her opposite in many ways is Athena, which the Romans called the Minotaur. And she is a daddy's girl. She is every father's dream daughter. She studies hard. She's very ambitious, and she doesn't hang around with boys or hang around partying. She is very, very ambitious. And in the Greek mythology, she's born from the head of Zeus, which meaning she is the ideal product of her father, every father's imagination, the daughter that you dream to have. Moving on. We have another archetype, which is Artemis. Which the Romans called Diana. And she is the goddess of chastity. Not necessarily chastity, but more of independence. She doesn't need a man. So she hunts by herself with her pack of dogs and isn't married to anyone. She is, she is the independent woman Going her own way. Another daughter archetype is Persephony, which the Romans called Proserpina. And she is, you can call it the modern equivalent, is the emo girl to depress dark girl. In the Greek mythology, she is captured by Hades and brought down into the underworld. So meaning from a psychological point of view, that she is caught by depression or dark, dark thoughts, thoughts, sad thoughts. And what happens is her mother, which is the math or CRS, goes down to the underworld and negotiates with Hades, gets two for six months or a year, take Persephony up to the world. And this is the Greeks explanation why we have winter and summer. But from a psychological perspective, this is the girl who sometimes falls prey to dark thoughts and dark feelings. Okay? So these are the major ones and I would advice you thoroughly, read this much Greek mythology as you can. And I would advise you to start with, don't start with a thick book, start with maybe scouting the Internet. Wikipedia, I would recommend Stephen Fry, that's written a good interaction in the book muthos. Study the Greek archetypes, studying the metaphors because they are not about all deities on a mountain which has no relevance today. The Greek mythology, it's the most intricate psychological system ever created. And that is why Freud constantly referenced to the Greek gods. And why the Greek mythology was enacted in place for at Greek because they represent, we might call them different things. The Greeks called the bad boy, Aries, Romans called the Mars. We call him the bad boy. It's still the same. These archetypes are universal throughout all cultures, throughout the ages. And the more you can make your character resonates with one of these or more of these archetypes. The better off you will be, because the audience, of course, are not cognizant of this, but they will feel it on a subconscious level. Alright, moving on, how do you create a character that makes us invest? Aristotle? Yet again, he says that he's, in his work poetics, he says that the goal of drama is to create fear and pity in the audience. And how do we create fear and pity? Well, you could argue that it has to do with karma. And karma is consequence, meaning that your characters has had to create their own destiny in some way, shape, or form. Otherwise, we don t feel fear and pity. For instance, what Aristotle says is that your character has to have some kind of law, some kind of sin, which he called her Martha. They must not be bad people, entirely bad people. We've talked about that it must have some redeeming qualities, but they must make a mistake. Or x4, they must have a view of the world which is in some way, shape, or form. Not entirely correct, that her Marcia, that mistake, that flaw on their part creates their problems. Unbeknownst to them. What happens is it a good story? Is that eventually your character, from the failures and from the struggles that she experiences trying to reach her goal, trying to solve a problem. She understands that, Aha, my modus operandi was wrong, or at least partly wrong. I need to change the way I tried to solve my problem. I need to get rid of them. I am Marsha. And if the story starts in a positive answer, in a positive way, he or she will get rid of that Marsha and employ a correct modus operandi, which results in victory. For instance, if you take Mother Teresa, an entirely good person and she walks down the street and a piano falls on her head and she dies. We will not feel fear and pity because she has not deserved that. She's a good person. She didn't make a mistake. You didn't commit the mistake. We'll feel that that was strange, sad for her. But we won't feel, By the same token, if we have a bus load full of pedophiles, pedophiles, killers, and the bus goes off a cliff and dice. We will not fear, feel fear and pity. We'll feel that serves those Mother efforts, right? So what we need to do in order to make the audience feel fear and pity is create a character that is, if not good, at least as good as we people are. Not, not exceptionally flawed, but good. Good enough with a flaw, with a mistake. That brings about her destiny. So this important, a good character or relatively good character where to flaw that, that causes a problem. You need these two bad character that makes a mistake. We don't care. A good character doesn't make a mistake. We don't care. Good character that makes a mistake. We care. For instance, a master of this is Stephen King. In any given story by Stephen King, you will find that the protagonist has made a mistake, has committed a mistake or sin that comes back to haunt them. For instance, in Cuzco about this dog that's infected by rabies. What is his sin? What is the mistake of the protagonist, the mother in this case, what she has been unfaithful. Now can say, well, being unfaithful doesn't doesn't merit being attacked by a dog with rabies? Well, maybe not, but in some way, shape, or form. She has made a moral mistake that comes back to haunt her. Looking at pet cemetery, the protagonist, the woman in the family, when she was a kid, she left her sister to die because she was gravely deformed and just feel scared of this, ran away. And now she's coming back to haunt through. That is what a good horror story is. Your past mistake is coming back to haunt us. And that is true even if it's a horror story, not our past mistakes or coming back to haunt us. Take Lord of the Rings, for instance, the past mistakes, not a Frodo, but of the human race, which is that when a fault Sauron and won and had the ring and had the possibility of throwing the ring into the lava at Mount mortar. He didn't do it and eventually lost it. And then Gollum found it and then Bilbo found it. So that sin that he committed must be redeemed. Not by insular, because it isn't alive anymore. Because Frodo. So this is super important. You have a good character was made a mistake. Take all the classic horror movies, slasher movies. There's the party of young people going off to a cabin that are going to party that entire weekend. And if now they had gone there without making a mistake, and then suddenly a guy appears in the letter mask and a chainsaw. We do feel like that was strange. But in all these goods stories, they have committed a mistake, which is most of the time they have trespassed, they have violated a rule. Some of these films they meet this old guy who says, don't go to the old cobe in, and there's our FU grandpa. And 8. Chapter 7: Relation: Welcome to Chapter seven, relation. The Russian director allergy framework says that Romeo and Juliet, thus not correct name. The correct them is Romeo and Juliet. Meaning the story is not about two separate characters, is about their relationships. And that is what all stories about. If you ever experienced the loss of a loved one or the separation of relationship, you know, that it can feel a part of you has been taken away, which it has, because the relationship between EU became something that was bigger than both of you. What does this mean for us, the storytellers, it means that the relationships between the characters is one of the main fabrics on the story. And how do these relationships change? If your relationships don't change in the story, you don't have a story. Story is about how these relationships change. And you can look at relationships in many ways, but we can split them into three major parameters. Number one is hierarchy, power, status. The second one is attitude. Power and attitude is not the same thing. And thirdly, we have attraction, starting with hierarchy. As soon as you have two people or two mammals in a room, you have a hierarchy. Nietzsche says that the basic Sire of humans and I think all land animals, it's the desire for power, the sire for high status, and what we're continuously doing as humans. We're trying to increase our power, increase our status. You can do that in a million ways. You can become a bank robber or a musician, or a professor at math, whatever you're trying to elevate your status. This is the way that the human brain works. And you say, Well, I'm not that superficial. We all are. And that's the way our brains are wired. We are wired to try to increase our status in a society as Oreo characters in order for us to understand a scene, if you have more than one character in the scene, we need to have a hierarchy. If it's not clear to us as an audience, who is number one and number 23 or four, if you're more characters, we don't understand the scene. The audience don't understand why. They don't understand. And this is true for most of the things that we've talked about here. Most of the things that are part of this craft are things that audience do not know or another arrow. And if you're new to this game, I think most of the stuff that I've been talking about is new to you. Maybe it isn't. But the audience are almost never cognizant of all this things that we talk here. It affects them. Said they are not aware of why this is not your job. It's our job, for instance. I don't know how the makers of the chair I'm sitting. I don't know how they did it. I don't care. It's not my job. I think as comfortable and as all I care about how to make it comfortable, that's the job of the carpenters made us excellent Chair. Same thing for you. The audience don't care. The only care about will you make them feel entertained? That's all. How you do it. That's what a job. Okay? So hierarchy super-important and the more clear that is the hierarchy, more interesting, the scene will, the story will become. You can, for instance, take a skit or a movie with Charlie Chaplin. He is low status character as all comic characters are. And