Transcripts
1. Introduction Modus Operandi: Welcome to the third
and last part of this tri-part series
in screenwriting. In the first part
of this series, we talked about aspects that are common to all your characters. In the second part, we've
talked about aspects that are specific to each
individual character. And now in this part, we'll talk about what do you need to do to take
everything that we've talked about and
create a story from scratch onto the point of a
fully realized screenplay. Without much further ado. Let's rock and roll.
2. Chapter 1: Logline: Welcome to the third
part of this series. We're going to talk
about modus operandi. How do you write a
function script? In the previous parts
of this series, we talked about what
constitutes a good script. What parameters do
you need to have in place in order for
a script to work? Now, in the third and
last installment, we're going to talk about
how do you go about turning blank pieces of paper into
a functioning script? This part of the series is more open for
subjective discussion. The previous parts are
more or less objective. That's the way it is, for instance, that you need a conflict for
seemed to work. That is not my opinion. That's just the way it is. It's like if you play music and if you want to play C major, that is C, E, and G, and that's just the way it is. Now, what constitutes
a good music and what you like,
that's subjective. But the fact that C major is C, E, and G, that's a fact. And so basically all
of the aspects and parameters that I've been talking about in the
previous episodes. Those are facts. That's basically it. C major aspect of writing. If you're well. Now
when talking about how do you go about
creating a good script? Well, that's much
more subjective. And the only thing I
can do is of course, offer you my method. What works for me. And what I can tell you is
that my method is a method that to a large extent is something that
many writers use. Of course not exactly like this, but many writers progress
in this fashion. Then there are many
writers who don't. And what do you have to do, of course, is fine your way. What works for you
might be similar to the way I'm going to the process I'm going
to discuss here, or it might be something
completely different. Either way, I hope and
I think that you will find great value in taking part of my
method and this method. Regardless, if you decide to work accordingly or
if you find that. Another way is what suits you. Usually separate riders
into two categories. One is the plotters and
one is the Panzers. The plotters to which I belong are the ones
who plot ahead, who write outlines and starting from a logline which we're going to discuss shortly. And expanding that into
a functioning synopsis. Expanding that with
functioning treatment, and then into a script working from the nucleus
out until the specifics. The plotters, on the other hand, are those who sit down and write interior house days scene one. And then they write continuously
until they reached. And one famous cancer
is Stephen King. He starts with a situation and then he sits down to write. And he famously
said that he hates plots, he hates outlines. So obviously, that's
one way to go about it. I would like dough to interject and say that I
do think that Mr. King, they're brilliant writer
daddy is he has an outline. It's probably not written down. It's probably not very
specific or very detailed, but he does have an inkling
of where he's going. And I can prove
that by saying that I saw him once
during the seminar. And he talks about
writing The Shining. And he said as he was writing, he was growing apprehensive because he knew that a couple of days he was to write the scene that takes
place in room 237. And if you've seen
the film or read the book, you know what
I'm talking about? So what does that prove? What it proves that he
knew where he was going. Probably didn't have
it written down. Maybe he didn't know exactly
what's going to happen, but he had sort of an
idea where he was going. So that would be my
case for advocating, which of course, the way I feel it's the best
way to go about. And that is the planning way, starting from the nucleus, working out into the specifics. And that's the way we're
going to talk about here in this part of the series. This is the way, for instance, that Norwegian playwright
Henry Gibson worked. And he was a young playwrights
came to him and wanted advice if they didn't bring him an outline of the play
that we're working on. He just showed them out the door because it said it's impossible to write something
without an outline. So that's the way we're
going to talk about here. But at the same time, creativity is when
it's really working, is a, is a constant
dance between your conscious self and
your subconscious self. The Hungarian
creativity philosophy. Graham Wallace has
written a book called The Art of Thought, which I can recommend. And he says that every
creative process has four acts, are four stages. The first stage is what
he calls preparation. There's, for instance,
if you have a problem, for instance, writing a script, this a problem,
it's a challenge. You start to do research. You think about your story. You address all the aspects of storytelling that we've talked about in previous episodes. That's your preparation. And then we'll take you so far, maybe will take you all the way through
down most of the time. It won't. Most of the
time it will take you a part of the way, then you will be left with
questions unanswered. Were problems. Where, how do I bring him from
there and how do I create a resolution to
the sequence that really propels us into
the next sequence, you will have all these
different problems. What do you do when
you hit that wall? Then you enter the second
stage or creativity, which he calls incubation. That is, when you bang your
forehead against the wall, trying to solve the problems
and you can't do it. Well, then you leave
your office or the coffee shop
where we're working and you do something else? You play with your
kids or what have you, you're out with your
friends, you play sports. And suddenly you will experience standing in the shower
or buying a piece. As your local grocery store. Suddenly you realize
that that's the way. And that is the third
stage and creativity, which grain Wallace
calls illumination. That's the eureka
moment where you're like where you wake up in the middle of
night and got yes? Yes, yes. I don't know how many times I woken up in the middle
of night to realize during this or maybe
I haven't woken up still in dreaming. That's right. The first thing I
do in the morning is just write it down. Steven Spielberg
ear by his bedside. He has a notebook because he knows in that short
period of time just before falling asleep or in that short period of time
when you just are waking up, you're in-between
sleep and awake. That's the golden, golden hour. Golden moments where our
creativity is at its peak. So that's a good
discipline to have, to keep a notebook handy
because when those ideas come, you better catch up because
as you probably experienced, you might have this super idea. And then just one
minutes later it's gone, never to be found again. In a William Blake, the classic poet, he wrote
the poem Kublai Khan. And he had the poem in a dream, and he woke up and it was gone. So the poem is just, he says, a pale echo, what
he wants to grant. So when creativity hits you, you need to be
there and grab it. Then the arm, the
Sean, Fantastic compulsory of our bio
musicals like chess. He says that creativity is like a drag on that lives in a cave. And you need to sit
there by the cave. And when the dragon
rears its head, you want to be
able to ****** it. So you really need to pay
attention to when accounts, when it arrives and
then you need to be able to receive it. Okay, so that's the third part. Illumination then comes,
according to Graham Wallace, the fourth part, the fourth act, or create the creative process. And that is because
that verification, that is when you
try to verify if this thing that your subconscious
brought you is viable, is this a good idea or not? Most of the time,
it won't be good. Wholesale. It will be partly
good and where it might give you ideas
to something else. And then you return
in the cycle to the preparation phase where you start to consciously
work in the material. Or you ask yourself questions, and that is what creativity is. You ask yourself
questions to which there aren't any
correct answers. This is why creativity
is so hard, and this is why creativity
is so different from, for instance, math or physics. If you remember, in school
when you were doing math, if you can solve
the problem, you, you flip back and read what
the correct answer was. In creativity, there
are no correct answers. And that's what's so hard. You're asking
yourselves questions. You're trying to answer a
question as to which there isn't an answer where
there is no right answer. This is the thing about art. In art, there is no
right and wrong. If someone tells you
this right and wrong, they don't know what
they're talking about. There is no right and wrong. There is, however, good and bad. If you write in comedy, no one left, That's
a bad comedy. If a writer horror movie
and no-one's afraid, that's a bad horror movie. If we write a sad scene, knowing Christ,
it's a bad scene. However, no one
can tell you that you did the wrong choices
or the right choices. That is, of course, what
brings us to the creative act is that that is similar to
what's short, sharp or south. The French philosopher and the founder or existential
that's obsessed. That's the existential
angst that we all feel that we have to live our lives
both as the perpetrator, the while committing the
acts, and then afterwards, we are the ones judging
ourselves so that it's there. And this is especially
so for us at creatives. As soon as you embark
on a creative endeavor, you are both being the
creator and the judge. Time, continuously
asking yourself questions and then coming
back to Greenwald, a cycle you are working on, on, on the problems at hand with this new information that your subconscious
brought you. And then eventually
you will hit a wall. You will bang your forehead
bloody against the wall, and then you will do
something else for awhile. And that is of course
the incubation phase. And then which eventually with bringing a
new illumination, which will bring a new
verification phase and so forth until you've
think that you're done. So a good creative process is your conscious self and your subconscious self
working in tandem. If it's only a subconscious, then it's become chaos. If it's only the conscious
self, then it becomes a, a, a, a dead product
of the mind. So you need both, both parts. Stephen King, he
says that he wants the boys in the basement to do the work and the
voice in the basement. Of course, this is a metaphor
for two subconscious. You can look at it this way. You're working on
the restaurant. As a busboy. You've taking orders from
the different tables. Then you go into the kitchen and you
don't prepare the meal. So you write down the
orders and you put it on the spike for all the people
in the kitchen to see. And then they prepared a meal. And when they're done, they
probably ring a bell dinging. And then you go on and say, oh, there's two fish card, blah, blah, blah, and you
take it out to the guests. And that is what
you do when you are creative and when
you are working in tandem with your
subconscious self, you're giving orders to
your subconscious self. You're saying, work on this, find a solution to this. And what you need to do
is to trust the process. And because I can guarantee
you from my own experience, my subconscious has always
risen to the challenge. My subconscious has always
come up with an answer. Might take some time sometimes, but as always, always, always come forth and
deliver unanswered. What I would advise
you to do when you're writing is to keep maybe a page of an Excel sheet or a Word
document or what have you, where you write
down the questions, the best way to solve a problem. This might sound
counter-intuitive, is to actually write
down the problems. Because what you tend to do, we tend to do as human beings, we tend to, when
we have a problem, start trying to find
solutions right away. This is much better if you
just write down the problem. For instance, I don't have
the ending to the story or I want to ending to
involve a double Chase. I want them to
chase him while at the same time to police are chasing the killers
or what have you. I don't know how to do
that. Write that down. I mean, don't just
write that down. Because what happens when
you write stuff down is that you send that signal
to your subconscious. And I don't know how this works. But what I think is that when
you write something down, you're sending a signal to your subconscious that
this is important, is the same thing if you want to memorize something,
write it down. Because that mere act of
physically writing it down will the mortar Oracle aspect of it will send a signal to your subconscious
that this is important. We need to remember this. So write down your questions
and then I promise you that your subconscious
will rise to the challenge, may take some time,
or sometimes it just gets delivered fast. But the boys in the basement
or girls in the basement, if you will, will deliver. I'm, John has written a wonderful book called creativity as short
and cheerful guide. And he also has a lecture
which you can find on YouTube. He says that he thinks there are five parameters to creativity. And it's time, time, space, humor and confidence. Time it takes time. It takes much more time than you think. Especially at the beginning
if anonymous writer, it takes much more time than you think to create something
that's functioning. It will speed in. Creating stuff will increase
the more you're right. But still it takes time. You can't rush art as they say. Secondly, time you have to a lot specific period
of time and space. You have a specific
space and there needs to be a time and space where no one can disturb you. I read somewhere that if
you're working hard on the problem which requires
a lot of mental effort, and someone just pops in their head and ask
you a question. It might take you 15 minutes
to get back to speed. So you need to make sure that no one can can reach
you during this time, whether it just be 30
minutes or ideally, I'd say one to two hours is a good is a good
amount of time. I would argue that no more than three
to four hours a day. Most professional writers
don't write more than that. For instance, Stephen
King, he writes about 3.5 hours a day. And of course he's one of the most
successful writers alive. I think he knows what
he's talking about because it's hard, you know, creating something out
of nothing. It's hard. It's really, really hard. It's mentally taxing. It's lovely and it's fun. It's exciting, but it's hard. That's the reason why many, most writers have a hard
time starting writing. Because that's that
threshold, that stuff. Initial resistance to
sitting down and writing. Because we know
that it's so hard. It's so hard, it's fun. But it's so hard that you can help yourself
by deciding today, I'm going to write
between 23 PM PM. I start at 3PM, I stop. This is super important that
you decide on writing times. You set a deadline. And the reason for this is
that if you want to kids, I mean kids or children or the most creative
beings alive, right? We have never been as creative
as when we were kids. And what are we trying to do as adults and engaging and
creative activities? We're trying to regain that childlike sense of wonder which we had
when we were kids, you know, Pablo Picasso. He said that it took me 16 years to learn to
paint like Matisse. And it took me 60 years to
learn to paint like a child. Of course, still having all the positive qualities
when the adult being punctual, being a hard worker and having
work ethic and discipline. So we're not throwing
that out the window. We're keeping that by adding
the childlike sense of wonder that we all had as children where
everything was possible. So we want that, that adult
self and our child-like self work in tandem. So a lot of time and
space because if you, if you have children and you
leave your children to play, you say you can
play all the way. And I'm going to pick you
up in above them one hour. And they are a super creative if they get
along with other kids. But if you were to
say to your children, play with his kids and I don
t know when I'll be back. Maybe I'll be back in two days. Maybe I'll come
back in two weeks. The children will
be really afraid. They won't play it all. And your creative self, your subconscious
is like a child. This your inner child. And you need to tell
your inner child. Today, we're going
to work two hours. So you need to mentally
prepare and sum up the mental and
creative energy you need to work for two hours. After two hours we're done. So you don't need to have more
energy and store for that. Then you'll create yourself. Oh, great, Wonderful. Okay, I know this I can do. If you tell you recreate
the stuff we're going to start writing now and we'll end. I don't know where you
will not be created. And probably you have felt this. This is one of the reasons why I feel people experienced writers block because they haven't
set The time limit. What happens is your
subconscious self starts to defend itself by, well, I don't know how much
energy sheets expanded here, so I better save it. So a better wait until
I start working. So it might sound
counter-intuitive, but the more the firmer a
deadline you said, I will stop. By this hour, I will stop working the more
creative you will be. And what I also
would advise you, try not to write eight hours every Sunday and then
nothing in-between. It's much better if you
write 30 minutes a day. You say, maybe you
hold down a job, maybe have a family. You don't have a lot of time. But I guarantee that even if you work a full-time
job and have a family, you can get at least half
an hour or one hour a day. But you have to let
go of something else. Maybe you have to let go
being on social media or watching soap operas
or what have you. But you can dedicate one
hour a day to writing. And what happens when
you write daily, whether it's just
what 30 minutes is that you tell by
that very action, you tell your subconscious, this is important to me. This is something that
we need to focus on. And then your
subconscious, well, as grand Wallace
talks about with start to homologues, okay? Okay, this is apparently
important then your boys in the basement to use the words of Stephen King will start
to work alongside. You have, you will
have so much for free if you keep
writing every day, whether it just be 30 minutes, saying things like exercise, it's much better than you
exercise 15 minutes a day, then three hours every Sunday
and nothing in-between. Kirby pockets, the great
American baseball player, he said that it's you have to do with everyday,
have to do it every day. Okay. So time and space,
a lot of time and space where no one
can disturb you. Turn off the phone and force yourself to sit
in the blank paper. Then talks about confidence. You need to be confident
in the process. We've talked about that if you post your subconscious
questions, thrust the process, trust that your subconscious will
rise to the challenge. And as I mentioned, every time I've written
down a question, my subconscious have answered
and yours will as well. Lastly, junk, this
is fifth is humor. And that's super important. It's very important that we approach the creative process. Not dead seriously,
but with a sense of, a sense of wonder. Like a child has a sense of humor that at the
end of the day, this is not a cure for cancer. We need to be really
serious about what we do. Because if we want to
take other people's time, then we need to treat that
with the utmost respect. But at the same time,
it's just rock and roll. We need As we need our adult self to work in
Tana without child-like self, we need to treat what are we doing with the utmost respect? And at the same time, hey, it's just rock and roll. Because if it's just
only a rock and roll, then it want them
onto something. If it's only dead
serious, it will be dead. So you need both. And find the right balance
is the same thing. When, when other creative
aspects that I mean, the most important
creative aspect of being human is of course, procreation. There are so many
examples of couples trying to get a baby and
they just won't happen. And trying all these
different, different methods. And in the end, they
give up and they adopt, and as soon as they adopt,
she becomes pregnant. And why is that? Because now they're having sex
for the fun of it, not just in order
to get pregnant. And it's the same
thing being created, even regardless of how serious you are or maybe you
need to make money of this. You need to treat it
with a sense of humor, otherwise, it will be dead. Okay? So when you create
with this method, I'm going to talk to her,
talk you through here. We have five acts to
this creative process. It starts with a logline. Creating a logline. Then you create a synopsis. Then you create a script
in prose or prose script. Then we have the script. I'm talking now, writing
a feature film scripts. And then the fifth act, which is the rewriting. What is a logline? Well, logline is
traditionally it's a statement of 25 words or less, which gives us the
nucleus of your story. It can be shorter
if, for instance, James Cameron's pitch to Fox when he wants
to make Titanic, was Romeo and Juliet
on board the Titanic? And that pretty much sums it up. What you need and
want a long line to accomplish is to create
a sense of wanting more. Create a sense of, I want to see the movie or I want
to read the script. It's first and foremost, function is a selling tool. But at the same time, it's also very
important creative tool because this logline will
serve as your compass. And hindering you
