Screenwriting structure Part 15

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Thought I forgot about ya? Naaah.

But I gotta tell ya… I went ahead and stuck a new contact page up and holy shit. All kinds of new thrills, chills, and spills…

Having said that… Can I just put this out there before I jump in with both steel-toe booted feet? Why in the hell are YOU sending me emails about the following:

There’s MORE but you get the idea.

No more of this shit, okay? On the other hand, if you’re a fairly regular visitor, you never know… I might be in the mood to answer you if you hit me at just the right time but I doubt it.

Let me split these questions in half…

The first half are obviously screenwriting questions… LOL. But not the kind of screenwriting questions to send me an email about. Go get a fuckin’ book and read about it because even IF I answer your question, that’s only ONE fucking question and because of the question you fucking asked me, I know you don’t know shit about even beginning to write a screenplay.

The very best FIRST BOOK I can possibly think of and can recommend to anyone who’s never written a screenplay before and is even remotely contemplating doing so is:

Buy this book and actually crack the fucking thing and guess what?

You’ll find answers! However, if you simply slide it under your pillow and hope that your brain will somehow absorb what’s inside…

Uh, no.

What I mean by cracking the book is opening it up and reading it through at least one time so that WHEN some kind of newbie question pops up, you’ll immediately know where to go to answer your own question!

YAY!

As for the other kinds of questions… Who gives a shit?

You gotta love the Internet…

Part 15 of screenwriting structure… Your Protagonist’s entrance into the new world…

Almost sounds like science fiction, huh? Nope. Remember, there’s the ordinary world and the new world. The new world being the world your Protagonist makes his or her journey through. It doesn’t have to be a new location. It doesn’t mean he or she has to go anwhere physically… It’s the entirely new set of circumstances, events, and obstacles that your Protagonist must now venture through to attain some kind of goal.

Yup.

Things to consider but are by no means rules of the game…

It must be your Protagonist’s decision to enter the new world. He or she should be a volunteer even if it means he or she made the wrong decision. Even if somebody else tricks or lures your Protagonist into the new world, the DECISION to enter should be theirs.

This comes hot off the trail of the Protagonist’s call to action dilemma. I just watched a screener of a fairly recent movie, 21 (yeah I’ve had it a year). Wasn’t bad — wasn’t great but I honestly think it could have been just a little better IF the Protagonist hadn’t just sat on a fucking bus thinking about becoming a player on Spacey’s blackjack team.

By the way… Card counters don’t flip over one card at a time to count… LOL. Fuck! Do some fuckin’ research! Card counters cancel groups of cards out. They see 2, 3, 4, or 5 cards and instantly see a plus or minus number, or hopefully a ZERO so they can simply IGNORE the group. When counting down a deck of cards, counters (depending on what hand they use) read the cards from left to right (if right handed) and from right to left if left handed again, cancelling out as many groups of cards as possible. In other words, we IGNORE the groups of cards that total fucking ZERO. We actually hold the cards in our hand and spread them from one hand to the other and count the deck down as fast as possible.

Got it?

I’m sure Vegas is thanking the hell out of the people behind 21. LOL.

I could go on but this is about structure… Sorry for the rant.

It’s okay if your Protagonist has doubts about entering the new world… It’s okay if he or she is scared or unsure what to do next. The point is that somewhere deep inside they know they have to make the journey.

The Protagonist’s call to action dilemma causes the Protagonist to question everything… He or she tries to figure the answers out to all those questions they ask themselves but something keeps pushing them toward the new world.

What’s pushing them?

A goal.

The means to an end. It may not be the CORRECT means to the end. It may not be the correct end. In fact, one or more goals might pop up along the way i.e., the initial goal can easily develop, change, and reveal itself as a totally new and different goal worth pursuing.

Remember… The new world is different from the ordinary world… Again, doesn’t necessarily mean location-wise but certainly can be… However, the location can be in the same exact location as the ordinary world but with new and threatening elements the Protagonist’s never seen or experienced before.

Make the new world different from the old world and we will feel the difference and not be bored.

This is also a decent time to consider tossing your Protagonist another dilemma. Remember — damned if you do — damned if you don’t dilemma.

Chew on it.