he's going there and he's facing these big and strong police officers there are chasing after him. Super high-status. We always want the David and Goliath situation. Take Hamlet's, you have the single noble prince was fighting the entire corrupt Danish court, takes Star Wars. You have the rebels who are just outnumbered by the giant empire and they're giant Death Star. The same goes for drama as it goes for comedy. We always want David versus Goliath is, if it wouldn't be hard for us to discern who is the highest as one and those lower. We will become this interested in your stories. You need to make that as clear as possible. That's number one. Secondly, what you need, It's an attitude between characters and attitude and hierarchy is not the same thing. So an attitude of scores. Do I like this person or do I dislike this person? That's the basic parameters of additive. Third one is attraction. Am I attracted to this person or not? And that's not the same as attitude. As you might know. We become, we might become attracted to people. We don't like. We might even hate them, but we're still attracted to them. And we might like people that we are not attracted to. So attraction attitudes are independent units. So what I would advise you to do, and we'll talk about this in detail in the third part of this series. When we talk about how do you create a good story employing all the things that we've been talking about here. But just to give you a hint, what I would advise you to do is to create a list, a status list, starting with in the beginning of the story, who is number one, number two, number three, and number four, I would advise you to read a fantastic book called impro by the Canadian theater director Keith Johnston. He is, that's the only text I ever read that talks in detail about status. And it's so important and so crucial that you have a clear and strong hierarchy. And what he says and what is true is that if you have four people in the room, you will already have a hierarchy and you will have one, number one and number two, and number three and number four, you can never have two threes or two-fourths. You will have only one. Number one, only one. For a short while. Of course, number two can challenge number one and try to take the one's position. But very short. 9. Chapter 8: Information: Welcome to Chapter Eight information. Now, you can look at the story as an information system. We are constantly supplying the audience with information that needs to be at every given point in the store new information. We should never tell the audience twice. Everything would tell them every single word in your script should be new information, advancing the story, giving a deeper understanding or your characters. What most people are aware of is that in order to create a compelling story, we need to conflict. We've talked about that when they fight, winning the struggle. If we don't have a fight, we're not interested. If for one moment in your story, we have no conflict, we leave the story. It's like a sports game. If you watch a game of soccer game football, if for one instant the characters, the teams would stop trying to win, we would leave the game, right? So it's, it's interesting because they're constantly trying to win. Now, the difference here between sports and storytelling is that that's not enough. You can have a great conflict. Powerful characters. It's still will not engage the audience. If you don't have at the same time information discrepancy. We need difference in information between the characters and between the characters and the audience. If you don't have this, you can never create a compelling story. And let me take you forever. Let's take an example. If I tell you this story about the Spartans. If you've seen the movie three hundred, three hundred Spartans against a 100 thousand Persians. They come in and they met at Thermopylae. And there are fighting in the data. And here you have David Goliath, Right? And we have a conflict. And we have King Leonidas, the king of the Spartans, who was a very powerful character. Still, you're not intrigued. And they fighting and fighting and fighting. But now watch what happens in you when I tell you this, what the Spartans didn't know was that one of them was a traitor and lead the 10th Mountain immortals around the mountain in order to come at, ambush the Spartans from behind. Now you're interested in why? Because now we have an inflammation discrepancy, you know, more than the Spartans do. Now you're interested. So you see a conflict and great characters. David, good life is not enough. We need them, but we also need information discrepancy and what is this? Well, in a story? And then they seem to function, needs two things. One, we need a difference in information between the characters and between the characters and the audience. And there are six aspects of this, which I assume tell you. The other thing we need is that this information structure needs to change. We talked about that in the previous chapter. We talked about relationships that the relationship has two change in every scene. Otherwise you don't have seen the same thing here. The information distribution has to in some way change at the end of the scene vis-a-vis the beginning of the scene. Okay. So what kind of information discrepancies, information differences do we have? Well, there are six ones that you can have. An ideally, you will use all six of them in any given scene. But you need at least one in any given scene. Starting with the first one, mystery. What is mystery? Mysteries that we, as the audience, we know, that we don't know. We have half of the information, we have a fragment of the information. For instance, usually in a good story, the prologue and the storage opening of the story will give us, We talked about that in previous chapters. That'll give us the big picture. This is the big problem. Well, the story world, which then our protagonist will meet, for instance in Star Wars Episode four and a New Hope. The big problem, the prologue is Darth Vader intercepting Princess Leah ship and capturing her. And she sends the way to two droids, R2D2 and C3PO, which eventually will wind up with Luke Skywalker delivering the distress call from Princess Leah. So that's the big problem meeting. And of course, Luke has an initial problem, his desire to become a pilot. And we understand subconsciously that these two problems, these two storylines will merge throughout story. Now, take for instance the opening of Jurassic Park. You've seen that one. We're given a fragment of a situation where Islam nobler in the middle of the night and there was one guy's loading a crate. And there seems to be some kind of animal in that create. We hear some heavy breathing with CNI, just glimpses of that animal. We of course, since we know as you, as you probably know, is a dinosaur, but we don't see it. Then suddenly an accident happens and one of the guys, one of the workers, gets dragged in by the dinosaur and we hear the boss shouting, shooter, shoot, and then counterweight to the next scene. Now, what this accomplishes is that it creates mystery. So we know something's afoot about Islam nobler, something's **** this about to go down at these low nobler. We don't know the whole situation. We don't know what caused this. We don't know what they're doing. We don't know what the context is, but we know something, we know that we don't know. This is a mystery. Every detective story relies upon the mystery. We know someone has been killed. We don't know by whom, or we might know who the killer is, but then we don't know how he's going to be found. Some mystery is a perfect way to start your story. The audience loves to play catch-up. It loves to start, start smack in the middle. Stuart, as the Greeks that InMail deal serious in the middle of things. And then audience has to catch up. And we love that. Alright, so that's the first information discrepancy. You can have mystery. The second one is the opposite. That's suspense. Suspense is when we as an audience, no more than at least one character. Can be many characters, but at least one. You have suspense. Hitchcock says that if you're two people dining and suddenly a bomb goes off, that's a surprise. We'll talk about that later. That might hold audience's interests for 1015 seconds. But if we would show the audience what the characters don't know, is that underneath the table there's a Bomba. You could we'd hold that scene from minutes and we'd still be interested because we know more. We know it's going to explode. And that is, knowing more is such a sweet sensation. It's such a psychological pleasure to no more than someone else. This especially clear when you, if you act in children's theatre and someone is standing behind you and you ask the audience, Have you seen blah-blah-blah and all the kids go behind you, behind you, behind you, and there's love it, knowing more. And the reason for this is that as you know, most times in life we don't know more. We actually almost all the time, no less. Most of the time were the last to know. You come to work a Monday and it says, Did you hear what they laying off 50 people, what? We made a profit this area, but we went with the last to know your spouse has been unfaithful. You're the last one to know. That is the agonist would cost them the experience. We know there's information out here and I don't know it. So for once for at least during the course of two hours knowing more. Such a relief. This is one of the major reasons we watch stories. It's one of the basic psychological pleasures. So as soon as you can get the audience to what the Americans call superior position, which meaning they know more than or at least why we don't need to know more than all the characters. But we need no more than one in my example of 300s. But the Spartans, suddenly, you knew, knew more than the 300 Spartans. And you were intrigued because then you're starting to think, Oh, what's going to happen when the mortars camera around? So try to, in your story, bring the audience to superior position as soon as possible. For instance, Jurassic Park. Not only does that prologue create mystery, it also creates suspense because we know that stuff is going to happen to these people that we meet right now. That's inherent, inherent in his storytelling. We don't need to know that what happened at the salon nobler will affect Sam Neil. We just know