from veering away from what is the nucleus
of your story that, that's, that's the center, the epicenter of the story. Spielberg says that
he wants to be able to hold the film in his hand, and that is the logline. For instance, he asked
Michael Creighton, writer of Jurassic
Park and he said, It's a theme park for dinosaurs. That's it. That's the concept
for Jurassic Park, a theme park for dinosaurs. The pitch for ALT on the first
movie was jaws in space. Since bed, okay, we get
it. What could it be? The pitch for,
for, for instance, Star Wars episode
for a New Hope? Well, let's look at it this way. What kind of questions
could you ask yourself that would give you the good basis for
a good logline? Well, of course, all the aspects that we
talked about previously in this series are aspects
of parameters is you would want to address in
creating your logline. And to summarize, you would
start with your theme. What's the, what does the story have to say
about the human condition, which you think is relevant
and important to share. What's the concept? What's the big
problem in the store? What's the, what's the
paramount fight, the struggle. In this story, I'm between which opponents are two worlds. If you remember, we talked
about worlds that you have two or three physical worlds
and you have four teams. For instance, if you take
Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl, the first parts of
the Caribbean movie. You see we have 23
physical worlds and the first world
is Port Elizabeth. That's the word belonging
to the British crown. And then we have the c,
belonging to the pirates. And then we have the cave
belonging to the dead pirates. We also have toward UGA, which is the opposite, the mirror opposite of Port Elizabeth because that's
the capital, the pirates. So we have these three or four could you
say fiscal words? Then we have four teams. We have the upper and we
have the ordinary world, and we have the special world, and we have the upper and lower
register of these worlds. And starting with ordinary
world upper part, that's important, Elizabeth. That's Elizabeth's
father, That's the officers and the
commanders in Port Elizabeth, the lower part of
Port Elizabeth. That's Will and Elizabeth. Moving on to the special world, the upper part is the ghost pirates led
by Captain Barbosa. The lower part is
Captain Jack Sparrow and the non dead pirates. These are the four teams that
will clash in the story. So this is super-helpful
when trying to create a good logline that you first decide what's my
theme was the concept. What's the, what's
the big struggle? What objects are they? Everyone trying to get? And how are the worlds and
the teams distributed? That will give you good map, so to speak, of your
story, of your concept. Then trying to decipher what are my main protagonists,
main characters here. For instance, like product, we have Barbosa, Jack Sparrow, will Elizabeth,
Elizabeth's father, and Commander Jack
and Warrington. There are several
other characters, but these are the most
important players. And you want, for
these four teams, you want when you create
a logline and just have maybe a basic idea what the story is trying to come up as soon as possible with at least one major character in each quadrant of your story. Okay? Next question is that you
want to answer is one, what is the big initial
problem for the story? And often lead this, of course, is displayed to
the audience in the prologue. For instance, in Jurassic Park. The big initial problem
is that at Eastland loop, or they are starting to lose
control over the dinosaurs. That's a big problem. No one knows about this yet, except those working
at these lung nobler. That is the big
initial problem which will hit our
protagonist later on. Now, second question is, what's the individual
initial problem for the protagonist? Yet again, taking
Jurassic Park has referenced the initial problem for our hero archaeologists, is that they lack funding
for their research. Now enter the big problem into the world of
our protagonist. And that is in Jurassic Park
where the helicopter lands. And Dr. Hammond comes to them with a bottle of
champagne and he says that he will finance the
research if they asked, come with him to Jurassic Park. Another question
to ask yourself, how does the
hierarchy look like? Who's on top of this world and who is at
the bottom of this world, which mentor assists
your protagonist from their original world
into the adventure. For instance, in Jurassic Park, Hammond serves at this
part of the story. He serves as the
mentor because he, he is the one who makes our protagonists leave
their original world and travel to the special order. The mentor here needn't
be the mentor later on, he or she can be an
adversary later on. For instance, in
the movie Aliens. The mentor that
helps Ripley leave her ordinary world and leave for the adventure
in the special word. Burke, who later turns out to be their biggest
human adversary. So the mentor he is the one
that is, at this point, point of the story helps our protagonist leave his
or her original world. Another question to
ask yourself is, why does the protagonists have no other choice but to
leave her original world? And the part for the adventure, why is staying no
longer an option? For instance, take aliens? Because Ripley
experiences nightmares. And she knows that unless she dares to face
these creatures again, she will suffer nightmares
for the rest of her life. She has no option but to
leave for the adventure. In Jurassic Park. Our hero archaeologists know that if they don't
accept Hamlin's offer, they will never
will never be able to continue their
research again. They need that money and
they live for their work. So that having said, they need to accept
the adventure. Another question to
ask yourself is, what is the time pressure? What's the deadline? We talked about earlier? We talked about that it's
so important that you have a deadline and keep that
as tight as possible. So you always want your protagonist to be caught between a rock
and a hard place. He or she has to win, has to defeat the drag on the opponent before
the deadline, after which everything is lost. And what you want the logline to do is to create the
promise of danger, of conflict, of excitement. When you hear a good
logline and we feel that that's something
I want to read, that something I want to watch. Another good way in creating a logline is to
decide is through movie history book is through story that you can
use as reference. Reference. We talked
about that earlier. It's really, really
helpful to you when you write and especially
when you pitch your story. When you're trying to get
people to read your script and invest in your film
and work on your film. A reference is so
good because it, it just, a picture tells
more than thousand words. And so a good reference, it's really helpful
as a selling tool, but also a creative tool because it will, with like a compass, it will keep you in line with the tonality of the story
you're trying to create. Now, you can have yourself even more by deciding
on the backstory. The backstory, of
course, you can write novel after novel,
treating the backstory. But there are three
important aspects that you need to decide upon. And there are three
different points in time for the backstory and the first part of the
backstories, the ancient time. And then we have the past-time. And then we have what
happened just recently, just before we entered
the story world. The ancient times, that is
where the protagonist and, or the ancestors of the
protagonist made the big mistake. They made that what Aristotle
called a harmonica, the sin, that mistake. We've talked about them, we're
talking about characters. So important what the story is, in essence is your character, your main character is
trying to right a wrong. She or he has to make amends for a sin and the sin doesn't need to
be done something bad. It's just they made a
mistake or they have a wrong understanding of how
the world works in some way. And that has to be mitigated, that it has to be transformed
into something else. And that mistake was made
in the ancient time. In ancient time doesn't mean
it has to be 1000 years ago. It can be two weeks ago. That was the start of the story, so to speak, started at the
beginning of the backstory. And you can see the story as the last part of the backstory. For instance, the Iliad by
Homer depicts the Trojan War. The Trojan War took ten years, but the Iliad only
depicts the last year. So the first nine years, and of course, Paris,
Paris stealing Helena. Before that. That's all
part of the backstory. And the story of The Iliad is just the last part of this
entire chain of events, and that's what you want
for your story as well. The richer backstory you create, the more powerful
your story will be. The richer backstory you
create, the more it, more fun and easier will it become for you to
write your story? Because your story is a
consequence of the backstory. In the ancient time. And then he sent home
can mean two weeks ago or it can mean a
thousand years ago. Your character or
your characters ancestors made a mistake. And that mistake can be
your characters upbringing. He or she was brought
up in a culture which US historic health field is not optimal in living
a successful life. That can be the mistake. Alright, second part
is the ancient times. That is when the conflict. Was laid dormant, is
waiting to be resurrected, which happened just recently. What happens just before
the curtain rises or just when the curtain rises is that
the dragon wakes up again. The conflict resurfaces again. By some, some, some catalyst, makes the conflict
come alive again. For instance, if we
take an example here, if we're looking at
a Lord of the Rings, you can say that if we start
with the ancient times, the first part of the backstory, you can say that insular fought with his army
against Sauron and one, and he got sovereigns ring. And he was about to throw it into the fires of Mount Doom, but it chose to not do it. That was his sin,
that was his mistake. There was this
hemianopsia, which every, all the characters in
these three books, they have to amend 40
mistake that is alerted now. And then he lost the ring. So that was what happened
in ancient times. Now, moving on to
the past tense, where the conflict
fell into decline and what happened
when he lost a ring. It laid dormant for a
long period of time, and then the creature
named go lump found it. And eventually go limb lost his ring to a creature
from the Shire, a Hobbit named Bilbo. He kept it for a long time
and now just recently. And this is what kicks off. The entire story is
that golem has been captured by the Orcs and
the Orcs are torturing him. And they found out that the ring is somewhere
in the Shire. And the Black
Riders, as we speak, or riding at full speed, speed towards the Shire. This setup backstory is the ammunition that
fires the entire saga. The Lord of Rings. So you see the richer backstory you can create and the more
specific answers you can give to these questions. What sin her Marcia was
committed in ancient times? And how was that conflict? How is that laying dormant
in the ancient times, in the past tense. And then how was that
dragon that conflict? How did that resurface through
the inciting incident? Just before the curtain rose or just when
the cardinal rose. Just a note on
inciting incident. If you read screenwriting books, you will see the term
inciting incident kicked off, kicked around a lot. And most of them
talk about inciting incident acid as if it were
the call to adventure. And it isn't. The inciting incident is, at least in my definition, is what happened just
before the curtain rises. When the curtain rises, which kicks off
the entire story. The call to adventure is when this big problem for the store universe hits
our main character. For instance, in Lord of the Rings, the
inciting incident. That's the Orcs
torture and Golem. And he disclosing the
whereabouts of the ring. That doesn't hit
Frodo immediately. It just later on, when Gandalf finds out
that they're coming, you need to take the ring Frodo. You need to take
it to Rivendell, where Aragorn will be waiting first, going
to meet him at brea. That's the call to adventure. That is when what happened at the inciting incident
hits our protagonist. Alright, summing up, so
the question I posed, How could a good logline for Star Wars episode for
a New Hope sound like, well, maybe it could be
something like this. In a galaxy far, far away. An orphan farm boy,
Luke Skywalker, has to follow his uncle, the Jedi knights,
Obi-Wan Kenobi, in order to save Princess
Leah from the clutches of Darth Vader before he
dominates the entire galaxy. Maybe something like that. And that will give
us the essence of the struggle and the
conflict and the mission. For the protagonist
and Star Wars. Of course, there's tons of things here that we
haven't mentioned. We haven't mentioned
C3PO or R2D2 or solo or tobacco or
Jabba the Hutt or, or what have you, but that's just a nucleus. A good logline should, should involve the through line. What is the through
line of the story? What is, what's the
super objective? We talked about characters,
we've talked about what's the character
is super objective. What is he or she trying to accomplish throughout the story? And what looks coworker
is trying to accomplish. And we talked about objectives have as layers on an engine. And he has one objective
here is that the big revolves around
the big problem in the story universe that's
defeating Darth Vader. That's, that's his objective in relationship to
the big problem. His personal objective
is to become a pilot, a hero pilot. And his inner objective, or which he isn't aware
in the beginn
3. Chapter 2: Synopsis: Welcome to Chapter
two, synopsis. What is the synopsis? The synopsis is a
one-page description or what happens in your story. And to write a
synopsis is to write the story because the
story isn't your script. The story is your
synopsis, which is an ofs. This Is Your Story. The script is the physical
enactment of your story. You can look at it this way. In military. In the military you had three different levels
of decision-making. You have the you have
the strategic level, and then you have
the tactical level. You have the operative level. So the strategic decision is, for instance, should we
in Sweden invade Norway? Answer of course is yes because all the oil and we want that. Okay. That's the
strategic question. Next, level of decision
is the tactic one. Should we attack Oslo first
or should we take Bergen? Where should we enter? And having decided upon that, said, well, we will
start in Norway. We will anther occupancy
again and then move up there to the
House of Parliament. Next level of
decision-making, of course, is the operative.
Operational them. How exactly where this is the
feet on the ground level, what actual steps are
physically be made. And bring in this metaphor
home into writing. You can see that the strategic level here in writing,
That's the logline. That's the essence.
Should we wait Norway? Yes. Star Wars about
Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi trying
to save princes layer before Darth Vader at
takes over an entire galaxy. That's the strategic level. That is sort of if you're on an airplane
looking down on a country, that, that's that
level of decision. Next level decision, that's
the helicopter perspective. Now as a tactical level. And that's the synopsis. That's not the
feet on the ground level because that's a script. So this is when someone is
referring to your movie, that is the synopsis. And Hitchcock, he says that what a synopsis
is, of course, a one fools gap of
paper and waffles gap. That's one page. He says that when your
ideal audience is referring to a friend
or your movie is about, this is what you'll say. And what do you want this ideal audience
to tell her friend? That makes her friend want to run to the cinema and
watch your movie. That should be your synopsis. Another way of looking at a
synopsis is to picture this. You're sitting in a bar.
It's a crowded bar. And you're talking
to a friend or a stranger and you telling
him or her the story. And you only have 60
seconds to tell the story. This entire story, you're
only have 60 seconds. What do you say? In order to convey
this entire story? Not done defeat
the little level, feet on the ground level, but on the helicopter
perspective level, what would you tell them that would make them feel excited? Understand the story completely, and excited about seeing it. A third way of looking at
synopsis is to look at it as, as a folk tale,
it's a fairy tale. All the fairy tales, most fairy tales have
very little dialogue, is very spares, and the action is usually from a
helicopter perspective. Something is not in detail
exactly what happened. And the length of a folk tale
could be about one page. Of course they are
longer ones, but it's a good reference
point to have. Synopsis should never
include dialogue. It's all about
fiscally the action. For instance, if we take the beginning of Little
Red Riding Hood, it goes something like this. Once upon a time, there was a little girl
living in a house? Yes. Cited big forest and her name
was Little Red Riding Hood. One day, her mother told
her to bring her basket to her grandmother
who was living in a cabin inside the words. But you're warned her
against talking to the wolf. Now, Little Red Riding Hood started walking
into the forest and meets with the Wolf who asks,
or where are you going? And Little Red
Riding Hood replies, I'm going to my
grandmother. Knowing this. The wolf runs ahead
and kills grandmother, eats her, and then
dresses like grandmother. Now, Little Red Riding Hood enters the cabinet
and opposite door. So you see this? I had one line there, but basically there
are no lines here. Are very few lines of dialogue
is just the basic story. What you want in a good story, as you can find in all
the good fairy tales, is that there's no information, there is redundant, no events or a superfluous everything
that is there needs to be there and
nothing is missing. Nothing is redundant,
nothing is missing. The events occur
in perfect order. And they are harmonious
relationship to one another, and that is what you
want for your stories. I would advise you. Study fairy tales. Read the fairy tales
are the Brothers Grimm. And what have you. And see how perfectly they are constructed
because they had been centrifuged throughout the
centuries, if not millennia. So now they are,
they are perfect. They only contain
what they need to contain in the perfect order, within the perfect properties in relationship to one another. And that is what you
want for your synopsis. So think of it as
you're pitching some the story to
someone in a bar, you only have six seconds. You're writing a fairy tale, and you only have one page. Your ideal audience is referring
your movie to a friend. What do you want her to say? That is a good way of
looking at your synopsis. Now, in creating this object, you start with the logline. Now we create the log
none and your pitch, you log on, you have tested it, You have worked on
it, you have polished it to a point where we feel
this is really interesting. And you should always
reach a point where you feel that even if I
had written this, I would feel like watching it. And this is a good technique
which I would advise you to do is throughout the
entire creative process. Imagine that someone you
hate had written this. Would you still
want to go see it? If the answer is yes, then you know, you're on to something. But if you feel ugly, the fear that suits the mother, well, then, you know, then you need to work
on it or drop it. Okay. So you need to create something which would make you feel that I want to see this even if I were
not the creator? Because that is of course, how the audience will watch you, your work, as David
Fincher says, filmmaking. And that's of course the same
thing in all art forms is trying to make strangers feel
something at the same time. Nodule family and friends,
but strangers who, whom you've never met, you try to make them feel
something at the same time. Okay. So assuming now you have a working,
functioning logline. Now we're turning to expand this to a synopsis, a one-pager. And of course, what kind of questions do you ask herself
in order to do it as well? We've talked about, of course, you address all the aspects and parameters which we
had talked about in this series and the questions I asked you to post yourself
in the previous chapter. But you can also add these questions in order
to create a good story. Yet again, the synopsis is
the story and the script, which we'll talk
about later on as the fiscal enactment
of the story. A very good question
to ask yourself, is this transformation? Transformation is the story. The bigger change you
have in the story, the more interesting
your story will become, the bigger change
or having a scene, the more interesting this will become and what is changed? Well, change is the
discrepancy between the end at the beginning and the
larger the discrepancy between it and the beginning of the more interesting it is. The advantage of starting with transformation is that you know where to start and
you know where to end. And that is I'd
say half the work. You've done, half the work if you know where
to start and end. And then the story is, how do you move your characters from the
beginning to the end. But that is so much
easier than trying to write a story and not knowing
where it's going to end. And this is why I believe so many people hit
writer's block because the starting writing something
and then the reach and usually start is really easy and you don't know the words
are flowing on the page. And then they stop. Why is this? Because they have no clue
where they're going. It's the same thing that
when you're on a vacation, you don't go to
the travel agency and say I want to
travel somewhere. You say I want to travel to Athens and we're gonna go