Unk

Is imagination natural talent?

imagination

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend. Got an email today that I think could benefit some readers… Again, I won’t mention who sent it but it just hit me as a really good question that I think we all have from time to time… Maybe even day after day. LOL.

Here it is…

Unk,

I know you’ve addressed this in the past on the website, but I still have some unanswered questions and I need input from someone who knows what the fuck they’re talking about.

Here’s the deal, I am a soon to be 35 year old with a. full time job, a wife and two kids, and a soul sapping mortgage payment on a house in the ‘location withheld’ area. I realize that these things severely handicap me with regard to becoming a succesful screenwriter. So, although I enjoy the shit out of writing screenplays, I need to know if I’m any good at it. I don’t want to put all of this time and effort into a “hobby” if it can’t lead me to something bigger and better than my current career in the fabulous world of insurance. My conclusion, after reading books and articles and listening to professional screenwriters, is that they all seem to agree that one must have a certain level of natural talent to be good at this. Makes sense to me. What I can’t figure out is how to tell, without waiting several years whether or not I possess that certain level of natural talent.

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

A Reader (he gave his name but I don’t out anyone without their permission)

P.S. - sorry for sounding like a whiney bitch.

Here’s what I wrote…

Reader,

I think a certain amount of natural talent certainly helps get someone there FASTER but I don’t necessarily think that it’s a requirement.

I’ll trade IMAGINATION for natural talent any fucking day of the week. I’ve seen some naturally talented writers write some amazingly derivative screenplays. The natural talent was for structure, maybe some dialogue, formatting, and basically writing a coherent script.

Believe me when I tell you that not too many people seem to be able to do that.

But in the end, the scripts were too much like something else that’s already been done.

And sometimes, it takes a hell of a lot of KNOWLEDGE and even some experience for the natural talent to start flowing… I know that when I FINALLY felt (nobody told me) that I had conquered structure, my natural talent multiplied like crazy and the first script I wrote after simply FEELING like I understood structure, sold less than a month after I wrote it.

I’m now working on two more that I’ve sold via pitches…

I’d like to think that I have some natural talent but I assure you that in the beginning, the natural talent usually gets in the way… LOL. Too much cleverness. Too much self-indulgence. Too much writing outside the lines.

Learn the mechanics through and through and I personally THINK that doing that will set the natural talent FREE.

And like I said, most screenwriting books and blogs never really talk about the most important thing a screenwriter needs…

IMAGINATION.

Without a good supply of imagination, derivation always seems to lead the way.

Unk

Screenwriting Structure Part 14

dance-steps

Wow, not having a working “contact” page has been a nice vacation… LOL. Only people I “like” are sending me emails. What a fucking concept! I may have to ditch the contact page altogether.

I thought I would share a recent email communication I had with one of the usual visitors here because it really does go with screenwriting structure and to be honest, I haven’t seen it discussed like this in any books, articles, or blogs and it’s actually very relevant to the series.

I basically answered an email and for the fucking life of me, I can’t remember the actual question but if the visitor I wrote this to wants to speak up — go for it.

I hope this explains structure to those of you who worry so much about formula… LOL. I had to rewrite some of it because I had deleted the original email and a truncated version of popped up in my search results so I have taken some artistic license to bring it to you here.

Here it is:

LOL. To be honest, I kind of had the idea that this might be happening with you… Just a feeling but I generally go with my gut and it has served me well.

What you have to try and keep in mind is that your stuff IS already different. The stories are different. The characters are different. The way YOU write it is different from the way this shit is being written today.

KNOW THAT. Relish that.

Structure will pull it all together.

Remember the baseline?

This is the HARDEST thing I can get people who want to break in to the business to understand…

Now the following is SIMPLY an attempt to explain what I mean — I am not talking about you — per se.

I think you’re a really good writer. I think you definitely bring your “A” game to the game. So that aside, read the following and let it cook a few days…

Let’s say that the following are the current baselines…

———-Pro Writer Baseline———-

—-Highly Talented Writer Baseline—-

——–Talented Writer Baseline——-

————Newbie Baseline———–

Newbies and Talented writers have a ways to go…

Highly Talented Writer is almost there. Pro writers ARE at the top — “in the game.”