it by instinct that, that happened and that will, these two lines will experience a confluence. Alright? It's just about super, super important. The Hitchcock always prefer suspense or a surprise. If you have two lovers sitting on a beach and talking after a couple of seconds that's seen has played out. We know it. But if we see what they don't know that a hungry bear is approaching. Now, you can play that scene four minutes because we're we're anticipating what will happen when the bear comes through to eat them. Okay? An opposite to suspense is also surprise. Surprises, as the name implies, sudden inflammation, what? We didn't know it. And this is movies. Suddenly you experience the O, so he is the killer and just bam, something emerges out of the wall. Especially this is common in horror movies from something appears out of nothing. This is, you need surprises in your story, but yet again, a surprise can hold the audience only for so long, where suspense can hold them for minutes. Okay? Moving on. We have tension. Tension is what? The audience, we have no mystery. We have no suspense, we have no surprise. The audience knows exactly what's going to happen. But we make it interesting by stretching the time, by putting them on the stretcher. It's like intellectual strip tease. We know what we're going to get, but the story is taunting us. It's like children on Christmas Eve. I remember when I was a kid and we woke up and saw all these presents under the Christmas tree and we had to wait until the afternoon before we could open them. And the entire day, what's your sweet torment? Waiting? And of course, we wouldn't have wanted to open it right away. So we wanted that torment. I'm wanting to open it right away, but not being allowed to. And that is what you want to create in the audience when you employ tension, you want this and I'll give it to you. But first, I'll withhold it. For instance, in the opening of the first Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark. He isn't a template in South America, and he's trying to steal a artifacts. He does so and this defense mechanism of the template is starting to work. There's a boulder rolling towards somebody has to run out and the temple door is closing and he has to get out in time. And it falls down to into a pit and the temple door dissents and it tries to get out of the pit and the temple door to sense this in real time. Of course, the temple door would have been closed minutes ago. But Spielberg stretches, stretches, stretches this. And we know he's going to make it because if you don't see the movie is over in five minutes, that would be bizarre. So we know it's going to make it, we're stretching it. That is tension. Okay, moving on the fifth one. What you want to create any audience is anticipation. And that is what, of course, foreshadowing. We always want to make the audience interested in what is going to happen in the future. We want the audience to think ahead, okay, So what's happening now? How will that affect what's happening later on? And that has to do a lot with suspense. For instance, if you've seen matrix to see in around the middle of the story where we're at Cipher. He lets down his crime rates and talks to Agent Smith and tells him about the whereabouts of the rabbits. And now we know we have suspense with superior position. We know more than our heroes do, and we also create anticipation. What will happen when Agent Smith catches Are Heroes? Lastly, what we want to create is reassessment. That is the audience reassessing what they have seen up until this point. For instance, a prime example of this is the movie, the game where I'm lost. I will not spoil their own thing if you haven't seen it. See it, it's a fantastic movie. If you haven't seen it. You know what I'm talking about? In the end, in the very end of the movie. The scales are lifted from our eyes and we suddenly realized that everything that we have seen up until this point has been totally different from the way we imagined it happens in our brains. When that scene happens, we reassess two hours of story material. They say that when you die, your life passes. Your entire life passes by in a flash. That's what happened at the end of the game. We as reassessed everything that happened until that point. And it's the same with n a story with it with a great twist that it's interesting in a moment. And on top of that, we reassess everything, they'll happen until that point. So this is crucial and this is one of the things that most novice writers don't get. Most novice writers understand, you need a conflict. You need characters. But what most novice writers don't understand is that it's hypercritical to always, at every given moment in your story to have some form of inflammation discrepancy. The information scrapers see conflict six forms. It can be a mystery. It can be suspense, It can be surprised. It can be tension, can be foreshadowing and reassessment, but you need at least one of these every given moment. The function is seen, as I told you, it has an information discrepancy. And number two, it changes that information discrepancy in some way, shape, or form. Someone learns something. In this scene, someone gets to know something that he or she didn't know before, either we as an audience and, or one or more of the characters. So regarding your story as an information system is hyper, hyper critical. You can see the way you tell a joke, funny story. If you think the story is funny, it always contains some form of information discrepancy which you asked the audience, Insert. How do you kill a joke? Well, you explain it, right? So the reason why the story is funny, because when the punchline comes, you immediately fill out the gap between the punchline and what the reality is that makes you laugh while doing that mental operation of filling in what has been left out. You laugh fiscally, hahaha, understand? And that is what you want in all your storytelling. You want the audience to supply as much information as possible. You don't want to tell the entire story. You want to tell the audience just as much they need to complete the story by themselves. Just as you do in a funny joke. Victor Hugo or the French writer, says that the best way to bore an audience is to tell them everything. And so what you need to give the audience just so much information they need. If you give them less, they will become confused. Remember to leave your story. If you give them too much, they will become bored. Leave the story. So you need to find out, and this can of course be super hard to find that perfect balance between not honoring forming and that's over in forming. And secondly, you want to give that information in a way that is lean and mean as possible. Not redundant. How many good road descriptions have you been given in your life? I'd assume you have been given none or very few. Why is it so hard to give written descriptions? Because if you've done that yourself, you need you have to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know what you know. And that is super hard for our brains to do. If I didn't know what I already know, how would I explain that? That is what you're doing when you're writing a story. And this can be super hard. The audience, they don't know your story, you do. So you have to ask yourself, if I didn't know the story which I've been working on for half a year or three years. What have you if I didn't know the story, what would I need to understand? And only that, what I would advise you to do is to study folk tales. Because they have been centrifuged throughout the centuries. They only contain what is necessary. Nothing is lacking and nothing is redundant. For instance, take Little Red Riding Hood. There's nothing in that story that is redundant and nothing is lacking. And the information is given. In the perfect sequence. Nothing is given prematurely, and nothing is given too late. There was a girl living with her mother in a hut by the forest. One day the mother said, take this basket to grandmother who lives in the forest, but don't speak to the wharf. Little Red Riding Hood takes the basket, walks into the forest and meets the wolf. And what does she do? She violates the warning. She talks through wolf. The wolf says, Where are you going? I'm going to my grandmother where she lived. She lives in a cabinet in the woods. The wolf runs away to Kevin, eats grandmother. Little Red Riding Hood, comes up to the cabin, walks in, feel something is strange because her mother, grandmothers, is lying in the bed, but she has a very big nose and very sharp teeth. So she's asking mother or grandmother, Why do you have the big knows why do you have the big eyes? And all the rest of the story. Nothing here is redundant. There's no story where she sits down and then pick some blueberries just for the fun of it. There's nothing here that doesn't advance the story. And there's nothing here that's in the wrong order. You know, if you heard someone tell a story as bad storytelling he had been oh, yeah. I'm sorry. You needed to know that before. Yeah. I should have told you that. There's a bad storyteller. You everything is given in the right order and the right amount at the right time, and nothing is redundant and nothing's missing. So that is what you want for your story to be, for it to be as lean and mean ***. The fork tests that study the folk tales. And you'll see how it's amazing they are as information structures. I'm going to conclude by talking about some, an aspect about this that in Hollywood they say, Don't tell them until they ask. Meaning that first you create a need for that information. Then you would hold it. You tease them. You want to notice? I'm not giving it to you. And then you give it the best way to create. If you start telling people information that they haven't requested, that's boring, That's information that's hyper boring. You start by creating a need for that information. For instance, if I were to tell you, Do you want to know something about Charles? Charles is a guy. You're not the interests that interests you couldn't care less. But if I tell you, you see that guy outside here with the machine GAE Machine Gun who's just shooting in there. You know who that is. Now you're interested. We created a need for you. Okay. Why does that guy standing there with a machine gun? So now you're interested and that's the way you tell the story. You create the