to Santorini in the summer. And I'm starting in Stockholm
and I'm going to Santorini, the way to get there. Well, that's the job
of the travel agency. But you know your destination and you know your
starting point, and that's half of the job. So starting with transformation
and with an interesting, exciting transformation, most of your heavy
lifting is done. And transformation has
different layers and aspects. Of course, the first one is talking about the big problem, the big story in the story universe and moved to take Star Wars is an example. Of course, the big
transformation is the rebels versus at Empire in this galaxy,
who's going to win? That's the big story, the big transformation
in the beginning. Or Vader is dominating its, He has all but conquered
the entire galaxy. Then he's lost. Deaf star is blown to
pieces and Darth Vader is just flung out into space
as a huge transformation. Next one is the problem
for the protagonist. How does that transform? In the beginning
of Luke Skywalker, he is a farm boy. He wants to become a pilot,
which seems unlikely. And in the end,
he is the pilots, fighter pilot and a hero at that He's the one
who saves the day. That's a huge transformation. His inner problem is that He's immature and needs
to become a DJ diet, which is not aware, aware
of in the beginning. But he needs to do that. And the beginning is immature. And in the end, he is somewhat
a Jedi in the sense that he flips his sights open
and thrust his intuition. He uses the force as Obi-Wan
Kenobi admonishes him to do, and thus saves the day. And then you have these
three levels of the story. The big problem, the
protagonist, personal problem, and the inner problem, the thematic problem, have
huge transformations. And this is one of the
main reasons why it, Star Wars, this
movie speaks to us. Wait, engages us, as
in all good stories. The less change you have, the less interest you will
get from the audience, the bigger of a change you have on as many layers as
possible in the story. The more interesting
historical account. Another layer is the,
the, the relationships. Looking at Star Wars yet again, you'll see they meet Han Solo and they employing
to become a pilot. They don't necessarily
like him because he's quite a moral and
a moral character. I mean, he, he is a smuggler, is a criminal of sorts. And in the end, towards the end of the lesson
down, he abandons them. And the less than
phi for themselves, but in the very end, he redeemed themselves and come back in and saves the day. So there's a huge transformation in Luke's relationship to Han Solo and of course, with other characters as well. So the greater
transformations you have as many layers as possible, the more interesting
historical account. And when you know your, your transformation, you know your starting point and
you know your destination. And that's the most
important point and I'll talk about that now. One other key aspects of
storytelling and writing a good story is knowing the destination that
talks about that. When you know the
end of your story. You know the nucleus
of your story, because the end of the
story is the story. Everything in a good story
points towards the end. That's where it's going to lead. It's like an, a good joke. Everything in a good joke
builds up to the punchline. In a good joke, There's
nothing that doesn't build up, doesn't lead to the punchline is the same thing in good story. Everything in a good story
builds towards the climax, points towards the climax. We talked about that when we
talked about the four Cs are plotting that it's
taught by coherence. All roads lead to Rome. And all roads in your
script needs to lead to the climax and need to effect and point
towards the climax. When you know your end, you basically know half
of your story at least. And then it comes easy part of, or at least easier
part of deciding on all the different stations in-between and then beginning. But when you know the
beginning of the end, most of the heavy
lifting is done. And the question to ask yourself and coming
up with ending is, how does the story, and
that's your protagonist win? Or does he or she loose? And why? If the protagonist
wins in the end, why can he or she has solved the problem which she
initially couldn't solve. What did she lack
in the beginning? What kind of insights, skills, contexts,
experiences, inflammation, the Allies did she
lack in the beginning, which made it impossible for
her to solve the problem, which after gaining
access to these benefits, made it possible
for her to women. Then, for instance, if
you take Kung Fu Panda, you start with a fat
untrained pool ping, the panda bear,
who has to defend his village against
the fierce fighter, the Snow Leopard Tyler. And of course, it's impossible for him in
the beginning to do so, but in the end, he succeeds. And why does he do that? Well, at bad is the
theme of the story. Because if you remember, a theme is a statement on why the protagonists
succeeds or fails to succeed in the end of the story where he or she would have
failed in the beginning. What's the trend in their
transformation that is needed for your protagonist in
order to win the day, in order to bring about
the outer transformation. That's what all good
stories are about. As Einstein says,
no problem can be solved at the level at
which it was created. Your hero in the beginning
cannot solve the problem. The problem is impossible
to solve for your hero. Being who she is. She needs to transform
into something bigger or better in order
to solve the problem. And that is what the story is. Your story is a series of tests
and trials and hardships, triumphs and tragedies that
makes your hair or evolve into a person that can
solve the problem, which is you couldn't
in the beginning. So that is your theme. Your theme is the
discrepancy between your hero at the beginning and you're here,
we're at the end. And bringing talking
about Star Wars. You can see why can Luke
Skywalker solve the problem, which initially
couldn't, because now he's a Jedi or at
least partly a Jedi. Whereas in the beginning
he was just a, a insecure, an immature
farm boy. Okay. You'll also find it so
much easier to answer the question how the story will end if you address
the backstory. I talked about this in
the previous chapter. We talked about there are
three levels to the backstory. What happened in
the ancient time, what happened in the past tense and what happened just recently? What happened in
the ancient time in ancient time can
be two weeks ago. It doesn't have to be
a thousand years ago. That is where your protagonist or his ancestors made a mistake, committed a sin,
committed the harmonica, which now has to be amended. And when you know that what
they have to atone for, then you know how this will end. Because what you
could see a story is basically the
backstory backwards. So you start with
inciting incident, which is the end
of the backstory. And then this story works itself backwards
through the pastors to, back to the very point where
the harmonica was committed. For instance, if you
take Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings, The entire process,
not the books, but the process to which the
books are just the end of, started when insular wondering and didn't throw it
into Mount Doom. That's when the process starts. The entire trilogy is
just in the last 10%. Or what have you of that
entire process from, from the committing of the original sin
until amending it. When Frodo, in the undoes
what Isabel couldn't, throwing the ring into the
lake of fire in Mount Doom. And as I talked about
in previous chapter, if you take the Iliad by Homer, which depicts the Trojan War, the Trojan War was ten
years and before that, you had the summoning
of the forces F, after the fact that Paris had stolen Helena and
taken her to Troy. But Iliad in itself, the book or the poems, epic poem, starts
in the last year. Last 10% of the entire process. And that is what you
want for a good story. You have this
entire process that started here with original sin. And the story has to fix up the last part of
that entire process. So for instance,
in Lord of Rings, The story is working yourself
back to mount Mordor. Mount Doom in
Mordor where Frodo, the ancestor is older, has to amend the mistake that, but we're committed
in then they do so. And also you can see Star Wars, the first trilogy and
Return of the Jedi. It ends with the Skywalker's
saving his father, doing what his father could not. And that's why Darth Vader says to him and down
when he's dying, that you have saved me. In every way a
human can be saved. Because it was moving back, so to speak, in the
backstory until the point of the original sin. So that's a very good
way to find your ending. To start. This process are which your
story is just to ending. Where did that start? What's
the original sin? What? That has to be amended, and that is the
climax of your story, then your entire process, it brought full circle. Another important aspect to consider when you're
creating your story is, and we talked about that in the very beginning
of this series when we talk about theme, is to use Hegel's
dialectic approach. And as Aristotle, the classic. Philosopher, he
states in his book, The Nicomachean Ethics is that a virtue is not the
opposite of advice. That virtue is a middle
point between two vices. For instance, generosity is not the opposite
of being a miser. They're being generous is the middle point between my
cert and the spendthrift. Spend three, or you could say, is a true opposite
of being a miser. So every, every virtue is the balance point
between two vices. We all know if we take a, a virtue too far,
it becomes advice. So it's a balanced point. That means when we create a
story as we talked about, when we talk about theme, is that in the first
part of your story, your protagonist tries to solve his or her problem in a
way that's not optimal. And this is your
first anti-thesis. Because Hugo says that we
move from a fierce thesis, anti-thesis and ends
and the synthesis. So your thesis talking to, with, with Hegel's nomenclature
is the first mistake. That's the first wrong way. Your protagonist is trying to bring about a solution
to the problem. Of course, eventually
this fails. They might experience
initial success, but eventually it fails and that this usually fails at the
midpoint of the story. Your protagonist realizes
that this is not working. I have to change my,
my modus operandi. My method of trying
to solve the problem. This new way, of course, is not the virtue,
it's the opposite. So it's new Vice, which is the opposite
of the first one. That might prove
initially successful. But eventually that
will fail as well. And that will usually fail somewhere around a three-quarter
mark of your story. And this is where the
moment of darkness appears. This is where the
moment is that all is lost and that always happens
in a story around it. Three-quarter mark. This is, if you,
if it's a rom com, this is the moment where the hero tells her
the heroin that yeah, I started dating you
because of the money, but then it became true
feelings, bloody, bloody blah. And then they separate, and
then they go separate ways in what's called the period
of desolation, the abyss. And this is the part of
the story where the hero has a hard time finding
his or her way forward. I tried that and
that didn't work. Then I tried its opposite. And that didn't work either. It's hopeless. By some, for some reason
they find the correct way, which is to balance point
between the two biases. That's the synthesis. And then they
employed a synthesis. There are tests that in the final fight against the
opponent, the adversary, and they went, if it's
a positive ending, if it's not possible,
they don't find it or they employed
or wrong method. As we talked about
when we talked about theme that has to
be true to you. It has to really be true
that you really believe that this is the correct way
to live successfully, or at least well in this world, is to employ this
modus operandi, and that becomes your theme. You want to start your character
using a monster brownie. That's wrong or at
least not optimal. And after finding out that this doesn't work usually
around the midpoint, he or she turns to its opposite. And after finding maybe
some initial success, that eventually fails as well. Now your hair is lost. I tried everything
and nothing works. Eventually finding out that, aha, I can use the
balanced point. There's rid of virtuous. And employing that method. And the final fight against
adversity he or she wins. If it's story with
a positive value. Another way to
approach your story, and we talked about this before, is to address it as a chain, as a sequence of
cause and effect. What the audience is
constantly looking for new story is cause and
effect that happened. As a result of that. This happened, and
as a result of that, that had to happen. Any event or beat
that is not part of this chain of cause and effect has to be emitted because that's
not part of your story. Your story is The chain
of cause and effect. And a really good
way to find out if an event is part of
the story or not as part of this is
to work backwards. Francis Ford Coppola, he says that You write a
script forwards, but you rewrite backwards. So I would argue that you could write
it backwards as well. But when you have a story and you have all the
events or the scenes, the start with and
then ask yourself, what led to this? Moving back to that event. And then they ask yourself, what led to this? Because working backwards
makes it easier for you to see if something
is redundant or not. If it's really vital to the
chain of cause and effect. And if you can remove an event, a beat, and still make the story function
from beginning to end. You need to remove that
because then it is redundant. And everything that is redundant will reduce the
impact of your story. David Fincher says
that extra seen, no story can afford it. If you have an entire
scene that is redundant, it will not only
be detrimental to that period in time where
that scene is playing, it will be detrimental to all the students
that are following because consciously
or subconsciously your audience will be thinking, well, what about, Yeah, Well, what about you
will constantly be like a noise busing there. So you want everything to
be non-redundant and vital. As I talked. Yet again, study fairy tales. Study folk tales. They are perfect
because there have been centrifuged for centuries. They contain nothing. That is that is redundant. Another way of creating
a good story is to regard the storytelling as
karma, karmic consequence. And what we as audience want, regardless of if we
know this or not, is karmic consequences,
we want poetic justice. Aristotle says in his poetics, which I highly
recommend you to read as first book ever
written, storytelling. And he says that
in a good story, all characters have
to cost around, fades in some way,
shape, or form. Plato says that our
character is our destiny. And that if your
character has experienced destinies which they
haven't in some way, shape or form created. We won't feel what Aristotle believes to be the
purpose of drama, which is to create fear
and pity in the audience. And fear and pity. Or only created if misfortune strikes good people which
have made a mistake. If misfortune strikes a saint, we don't feel fear and pity. If misfortune
strikes evil people, we don't feel fear and pity. But if misfortune strikes
good people which have committed a
mistake or her Marsha, then we feel fear and PV because we realized that
that could have been me. That couldn't be mean. But for instance, if you have Mother Teresa walking
down a street, is the big load of something is false down
on her and kills her. We won't feel fear and periods
just that was bizarre. Why did that happen to her? If you have a bus load of pedophiles, that
goal real cliff, we won't feel fear and pity because screw them.
I don't care. I'm glad they died. But if misfortune strikes someone who is good
or relatively good, but they made a mistake. So they actually caused their
own faith than we feel. The master at this study, Stephen King and you'd
find in all his stories, all the characters have
created their own destinies. The horror that befalls them. They have in some way, shape or form
created themselves. For instance, in Kou Jiao, that radius infected dog is the externalization of the guilt that the woman and the family feels for it being
faithful to her husband. And you might feel that well, that dog is disproportionate
to her crime? Yes. But still, in some way, shape, or form, she deserved
that destiny. In pet cemetery. The woman and family left her dying sister
when she was a child because she was
gravely deformed. You can say that, well, it was a really
understandable for a child to leave such a
horrifying situation. Still, she crossed her on faith and that is why
her dad's sister, it's coming back to haunt her. And that's what course sphere. If, in these
instances, take UDL, if the mother and the family
had been the perfect, we would not have
felt fear and pity. If the mother and the family and pet cemetery would have
been behaved perfectly, we would not have
felt fear and pity. It's due to the fact that they have to atone for his
sin they have committed. That is what creates
the fear and pity. And else you want to create a karmic consequences
for all the characters. Oscar Wilde says that the
essence of storytelling is that the good get the reward and the wicked
get through punishment. And the karmic consequences, poetic justice gives us wonderful psychological
pleasure as an audience. We love that. And of course, you might
choose to disregard this, but then be aware, your audience will
be frustrated. And of course, if
that's what you want, then you can do that. But most of the time we want
to please our audience, and that's why we won't
give them poetic justice. And Bruno Bettelheim is an American psychologist
and he wrote a book, a wonderful book called
The Uses of enchantment, where he talks about the psychological power of
the fairy tales and why do children love to hear the fair test over
and over and over again? And of course we as adults, adults do that as well. And he did an experiment
with children. And he read to them the
story of Cinderella. And in the original Cinderella, not the Disney version, but the Brothers Grimm version, they're really grim version. At her evil stepmother in the
end is forced to dance on, sorry, sorry, Snow White. Snow White. Snow White, who are evil stepmother
is forced to dance on red-hot iron shoes, which I mean severe punishment, but yelling up for severe crime. And what he tried to do was, as you do in the Disney version, is you remove that crime. Oh sorry, remove the punishment. But he read the fairy tales
for the kids a number of times when they basically knew
the story by hearts of n. Snow White gets the prints and her evil stepmother gets it down something rather
hot Irish shoes. Then after a while, he omitted the part in them. Where to evil stepmother dances on the rather hot iron shoes. And he was curious as to see whether the
children missed it. There were relieved to not hear about such
a gruesome thing. And the children were
extremely disappointed. And they said, Oh, you missed the part. You missed the part. You missed the part where her evil stepmother dances
on the railroad are issues. That is a testament to the
fact that what we want, what we crave as an
audience is poetic justice. We want the good
wants to be rewarded. We want the bad
must be punished. Yet again, you can
go against this, for instance, Chinatown,
this brilliant movie. In the end. Our bad guy, normal Gray. He gets away with it. And Jack gets our hero. Jack Nicholson's character is
not able to solve the case. That of course, doesn't
leave us as fulfilled. But then of course that is
the point of the story. So you don't need to
fulfill to follow this, but know that effect will be that audience will
feel displeased. Another way to look at creating
a good story is looking at you have two opposing
forces that are working. At the same time. Your hero is trying to get
closer and closer and closer to the resolution
of her objective. At the same time. And in doing so, she's getting stronger and
stronger and more insightful. And she's employing better
and better modus operandi in trying to solve a problem. At the same time, her adversary, the
dragon, so to speak, is also growing stronger,
drawing closer, getting more allies,
more insights, more information about the whereabouts of
the protagonist. For instance, in
the final fight, in the climax of the movie, your hero has never been as close to solving her problem
as she is right now. And at the same time, the antagonist has never been more dangerous
than he is now. You want it to be an arms
race where continuously, for every scene,
your protagonist is growing and string for any
information in allies. And at the same time, your antagonist is growing and strength allies information, building up to the point. And you always, always, always want your
antagonists to be at least slightly ahead of your protagonist up
until the very end, up until the climax
of the story. And that's where you want your protagonist to finally
overshadow the antagonist. If the story answering
positive way, if not well, then it's
the opposite way round. One example of this is, for instance, the
movie The Mummy. We're in the middle
of the story. Mami wakes up in the desert and they are trying
to defeat him. And they are heroes are getting stronger and
stronger at the same time. Or antagonist, the mommy
for every body part that he ******** for someone
else and puts in his body. He gets stronger and
stronger and he's getting more and more
and more allies to. So it's an arms race at
the end in the film, Monster House or protagonist. So growing stronger
and same time, the antagonist,
the monster house, is getting more and more
active and more and more dangerous by the hour.
So that's what you want. It's like in a poker game,
continuously racing stakes. If the protagonist and the antagonist stay on the same level
throughout the story, it ceases to be exciting. How dangerous the antagonist, this always wanted
the protagonist and antagonist continuously
increasing in strength. And strength might be, might be in proximity
and numbers. Information fiscal
strain for men, for mental strength would have you in some way, shape, or form. The protagonist and antagonist
has to always, always, always increase their strengths
throughout the story. One more aspect to consider
when you're creating your story is
inflammation discrepancy. We've talked about this before. If you remember,
it's so vital that at every given moment
in your story, someone knows more
than someone else. If everyone in your story,
including the audience, knows exactly the same thing, I have exactly the same
amount of information. Your story is dead. Regardless of how much
conflict you have, how much David versus
Goliath you have, you need information
discrepancy. If you remember,
there are six forms of information discrepancy
where mystery, which is where we as an audience know
that we do not know. We only have a fragment. For instance, an opening of Jurassic Park where
we see something's afoot at these
little nobler **** is about to get real
at Islam nobler. And we don't know what and how this stuff is working
is we know it's something with dinosaurs
and they're losing control. So we know that we don t know, that's mystery or detective, detective stories are mysteries. If we don't know
who the killer is, because the MR is, we know there's a killer, but we don't know
who the killer is. We don't know that
we don't know. The second one is suspense. And that's where
we as an audience no more than at
least one character. And Hitchcock, if you remember, admonishes us to always favor
suspense or a surprise. Surprise. The third information,
discrepancy, information. The script C is, as
the name implies, it's when suddenly
something hits us. You always want every scene in your story to convey
some form of surprise. You want the ending of
a scene to bring about some form of surprise where
you want the ending to be. Somewhat surprising. Aristotle to assess in his
poetics that what we want to create a storytellers at every given
point in the story. We want the ending of the story
and ending it was seen to be logical and yet surprising. This is hard to be logical
and, and non surprising. That's easy. To be surprising and just playing
chaotic, That's easy. But we logical and surprising. That's very, very hard. All the good jokes
that you love, you laughed because they were logic and surprising if
the joke had been logic, but not surprising, you
wouldn't have laughed. Had been surprising,
but chaotic. You wouldn't have laughed. It was logic and surprising
because the punchline gave you some
additional information. It offered a new perspective on what you already knew which enlarge and your understanding of the story was that okay, that's what it was really about. Now I get it. A really good surprises where
when you take the origin, that a situation you don't
tell the audience origin, but you only start in
the middle, so to speak. And then you give as the ending to the
scene and the story. You give the origin of
that scene or story. That's the way to create organic
surprise. That is logic. And yet surprising. This is common in
goods stores and watch out and study these
in good stories. And you see that the
perfect surprises and the end are the ones that, yeah, that was the origin. For instance, take one of the most famous surprises in
a motion picture history. The ending to the movie. The Sixth Sense, where you
find out the spoiler alert. Hi, He was that all along is logical because we saw in the opening
scene, he was shot dead. It was obvious. But
then, of course, the storyteller is
fooled us into believing that he was still alive. But it was logic because
we haven't been fooled. He was shot in the belly and that's basically
a kiss of death. And so when the twist appears
and ending the surprise, it's like, Yeah, that was the
origin of the whole story. That's really good way to
create the good Twist. A good surprise is
to take the origin and remove that and just
let us know in the end, this is what caused
this entire thing. Okay, That's surprises. And then we have tension, which is where we as an audience know how
it's going to add but us a whole lot on the
rack until we get it down. And then we have for boating. And the more you can make
the audience think ahead, the more you make them
interested in the outcome, the more you make them think or what's going
to happen when he finds out and what's
going to happen when the more they
invest in your story, not only intellectually
but also emotionally. Then lastly, we
have reassessment. And reassessment is where
you forced the audience, r
4. Chapter 2.1 Campbells monomyth: Creating a story using
Joseph Campbell's monomyth. Now going to take you
through an example, how you can create your story, your synopsis, by using
Joseph Campbell's monomyth. I'm going to use Star Wars yet again episode for a New
Hope as an example. And what Joseph Campbell, he gives us certain, certain points that you wanna, you wanna, you wanna hit. And of course, this is not formulaic writing,
this is not all. This needs to happen at page
24 or some crap like that. This is just, these
are the stages that we as humans psychologically pass through when we're
solving problems. That is, the monomyth is, we all pass through the
monomyth in our lives. And there are short
cycles and long cycles. Every time that you
face a problem, which are problem-solving,
you face the monomyth, you go throw the beginning
me a little land and you have to adapt, you have to transform
to solve the problem. It might just be as simple, mundane thing as r. That's where you put
or what have you. But still, that's the monomyth
beginning of the land. You didn't know you
couldn't solve the problem. You went through
trials and tests and which made it possible
for you to solve the problem. And then of course, the
bigger ones, your marriage, your your entire school period, your time in high school. That's a monomyth. All the trials that we
faced that transform us. Alright, the steps here. So I'm going to take you through steps first and
then I'm going to take you through them again with Star Wars Episode
four as an example. So what do you could
start by doing is addressed the
backstory we've talked about the ancient times, once put in the time
there was a war, then you move on to the past tense and Dan and
their war fell into oblivion. And then the third part and
last part of the backstories. What happened recently? The inciting incident
that starts the story. And that's a now the
conflict has resurfaced. Now the curtain rises, then you want to
address these points. What is the big initial
problem for the university to the story expressed in
the inciting incident, then, What is the individual initial
problem for the protagonist? How does the big problem
hit the protagonist? And the call to adventure, which meant or helps the protagonist over the
threshold to adventure. How does the new world situation
differ from the old one? In what ways is it the exact
opposite or extension? Test trainings? Allies is what the
protagonist faces. The end of the beginning is the descent to the
dragons callosum. The dragon, of course,
is metaphorical speaking as a mythological term. It doesn't need
to be, of course, a drag on per se. It's the main adversary
meeting and surviving dragon, sorry, inside dragons
castle regrouping and Nazi Germany ceasing sword and doesn't have to be sword. It's the object of attention,
what everyone wants. For instance, in Star Wars, It's the Princess
Leia and the plants, the drawings to the
year of the death star. Then the beginning of the end, the internal conflict climax. This is where the potassium
loses the sword object and the mentor enter abyss or periods of desolation
than the magic fight, final fight, a climax,
and then the aftermath. And now I'm going
to take you through these points using Star Wars
Episode four as reference. And you might want
to download this, this document and follow
along if you want. Alright. Backstory, ancient times,
once upon a time there was a Sky Walker was the name of his young Jedi warrior who was promising but temperamental. And in the war against evil, he himself joined the
dark side and most transformed into Darth Vader. If you're Northern Star Wars. This is actually the
first three movies, episode 123, second
part of the backstory. Then who fell into
oblivion, the past tense. While Darth Vader
did everything he could to try to
control the galaxy, his son and daughter grew up unaware of each
other's existence, far beyond his control until
third part of backstory, recently inciting incident, and now the conflict
has just resurfaced. Darth Vader managed to capture his daughter,
Princess Leah. But she managed to send an
emergency message via a droid, R2D2, which by detours, ended up with her
brother, Luke Skywalker. That's the inciting incident. Now, the curtain rises. So what's the big
initial problem for the universe and the story expressed in the
inciting incident that talks about that because
the inciting incident, this both to end,
it's the climax of the backstory and the
beginning of the story, as well as the end of your story is the beginning
of your posts story. There's an old ferric
tells you said, and they live
happily ever after. The end of the fairy tale is the beginning of the Post story, where they lived
happily ever after. So when the curtain rises, we are faced with the
inciting incident that is the catalyst to
the entire story, which is Darth Vader
capture and prisons LEA in order to
dominate the galaxy. This big problem is linked
to the thematic problem. For example, in
Jurassic problem, sorry, interesting park. The problem is that
they're losing control of the dinosaurs at
Eastland nobler. And indirectly, this means that the thematic problem is that we, humans in our hubris, often think we can control
nature and as we know, there's always leads to
disastrous consequences. Alright, so this is
the big brim problem. Moving on to point number two, what's the individual initial problem for the protagonist? Well, Luke Skywalker,
being a farm boy, dream of becoming a pilot, but it was doomed to remain
a simple peasant boy. Insoluble problem. Alright, number three, how does the big problem hit the protagonist and
the call to adventure? One day, luke came
across to Droids, which led to Uncle Ben, where he saw the
Droid R2D2 project and the emergency
message from a princess. This layer called to adventure, very literal call to adventure. Now, what the protagonist
usually experienced this now is what Joseph Campbell refers to as the
refusal of the call. The protagonist does not
want to enter the adventure. He or she is afraid or reluctant in some
way, shape, or form. So what he or she
needs is a mentor to help him or her over the
threshold to the venture. And in this case, of course,
it's Obi-Wan Kenobi. Luke doesn't want
to accomplish her. He wants to go back
to the farm and Luke and his uncle
Obi-Wan, Kenobi, having explained how the
fourth force works that Luke's father has once
been a great Jedi warrior, doesn't disclose the fact
that this is the operator. When returning to
Luke's aunt and uncle, stormtroopers have killed them. So now Luke has no option but to follow along ankle
band on the adventure. I talked about that when
you're talking a logline. Why, why does your
protagonist have no option but to embark
on the adventure? We feel as an audience
that way in a moment. Why is he doing that? That seems strange. Your entire story will flounder. So it's important that
we feel in the moment that your hero departs for the adventure that we
understand the, okay, I get it. She had no choice or that was at least her best
choice, right? 0.5. How does the new world situation
differ from the old one? In what ways is it
the exact opposite or extension of the original,
the ordinary world? Well, Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi went
to Mos Eisley, which is a shady port city, trying to get a pilot without being detected by stormtroopers. We've talked about
that the special world or the world of the adventure, is in some way shape
or form the opposite of the ordinary world
or an extension. And the characters
in the special order are an opposite or an extension, an exaggeration of the characters
in the original world. For instance, if you
take the wizard of loss, Tin, Tin Man, Scarecrow, and lion are mirror images of Dorothy's three
brothers back in cancers. And of course the US
is a mirror image. Or Kansas. You've seen the film, you know, us plays out in color, whereas Kansas, thus it. Alright, moving on
to the next step, test trainings,
allies, Star Wars. Another bar is surrounded
by lots of bounty hunters. Luke Skywalker and I could
meet the pilot Han Solo. And is homespun Chewbacca, which they hire for Domitian. But soon after that, they are chased by
storm troopers and managed to escape
with hustlers ship the Millennium Falcon
just before they were killed or captured
by storm troopers. Now the test and
trainings have started. This part of the story. Your protagonist is tested on his or her ability to
discern friend from foe, who is a friend and an ally, and who is a enemy. So this is what happening here. And this trend discern
is Han Solo someone they can trust? Your
friend reshuffle. This is the part in your story. If you have training,
for instance, in a matrix, the first matrix. This is the part of the
story where Neo gets trained by Morpheus
in martial arts, in jumping from skyscraper described scraper, and so forth. Building the necessary
skills which they will need. The second part of Act two in the second
half of the story, when they're actually facing the drag on the
adversary face-to-face. For instance, for Neil them facing Agent Smith face-to-face. Next plot point, next beat
is the end of the beginning, and that's the descent
to the dragons Castle. In Star Wars. Lucan's guy, Skywalker and
Obi-Wan Kenobi traveling enhance Solo's spaceship
through space and time. While OB1 is training
loop in the Jedi art, which is yet and tests
trainings, allies, and arriving at the
planned order on, they find it to be blown up
by the adjacent Death Star. Now they're approaching
the dragons castle. So yet again, drugs castle metaphor and in this case it brings castle
this the deaf store. Next 0.8, meeting
and surviving dragon while the hero spaceship is sucked into the Death
Star via a tractor beam, Darth Vader fields some
kind of precedence. We don't know why
it, but he does. And of course, later we realized
that's because it's sun. Look Skywalker is
on board the ship. Next point inside
dragons castle, regrouping and Let's see, journey inside the deaf store. Our heroes tried to find Leah and the drawings to
the deaf store without being harmed or
killed or Caught. Next point, town ceasing sword. Yet again, sword is a metaphor. It can be anything, the object of desire, that thing, that
both the protagonist and antagonist. Once. After several hardships, Luke, Han and chewy managed to
find both the drawings, which actually is C3PO or R2D2. They find the drawings, and Lou Kahn and chewy
find prisoners, Leah, whom they save. Okay, mission accomplished. Now begins the
beginning of the end. The internal conflict climax
at where our protagonist, in some way, shape
or form, loses the sword and or mentor. On the way back to the ship, the Millennium Falcon,
to escape the deaf, start with the drawings
and Princess Leah, Luke is forced to see how Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan Kenobi. Without knowing, Darth Vader had a tracking parole
put on her spaceship, as they managed to escape. Their command, them to escape was quite easy and they
don't understand why. But we realize
there's no audience. Darth Vader plan is
because he wasn't know would rebel base is
alright, suspense, right? We know more than at least
one of the characters. Usually around the
three quarter mark. This is where your protagonist
lose system mentor. Why is that? It's because now you're
training of your protagonist. The transformation of
your obtain this from the Old South to the news itself is not entirely complete, but the heavy lifting is done. Now, the rest of the journey, your protagonist, your student, has to travel alone. It's like if you had been involved in higher
education that the last semester or so or
higher education is that the student is
writing a thesis. Basically what she's
working on her own. From the start of the education where there were seminars and they were
teachers all around. Now, he or she is more or less on their own
being guided somewhat, but by professors and this
is same thing as story. Now, this is the time for your protagonist to write
their thesis, so to speak. Now they're more or
less on their role. They have to complete the last transformation in their transformation and now to transformation by themselves. If the mentor were
with them to the end, that would be cheating, right? Then we, we will know if the protagonist could
do this by themselves. So that's the meaning,
the psychological meaning of the mentor dying or disappearing at the moment of darkness around the
three-quarter mark on the story, enter abyss, the
period of desolation. And this is in a rom com where lovers have
split for some reason. And now we see them living, their lives separate
from one another, being maybe quite okay, but, but still unfulfilled. And here in Star Wars, luke mourns Uncle Ben on the
way back to the Rebel Base. And Han Solo abandons them
now in their hour of need, in their darkest
hour, he leaves them. Next point, magic fight. Extreme fighters would
look in the lead, assistance by the
Droid or to do to lift towards the Death Star in order to try to take it out. Final fight to the climax. And above the deaf start
a final battle is fought. Why the deaf store approaches to rebel base in order
to destroy it. And after several failures, Luke's win by solving the big, the thematic and individual
problem at the same time. By listening to all be
ones used force Luke, this continuing
his technical aid, trusting his intuition and putting the shot right
indexed osteon pipe, causing the death
star to explode. Thus, he sourced a big problem. Or defeating Darth Vader is own problem and wanted
to be a hero pilots. And a thematic problem
of relying more on intuition than on
technology or the cautious. Every good final
fight has two parts. The first part and
the final fight. That is where the
hero and his or her and his or her
allies are fighting. The antagonist and
his or her allies. A big fight in the
end for some reason, either to Dallas or killed off, or they have disappeared or
they're no longer present. You have the last part or
the final fight with this, the mono or mono between the
protagonist and antagonist. It's only the protagonist
and antagonist. No one else is present. Here. In stores. You see, it's very end. Luke Skywalker is
alone in that run and he has as Darth
Vader behind them. And it's, it's, it's the comes
down to the two of them. And that's the ultimate
test of your protagonist. He, he or she has
lost the mentor. He or she has lost the Allies. Now here she is honorable, face-to-face with a dragon. And moving to the last point of Joseph Campbell's Hero's
Journey, the aftermath. As a reward for their
heroic efforts, Luke, Han and chewy are honored with
metals from Princess Leah, still unaware that Ishi
and Luke are siblings. So you see you do
well to look at your story and try
to see if you're hitting all these points that, that Joseph Campbell proposes. And yet again, he identified these points looking at all kinds of stories
in the world, from all different cultures, from all different ages. Whether they'd be
sacred or profane. They all follow the
same structure. You have an orphan
or someone at home having a personal problem, and the world of the protons
is facing a problem. You're pretending as if
forced to leave home. The port for an adventure, trying to rescue the object
of desire to bring back live, restore the tribe, rejuvenate
his or her village. And in doing so, comes back, bestows the Boone upon the tribe and defense
it one last time from the dragon who has followed her from the special world back
to the original world. This is the, if you take aliens, for instance, you'll see we have our
protagonists, Ripley. She has a problem, she cannot sleep because she has nightmares from the master says she met the world that she
lives in has a problem. They lost contact with LV 426. So she's forced to leave
the security and go and face the Masters in order
to save the colonizers. And she does so. And it during the
tests and trials, she transforms from a
civilian into a soldier. And she is able to rescue
one of the colonizers. Live bigger minute,
as you brings her back on board is
local board a ship. Now, the dragon has
followed along. And for the second test, first, in the special world, our protagonist was able to win, to bring back the object, bring back what was supposed to be rescued
from the clutches of the Dragon to the original
world now or Petain, it has to defend it. Once again, the second test, can he or she keep object of desire from the dragon now being back
in the original world. Now the protagonist being all
alone in the special world, Ripley was accompanied by
specially trained Marines, but now she's all alone. Facing the dragon, Mono, mono. If we sum up what
we've talked about here, these different points. And in the synopsis for
Star Wars Episode four, New Hope, it could sound
something like this. And if you want, please follow
along in your document. And what you'll find I
think is in this synopsis, which is about one page
and a quarter of a page, is that all the relevant
thought points are here. Of course, there are
stuff that's not in here, which are the details. But all the major
plot points are here. And you can read
this as a fairy tale and we'll be able to construe what's happening
from beginning to end. Alright? So this is at Star Wars episode
for a New Hope synopsis. A long time ago in a
galaxy far, far away, there was a young
Jedi warrior named Anakin Skywalker was
promising but temperamental. And then the war against evil, he went over to the dark side, transforming into Darth Vader. While he did everything he
could to control the galaxy. His son and daughter, unaware of each
other's existence, grew up far beyond his control. Just recently, Darth Vader managed to capture
his daughter layer, the princess of the
resistance movement. And she doesn't know
that Darth Vader's or father layout managed to send an emergency message
via the Droid R2D2, which by detours, ended up with her unknowing brother
Luke Skywalker. Luke dreams of becoming a pilot, but he's doomed to remain
a simple farm boy. Lucas ordered by the uncle
he lives with to bring the Droid R2D2 to his
mysterious relative Ben, who lives out in the desert. Advance home. Luke catches through
the Droid R2D2, the emergency message
sent from prisons layer. Uncle Ben turns out to be
Jedi warrior Obi-Wan Kenobi. He explains how the force
works, telling him, Look that his father was
also a great Jedi warrior. When they returned to
Luke's uncle and aunt, they find that stormtroopers
have killed them. And there'll be one had to. Mos Eisley is shady port city trying to get a pilot in order to save princes layer without being detected
by stormtroopers. Another bar surrounded by
lots of bounty hunters, Luke and Ben meet pilot Han Solo and his Haussmann sure, walker, which they hire for Domitian, but they are discovered
by storm troopers and managed to escape just before they are
killed or captured. Enhance solar spaceship,
the Millennium Falcon. They travel in space towards the planet older
on why there will be one trains Luke into
Jedi art and upon arriving, they find a planet to be blown up by the adjacent Death Star. Darth Vader, he feels
some formal precedence as the hero spaceship
is sucked into the gigantic Death Star. Inside the Death Star, the
Harris tried to find layer and the drawings for the deaf store without being caught and killed. After several
hardships, Luke, Han, and Shui managed to
find prisons layer and R2D2 and C3PO
find the drawings. They rescue pieces layer, but on the way back to the ship, Luke is forced to see how Darth Vader slays Obi-Wan Kenobi. And unbeknownst to the heroes, Darth Vader has a tracking
pro put on the spaceship. Look more on cycled
band on his way to the Rebel Base where Han Solo tells us that he's
abandoned them, them in their darkest hour. X wing fighters would
look in the lead, assisted by the
Droid R2D2 takeoff towards the Death Star. The final battle takes place
over to the deaf store at the same time as it approaches the rebel base in
order to destroy it. In the final moments on solar returns to a cyst or
heroes after several attempts. Look, after several attempts, look finally wins
by solving the big, the thematic, and the individual problem
at the same time, by listening to
all be once voice. Use the force Luke, unfolding the
technical aid for us, things intuition and
putting the shot right in the exhaust pipe, causing the death
star to explode. As a reward for their heroic
efforts, Lou Kahn and chew, we are honored with metals
from Princess layer, still unaware that she
handled or siblings. I would argue that this covers
all the basic plot points, all the major platforms
that Star Wars and you get the story yet again, there are details
here of course, which you don't get. But this, I'd say would serve
as a good map of the story. Maybe scale one to 100
or, or what have you? Well, actually, if you know, the rule of thumb
for a script is for a script to be a
120 pages no more, but yet again, of course
this is up for debate, but one page, this
would be about 1%. But 1% or 2% of the story. So the scale would be
one to one hundred, one hundred fifty and
that's a good map. That's what we want,
too much detail. And it starts to
lose its benefits as a map to little story, too little detail, it starts to lose the
benefit of a map. So we want that
kind of one-page, more or less, that fools gap. In order to give
us this roadmap. As I told you, with
a longtime testis, don't write a synopsis
until you written. Log on and that works. Well. Don't start start writing a script until you have
this synopsis that works. And I would advice you, take your synopsis even better
if you can memorize it. But if not, take it and read it twice as many
people as you can. Yet again, if you read them
to friends and family, pretend that you
haven't written it, to pretend that
someone else wrote it. Someone in class years
doing them a favor. Could you tell them
what you think, your honest opinion on this? It might be easier to get an honest opinion from your
family, friends that way. And test it and see, because when you read
something aloud, you will feel, you will feel yourself if
something is working or not. And you will sense, you will feel in the
way that the recipient is looking at you or the way they're shifting
in their share or not. If they are into
the story or not, it will be so clear to you. You could spend hours and
hours and hours sitting alone at your desk
and never coming close to the assessment of your story as you do when you read it aloud, Someone else. So pitch it to pitch and pitch
it even better yet if you can tell a stranger to try to get an as an honest appraisal as as possible if the story
is working or not. Now, doing that. As soon as you notice that
things are not working, you need to address
them and do not move into writing a script
until you have a working. Synopsis is an opposite where eight or seven of the ten people who listened to it feel like, hey, I want to watch that
where I want to see that. Another technique, as
I mentioned before, is that you can take
your synopsis and write, written by, and then
you write the name of person that you truly
hate and despise. And then ask yourself, if I were to read this written
by this piece of ****, would I feel envy
where I would agree. If you would feel ugly, then you need to
rework it or drop it. If you will feel envy, then
you're on to something. Okay? Assuming now you haven't working synopsis,
which were they? A chain of events, a sequence of events, cause and effect from beginning
to end and unbroken chain of events leading
from the beginning to down with his biggest
transformation as possible, which is the, which is a
fleshing out of the logline. Alright. Now, you got that. Now you're ready to move
on to the third step, which is writing the script.