need first and then you supply the information. But first, after you've been holding it, like a detective story, we start a need for someone has been killed by whom. We have a need for information. We haul that information the entire story until the very end. Make them wait and make them guess. They say in Hollywood that you create information need and then you would hold it and then eventually Italian. So in conclusion, when you create your story, you can see that, see this as two aspects. You have the story and you have the plot. Story is what happens. This is what physically happen in this universe, in this sequence, the plot, that's the way you convey that. And we don't tell everything that happened. What you want to do is create a big off-screen story as possible. You want as much for happen off screen. The more you force the audience to fill in for themselves, they're more interested in your story. They will become. Communication comes from the Latin word common Nicole IRA, which means to make common. And communication. In order for us to communicate, we need interaction. If we don't interact, there is no communication. Information. That is, someone spewing out the information. Communication is always some form of dialogue. And what I'm hoping now that we have here now is a dialogue. Of course, I'm not seeing you. I'm not hearing your responses because this has been pre-recorded. But what I'm trying to do at the best of my capability is to make this. I'm trying to anticipate what you're feeling and what do you thinking and are trying to address that. The same thing when you're writing. You're trying to engage in a dialogue with the audience. A bad, bad writing. That's a monologue. This happened and this happened, this happened. Good writing is a dialogue. Now this happened and then, you know what he did. You're constantly creating questions in the audience. Your job as a storyteller is to create questions in the audience, create a need for knowing, and then he would hold it. So that's the plot. So when I advice you to do is first create your story, this would happen and then tried to decide what's the plot, what do I tell in what order and what's the exact information I need? And I would advise you to see how many of the information discrepancies can you use? Mystery, suspense, surprise, tension, anticipation, reassessment, and try to use as many of these as possible. One way is to try to distribute. You can, if you list all the new information that the audience will receive and then you distribute that throughout the story as breadcrumbs. It's like a detective story. We follow. We have one lead that leads to the next lead, that leads to the next lead and so forth, up until the point when we learn who the killer is. And try to, every senior right, have some formal suspense. Put the audience in some form or superior position. Let everything have at least one surprise or tension. If we know it's going to end. The more of these discrepancies you use, the more the audience will be enthralled. And yet again, if for one moment in the story you don't have any kind of information discrepancy, the audience will be disengaged. Alright, information. Now we're gonna move on to a different subject, which has to do with the way the story changes physically and mentally. And that is about position. 10. Chapter 9: Position: Welcome to Chapter nine position. In order to create a compelling story, we need our characters to constantly change position. It's like if you watch a soccer game, they need to constantly change position. Otherwise it becomes boring. It's like yeah, when, when one of the teams play very defensively and paste all their players in their own penalty area, that becomes boring. So we need them to constantly change position. Now, does this mean all waves have to change physical position? No, it doesn't. So there are two kinds of changes in position that you can have. It's changed in fiscal position and if the change in mental position or change in relationship. So for instance, if you have a James Bond movie that traditionally has very few changes in mental or position, then we have to constantly change the physical positions, which a traditional James Bond movie always does. We're in Asia, were traveling there. We're going there, we're going all the places which makes it exciting. Week. Of course, we could also have changes in mental position. But if you take, for instance, which is very common in the theater, where we're staying in the same setting all the time. For instance, if you take your place, then became movies like Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf or 12 Angry Men, which is all set in the same physical location the entire story. Well, if we're not changing the physical position, we need to change the mental positions all the time. And that is what happens in the story. For instance, 12 angry men is about a jury and everyone is convinced that the guy is guilty, except one of them. And of course, in order to give a verdict, the entire jury has to agree. So what happens in the story is eventually, as the story progresses, the one guy who thinks that guy's innocent gathers more and more and more and more followers constantly. People are changing mental position. And that makes the story interesting, even though we're not changing fiscal positions. Who's afraid to Virginia Woolf, it's about in the middle of the night. It's older couple then inviting and younger couple and fighting it out during the night and when the same fiscal position. So their mental position, the rate, the relationships has to change all the time, which it doesn't giving new information, new positions, so forth. And yet again, of course you can have both. You can have both a change in fiscal position and mental position as well. But just this, any football game or any sports, you need the positions to constantly change. If it doesn't, your story is dead at that moment. So writing your story, always ask yourself, how are the positions changing right now? Are they changing physically and or mentally? If you write the scene and the positions are not changing, you don't have a scene. So either this is most probably the case that you're seeing this redundant. It needs to go. If it doesn't, you need to make the changes in position as big as possible? Yet again, I talked about this in a previous chapter. The more your story changes, all the aspects that we're talking about here, the more they change, the bigger changes, and the more changes you have, the more interesting your story becomes. Okay, we're talking about position. We're going to talk about something else that is very closely related to position. And that is function. 11. Chapter 10: Function: Welcome to Chapter ten, function. In the previous chapter we talked about precision. So now what's the difference between position and function? Function is the purpose of your character in the story. Character can have mainly three purposes. He or she can be a victim, should be a rescue or a hero. Or she can be a attacker or persecutor, a dragon, so to speak. If you've ever been to store the big church in Stockholm, the old town in Stockholm, there's a sculpture of St. George and the Dragon. And if you're there, probably you've only seen the St. George and the Dragon because there's a third part of the sculpture placed a couple of meters from that main sculpture. That is the maiden, the virgin. Without her. The sculpture is incomplete because we'd, all these three participants, we have what is called in psychology, a drama triangle. A drama triangle constitutes a victim, a rescuer, persecutor. And that is what you need in your story at any given time. So in every story and every scene, you need a victim rescue. And the prosecutor, they don't all need to be physically present at all the time. But in any given moment in the story, the story needs to have these three functions cast and several people can fulfill the same function. But we always need them cast. And they, the functions don't need to be pure. We don't need to be hundred percent rescuer. Hundreds. And the prosecutor, we can be somewhere in the middle of between rescue and persecutor, somewhere in the middle between victim and rescue. For instance, most heroes undergo a journey from victim to rescuer. And if the hair makes it dark turn, he or she might go from rescuer to the dragon, so to speak, the perpetrator. And as I talked about for the clearer structure you have, and the more changes to that structure you make, the more interesting it will become. In a good story, the victim rescue PER scores don't stay safe, stay, stay the same because that would be boring. So the more you can have the characters change function, the more interesting your story will become. And what you could do is if you draw a triangle and you have, for instance, the victim and the rescue and a perpetrator. And then you plot your characters journeys in that triangle and some of your characters course will not travel. For instance, take Star Wars. Dark weather is and will always be the perpetrator. He will not change up until the very end. If you've seen Star Wars soon Return of the Jedi, you know what happens in the end when finally Darth Vader sees is some tortured by the old sift Lord. He eventually can't take it anymore, texts the seafloor and throws him into this giant viaduct, becomes the hero, after which he is dying. So Luke carries him away and opens his helmet. And to his dying father, is it looks at his dying father and says, I'm going to save you. And Darth Vader. Now, Anakin Skywalker says You already did. So what happens here in the end, we have Darth Vader, who through the entire series have been nothing but the bad guy, nothing but the perpetrator suddenly becoming rescuer and then victim with Lucas rescue. And that is what catches us, that is what creates the emotion in us. So even your hero might undergo a dark turn for a moment, become the perpetrator or have some purple trait, Arish qualities. The more your characters change, the more they change function within the story, the more interesting account, for instance, you're here might be started as a victim or victims slash rescue become more and more rescuer that may be failed, come back to victim. Take for instance, the matrix. You have a Neil starting out as a victim is very impotent. He has no power and he gets caught by the, by the, by the agents. Eventually, as the story progresses becomes more and more and more and more of rescuer. In the end, however, he is partly victim, running away in the matrix from the agents and then being killed, eventually, rebirth as a hero. Morpheus starts out as a rescuer and he's a mentor to anneal, but he gets kidnapped and now he is in the victim position. So the more changes you can have to your drama triangle, the more interesting it will become. So. In concluding the side cast, your story cast, you must always have at least one victim, at least one perpetrator, at least one rescuer. And these functions need, your characters need to change functions as much as possible within the story to create an interesting story. Okay, so we talked about precision, we talked about function. Now, we're going to talk about something that is vital, especially when the writing scenes and that is motor. 12. Chapter 11: Motor: Welcome to Chapter 11, motor. What does that mean? Well, in the story, you need one character who is the primary driving force. That's true for every scene. In any scene, you need the primary driving force. We've talked about conflicts. We've talked about it's so important that all your characters have strong desires that are opposed to one another. That is conflict. They have to be passionate about getting what I want to have to really need it. It has to be life and death for your characters to get what they want. And that stands in opposition to at least one other characters want and desire. So all the characters are responsible for pursuing their desires. But at the same time, there's one character that is the primary driving force of that scene. That can change in the story, that can change in the scene. But at any given moment, there's one character who has the pink shirt, so to speak. If you, if you compare it to professional bicycling, there's the leader has to pink shirt. There's always a person with a pink shirt in the scene. And that, as I mentioned, can change. Why is this so important for you as a writer? Well, so what or who is driving the scene? The character that is driving the scene that is a primer engine, can never stop, can never pause, has to continuously tirelessly work. And the other characters pursuing their own desires, working mostly in response to that character. For instance, if suddenly you have the characters here and suddenly a monster breaks in through the door. Who is the primary driving force? Of course, the master. The other carriers aren't passive. They're pursuing their desires, but they're mostly reacting to, at least initially reacting to what the primary driving force is doing. That might change. For instance, in a story. What happens is in the first half of the story, the primary driving force is always the antagonist, the dragon, so to speak. Your character is active, bleed pursuing his or her desire, but it's mostly trying to par, and trying to stay away from the blows of the antagonist. In the mid point of the story, the great shift, the great turning point. Every scene in stories should be a turning point. Otherwise, it doesn't merit its place in the story. But the big, big major tidal shift in the story is the midpoint. For instance, what's the midpoint of Titanic? They hit the iceberg. The midpoint of Star Wars Episode four. They blow up the planet Tatooine and our heroes gets sucked into the Death Star. What's the midpoint? In Jurassic Park? The T-Rex breaks loose and starts eating people. So that is the big shift with turn from basically one situation to its opposite. The situation is turned on its head. What happens in the second part of the story is bad is where our characters are. Our main character is becoming more and more to primary driving force. Now he or she is not only responding to what opponent is doing, he or she is more starting to force the opponent to respond to what they're doing. So that is the major shift that's happening in the middle of the story. You need to make clear at any given point in the story, who are the driving force is being the driving force doesn't mean that you, for instance, if you have a dialogue scene, doesn't mean that the primary driving force is always the character that talks the most. Sometimes the characters that talk the least, or maybe it's entirely silent. If the primary driving force. Silence can be extremely powerful. For instance, August through and he wrote one act play with two women who meet at a cafe. It's called the stronger. One of the characters don't utter a single word through the entire play. Is XI passive? Of course not. She's extremely active, but using her silence as a means. And as mentioned, silence can be extremely, extremely powerful. Yet again, you need to know at any given point who is the primary driving force and where does that change? And the person who is the driving force can never, never, never. Let's go. To reiterate, in the first half of your story, your protagonist will be actively pursuing her desire, but mostly in response to what the antagonist is doing. In the second half of the story, your character will be more and more forcing the opponent to act in response to her. It's like a game or boxing. Maybe Mike Tyson has the upper hand. The other guy is trying to win, but it's just mainly trying to defend themselves from the blow. So Mike Tyson and that might change. And that is what we want to see in the story. We want to see who has the upper hand, and we want that to change. For instance, if in a football game, if our team leads five to nil in the first couple of minutes and they keep that until down. That's not exciting. We want our team to be a head and then their opponents to be had. Then our team ahead, that is with creates an interesting game and that's what creates them interesting story. How is this story played out? Well, now we're coming to a subject that is widely discussed and that is structure. How is the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist? How is that played out over time? Is there a pattern to this that is recognizable in all stories? The answer is yes. And what is that pattern? We'll talk more about that in the next episode, chapter 12, structure. 13. Chapter 12: Structure: Welcome to Chapter 12 or concluding chapter in this first part of this series structure. My hat has three edges or three edges has my hat. And if it doesn't have three edges, then it's not my hat. This is the sweetest children's song. This is an embodiment of story structure. If four-part story structure. I assume you've heard about the three-act structure that is predominant in Hollywood, which not only hold one, if we go back to the dawn of time, ever since the old Greeks, every story that has function as work has followed the three-act structure. Why do I speak of four structures for Ax? Sorry, because it's the same thing. The three-act structure is really for structure. In the classic three-act structure, the first-quarter of the movie, approximately the first 25% is the first act. And then the next 50 per cent from the twenty-five percent mark to the 75% mark. That's act two, divided by midpoint. And then the last quarter of the movies, act three, the beginning, the middle, and the end. Act two is divided by the midpoint, which dividing it into two Acts, namely act to a into B. So it is four acts. And you can see this in all this structure in all of nature. We have four seasons. Summer, autumn, winter, spring. We have four directions on the campus. And this is especially noticeable in music. For instance, almost all pop songs fall the same formula. You have a verse and the chorus. Then you have the verse and chorus again. And then you have the guitar solo or the stick or the bridge or what have you. And then you return to the refrain, and then it's usually just a refrain. A couple of times. In classical music is the same thing we have, is called the sonata form. And there's all the classical composers, mozart, up until Beethoven use this form. Anther romanticists. They started to break away from this form. But up until Beethoven, sonata form was what everyone used. And the sonata form can be abbreviated AABA form structure, where it presents a and then you repeat a. And then the third act, the third quarter is B, That's a new part. And then the fourth part is returning to a, but now a has transformed as a consequence of mutating it through B. So for instance, in Beethoven's famous Symphony, Symphony Number five, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba bom. You have the verse and the chorus, so to speak, in the sonata form of classical music, you first, every theme had the male theme and the female theme, the a and the B part. So does it adore that are though, and then constituted, edited it edited and so forth. And when that's presented, he goes back and presents the exact same thing again, baba, baba bomb. When that has been done to twice, we now in the middle of this movement, now enter section B, third act. That is where the composer takes the material that he or she presented and develops it, turns its twist, it turns it on its own topsy turvy. And as a consequence of which, when we come to the fourth and last quarter than it's AABA. But now when we return to a, the a is not the same as in the beginning. They similar, but has to some degree change as a consequence of being in the B part, the third act. And we see this in the sonata form, and we see this in pop music. It's the same structure in storytelling. You start with presenting a, this is the way the world, this the second act. You present a again, but now you expound on it. We compound on it. It's aggravated. Then front the midpoint until the three-quarter mark point. That is the third act, the B part. This is where the new stuff happens. This is where the change happens. Now, everything is turned upside down. What was initially the case is now the opposite. Then from the three-quarter mark until the end, we return back home. Now having changed, Excuse me, as a consequence of being in the third act. So every story it starts with your hero being at home. Leaving home for an adventure where he or she will change, transform in the inner universe and the outer universe and then return back home. As a consequence being changed. You can look all stories. You will find these, this structure. In Japan. They have a four-part structure storytelling called the Kishore ten cats sue. The four parts are key. Shore, Town gets it. And key, you present