5. Chapter 3: Script in prose: Get inside the music. That's what Miles Davis
admonishes us to do. Welcome to Chapter
Three, script in prose. Miles Davis tells us to
get inside the music and it's the same thing for
us as storytellers. The more you can get
inside the story, get inside the scene, immerse yourself in the scene. The more you can pictures
of being there in the same space as
the characters, the more you will be able to write something that affects us. So try to place yourself
there with the characters and the listen and then wait for the characters have
started to speak and act. And writing is like the Irish
writer comb Tobin says, it's slow, careful
work, don't rush. This. Is that when you watch
archaeologists, when they, when they tried to unearth
the old skeleton or what have you that they're
standing there with their toothbrushes
going gently, gently, gently because they
are scared that if they go too fast or too hard, Then they will maybe destroy what they're trying to find is the same thing for here
when we create art, you know, take your time. Sometimes it might
all come in in a rush and you have a
hard time keeping up. But many times,
slow, careful work, slowly, unearthing what the
story is about Michelangelo. He said that, how do you
make a statue of David? It says that remove
everything that isn't David. That's the same thing
here. Remove everything that isn't the story. Why do I encourage you to
write the scripting pros before committing to writing it in the screenplay
play format. We're going to talk
about that much more in the next chapter. How do you write in the
correct screenplay format? The reason why I'd like
to encourage you to write your script and
pros are several. The first one is that when
you're writing prose, It's so much easier just
to create the story. Because as we'll talk
about in the next chapter, screenplay is formatted in a way which is highly,
highly abstract. If you've ever read
the screenplay, you know, it, it reads interior. Eric's how's day? Eric? Anthers roof Philip disorder. They're there. Eric. Hello, Philip. Philip, hello Eric. No one tells a story like this. We tell a story in prose format. You say, well, you know, ever came into Phillips house last night and I said,
hello, how are you? I'm good. That's the way we tell
a story and that's the way that's a
format that the pros. So that's why I
encourage you to write the story first in prose, just the way you
tell it to a friend. What happened? Well, this guy came
in and then that guy, he pulled out a gun
and he screamed. That's the way to a story. And when you have that story, your script in prose, then you transpose that and we'll talk about that
in the next chapter. How its transpose that into
the screenplay format. But because you're setting up yourself for a lot
of extra work and frustration if you're
trying to create the story and format it, at the same time, you're
setting up yourself in trouble. So don't do that. Do one thing at a time. Now it's time for
creating the story. So come up to this point. I assume you made, you created a logline and you have pitch that
and you've tested it. And you feel that this works. Yet again, don't move
forward and try to write a synopsis before you have a working logline because
you're wasting your time. And you've written a synopsis about one page or something. And you've tested that,
you've pitched that. And you feel that the
majority of the people that you pitch it to
our leaning forward, they are interested
in your story. Now, it's time for the third step and start
to write your story. This gifted pros and yet again, don't move on to this part of the process until you have a working synopsis
which you feel this, this is logical, it's coherent and evokes an
emotional response, and it keeps my interests, and it keeps the interests
of those people. I pitched it to all the time. This is harder than you think, you know, writing is easy. Anyone can do that.
Anyone can sit down and knock out 120 pages. That's easy. But to write a 120 pages
that at every single moment keeps the interests
of the audience and elicit some kind
of emotional response. That's hard. That's really,
really, really hard. So that's why I would, as I've talked about before,
I would encourage you, do not approach the story telling process in
a linear fashion. Scene one, scene to scene three. Start it from a
holistic perspective. Like if fetus grows in the womb, you're starting with
your logline and that's basically
your entire story. Your entire story in
25 words or less. That's the small, small
fetus in the womb, but in the beginning
of the pregnancy, then you let that expand
into the synopsis. And that's just the fetus
but still bigger and that's your entire
story in one page. And then you expand that
now into the full script. This is the way nature
works, like a fetus. The fetus in the
womb doesn't just grow leg, a perfect leg. And then the next leg, everything is there from
the beginning, the eyes, the brain, the fingers, everything you have it in
that small, small fetus. And we are working wisely, if we follow a mother nature
in the way that she works, It's like building a house. I talked to you
about that before. No one erects a
house by building the structure and then the walls and then the plastering
and wallpaper. And then moving on to the next room in the house and starting
building bathroom scratch. That's ludicrous. And yet so many people do this
trying to write a script. And I've seen people on
Facebook and they're posting like I'm writing
a script and I'm already, although they are
written 40 pages. And I know these people, a, they will never
finish that script. And B, if they do, it, will not amount to something of good-quality because that is
not her mother nature works. That is not how a
creative process where you want the entire thing. It's like a seed. Every giant oak tree begins
with the small seed, and that's small seed
contains the entire oak tree. Okay, now, starting
to write a story, yet again, get inside the story. Positioning. If it's takes place in a wood, positioning yourself
in that would look at Red Riding
Hood, the wolf. And then listen, wait, and see, see what happens. By now. Of course, you know, you should know the characters, you know what they want. And when you do that. And we'll talk about
that later on, I will give you my
method of working. That is starting with the characters and this
is super important. The more you know
your character is, the easier it will
be for you to write, and the more fun it will be. Alright writing. And as you've seen here, this is the first time we actually
start to write dialogue. And I'd say that the
hallmark of the amateur is that you start
writing the dialogue. Why do we do that? Because there's a fun part. He said, she said, and he said, the more you weights
with writing dialogue, the better dialogue you
will write. Why is that? Because if you start writing
dialogue from the get-go, when you don't know a lot
about the characters, you don't know a lot about their motivations,
backgrounds, and situation. It's going to be generic. It's gonna be flat. It's going to be on the nose. So when you wait until you have a good understanding of
what's the situation like. What are the characters like? What are their motivations? What are they bad,
their backgrounds? Now, you stand a
much better chance writing something that is specific to each character
and not generic. This is the hallmark
of great dialogue. You should be able to remove all the names of the
person speaking. And you should still
be able to tell who's speaking just from the
syntax or the cadences, the word choices from
different characters. That's good dialogue or one
aspect of good dialogue. When you write, you're trying
to accomplish two things. One, you're trying
to tell the story, what happens, and
you're trying to tell it as efficiently as possible. We're going to talk about
that in a later chapter. Writing is rewriting. And you're trying to turn
out as clearly as possible. This is one of the most common pitfalls
when you start writing. Many beginner, novice writers tend to be afraid
of being clear, but you can never be too clear. Norwegian director while said, there are three rules
the theater and the same thing for
all art forms. Its clarity, clarity, clarity. The more clear you are, the better off you will
be because you don't want the audience to understand well what's happening at
every moment in your story. Later than that, you want
them to understand what happens at every moment at that. Very moment. You want the experience and understanding to
happen simultaneously. In order to accomplish that, you need to be very, very clear. So that's the first
thing, telling the story. The second thing is telling that story as
visually as you can. You're trying to paint
a picture with words. Writing when it's good, it's painting with words.
Instead of a brush. You are using a pencil, trying to create a vivid images in the minds of the audience. To pick two ramp we assist the Romans said from
the words, the picture. And the way to do that is
the stronger verbs you use, the more specific nouns you use, the more vivid images you will create in the
mind of the audience. The third part is, you're trying to be clear. You're training to be visual. And thirdly, you're trying to be as
emotional as possible, trying to elicit an
emotional response. And that is your goal, is not trying to convey
what is happening, but how does that make the characters feel
what's happening? If you're writing
about a hot space. How can you write about that heart space that
makes me as a reader, as a spectator goal format. That's hot. But we cannot elicit an
emotional response until your writing visually. And of course, you can't write visually until you know
what the heck is going on. So you start by being
clear what's going on, and then you try to express that as a visually as you can. Then you're trying to
make sure that this elicits an emotional
response as possible. Because that's a
goal of all art. To elicit an emotional
response in the audience, we might as well elicit an intellectual response
and a fiscal response. But first and foremost, it's about eliciting
an emotional response. It's like Stanley,
Stanley Kubrick says, it's not a think of
it as the feel of it. And you can have all intellectual ideas that
you want and that's great. But if you fail to engage
the audience emotionally, it's all for nothing. Our primary objective is to elicit an emotional
response to the audience. Okay? One other ways in order to write visually and to create an emotional response is
to use this technique. If you use this technique, then I'm going to
teach you right now. I promise you you will increase your writing prowess
with at least a 100%. This is the technique when you're writing or when
you have written. And you'll go back and revise. Every time you see the word
followed by S or wasps. You transform that
into a strong verb. And the specific now, for instance, it was
raining, That's very weak. And why is that? Because it is an abstraction. You cannot, it's not tangible. You cannot point to it is, there is no there is no is the rain exists, but it doesn't. So those are abstract words. We know intellectually
what that means, but, but we fail to
understand emotionally. So how can you do is, for instance, it was raining. We could transform that
into a strong verb, a specific noun by saying, the rain was pouring down. That's much better. And you can do even better. The rain was hammering
on the windows. You seem so much stronger
than it was raining. And take for instance,
it was raining, it was cold and the people
was, were shivering. That's not emotionally
engaging. And why not? Because they are abstractions. But if I were to
transform, it was raining, it was cold and the
people who were shivering into strong verbs
and specific nouns, it could be something out, of course you can do
million texts on this. But one way you could write
something, for instance, like the cold rain was hammering like spikes in the phases
of the shivering people. Now, that's so much stronger than it was raining or it's
called the people shivering. So every time when you revise or rights and
you come up with words, it is, it was. Transform those into a strong
verb and specific noun. And you will increase
your power of your writing by at
least 100 per cent. Okay, Another writing technique, especially the
William Raw dialogue, is to use to place the most important words first
and last in the sentence. And we talked about this
before in the previous, previous installment
of the series. So if, if the sentence you're writing at is dealing with Eric, then try to start the sentence. Would Eric don't don't have Eric appears
somewhere in the middle. If the sentence is mostly
about Eric sweater. Well, try to start the
sentence with Eric sweater. For instance, if I
tell you that Eric, you know, true to form, war, really happy sweater. Now, this is mostly
about Eric, right? But if I say Eric sweater, which Eric War was
really a happy one. Now, this is mostly about the sweater because
that's the way we started at. So the first word that
we read in the sentence, it's like a headline. For newspaper article. Your first word tells
us, this is what, this story, this, and each
sentence is a micro story. This is what the, what the
story is about and you're making it hard for the
audience, for the reader. If the central word which the hero of the
sentence so to speak, is placed somewhere else
than in the beginning. And you want the reading
to be as easy as possible. The easier it is to read, the more, the better chance
you stand up against me. Emotionally. Good. Reading should feel like you're unaware that
you're looking at, at splashes of ink on the paper. You read the words
I is flowing and you're totally into,
into the images. Another good technique
is to use triplets. It's so much more
stronger to say. I was doing it. I was doing yesterday. I'm doing it today and
I will do it tomorrow. Much more stronger that I'm doing it today and
we'll do it tomorrow. And the prime example
of this, of course, Julius Caesar's Veni vidi vici, I came, I saw I conquered. Another writing technique is to, if you are using several words after one
another and use them, place them in ascending length. Don't say I was having a shower, a drink, and a computer game. Say I was having a drink, a shower, and the computer game. Let's flows so much better
when writing dialogue. And we've talked
about this before. Yet again, I want
to reiterate how important is to have subtext. And the greater the
difference between the text and the subtext, what is said and
what is implied. The more interesting
dialogue you will write. And the more you try to convey what the characters
are trying to convey. Not with words, but with
facial expressions, gestures, actions, the better
your dialogue will be. Strive to write a silent movie. You should try to
see every line of dialogue you write as a failure. You failed to express
it non-verbally. And that's the way you
create great dialogue. A common misconception with novice writers when you
start to write dialogue is to have the characters answering each other's
questions. How are you? I'm good. You're going there. Yeah, I'm going there. You don't wanna do that? No, I don't wanna
do that, right? Yes. And that's super boring. Try to have tried to cut
50% of the dialogue. And don't be afraid of having
just one person speaking. He or she might ask questions which aren't answered verbally. They are answered non-verbally. So much more
interesting to write. So how are you? Yeah, I've been there too
much more interesting then. How are you? Not good? Yeah, I've been there too
much stronger to emit that, that the other
characters response. Okay? So in writing, Take your time. Place yourself in the scene. In the characters are
beside the characters. Listen, wait, and take your time and let your
story, story of all. The more you know
about your characters, the easier and more fun
it will be to write them. We'll talk about that
in a chapter later on. Because what is the story? Well, in essence, story is the sum total of the
character's actions. There is no such
thing as a story. It really, there is the characteristic cysts
that are actions exists. And the sum of that, these characters and the
reactions, That's the story. The more you know
about the characters, the better off you will be. Okay, Now, let's assume you've written your
script and prose. And I would encourage
you yet again, sand out off to a friend. And that's another advantage of writing your scripting pros. Because if you send
it to a friend or someone who isn't
in the business, who isn't used to
reading screenplays. It will be so much
easier for them to appreciate and understand and critique your story if they
read it in a prose format, just like pros format is just
like when you read a novel or a short story
or a fairy tale, that, that's the process
that you are aiming for. Now. You got your script in
prose, you've tested it. Now. It's time to transform
it into a screenplay. And that's the subject
of the next chapter.
6. Chapter 4: Script: Welcome to chapter
four, the script. Now, you wrote your logline, you wrote your synopsis, you wrote your script in prose. Now it's time to take
that script and prose, transform it into the
screenplay format. And the way I would
encourage you to do this is that if you were writing
your script in, for instance, Word or Pages, well, then you just keep
working in Word or Pages, whatever writing software using. And then you just break it
up into a screenplay format. Then if you have access to a screenplay formatting
programs such as final draft, then you export from Word or Pages to final draft
to finalize it. Do you need to have final draft? You don't, but I would highly encourage you to
use Final Draft if you're serious about trying to sell your screenplays or
having them produce because, you know, if your screenplay fails to adhere to the
industry standard, you will not be taken seriously. And you might say, Well,
why should that matter? What should matter
is the quality of my story and that's true. But that's just the way it is. If someone opens up your script and sees on the first page that
this doesn't hold up, this is the wrong format. They will toss it
right then the bin. And that's just the way it is. And it's the same
thing, you know, like wearing a tie. Wearing a tie is
completely useless, right? This is just a tie, serves no function
except to tell everyone else that I'm complying
with a social norm. This is staffing. What
screenplay format. It's like wearing a tie. You need to do it. To tell your reader that
I'm cognizant of the form. I, I know my ****. Basically. I'm one of one of the team. I'm inside, insider
and outsider. So you need to know and write your script
in the proper format. And we're going to talk
about this right now. And of course you
can do this in Word, but it's so much easier if
you do it in, for instance, final draft because then the
software will do it for you. It will be the perfect margins
and the perfect indents, and the perfect
measurement's perfect format and you don't have
to think about it. That's why I will encourage you. I think final draft is $200. And if you're serious
about writing, that's an investment that you really should, should consider. Now, how do you write
the screenplay format? Well, I would encourage you to read as manuscripts as you can. And of course, your
favorite movies or TV series download or these
scripts and read them. And there are several sites online you have is
simply scripts.com, Druze script, the
Rama.com, you have I, S dB, not IMDB, IMS DB, and of course simply scripts and several others. Read them. Study how it is done. One caveat, when you read
those scripts online, many of them are not
a shooting script. The shooting script is
the finalized version, which resembles most
closely the final film. Yet again, the
storytelling process continues up until the
release of the movie. So you write your script, but then it will, you know, transform at least slightly
during production. And there will
continue transform at least slightly during
the editing process. So I bet you, you will never read
a script which is a transpose is exactly
to the final movie. But it's a great exercise
to read great scripts. And of course there are so many, but I would recommend
the scripts of Aaron's work in David
Mamet, James Cameron. So many great writers and
read them and study them. Okay, but the former
looks like this. You always, always,
always write in 12 career or Korean knew
that's the only font you use. You'll never use any
other font and let, the first thing you write
in the upper left corner is Fade In a colon. That's it. Then comes the first slag line. Every scene starts
with a slug line. And the slope tells us, are we inside or outside? Where are we and what
time of day is it? So for instance, it couldn't be interior the counts Castle
day and you're right, that interior
exterior abbreviated. So you write int dot and
then the counts castle. Dash night, Interior,
Castle night. Now we know if we're interior, exterior, where we are and
what time of day it is. And this is of course
for the reader, but also for the production. So you know, when you're
breaking down your script to see what scenes should we, should we shoot when? Then you can see this is
a day seen and this is a night scene and so forth
from this is that location. So that's, that's the
way the script works. And that's why the screenplay
is such a strange beast. Because screenplay is
a literary products meant to be read and to
evoke an emotional response, but is also a blueprint, like an architect's blueprint, how to erect a construction. So that is why,
that is yet again, why I encourage you to first
write your story in prose. So it's just the story. And now to transpose it
into this hybrid form that the screenplay format
is both serving as a piece of literature and as a piece of architecture
at the same time. After a slug line, then you enter into the
scene descriptions. Then you write
what is happening, who is doing what. And you always start after slag down with some
pharmacy in the description, you never go straight,
straight from, from slug line to a
piece of dialogue. And as soon as Gretchen should
be as brief as possible, as succinct as possible, as precise as possible. You should try to write in
short sentences as possible. And you should use short
paragraphs as possible. Don't write an entire
block of text with 1214 lines because that's
just fatiguing to the ear, the eye, and try to break it up in paragraphs 3456, lines. Max, it makes it
so much easier to read and try to use
short sentences. And when you write a screenplay, you can forget everything that your English teacher taught you about good English writing. Something that works
really, really well. And writing scripts are writing sentences that
are one word long. For instance, he
entered the castle. Cold period, dark
period, cobwebs, period. That's not good English, according to your
English teacher, really good screenplay writing. We're trying to be so
succinct as possible. So always, always try to write a short sentences as possible. It makes it so easier to read. Also, what you're trying
to accomplish when you try to have one image per sentence. For instance, if you
if you're right, he was entering the
door behind him. There was an elephant. And if that's two
different sentences, tried to break them up. He was answering
the door, period. Behind them, there was
an elephant that's easier to read and it's
easier to imagine. It's easier to visualize
for the reader. Instead of opening the door and behind him there
was an elephant. Then that's two images that have the process
at the same time, it makes it harder, it makes
it less enjoyable to read. But saying he was
opening the door period, behind him, there
was an elephant. So much easier, so much
easier to visualize. Yet again, you try to make it as easy as possible
for your reader. The easier you make for your
reader to read your story, the more enjoyable
it will be for them. When you introduce a character for the first time
in the script. Only for the first time. You write that character's
name in capital letters. For instance, if
eric enters and it's the first time that we
meet Eric than you'd write Eric and capital
letters after which you insert his age
within parentheses. For instance, Eric, parenthesis,
27, end parenthesis. And then you add one or two
short lines of description. This is not a long
character bio. If you want something
that's very specific and the visual to give me an image to
paint a picture of Eric. So when I see the
word Eric again, that image comes to mind. For instance, if I said
Eric 77, a skinny, balding old man with glasses, wearing a black suit. That's good. Okay, so now next time
I read about Eric, I get this balding old
man with a black suit. And of course, there's
so much more to Eric and his character than being old
and having a black suit. But what do you want
to do at this point? You want to give him
What's the nucleus was character and you want
to paint a picture soda. I can see him in my mind's eye. You want to give us something that really
sums up the character. For instance, enter the Jacob, a 24-year-old bodybuilder
with the Sylvester Stallone, as great as Idle. Is that okay? Okay,
I can see them. And of course that's
really brief summary, but it gives me some picture. So I can hang up that picture
every time I read the word. Yet again, you're trying to write as a visually as possible. You're trying to paint
a picture with NADH, with a brush, but with a pencil. And you might also write other
stuff in capital letters. For instance, sound effects. If you want to
enhance something, if you, for instance, if there's a gunfight and
you want to write bland, bland plan, then you would
write that in capital letters. Bland period, bland
period, lab period. To get the feeling
of because that jumps off the page
and will feel me, make me feel as a reader dot, dot God, there's
something happening. And also if you really want to give emphasis to something, you might enhance that by writing that in
capital letters. And that might be just
a part of a sentence. For instance, if someone
turns around and sees a guy who is a
monster and a text, if you write, it, turns around and sees Eric. And notice that his
face is rotten. You might want to enhance the last part
of that sentence by go. It turns around and says, Eric, and he sees that
his face is rotten. And you keep that in capital letters because
that will stand out and we'll jump off the page
and make me feel as a reader. At least something what we hoped that the
audience will feel. So yet again, you try and
this is not good English. Your English teacher
would never approve this, but this is good visual writing. Finger-like you
writing in a cartoon. Writing as visually and
emotionally as possible. Okay, What happens if you have a scene that inter
cuts, for instance, we're in the counts
cancel and we're on the battlefield and you're
cutting to and through. What you can do then
is in the slag line, you write, for instance,
interior slash exterior, which INT period slash
EXT period counts casual slash
battlefield that day. Then you just write
what happens. And then we know that, aha, we're jumping back
and forth between the counts castle
and the battle. Okay. Moving on
to dialogue where the slug line and we have the scene descriptions,
dialogue. You start with writing
the character's name, the person who is speaking
in capital letters. And that is basically
centered in the page. After that comes
the parentheses. If you use a parenthesis, try not to use parentheses. But if you do, the parenthesis would
end the parenthesis. You right? How you want the characters
to say their lines. And of course, don't
use this if it's obvious from the line how
they should live with us. If, if, for instance says, John, get the **** out of here, You stupid as well. We know how he's angry, right? So you don't need to write parentheses angrily
because that's redundant. But for instance, if he's
being ironic, then you might, if you're saying that to a friend in a
playful manner while then you might benefit from writing John
parenthesis playfully. Get the **** out of here. Because that's the way
repartee between France. But don't try to be very conservative in your
use of parenthesis. Don't use them unless you feel that you really,
really have to. That. And the places that
you would do this is when the delivery of the line goes against the
content of a line. If you're being
ironic, for instance, for somebody, yeah, nice hat. And you might write ironic. So it means that he didn't
think that that was nice. It was being sarcastic. But otherwise, try to
be very conservative. After that. And the parenthesis, if you have the character's name here, then you have the parenthesis
a bit to the left, and then a bit
again to the left. That is where the
dialogue starts. The dialogue is indented both to the left
and to the right. Yet again, if you use a screen play font
formatting software like like final draft, they will do that for you. You will have the perfectly
and then indentations. But if not, then you
have to do it by hand. And then you write the dialogue. Um, okay. And then at the
end of the script, then you write,
in the far right, you write fade out. So that's the way we
know that it's ended. Yet again, your job is to
write as specifically, as visually and as
emotionally as possible. And to illustrate this, I will give you two examples. Is the same scene. It's the exact same story, is the exact same character's
actions and lines. The first one will be much
more factual version. This is what happened. It will be less emotional. And then I will give you
the same scene again, but now written in a way
that is more emotional. And I think it will be
clear to you see that, wow, what a difference that made. And it was purely from
the writing itself, not from the storytelling
is exact same story, but just the way we presented. Okay, this is the first
version, the factual version. Interior the counts castle Hall. Night. Eric enters the
castles mighty Hall, which is empty and desolate with lots of cobwebs on the walls. He looks around the moves
towards a huge stairs. Suddenly he stops
and turns around. And when we go around him, we see the count
standing behind them. The count welcome Eric tern
quickly and accounts miles. So Eric cannot stop
himself from shaking. He runs towards the door
and it's about the grabbed the handle when the
door slams in his face, the count leaving already
the party I just started. It turns around and
sees that account is one meter behind them. Friendly dramatic story. Where are you excited?
I don t think you were, because it wasn't written in a way as to put the
audience in the same state, emotional state
that we hope that the audience will
be on the watch to find is finished movie. So now let's give you
the second version. I hope that you'll
feel that this one is significantly more emotional. Alright. Interior, the
counts castle Hall. Night. Eric enters the castles,
might the hall. Empty, desolate,
cobwebs everywhere. Eric moves towards
a huge stairs. Suddenly, he stops, turns, we move around them
and behind them, in the middle of
the huge stairs. Stanza figure we
haven't seen before. The count. The count whispers. Welcome. Eric turns around. The counts miles wide, incredibly wide. Eric can't stop trembling. It turns through the
door, bolts at top speed, is just about to
reach the door, slam. The door slams shut. In this phase, the count is
really soft, leaving already. The part is just
getting started. Eric turns around and notices the count is
standing one meter behind. I would argue this is much more emotional and you were much more emotionally
invested in this one. It's the same lines, it's the exact same story, the exact same beats,
the exact same actions. But your experience
was very different. And that's because
it was written differently that the writer is using shortest
sentences and using, and this is something
you can use when you read the script. You see if you really want to emphasize
something you can give, give that its own line. And you can also write
it in capital letters. For instance, here
when we introduced the account is this stanza
figure we haven't seen before. And then on its own line
in capital letters, we have the count. Now. Bad English according to
your English teacher, good writing, according
to screenplay writing, because this makes the count pop from the page,
which makes us go, Oh, Jesus Christ account,
which is exactly what we want the audience to feel that
weren't washing your film. So you're trying to write
what happens and in such a way that you create the emotional reaction that you want the audience to happen. Okay? Let's assume you have transposed your story
into a screenplay format. And yet again, I will encourage you to do
that in final draft. Now, you have your
fairness script. Wonderful. You're done, right? No, you're not done. Why are not done? Well, I'm going to talk you, take you through that
and the next chapter.
7. Chapter 5: Writing is rewriting: It ain't over till it's over. It ain't over to the fat lady. Six. Welcome to Chapter Five. Writing is rewriting. Once you've written your
script and you're done, you think, because you have
come to that final point, it's easy to think that
you're done, but you're not. Because now is where the
final and in many ways, the most important part of
the writing process ensues, which is the rewriting. And the writing is rewriting. And that's an old adage
which always holds true. And someone said that the human brain has
an easier capacity. You're working with a contrast, contrast and compare situation that in a creative situation. So once you've got something, you've got something on the table that you can
contrast and compare, then it's so much easier
to continue to work on it. And we're going to talk
about some techniques that you might employ when
you are rewriting. The first thing you should
do when you're done with your script is to
have a table read. You should, ideally,
you should hire actors. And if you can't afford that, then you should have
some friends read it and read it aloud. And you shouldn't read not
even the scene descriptions. You should sit with a notepad
and a pen and just listen. And he has feel the
ambiance in room. And I promise you it
won't be so clear to you what's working
and what's not working. Because you can sit
by yourself for hours and hours at
end and not find out a fraction of the information
that you will find out when you are
performing a table read. And it will be so binary, you will feel that either
it's flying or it's dying. There will be no middle ground. You know, what I like to do and I like to
encourage you to do is sit and just make a note
if something's working, I just write down an exclamation mark and that's that's good
to know as well. Okay. This is working. If it's not working, I just write the assessor, which means that
either this has to go or it has to be shortened, or it has to be rewritten. But basically you could say everything that the
audience doesn't enjoy. You remove that or
you rewrite it. And if the audience enjoys it, that's good to keep it and well, and if possible, you enhance it. William Goldman, the brilliant writer who wrote,
amongst other thing, All the President's
Men and batch, Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he said that the audience knows the rest of us
are just guessing. And you can hire ten. Dramaturgy rigs or
consultants will have you, but they will never
give you as much information about your
story as one table we will. This is super important,
super crucial. Do not skip out on the
table, a table read, It's so much better that
you face the bool here. And you find out in a table, read that out, god ****,
this is not working. Then you make the
film and then you sit in front of an
audience and fight them. This is not working. It's so much better here. It's cost basically nothing. It's so much cheaper
and easier and less painful to correct mistakes
at this point in the process. Then later on. That's why I encourage
you to not move forward in the process until you feel that what you have is solid because it's harder
and harder and harder. It takes more and more work and there's more and more painful to address problems the later
you are in the process. Okay, so tabled read, that's where you start. And probably when
you have a table, you will have lots of ideas
how you can improve and what to take away or
what to short-term. And usually nine
times out of ten, if you feel that something's not working, you should cut it. That should be your
default option to cut it. You might feel the tendency
to feel the Golem, Tennessee, My precious, you want to keep
it because you wrote it, you spend time on it. You want to keep it. Try to refrain from listening
into your inner Gollum. If it's not working,
throw it away. Kill your darlings, they say, and that's what it's about. If it's not working, it doesn't matter how
much time you spent on it or how much you love it if it's not working,
throw it away. In some instances,
one time out of ten, it might be that you
actually need it, but then you might
need to sharpen it or abbreviated on sometimes
it'll be in the scene. It might be that. You need that piece of
information or that beat, but you might be able to extract it and put it into
another scene. So you don't need
to pay the price of another scene for that
just small modicum of information that you needed. So that's important
to consider that just because you need that beat, doesn't mean that you
need the entire scene. You might be able to transpose that moment that beat
into another scene. Always try to compress. We're going to talk about that, one of the techniques
in writing later on. Alright, so after the
table read one technique, one aspect that
is important with different names is try to have the names of the
characters in your story start with different
initial letters. Try to avoid having two
or several characters, having names that start
on the same letter. For instance, avoid having David and Daniel in the
same story because that's just takes more
time for me as a reader. And yet again, you want
to make it as easy and as enjoyable for the
reader as possible. Many readers, many
professional readers says, when they pick up
a script and say, oh, this looks
like an easy read. And there's a very good thing. This is the thing you should
be aware of in the industry, in the professional industry. Getting a professional to read your script from the
first to the last page. That's a feat to itself. First, you need to sell your script by having
a great synopsis, a great pitch of great
logline that will make that professional wants
to read your synopsis. And if the synopsis is
great, read the script, but there are no guarantees
that read your entire script. Many working professionals
in Hollywood say that they give a script one
page, one page. And if the first page
fails to engage them, they toss it in the
bed because they have thousands of
scripts to read. They cannot waste time with
the script does not working. So you really, really need to make your script working
from the get-go. And you need to make the reading experience as easy
and enjoyable as possible. Another thing to
consider when you read writes is what Francis
Ford Coppola says. He says that you write
the story forward, but you rewrite it backwards. And when you are working
on your rewrite, what you can do is what Francis Ford Coppola admonishes
us to do is you take a piece of paper and
then you start from the end of your script and
then you ask yourself, what, what led to this? And then you back
up to that point. And then you ask yourself, what led to this? And then they continue up until the beginning
of your script. If you find a scene or beat that is outside that causal link, that link of chain, the
chain of cause and effect. That is redundant to the
story and that has to go. It's like David Fincher
is says that extra scene, no story can afford it. Because if you have a
scene that is redundant or partially redundant,
you might say, Well, we were going to survive
that later on and we don't, because that scene
is going to linger, at least in the subconscious
of the audience. And then they're going to wait
for to pay off the scene. And they're going
to feel like why, why, why did they go? And this is super-important
that everything in your story should be
either a setup or pay off. Especially now,
when you rewrite, try to have everything that
every beat tried to have it, either a set or pay off. If someone assess
in the second half, I'm going to go to Australia, set that up in the first
half of the story. And of course, setup and payoffs might work
in different ways. But, but the basic
structure of setup and payoff is that the first half
of the story as the setup? And the second half of the story is that
payoff, of course, there might be set
up and payoffs within the same
scene and so forth. But try to connect
everything in your story as much as possible to
weave that web as, as tight as you possibly can. Because that will increase the audience's
enjoyment when they see that are all the
dots are connected. I would encourage you to
watch the movie hot foss. Just a great, great reference. You see a harmony thinks
they are tying together. How many things, setups that are paying off at the
end of the movie. And when you watch that movie, notice how you feel as an
audience that the pleasure you feel for every time
something is paid off, which was set up
earlier in the story. So try to connect as many
beats, beats as possible. Try to weave that story web. As tight as you can. Another thing to
consider when you rewrite this arc comes race or outcomes is named after medieval monk
named who said that everything should be
done as simple as possible. Einstein says that you
should try to solve every problem as simple as
possible, but not simpler. It's like a bodybuilder. You're trying to shed
all that excess fat, but you're trying not to shut muscles and ligatures of course. So everything that you
can cut must be cut. Every scene, every beat, every sentence, every word that you can cut will make
your script stronger. And scriptwriting
it has much more in common with poetry
than with pros. If you write a novel, well, you can get away with writing four or 500 pages and you
can get away with a passage, not really moving the store at story forward in squirt
prompting you can't. This is a very, very
disciplined form, a writing. It's like poetry, and I would encourage you to write poetry. You don't need to
publish it or anything. But writing poetry is
really good practice. We're trying to say as much as possible with as few
words as possible. You're trying to maximize the information density
in your writing. It's like when you're a kid and you're throwing
snowballs at one another, He's trying to compress
the snow to make the snowball as hard as
hard hitting as possible. That is what your
writing should be. Every word you can cut. You need to cut. And as for dialogue, can simply ask yourself, do, does my character
really need to say this in order to
communicate this? Can he or she communicated
via facial expression, look, gesture, fiscal action. And the more you can
push the characters communication down from
the text into the subtext, into non-verbal communication, the better your story will be. I talked about that previously, but it's worth mentioning. Again, super, super important, really, really good scripts. And you will notice how much is communicated nonverbally
between the characters. And that's one of the
hallmarks of great writing. Okay? When you rewrite, follow your protagonist and
your lead characters, and make sure that we
have every moment in the story are cognizant of what they're doing and
why they're doing it. How are they reacting to
the events unfolding? And what are they thinking? If for one moment, I, as an audience are not
aware of these things, I'm leaving your character, I'm leaving your protagonist. If I leave your protagonist, I'm leaving your story because your protagonist is my
avatar into your story. It's like a computer game. You're running around and
you're seeing the rifle. I mean, if, if there's a,
if there's an action game, you are experiencing
the world of the game through the eyes of
your avatar, your player. It's the same thing
in the story. Our protagonist is our avatar. We're experiencing everything
via the protagonist. And if a story is
not an objective, reference of events
is subjective. A retelling of events. We experiencing these events
through this character. And if for one moment you shroud your distance us
from your protagonist. I distance myself
from your story. So it's super important that every twist and
turn on this story, I completely understand what
your protagonist is doing, why they're doing it, what are they
thinking and feeling? There's 1 in the story where your protagonist
can surprise us, and that's in the very end, and you can forget a
good example of this. You can watch Ocean's
Eleven, also Titanic. There's 1 where rows
surprises us and does something which we
weren't aware of. And that's very odd when
she throws the heart of the ocean into the
ocean or she fooled us, she tricked us. We
didn't know that. But up until that point, we're with her at
every twist and turn. If we weren't, we
would leave the story. So that's a super,
super important that you make sure that we are width inside your protagonist the entire
story up until the end. Writing is, rewriting has many aspects and one of them
is condensing, compressing. Stephen King says
that the second draft equals the first draft
minus ten per cent. Astrid linger in
the Swedish writer of books such as
pip along stocking, she says that rewriting is cutting half or you've
texts and rewriting. The texts that remains. Ingmar Bergman said in
editing movies that you should remove
thirty-three percent. Quentin Tarantino, he says
that you should always cut the last two
lines of any scene. The Greeks, Aristotle, he says that we should enter a scene, an entire story as
late as possible. And we should leave the
scene as early as possible. So enter late, exit early. But you don't want
to enter to light. So you should always enter a scene as close to
the Jews as possible, as close to when the ****
hits the fan as possible. And then as soon
as your scene has told what they're
seeing wanted to tell, and then you move on
to the next scene. So you're trying to compress
as much as possible. And this goes for the scene
as well as the entire story. For instance, if
you look at one of the first works on Western
literature, The Iliad. The Iliad depicts
the Trojan War. And the Trojan War
encompass ten years. But Iliad doesn't start at
the beginning of the war. It starts after nine years. The Iliad deals with the
last year of that ward, the last ten per
cent of the war. That's a very, I
think, good model. How to create story
there you can see that the story is really
just the climax. The backstory. For instance, if you take Star Wars, what happens episode for 56
is really just a climax. Huge backstory, everything that happened
up to that point. And of course, you
know that backstory. George Lucas depicts
in episode 123. If you look Pirates
of the Caribbean, than movie is just a climax to the giant backstory of Will's father or
build the bootstrap. You have it, you name it
the Lord of the Rings. This is just a short,
short climax of that huge backstory
of insular fighting. Sauron, taking his ring, not throwing it into Mount Doom, loosing it to goal and bump up, up, up, up all that part, leaving up here to the story. And we don't enter
the story here. We entered a story here as
close to the Jews as possible. So they're late, exit early
and try to see how much. This is a common mistake
with beginning writers. You're starting the
scene too early. You started the story too early to push it,
push it, push it. And I promise you that probably you'll see that you
can start your many receives much later than you thought was possible.