something. Sure, you expound on that. Ten, the twist, the change. And then cats are the consequences of the change. For instance, I'm going to read you a very short poem with a four-part structure. Daughters of Ayatollah in the Han mushy of Osaka. The elder daughter is 16 and the younger one is 14. Throughout history, Deimos killed enemies with bows and arrows. The daughters will be toya, kill with her eyes. So this is a four-part structure. First one, daughters have a toy in their own material or soccer. Now, the second act, so to speak, the development, we have introduced an idea in the key of a toilet and then now we develop it in the shore. The elder daughter is 16 on the younger ones 14. Now, the third act that twist the tan throughout history, Diamonds killed enemies with bows and arrows. This is new information and as a consequence of injecting these new information. Now here comes the conclusion. The cats are the daughters of our toya kills with the rice. Another example, also Japanese poem, introduction. The light of the full moon shines down development. Illuminating the world with divine light. Twist town. When my lover sneaks into visit me, conclusion kits, I wish that the clouds would hide that light just a little. So the new part and the third is R, It's about a lowered, it started out being about the moon, and then suddenly it was not really about the moon at all. It was about the lover and my wanting the moon to cover his or her interests. So this structure, you can see in all nature and I would advice you thoroughly to when you start plotting your stories, start from the helicopter perspective and see what's the four-part structure. And you present the problem here, you develop it, you twist it, and then you return. And as a consequence, your hero is able to solve the problem or not if its ends badly. In advanced mathematics, they have a process called the Laplace transform, named after a French mathematician Laplace. And it works this way. You have a mathematical problem which is insoluble in the normal mathematical world, you can't solve it. Then you transform that problem via laplace transform into a parallel mathematical universe. In that universe, you solve that problem. And when you have solved that problem, you transform it back via laplace transform to our normal mathematical world, thus having solved it, this is what happens in the story. Your protagonist has a problem in the original world, in the ordinary world of the protagonist that he or she cannot solve, it is insoluble MTR. The big problem, which is presented in the prologue. Anther that takes the protagonist on an adventure voluntarily or involuntarily, to a parallel world, to the special world, the new world. We've talked about that when we talked about worlds in Chapter five. In this new world, the protagonist has a face bigger problem, which is parallel to his or her ordinary problem, but it's a much bigger problem. And in trying to solve that bigger problem, he or she will develop qualities modus operandi in science, point of view, skills, qualities that when he or she returns back home will make her able to solve her initial problem. This is one story is you're the person with the problem that ordinary world, we transform that into a special world where r here is giving a, given a new problem, much bigger problem in trying to solve that problem, he or she develops qualities that which upon returning home she can use to solve our original problem. Take for instance. Star Wars episode for a New Hope. Luke Skywalker's original problem. What is that? He wants to become a pilot, but it's only form hand and his uncle, and he has little hope of ever escaping that. Now. And through big problem, Darth Vader has kidnapped presence. Leah Obi-Wan says that you must help and suddenly he is thrust into an adventure in space. We're confronted with a Jedi power and they are entering the Death Star. And all the while, all of this, during this journey, a journey, it Luke Skywalker transforms as we all do in adventurous here, becomes stronger and more insightful, more courageous, more responsible, and all of these qualities he will be able to use when he returns back home and not to the planet, but our leaves the Death Star. And suddenly now he's no longer farm boy. But in the third act, he is a pilot. And then the very last climatic moment of the story, he also becomes a Jedi. So this is how the story works. So you need when you create your story to have your main character have an original problem, which, which we talked about earlier about karma. He or she has to have created herself through her and Marsha threw her mistake for her cultural upbringing through her mistake and modus operandi. Now, she cannot solve this on her own. Otherwise, there would be no need for the story because the story is, in its essence, it's about human transformation. It can be, you can have laser sabers and you can have TIE Fighters. Millennium Falcon is deaf stores what you want. We'll never grip an audience if it's not in its essence about human transformation. That's what a story is. All the external events serve one purpose to transform the character, your main character, and other characters as well. That is the purpose. And that is why. When you ask yourself what's more important character or story, it's impossible to answer the question because it's the same. The more you study story and more you realize by storytelling, you realize the character and story is the same thing. The character is transformational arc. How the character changes is the structure of the story and the fiscal events that outer events are the agents of change. And at the end of the story, or the events that are being changed by the transformation or the protagonist. In the beginning of the story, the outer events are working much more on the protagonist than vice versa. Changing, transforming her. At not only the positive events, everything that your main character encounters be negative or positive, transforms the character for better or worse. It's like in life, your mentors and teachers that you have had. Hopefully I've taught you stuff, but also, and this might be painful to realize. Your enemies have also taught your stuff, and maybe they were your best teachers all along. And this is the case in all stories. Obi-wan Kenobi is a fantastic teacher for Luke Skywalker, who is his best teacher. That stuff later, because Darth Vader shows Luke, Skywalker and whatnot to be the dangerous the lurks in the psyche was all. If we turn to the dark path. So not only the mentor, but also the antagonists, Let's say especially so the antagonist and decide kicks and the allies all help our hero transform into a if it's a good ending, the bigger and better, more powerful and more insightful person than he or she was in beginning, which makes it possible for her to solve her initial problem. So that's the mathematics of storytelling. And I urge you to study all movies that are functioning all your favorite movies and to identify this structure, this mechanism in all those stories. Now, when it comes to structure, there, there's a plethora of books and ideas and models of how structure works. They are, I don't know how many books have been written in the subject. I'm going to try to make it as easy for you as possible. The basic structure, as I talked about in any story, in any piece of music, whether it'd be pop music or classical music, is the four act structure. You'll see it everywhere in nature. Now, I'll move on to talk a bit more detail than a four extractor. And we'll talk about different models. We'll talk about Vladimir props model, who was a Russian folklorist, who started the Russian folktales. And we'll talk about the highly, highly influential Joseph Campbell and his theory on the monomyth. And then I'll discuss some other models. But Otherwise, I want you to keep in mind that the thorax structure that we've been discussing, that is the primary structure of all art, as in all life, beginning, middle. And you introduce something, you aggravate it, you twist it, you turn it, and then comes the consequences. If you take a funny joke, for instance, funny story, then you introduce something. It happens a second time. And on the third time, there you have the punchline, which meaning the third, the fourth fact, the last quarter of a funny joke is never told, but the audience feels them for themselves. That is a consequence of the twist, the consequence of the punchline. Okay, let's start to talk about one of the models that are more specific. And this is the model of Vladimir Propp, who was a Russian folklorist. And he identified 31 steps in all the Russian folk tastes. He started, I want to give you this. And of course, your story will not hit all these points, but I think is highly beneficial when you work on your story to use these structures as a reference point. You don't need to follow them. Slit is the same actually, you don't need to follow them at all, but you might get ideas through studying these, these structures. Okay? So the morphology, morphology of the Russian folk tale, according to value prop, is this. Excuse me. We start with one. Absent. Someone leaves the security of home environment. They might be the hero or maybe a person to hear and needs to go and rescue. This division serves as the first of tension in the story. He defines. He says that there are two cancel heroes in the story. You have the victim hero. Now you have the searcher hero. The victim hero is someone to whom before something bad. For a lot of horror stories, the family moves into a house and it's a haunted house. And it starts, started, they started attacking them. They are victim heroes. They're trying to save themselves. A searcher hero, a rescuer here is someone who sets out on a mission to save somebody else. For instance, Ripley and the Marines in the movie aliens, they set out to rescue the colonizers. Okay? Number two, interdiction, the hero is warned against the action. Three, violation of interdiction. The warning addressed to the hero is violated and the villain enters the story. This doesn't necessarily need to be a direct encounter with the hero. For reconnaissance, the villain tries to find out something about the hero and his her request. Often the villain and here are often meet face to face five, delivery. The villain finds out something useful. Usually it's about the hero, sometimes the victim. Six, trickery. The villain attempts some kind of trickery. Often it's a disguised in order to win the confidence of his her victim. Sometimes the victim is captured. This face earns the villain more information to use against the hero. Seven complicity. The hero victim falls for the villains trick, unknowingly helping the enemy. The hero usually now unwittingly response in a way that helps the villain. Eight, villainy or lack. The villain gets a win and causes some kind of harm or domain community unit in the story suffer some kind of lack or setback. Sometimes it's both. This usually results in some other desire or the family community, community. Nine, mediation. The lack or setback becomes widely known. The hero is prompted to act. Ten, beginning counteraction. The hero seeker is prompted into counter action against the villain in order to resolve the lag. This is the defining moment that was set the course for the rest of the tail. The hero is usually defined as the hero as opposed to the ordinary or reluctant adventure in this function, 11, departure, the hero leaves home again or plays or normalcy. 12, first function of the donor. The hero is tested opening up the opportunity for to help her donor to act. 13, heroes reaction. The hero or reacts to the donor maybe withstands the test for USA captain, councils, adversaries, etc. 14, receipt of a magical agent. The hero acquires a magical object. 15, guidance, the heroes guided to the object of the search. 16, struggle. The hero and villain meet in direct conflict. 17, the branded. The hero is somehow branded. He, she might receive an injury or a mark or maybe some kind of object. 18, victory, the villain is defeated. 19, liquidation. The previous misfortunes or lack of assault, spells are broken, capitus of free, etc. 20, return, the hero starts back home. 21 pursued. The hero is pursued again by an adversary force. 20 to rescue, the hero is rescued from pursued. Here the hero undergoes its transformation. 23, unrecognized rival, the hero returns to a familiar place and this unrecognizable, this could also be to hear what arriving in a new place. 24 unfounded claims, a force here or appears presenting unfounded claims. 25 difficult task. Another arduous task is presented to the hero. 26 solution, the hero resource that task, 27 recognition. The hero is recognized by their brand. 28th exposure, the false hero or villain as exposed. 29 transfiguration. The hero is transformed again, often by new appearance or garment. 30, punishment, the villain is punished, justice is served. And 31, wedding, the hero marries the princess and takes their place on the throne. This might be fingertip. Alright, let's look at a couple of beats here and compare them with Red Riding Hood. First, absent, someone leaves home. And so Riding Hood is advice by her mother to take the basket and had for her grandmother's house in the woods. So that's our someone is leaving home to interdiction. The here was warned against action. The mother of the little red riding hotels or don't speak to the wolf. Three, violation of the contradiction. The warning addressed here is violated. What happens? Red Riding Hood violates a contradiction, talks to the wolf, reconnaissance. The villains tries to find out something that's a wolf coming to meet her. Delivery. The villain finds out something useful by talking to Red Riding Hood. He learns that there's a grandmother, mother and their trickery, the villain attempt some kind of trickery and, and complicity. The hero force for the valence trick here is a little Red Riding Hood, the wolf, where the grandmothers cabinets eight villainy or lack. The villain gets a win and cost of some kind of harm. Well, the wolf goes to the cabin and eats Red Riding Hood grandmother. So you see these, these structural points can be found in basically all stories. Maybe not all of them, maybe not in the correct sequence. But yet again, I would advise you to take a look at this when you create your story. You don't need to follow this slavishly, but you might get good ideas and it's always a good point. What I would advise you when they write, always tried to have a reference point. Use a story as reference. It can be forked tail and it should be quite old story, a classic story, for instance, when they wrote westside story, what do they base that upon? Of course, Romeo and Juliet, Titanic was based upon, of course, Romeo and Juliet. And of course, all the details and all the specifics are completely different. But the basic structure is there. And there are only so many stories. Some claim that our 36th, the Italian George Polk, the claim started 36 dramatic situations. Some claim there are ten. Blake Snyder, the writer of the book saved to Kathy, says there are ten Kansas City stories. Some claim there are eight, some claim there are two. And Joseph Campbell who will talk about now claims that they are one. Regardless, try to find a story which you love, of course, and you feel resonates with the story you're trying to tell and use that as a blueprint. That doesn't mean to copy. It just means the basic structure, the basic premise of the story. Which of course, if it's an older story that has withstood the test of time. You know that this is a functioning story, is the same thing. When a pop musician writes a song, he or she doesn't try to invent the wheel. Again. Most sites will have the verse and the chorus verse, chorus bridge thick guitar solo and back to the chorus. And that's structured. It has worked for so many times and still every song is new. Every song is unique. Even though most of the songs written follow the same structure. Okay, Let's talk about the most influential story structure we know in the world today. And that's the storage structure of Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell lived from 1904 to 1997. He knew he was a professor at literature and he specialized in comparative mythology. And what he did, he read all the myths throughout the entire world. From Occidental stories and the oriental stories, profane and sacral stories. And he found in all the stories, he found the same underlying pattern which he identified and called the monomyth. And this is his definition. A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and the decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure, would have power to bestow Boone's on his fellow man. Remember I talked about you, the hearer has an initial problem, leaves her original world to fight the bigger problem in order when solving that, she develops the qualities needed to return back home and solve her initial problem. This is what we have here. Your hero in this, in the ordinary world enters in the one-quarter mark into what Joseph Campbell calls the special world, which is, we've talked about that in Chapter five. It's a mirror image of your original world. It's an exaggeration or it's a contrast. This is a psychological symbol for the characters subconscious. We're leaving our conscious mind, entering our subconscious. Every good story. It's an external representation of your characters battle with forces within herself. Externalize through all the characters. In any goods store, you'll see that the drag on the opponent, the main opponent of the character, is but a physical session and externalization of his or her biggest interval. That's the way the whole Marcia, the mistake, the sin, so to speak of the character is related to the outer antagonist is the same. If you look at Star Wars. Darth Vader is an externalization of Luke Skywalker's. In their problem. He will never be able to defeat Darth Vader until he has defeated that inner Darth Vader. Okay, let's look at the different structural points in Joseph Campbell's as widely, widely studied monomyth. And by the way, when George Lucas created Star Wars, he was very, very much influenced by the work of Joseph Campbell and he credited lot of the success with Star Wars on, on Joseph Campbell's work. Alright, there are three basic parts in Joseph campus structure. And we started with the departure, which is x1, and then we have the enunciation, and that is 23. And that is where your hero transforms her old self into her new self, which is able to, in the last part, return, go back and resolve her initial problem. The first part, call to adventure. Your protagonist starts off in a normal everyday situation, he or she received some information that prompts them to head off on an adventure into the unknown. This leads to point to refusal of the call. Your hero is reluctant to leave his or her everyday circumstances for a variety of reasons. Whatever the reasons it's clear that staying in the comfortable every day will lead to all kinds of troubles. What happens is that 0.3, excuse me, their protagonist meets the supernatural aid, the mentor. Once your protagonist's commits to venture, a guiding mentor figure with typically arise sometimes bearing items and skills and knowledge that will help your hero on his or her journey. That this will help your character leave her original world for the adventure, for crossing the threshold at this point to here, whereas committed both subconsciously and consciously to the venture. It takes the first steps of the journey outside his or her everyday comfort zone. The rules of this new world are unclear and potentially fraught with danger. And now at the one-quarter mark, we enter the belly of the whale. And of course, all these terms are not to be taken literally. They are metaphors. When your hero isn't a metaphorical belly of the whale, he or she has finally been cut off, cut off from the world left behind and the person they once were has symbolically died. The protagonist will be embarking on their own metamorphoses. Now we're into the enunciation waiting to, to act to the road of trials once you're here or has accepted the challenge of begun on the path of their own transformation. They are typically beset by a series of challenges that would serve as a catalyst for change. Typically, a character will fail at least one of these tests. Seven, meeting with the goddess asks your protagonist's journey so long he or she will likely encounter an all encompassing love. Campbell describes this as the final test of the talent of the hero. We're complete enjoyment of life itself is the reward. Eight woman as temptress. Temptations, usually of a, excuse me, the physical nature come through the hero. Threatening to the