Compressing. It's so important. Yet again, I'm compressing
is just, it's not optional. It's a key feature
to great writing. And the more condensed
you're writing is, the more the stronger response you will get from your audience. And a good scene comprises
several situations at once. If you watch the movie, The Talented Mr. Ripley, several great examples of scenes comprising
several situations. Also try to compress several
characters into one. If you have two characters performing mainly
the same function, try to compress them into one. And try to compress
the use of time. The more you compress the time that the
story of comprises, the easier it will be to write, and the more engaging
this story will be. If you can take a
story that takes place during the course of three days and compress
it to one day, you will have a much
stronger, strongest story. The French class,
the cystic drama. They had a rule that every play should comprise no
more than 24 hours. And of course, of
course you can. The more you compresses
the battery, your story will be. For instance, Romeo and Juliet takes place over the
course of five days. Star Wars Episode
four takes place. The bulk of it takes place
in the course of two days. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? 12 Angry Men takes place over the course of
a couple of hours. Compress, compress,
compress the use of time, and it also will make it easier for you in
the creative process. We only have one chapter
left now and that is, I'm going to give you my tip. How to create a story
from beginning to end. I'm gonna, I'm gonna
give you my Excel sheet, which I use to create
stories and which I hope will help you to
create your stories. But before that, I'm
just going to give you some tips on
recommended reading, further reading that
you might enjoy, which I have enjoyed it
thoroughly and learned a lot from the primary, the first and foremost
book you should read this poetics by Aristotle. Aristotle, the Greek
philosopher that lived 38423, tutorial to before Christ and poetics is actually first book on storytelling ever written. And you could argue,
it's the best. And it's very simple,
it's very short. And throughout the series, I've talked about to you about some of the concepts in poetics. For instance, I
talked about that. According to Aristotle,
the purpose of drama is to create fear and
pity in the audience. And the way you create that, instead you take a
person that's good or at least reasonably good, and you have them commit the mistake and that they
have to pay for that mistake. If misfortune befalls a saint. We don't care. If misfortune befalls
an evil person. We don't care, but if misfortune befalls a good person
who made a mistake. Now we care because that
causes fear and pity, fear and Peter, because I
feel that could have been me. Okay, another
fantastic book is an, I talked to you about
that foreigners series. That's the book, The Hero
with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. And Joseph Campbell, he was a
professor of literature and he was specializing in
comparative mythology. This book is really a game
changer and many people say that you will not
be the same person. After reading the
hero's journey. There were 1000 phases as you were before, and
that's really true. It's, this isn't about
storytelling per se. You won't find any
recommendations on how to write a script. This is about why
do we tell stories? What's the
psychological benefits? Why have humans at all times, in all cultures relied on
stories to help us give meaning and structure to our understanding
of our existence. It's a fantastic,
fantastic book and I encourage you
cordially to read. We have 1000 phages faces. George Lucas, when
creating Star Wars, was highly influenced by Joseph Campbell and the
Hero with a Thousand Faces. I would also
encourage you to read a fantastic book called The Art of Dramatic
Writing by larger e Greek. And what he talks about there is something that is
super important is this, that characters
create the stories. If you start with
the characters, if you try to understand your characters and
their motivations, the better stories
you will write. Because as I mentioned before, stories are an abstraction. You can, you know, you can't point your
finger at the story. The only thing that
really exists or the characters and
the reactions. Another book we've
talked about that, this morphology of the folk
tale by Vladimir Propp. And there's an American
writer called Michael Welles. Shock was right in some terrific books
called screenwriting, down to the atoms
and screenwriting and a unified theory
of narrative part 12. And lastly, I would like to
recommend Into the woods by English writer John jerk. There was a two websites
I'd like to recommend. Of course, there are a
plethora of websites, but these are two that are just playing fantastic.
It's all free. I'll give you three actually. The first one is by an American writer
called K and Wieland. And her site is called helping
riders become authors.com. And there's a ton of
information there, and it's all for free. American writer called
Steven Pressfield, who has written the
legend the Bagger Vance. And he has site called
writing Wednesday's, which is super inspiring. And I would also like to
recommend the website by Terry Elliott and sorry Ted Terri roseola and Ted
LEO to write herself, Aladdin, the Caribbean. They have a website
called The word player, which is very insightful,
entertaining. So ethanol or
artistic endeavors. When are we, when are we done? When are we, When is
our training complete? And the answer is,
of course, never. Even Steven Spielberg
as a student. And we will be to the
very day that we die. And I think it's so inspiring
to think about what, what Joseph Haydn,
the composer said. And of course there was
such a prolific composer, he composed 104 symphonies,
choral works, concerts. What have you highly,
highly prolific composer. And on his deathbed
he said that. And I just was beginning to
understand the woodwinds, not the entire orchestra,
but the woodwinds. I was just starting to
get to understand them. I think it's so inspiring that we could do this for
3 thousand years. It was possible to live that long and we would
still be beginners. That's also, I think
the very beauty and that it's something that, you know, it never ends. Paul McCartney said
in an interview, and I think that's inspiring, is that the joy of
music for him was not creating all these
albums are solving all these albums and being so influential
they sent to him to enjoy music is that I have something that will
always bring me joy. I sit down to play. And that's what I
hope for you as well. That if you choose writing to be your art form, that it will, regardless of your
professional success or lack thereof,
you will always, always experienced joy when you dedicate yourself
to or art form.
8. Chapter 6: Fredrik Hiller´s Tool for scriptwriting: Welcome to the last chapter
in the last series. Now we've talked
about how to create a story from scratch to
a finished screenplay. Starting with a
logline, synopsis, too, descriptive pros, and to the finalized script
and screenplay format. But how do you do that in
a way that is organic? Well, what am I going
to present to you now is my modus operandi
that this is the way I work. I work for the first part
of the process in Excel. And of course you
might work in numbers, which is of course, the Apple's own version
of Excel or Word, it might be others as well. What's the advantage of working in Excel and not
in Word or Pages? It's so much easier
to have structure, an overview when you work
in Excel because you have all these different
boxes and you can really get an
overview so much easier. And that is what you want. In the early part of the
story telling process. You want the structure, you want the helicopter
perspective, you want the overview. And that is so much harder
to have if you write the word or pages or in Final
Draft or what have you. So that's why I recommend
it might sound strange, might sound not creative. You know, Excel. That's for
people who work in finance. But this is really, really, really a super useful
tool to work in Excel or Numbers are worth
however you want. I'm sending along here
what you can download here is my Excel document. And of course, Is this
the only way to work? Of course not. You can work in a thousand ways. Every writer has
his or her own way. If you would ask Stephen King, does he work like this? They will probably laugh
for an entire hour. This is not the way he'd work. But then of course,
there are writers who wouldn't dream of working the
way that Stephen King does. So there's no right and wrong. The only thing that
matters is the end result. To me, this is a very
good way of working. And after writing 11 place
and seven screenplays, this is what I feel now. It's a very productive
way to write something that
becomes functioning. And also a process that
is very, very efficient. You can say there are
two kinds of writers. There are the plotters
and the answers. The answers are the ones that
write like Stephen King. They sit down and say act one, scene one, and then
they start riding away. They probably have an
id on where to go. But, but basically, that's it. Of course, that might
lead to good stuff. Of course, I would
say the drawback is that you might
end up in words, you might end up
with the material that's just not coherent. And if you end up with
material that is coherent, you might have so much stuff
that is redundant in my, my take you so much
time to weed out everything that is not part of that chain of
cause and effect. If you're working this
way, I promise you, it's so much easier getting to a good end result
because in this way, you are only
creating and working with what is vital to
telling this story. And if you feel that, or writing in this way seems
a bit formulae, can try it. I would say, I would argue, Henrik Ibsen, the great
Norwegian playwright, wrote Hello gallbladder and all these influential
and Seminole place. He, when he encountered a young person wanting
to be playwrights, if they didn't show
him a synopsis. He has shown to the door
because he said it's impossible to write a good
play with having a synopsis. So obviously, I think you
understand that I favor henry Gibson's method
versus Stephen King's not to say that Stephen
King isn't a brilliant, brilliant writer.
Of course he is. Yet again, what matters
is not your process. What matters is the end result. So all caveats aside, this is not the
only way working. And if you ask me in
ten years from now, maybe I've changed something
in this way of working. But for now, after doing
this for almost 30 years, this is what I feel for me, at least to be the most productive and
enjoyable way of working. So without further ado, let's get into it. My Excel document. So you can see I have
a six tabs here. The first one is called log. The second one is a
theme and concept. The third tab is content. The fourth is players, the fifth is causal chain, and the sixth is ideas. So let's get into detail in this different
different tabs. The first time log,
this is where our log. What I do, what I
feel about what I do, What's my goal for the next day? When do I start? When do I n Why do I do this? Because it's like if you're
into health and exercise, you will know that if you
have a personal trainer, they will encourage you
to have a notebook, to have a diary
where you just write down what kind of
exercises you did, how much you ran that
day, what it felt like. Why is that is the purpose
to go back and study it? No, it's not. It's just that
writing down what you do, what it felt like. Really helps, helps you,
helps you in the process. It helps you to keep
yourself on track. I think it's also a good way of monitoring how much work
you're putting into something. For instance, if you're
writing a script and you're seeing that you
put in 500 hours. That's way, way, way too much, then you know, I'm
doing something wrong. If your work, the way
I do, I would say, you shouldn't writing
a script of 120 pages. You shouldn't spend
more than 200 hours. If you spend more
than 200 hours, I'd say you're doing
something wrong. So it's a good it's a good
test to see where am I at. Am I going too slow? Am I doing something wrong? And it also helps. It gives you that reward. At the end of every day, writing when you
can log out today, I wrote one hour or two
hours or three hours. What have you? You can give yourself a
little pat on the back. And that's important
because writing a novel or a full feature screenplay
takes a long time. If you write a poem
or write a song, you can do that in a day. Of course, it might
take much longer that, but you can, it's feasible
to write a song in a day. I know some artists can
write several songs and day, but you cannot write a screenplay or a novel in
one day that's impossible. So this kind of creativity is much more taxing on our powers
of perseverance. In order to persevere, in order to doggedly go back to the work
every single day. It's a very good
practice to give yourself a reward at
the end of every day. And it's also very
good practice, very good practice
to write down. The last thing you do every
day writing is to write down what am I going to start with tomorrow or the next
day I'm writing? This is what Hemingway did. The last thing Hemingway did
every day was to write down, what am I going to
start with tomorrow. And that's a little
bit because that makes it so much easier when you come back the next day
and you know, okay. Oh yeah, I'm starting
there. Instead of having to pick up the
pieces all over again. Hemingway also says
that you should never write until the point
where you're exhausted. You should always stop
before you're exhausted, you should stop
writing what you have. At least some gas
left in the tank. Because if you're always deplete
all your energy writing, eventually it will feel tiresome
to start writing again. So when you're going good and
you felt that you've done a good day's work and you
can be proud of yourself. That's when you start. You could have continued
for half an hour. Maybe you could have
continued for a full hour, but you stop because you never want to deplete your
entire energy because that will eventually wear down
your enjoyment in writing. It's like my brother who's a very good long
distance runner. He said you should
always start running, run a bit slower than
you think that you can, because that discrepancy and gives you a feeling of power. No feeling of being substandard. To write down the last
thing you do every day. Write down what's the first
thing I'm gonna do tomorrow, and never exhaust yourself. Always quit writing before your gas has expired
from the tank. Looking here. We're starting to hear
the story and then we have the goal for
the finished script. This is how many
hours do I feel? It's my budget, is my
time budget because it's important
even though you're writing and maybe you're
not getting paid. And you're writing and
saying, Oh, it's for free. It's not for free because
it's important in order for other people
to respect your work. You have to respect
his yourself. And only way you can
respect your work is that you decide how
much is this worth? How much money have I spent on salary for myself,
which of course, you're not paying if
you're working yourself, but it's important to take
yourself seriously to decide. This is the amount of money, this is the amount of time that I would dedicate.
This is my budget. And I would argue, probably starting out if this is the
first time you're writing, it's going to take longer. But if you had
written some scripts, I would argue that if it doesn't involve
extensive research, if you're writing
a period piece, I would say you should be
able to complete the script in 200 or 250 hours. Here. Here we have the sum total, which is the sum here. We'll see it later on. Of all the, the amount
of time you spent. Here's the strategy. You might say I'm
going to start with doing the characters and then I'm going to do this and
they're not going to do this. And then I'm going to do this and then you're breaking down the estimated time
budget here every day. You're writing down
what day is it? What's your starting
time once your n time, and then what's the sum, what's the amount of time
you worked that day? How many hours was it? 30 minutes, one hour, two hours, three
hours, four hours? I would argue that, you know, try not to write more
than four hours. I would say three to four hours. That's basically a Mac.
You'll Stephen King. You rise 3.5 hours a day. And you might say 3.5
hours, that's nothing. But if you ever have
written something, you know, writing
is hard. It's hard. It's like juggling ten balls
in the air at the same time, the kind of mental power that you have exhaust
is very, very taxing. So writing three
hours, that's a lot. That's a lot. 3.5 hours. More than four hours. I'd say you're going
to exhaust yourself. So I would say be realistic. I say plan or writing two hours a day,
maybe one hour day. And if you can if you can shed, you'll in three to four hours some of the days
if that works with your work duties or families and what you have in
your life, do that. But you can accomplish so much wood writing,
yes, one hour a day. And I would argue, everyone, or at least most people can
set one hour a day free. There's no excuse for not
writing a screenplay. I don't have the time. You have the time. You can set one and
you notice you can set aside one hour a
day. What's less? Facebook? Watch one TV, show, less, less doodling
around on social media. You can, you can, you can take that one hour. And if you write one
hour a day and you do that for 250 days, you're
going to scream pipe. So one hour a day you can write the screenplay finished
in less than a year. So there's no excuse. However, if you can put in more hours than I
mean, by all means, But I would say try not to
write more than three or 3.5 hours because not even
Stephen King does that. It's hard. Okay. I will also argue,
when you write, try to take a short
break every 15 minutes. A friend of mine
who was a doctor, she says that the human
brain is not designed to concentrate deeply more than 15 minutes at time, at a time. So when I was in the
Swedish military, we were marching, you know, for hours and hours and
hours and hours. The way we could do this, that every 15 minutes we took
a ten minute break. So we marched in 50 minutes, ten-minute break, 15
minutes, ten-minute break. And we felt that we could be
marching around the clock. I would argue that
it's not the sum total of your work effort
that makes you tired. It's the length of the of the time you're
working consecutively. So if you take a break
five or ten minutes, every hour, I think you'll see you'll
we'll experience that. After three or four
hours working, you're not as tired as if you had work two or three
hours consecutively. So take five or ten minutes off every hour, leave the room, go up, do some do some push-ups, sit-ups and go and grab
yourself a coffee. Leave the computer or on
a typewriter and think of something else than
your script because they will rejuvenate your brain. This is important. Don't work against your biology. Work with, work with the way the mother nature has
as greater than okay. Moving on here, action, what did I do? I write down, what did I do? Well, I wrote that chapter
and I was prepping the next chapter and I was
working on a structure. What have you then here
feeling what did it feel like? They are today felt
hard or today I didn't feel like
I got into music. I didn't get into
the scene today. Or maybe if that today
I was flying man. What's my goal for the next day? Well, tomorrow I hope
to accomplish this. So you can see this. Maybe I'll work two hours
here and one hour here, and 1.5 hours here. And then you can see up here in the sum total m, of course, the sum totals
should hopefully not exceed the goal for
the finished script. Okay, So this is
what I do at the end of each working session, that, and that each day. And it feels really good and you don't really need
this because yet again, writing a novel or
screenplay that it's not a sprint,
it's a marathon. It's like you're going to trek
through the Amazon jungle. It's not like running 15
minutes round the compound. So it's really good to
have this travelers log. It will, it will inspire you and it will help
you keep you on track. Keep the log like every
sailor always had in history. Moving on to the next
tab, Theme and concept. Okay. So these are the questions that I'd
like to answer by myself. And I would also say that these almost everything you right here are for
your eyes only. Don't show this to anyone else because most of the stuff
that you'll be writing here are many styles
of things there'll be writing here might be deeply personal and you shouldn't disclose that that's
your, your secret. The magic with storytelling or all art form is that you're
taking, if it's good, you're taking something inside yourself which is
deeply personal, might be painful, it
might be a joyous, but is deeply personal. Sensitive. You're trying
to communicate that. But you want to do that
in a way that safeguards both you and the audience.
How do you do that? Well, we do that with fiction. So you take that, which is deeply
personal within you, and you transpose that
into a fictional universe. And then the audience can take that
fictional universe and transpose that into
their personal story. And that's the way
we communicate. So the fiction as
the bridge between my personal experience and
your personal experience. So you need, the
more you can explore yourself and your life and your dreams and
your fears in writing, the better your story will be, but beware, you should never, never disclosed that because this is your working material and then you transpose that
into the fictional universe. But you do need to know it. But you also need to make
sure that no one else does. So everything we're
talking about here, this entire document,
you keep to yourself. Okay. I'd like to start by asking
myself, what's my purpose? What do I hope the audience
will gain by watching? Everything you do is
for the audience, it's first and foremost
for ourselves. And if we're not interested, of course the audience
can never be. As Ray Bradbury says, no tears in the rider, no tears in the audience. If you're not laughing,
daunting as well, not in all art, there are no
positive guarantees. They are only
negative guarantees, meaning that if you're
laughing at something erodes, there are no guarantees that the audience
will have as well. But there is a guarantee
that if you're not laughing, they will definitely not
be laughing as well. If you're not moved, the audience will not be moved. But just because you are mood
doesn't mean they will be. So there are no
positive guarantees, only negative guarantees. Alright? But in the end, if we are producing something
for someone else to watch, especially if we're asking
them to pay money to see it. We're doing it for them. What do I hope that the
audience will gain by watching? The audience is not a
homogenous group of people. There had two genres. They have their disparate, they have different
likes and dislikes. But what do we hope that at least part of the audience
will gain by watching? Next question, in
what ways do I hope this story will
empower the audience? Good art know, makes
the audience stronger. Every, every film or play or book or piece
of music that you ever listened to or watched
or read that you liked. In some way, shape or
form empowered you. I read an article where they played AC DC music
for a young child. And she said, What listening to a CDC said that
listening to this music, I feel I can fly. I think that should be,
that should be a goal. The wall art. Yeah,
you can be serious. It can be tragic. What have you, but
in some way, shape, or form it needs to empower the audience was a Swedish
act or count down. There's also said
that art isn't art. If it doesn't give people
the power to live, I think that's really important. Some rami, the movie director, he says that he thinks that a movie should give
energy to the audience. Thinks there are too
many movies that suck energy from the audience. And I think it's
super important to try to empower the
oils we might fail. But I think it's our duty to try to give as much as
possible to audience, to empower the audience
as much as possible. In the best-case scenario, make the audience feel
that they can fly. In what ways do I hope the
story will be life affirming? Yet again, someone said,
I think it's good. No one is interested
in paying good money and spending time to hear
that life is ****. No one. But we are interested
in spending time and money to hear
that life is hard. What's the difference? Well, it's huge
difference. Life is hard. We all know that. But life is not a futile. Life has immense value, but, but it's hard, or maybe
because it's hard what I know. But it has to be life
affirming even if you're, if you look at a great art,
look at, for instance, Schindler's List, dealing
with the most atrocious, heinous crime ever committed. It's still life affirming, and that's why we can ensure, and that's why we are
empowered by watching it, even though it deals with something atrocious
as the Holocaust, a prayer, it doesn't, you don't need to be religious, but every good story
should be, should. We should try in writing
to elevate ourselves, to become better
versions of ourselves. And in so doing, maybe the audience
can be that as well. Confession talked about you're taking something very private, addressing that in
specific circumstances in order for the audience to
confess something as well. And this is where
storytelling works. What we're doing is basically it giant collective therapy, where I'm saying something, I'm admitting something to you, which I would never dare
admit in real-life. And I do that through fiction. Thick fiction, one's good is
a lie that tells the truth. And what if I succeed
in doing that? Then you can admit
the same sin or mistake or feeling too. And you can feel, my God, I'm not the only one. There are other people
that feel the same way. And we can all breathe easier. We could never admitted
because in life, for instance, for an example, if I were to write a
story about a killer, maybe I could confess that sometimes I
wanted to kill people, which of course I haven't,
because we're good people. But as you know, we all wanted to kill people. But we can't admit to that
because then we're crazy. But we all wanted
to kill people. And we can use art to confess. A communal confession, which
is great, great therapy. Cs Lewis, in the movie, shadow lands, he says that
why do we read and write? And of course, why
do we make stories? To feel less alone? And that's what good art does. It makes us feel less alone, bad, or does the opposite? It makes us feel more alone. No one else's has felt
the way I'm feeling. I'm weird. Good art makes us feel. Not only what lamb annotation, what makes us sad
and what makes us happy about the
workings of the world. Moving onto theme. What is the universally
relevant subject matter? And what do I find to be both true and interesting
in regards to this? If you remember, in the
first part of this series I talked about theme
is the subject, and then you have your take
on that subject, your truth. In regards to that subject, that is your theme. And of course it's opposite. One is not true in
regards to this. What are the lies,
the misconceptions? What is the central
truth, the ending? Your central truth always
occurs at the end. It's like in a funny story. The punchline, that's
the point of the story. The point of the
story of course, appears at M story. And that's the great advantage in working from inside out. If you start working with
a theme of your story, when you know what you feel
to be absolutely true. What's the central truth about this subject? You know your end. When you know the lies and
misconceptions, you know, at the beginning and erode
up to the final truth. What are one of the most
common misconceptions? That is the beginning
of your story. And according to you, how do you live successfully in regards to the subject matter? How do you live unsuccessfully? And if the
protagonists succeeds, what can she do that in the
end and not in the beginning? And that's the theme, if you remember, we've
talked about theme. Theme is the difference in modus operandi between the
beginning of that and the way the protagonist tries
to solve the problem in the beginning versus the
way she tries to solve it. In down. That is, the theme. Moving on here to the
thematic cross at Aristotle. You're starting with,
if you remember, when we talked in the first
part of the series, by theme, your protagonist
is starting with being her old self using
her first modus operandi, which is the anti-thesis. The first anti thesis. At the midpoint of the story, she is moving more and
more into the second self, the new self, which is
opposite to the old self. And this is the
second anti-thesis. So this is a second wrong way of trying to solve the problem. Each way has usually some
kind of initial success, but then it fails. Same thing here with
the second anti-thesis. Usually you have some
initial success, but eventually it
fails and this fails at the moment of darkness, Three-quarters into the story. And they're, your protagonist moves into the
third anti-thesis, which is usually no
self is the desolation is trying to retreat
to the form itself, which is no longer possible. And if the story ends
on a positive note, your hero eventually
learns the synthesis, which is the right way, the right modus operandi, and that's the master
of the two selves, the ultimate self,
the true self. Dividing your characters into the knights and the
maidens and the dragons. You remember we talked about
the drama triangle and all your characters should be positioned somewhere
along being the maiden, the ninth and the dragon, and they don't have
to be a 100% dragon. Knight then can be somewhere in the middle of between
night and Dragon. And we've talked about this
in every functioning seen, at least one of the characters are in
some way shape or form, changing their position
in the drama triangle. To fiscal worlds for teens, we talked about this
original world. You have the protagonist and
the antagonist and then the special where you have the
mentor and the dragon. For instance, we talked
about Pirates of the Caribbean original world. We have the protagonist where
the Will and Elizabeth. And then we have the antagonists
which are the upstairs, That's Command ignoring
the Elizabeth's father and all the soldiers
and the special world. We have the mentor,
that's the spiral. And then we have the drag on, which are the soldiers under the command
of Captain Barbosa. They are fighting the
two fiscal worlds, which is Port Elizabeth
versus torque, and the cave and the seed
that belongs to both of them. Moving on to transformations. It's a very good way to start when you're
transformations. We start with the entire transformations,
the entire story. And then for all the acts, act one to a to b and x three. Because if you know that
your transformation, then you know your story. You know the end point. And you know, at the
beginning, it's like when you're buying a journey, you're going into a travel
agency and buying new journey. You don't say I want, I want
to buy a trip to somewhere. You say I want to go to
Greece and I would travel from Orlando stock on I don't wanna I wanna
go on that date. Now you know the end
and the beginning and the way between the
beginning and down. That's your story. If you know your transformation
around the beginning, almost half of the work is done. The hardest part in creating the story is coming
up with them. Anyone can come up
with a good beginning. Anyone starts with a bank robbery and
that's a great beginning. It starts with a bomb going
off the House of Parliament. That's a great start. So easy. Finding, finding a good ending
that is hard, super heart. And how do you find
a great big ending? Well, argued that easiest way, least hard way, is to
come up with your theme. It turns out what
am I trying to say? What is to me the most ultimate truth
about this subject matter. And when you know that, How do you realize that
that's your ending? Moving on to concept. There are several questions
here that you can toy around with in trying to
understand your story. Starting with a headline,
you want to write. If you were writing your
story as an article, as a newspaper article, what can a headline
could you write? That would be catching and that would encapsulate the
beginning and the end. This is a very good technique in finding concepts
that are interesting. For instance, in discerning, do I have a large
enough transformation? For instance, if your
headline would be a racist skin had kills
and immigrant girl. This is depressing
because there's no, there's no transformation
and he started out in the same way he ended. But if the headline
would be a racist, skin head sacrifices his own
life for an immigrant girl. Ah, that's a transformation. Ok, started out
the racist Skinner ended up sacrificing his
life for an immigrant girl. That's a really huge
transformation. Now I'm interested in
learning why what happened. What experiences and insights
did this guy have that transform him from being a racist Skinner to a guy who sacrificed his life and
then we get the girl. So this is good
technique if I now, do you have enough
transformation in your story? The further apart you can
push to end at the beginning, the further apart you can push the character and what he
or she does in the end. The more interesting a concept
and thus a story you have. For instance, in Kung Fu Panda, you have the fat panda. Pooping, who is
completely untrained in the martial arts
and he has to fight the deadly fierce snow
leopard tai Lung. And then then he does. And how come? Well, that's the story that if you'd write
that as a headline, that would be intriguing. Fat panda defeats
fear, Snow Leopard. It's intriguing. So this is a good
way of finding out, do I have enough
transformation in my story? Change of POV, change
our point of view. In the beginning, we and the characters thought
it was like that. But in the end, it turned out it was like this. Every good story encompasses some form of perspective change. Every, every funny story, every joke starts out with presenting a
view of the world. And then we pull the rug under defeat of listener as a heart. So it's okay. I get it. That's funny. We interpret, reinterpret
the information we've been given from a
different perspective. It's the same thing
with a good story. It doesn't have to be these
very famous twist like, like in the sixth sense, even a family drama we
want in the end to fear. Okay, yeah, that's another
way of looking at it. Just like in a funny story. Wrong sin. The story is new and old, wrong has to be righted. Conflicts, a new and old
conflict has to be put to rest. Misunderstanding and older
new misunderstanding has to be corrected. Problem, an old life threatening stifling and new
problem has to be solved. Captive. And old and new
captive has to be liberated victim and older
new victim has to be saved. Of course, not all
stories need all of them, but this is a good
discipline to, to come up with ideas
for your Stuart's story. To ask yourself, do my story, have a captive or a victim
lost or something lost? Solving long lost and newly
lost has to be regained. Injustice and old and new
injustice has to be avenged. Law, crime and punishment. All stories we've
talked about that. It's about karma, about
cause and effect. Oscar Wilde says that
good storytelling, the meaning of stories is
that the good people get their reward and the bad
people get their comeuppance. One way of looking at
stories is in looking at as attributing all law, establishing the law,
someone breaking that law and they are
suffering the consequences. These laws might be
benevolent or malevolent. For instance, in one of
the Harry Potter movies, there's a new regime
and they impose laws which are not benevolent. And then of course,
the act of breaking those laws are heroic act. Some films, stories, of course, the law is a good law, benevolent law, and our
characters break them, and then they have
to be punished. Yet again, stories about karma. Your characters should
always, always, always cost their own destiny. This is super important. If your characters are not
causing their own destiny, their fates will not create
fear and pity in me, which according to Aristotle, is the purpose of drama. Ancient send mistake. How Marsha, Marsha is what Aristotle ends poetics
called the sin, the mistake that the
character has made, which brings about
her misfortune. The mistake that the
protagonist or her ancestors made, causing
present-day problems. The protagonist and the ordinary
words, initial quandary. So the mistake that are
protagonists did in the backstory or the ancestors of the protagonist
in the backstory. Now we're coming
back to haunt them. That's the cause, the root cause of the protagonists misfortune
in the present day. Of course, the
protagonist is not aware that this is the case. But embarking on the adventure, fighting the dragon,
fighting the adversaries. Eventually they
will realize that, aha, it was my
wrongful thinking. Where's my misconception? That caused my initial problem? Past-tense. So in ancient times, we're looking at the
backstory story now. We've talked about there are three parts to the backstory. We're starting with
the ancient times. That's where the sin, the mistake, the whole
Marcia was committed. And then past tense, that's the time
where that conflict, the dragon is a
latent is dormant. And then we have the
inciting incident, which is the prologue
to the story. This is where the drag on the conflict
awakens, resurfaces. Every good story is in some way, shape or form a family drama. For instance, Star Wars is a family drama because
they're afraid there's a father and Luke Skywalker and prisons LEA. Wish fulfillment. Every story that
makes the rules, the audience offer some
form of wish fulfillment. Either we are giving the audience experiences that
they want to experience, or they are leading the
lives of people that they would like to
delete themselves or being people that they
would be like to be. It's also in some way, shape or form a
fear fulfillment. We are experiencing
in a very safe way. Experiences that we would not
like to have in our lives. But it is cathartic
to experience them, them infection through
avatar for instance, being shot out by terrorists. No one wants that,
but it's deeply cathartic to experience
that in a safe environment. For the friction,
drag those and gold. Your hero has to find a goal
and an all good stories. If there is gold,
there's dragons. And if there's
dragons, there's gold. You can't have one
without the other if someone leaves are
arrives. Nikolai goal? Well, the Russian
writer, he says that every good story is either the person leaving town or a stranger
coming to town. Sometimes they can be both. For instance, in RAM
stoke is Dracula starts with Jonathan Harker
leaving for Transylvania. And the second part, Dracula leaving, trust
them to come to London. Vladimir Propp, the
Russian folklorist, he says that there are
two kinds of heroes. They're a victim
heroes and there are searcher heroes and victim here who someone was trying
to save her own life. And the searcher
here is someone who was trying to save
someone else's life. Danger, no danger, no story, no danger, no drama. The story starts when
the danger starts. If your protagonist is not in danger, you
don't have a story. We've talked about this, that the stakes for
your characters, especially for your protagonist, has to be life and death. It doesn't have to be
fiscal life and death. It can be social life and death, psychological life and death, emotional life and death, spiritual life and death by the in some way,
shape or form. The stakes have to
be life and death. Biggest transformation. What's the societal,
interpersonal and intra Personal transformations and we want transformation
on all three levels. The big scope on the big Canvas
and in the relationships, in the major relationships. And with m, the characters, especially the lead characters. What genre is sit? And of course, the primary
division is drama or comedy. Or we mainly trying
to get audience to sit on the edge of
their chairs and cry? Or are we trying to make
them laugh references? It's a really good
practice to try to find references to your story. One or two movies or novels
or TV series that you feel share some
similar qualities with what you're
trying to achieve. Because there's really
gives you a campus. There's also really good in
trying to sell your project. Future buyers or investors or distributors or
potential co-workers. Having a reference or two is really good because standard, you can make people feel
that, okay, I get it. That's what you're trying to do. Experience sampling.
We can't or won't. Well, we talked about that. I wish fulfillment. If your story is entirely about mundane things,
in everyday life, it will be hard to attract an audience
because in some way, shape, or form, we want some
formal wish fulfillment. We want something that
is extraordinary. That's why we go to the
cinema. We want it. Or if the surroundings, if the circumstances
are ordinary, we want extraordinary characters and, or extraordinary
circumstances. Computer game, how do you win the game if your story
was computed again? How will you win the game? What would the playing
field look like? What would the rules be? How do you buy weapons, advantages, and at what cost? How are the opponents
constituted? And what you need to succeed in order to advance
to the next level. This is an interesting way to look at the story
as a computer game. If you were to take your story and make a
computer game out of it, how would you design
a computer game? Because if you have a hard time deciding that a computer
game, chances are, you're not really clear on
about the way your game works.
Stockholm Film School, Stockholm Film School Online Classes