rate of request. This isn't necessarily sexual, but can represent material aspects of life. Nine, atonement with the father. Here your protagonist confronts whatever holds the most power in his or her life, often represented by a parental figure. This is the high point of the journey with everything so far leading to this point, then everything afterwards leading away from it. Now in sport it when we talk about woman and father, this doesn't mean that it has to be the literal Father. It just means in archetypical terms, you are meeting some form of authority. Alright? Ten, apotheosis. The end of the quest is drawing nearer and you're here and now rests within her new selves, gathering temporarily before going on for the final achievement, the ultimate Boone, The Quest is fulfilled everything in the story before I served to prepare your protagonist for this movement. Refusal of the return. Now that you're here where it has fulfilled his or her request, he or she might feel reluctant to return to the everyday world where they came from. 13, the magic fight. In some cases, your protagonist might need to put up a final fight to get away with a quest fulfillment and his or her way back to normal world. Rescue from, without. In some cases the hero might find fine. He or she cannot find his or her way home without help. Crossing of the return threshold. The hero returns to the world he or she came from, but must retain the lessons learned during the quest and perhaps look for ways to apply this new wisdom to Deborah. They world 16, master the two worlds. Returning from their journey, the protagonist now occupies a double place of existence, balancing the material world and every day with the spiritual world represented by the wisdom. Stay quiet on their journey. And lastly, freedom to live. By the end of the story, your hero finds him or herself this new sphere or living in a moment equally pleased with depressant as with the past and with no anticipation of the future. Okay, So let's take for instance, matrix, the first movie, call to adventure. You know, in the very opening of the movie, Neo, this hacker is sitting in front of his computer and the texts appears to follow the white rabbit. This is called to adventure. It starts right away. And of course, this is a reference, of course to Alice in Wonderland. And not before long knocks on the door and some people want to buy something from him, but soon he gets in contact with Trinity, refusal of the call. He doesn't want to and he tries to get away if you've seen Matrix runaway, but he's confronting is very high up and the agents are able to get him meeting the supernatural aid. He meets with it, talks through the phone with Trinity and meets up with her and meets Morpheus, which is, will be his mentor. Crossing the threshold. Morpheus offers him the blue pill or the red pill. And af, if you take the red pill, nothing will ever be the same again. And of course, through the forum or hero, the sites across a threshold. And now we enter the belly of the whale, which is now we're realizing, Oh, okay, everything that I thought was true about life isn't anymore. So your first act at the one-quarter mark ends with some surprise, some kind of Revelation, some kind of major turning point that makes it impossible for your hero to return. Now what I've entered this stage, now, we're in the special world. Now entered the road of trials. And this is usually, so this second quarter of a movie is usually where to hear or terrains. If you have a story where someone enters a military academy or what have you, this is what happens in the second act and this is what happens in matrix. Morpheus trains Neil and several ways to become a better jumper martial arts fighter. And all these meeting with the goddess, who is the goddess? Well, of course it's Trinity. Trinity of course, being a hold a reference to the Trinity, father, Son and the Holy Ghost. Woman as temptress here. What's this? Well, this is where cipher meets with Agent Smith and sells out. So this is not a sexual temptation by a materialistic temptation. This will meet, to meet thing with the father. And that is where when the agents come in and they abduct a Morpheus, causing now the apitosis. When our hero has to transform, this is where Neo and Trinity their arm up to enter the complex where Morpheus is captured. And to save him, which they do, which is the ultimate Boone. They take the gold, they take the thresher from the clutches of the dragon. Now, refusal of the return, if you remember it, they're standing there in the cell. We're going to take the telephone to teleport themselves back. And Neo hangs up. Because it wants this alone time with with Trinity. And then the agents come and we have the magic flight and the rescue from without. And this is where Trinity rescues, rescues Neil, crossing or the return threshold, a master of the two worlds. This is the Nios running away and he's being shot at by the agents. And now he's able to stop the bullets. He's the master of the two worlds. He's the master of being in the matrix and he's the master of being outside of matrix. And this leads to freedom to live. Your hero finding herself in a new sphere of living in a moment. And you remember in the final image, a matrix he's taking off to the heavens. Like Superman. He is now no longer mere mortal. He has become a legend. He has become a super hero. This is the journey of the hero in, in, in any good story. And of course, it doesn't have to be at this fiscal level. Even a court room drama or family drama will follow these steps. So study, study. You also campus monomyth. And I would advise you to all the movies you see. Try to identify where in the story you can you find the difference, different stations as well. It's important to recognize this is not about formulaic writing, It's not about filling the numbers. It's about basic, basic structures that have been found in all stories because these are basic structures in the human mind. This is the way we perceive the world, and thus, it's the way that we construct our stories. I read recently in a book, but neuropsychology. And it said that we humans interpret the world in stories, were not capable of thinking. In other terms, Dan stories, beginning, middle end, someone opened the door and then that's the thing fell down. Immediately. My mind will make the connection that film because they opened the door. That might be untrue. There might be some other reason why that fell down, but that is the way I will interpret it. Cause and effect. Cause and effect. We've talked about that. Alright. I will give you here in the course materials you'll see several different structure models. Yet again, there are so many models, but what I wanted to convey to you here is the most important one and there's the four-part structure which you find in all stories, in all music, in all the temporal arts. Then Vladimir props, morphology, his 31 steps. And then Joseph campus, 17 steps and please do study them. And when you write your story, you can use them. Getting a nod to fill in the blank. But justice as a guide posts to what kind of beats you need in your story. The writer, KM, KM Wieland, she says that there are writers before her. Her said as well that there are two kinds of scenes. You can have a scene, scene and the scene. And you can say it's seen as either an action scene or primarily a reaction and see, what happens in an action scene is that we have a goal or hero's goal. And she fights against an adversary force with our position in conflict. And that leads to an outcome which usually is a setback. 40 or in some way, shape or form. Or if it's a triumph, it's not a complete triumph. It might entail a cost that might entail a new problem. By the way, all the triumphs that your hero wins must come at a cost. If they are not interesting, every thing that the character gains should come at the cost and the cost should be increasingly higher. So you have a goal and you fight it out in opposition, and you reach a conclusion that hopefully brings, or here closer to the goal, the ultimate goal. But at a price, at a cost, maybe at a new problem or a new take on the problem, surfacing. Now, enter the sequel. This is where our characters react to an outcome. There are faced with a dilemma. Should we do this? Should we do that? If we do that, that will pay this price. If we will do this, we will pay this price what to do? And eventually they decide upon a way forward, the decision. Now they have a goal and they enter into opposition, into a conflict which will lead to new resolution, so forth. You have the goal, opposition, outcome, reaction. Lemma, decision, goal, opposition, outcome, reaction, dilemma, decision and so forth and so forth all the time. And this is the circle and movement that door characters are constantly, we are acting and we experienced a gap, some form from a gap between our ambition and the result. That gap has to be closed. What to do? We reassess, we regroup and re-plan, and then we enact that new plan. And what's the difference between this and the way that we act in our lives? Not right. And as I said before, the more you study storytelling, the more you realize that what we're studying really, it's not storytelling. We're studying life. And the more your stories are true to life. And then one more day are like life, the more interesting they will be because that is what we want. In Sweden, we call cinemas be yogurt off and be younger off comes from the Greek words BUN graphene. Graphene meaning show, and B, or bio, meaning life. So what is cinema does when it's good? It's not showing movies, showing life. Okay, I'm going to conclude th 14. Outro Common: And I was the first part in the series. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope that you have been given tools that you need to create stories that are compelling. Everything we've talked about in this first part of the series are tools and parameters that are common to all your characters. We are addressing your story from the helicopter perspective. Now, what we also need to do is to address your story from, from the ground, from the individual characters, from the perspective of the individual characters. And that is what we'll do in the second part of the series. If you choose not to follow along, I would say thank you so much for watching and I wish you the very best of luck in your future endeavors. Thank you.