For newbies and talented writers, it’s often simply a matter of experience but having said that, I have read a shitload of newbie and talented writer screenplays that could have easily been elevated to Highly Talented Writer Baseline if ONLY they would have had some kind of applied structure. Now when I say that, you have to rise above the actual words that I’m using and not simply let the word or phrase, “structure” — pigeonhole you into meaning something formulaic.

We can talk for months and years about outstanding movies that break the mold. I have never argued that point but I think arguing about it online, forums, blah blah fucking blah does a disservice to newbies and talented writers because what they fucking need is structure to get them on the right path MOST OF THE TIME.

So many books talk about structure but really do NOT explain it in any real detail and show me a book, article, site, whatever that says not to use 3 Act Structure… And, for those that do, it’s almost as if the author IS IN FACT telling you to simply use the structure they give you as is.

See, the lines are extremely blurry. Anything can fit into a 3 Act Structure but I think when you call a kind of structure 3 Act Structure, it causes mass confusion because that’s what’s out there the most and if you’ve ever looked at the basic 3 Act Structure — there’s really not much to it. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. Of course it works but it was the 3 Act Structure with its SIMPLE BASIC explanation that allows those using it to be creative i.e., since it doesn’t list every possible fucking story element that could happen within the 3 Act Structure environment, you are free to be creative and do whatever you want because the 3 Act Structure is in fact so very fucking vague.

I don’t like vague.

So I started my research into structure and the first thing I found that I despised about 3 Act Structure is the twice as long 2nd act. I fucking hate that — but that’s just me.

With my background and the way I think and the way I do things — the way I was taught to take notes — blah blah blah — I like things to be nice and tidy. Meaning, I like 4 distinct acts of somewhat equal length. It just makes sense to me. It goes along with my mindset. Easy to understand. Easy to remember. It’s simply a process and a process that works for ME.

If it can work for others then ME HAPPY.

I am a non-linear thinker. I’m no less an artist than anyone writing but I realized early on that Society — at least the society that I live in and continue to live in does not lend itself toward an artist’s mentality. Nothing wrong with that but the problem is that as artists, we tend not to think like average society when it comes to the actual writing or THE ART.

However, for me — I am not speaking for you — for me — everything leading UP to the art is fairly linear to me. Preparation. Research. Notes. Whatever. It’s the actual ART that I DEVIATE from linear thinking and I have observed this with a lot of people.

But at the same time, I also know a few artists who were brought up by artists. Raised in an artist family. Lived in areas dominated by artists. Not a lot of them because there’s NOT a lot of them but they do exist. While these people usually have to find their own way to their art, they do seem to have a little easier time of it because they are not bound by the same society to which I am certainly bound…

They have evolved in a completely different way than us linear thinkers so they devise their own process.

Neither is more right than the other. Neither works better.

It’s simply what works BEST for YOU.

The 4 Act Structure I came up with works best for me and as it turns out, I would say that 98% of those people I share it with also FEEL like it would work better for them and guess what, when they write their screenplays using it, they usually end up a hell of a lot better. Having said that however, EVERYONE WILL USE IT DIFFERENTLY. You get out of it whatever you get out of it.

Some people look at it and jump to the conclusion that it’s some kind of list that you go down and simply cross off as you write that particular element into your story… The dreaded formula… LOL.

And for THOSE that want to use it that way — fine. I can explain it all I want but in the end, people do whatever the fuck they want to do.

I’ve never promoted it as some kind of end all one structure fits all structure. As I said previously, it’s simply a starting point.

It’s a “compass.”

With a compass, you are at point “A” and you know that you must head due north to eventually get to point “B,” right? But if you’re going over mountains and through rivers, and whatever, you have to take detours. You might have to go west for a few days before you can start heading north again. You then find out that there’s no way for you get over that mountain because it’s straight the fuck up and down. So now you have to turn around and head south until you find a passage… A valley, a trail, whatever… Something that allows you to eventually start heading north again.

That’s all a really good structure is… A starting point. Every writer is different but hopefully, many writers will simply let their characters take those passages… Those valleys and trails until they stumble back on the trail i.e., structure.

And although the books, articles, and even SOME of the gurus advocate using their structure in such a way that you simply follow and connect the dots, I think they do that because it’s easy to advocate.

Where I break off from that mindset is that I think every writer owes it to US to divert and let the story evolve until it has literally created its very own structure… One that is perfect for that story. Organic and germane to the story you’re creating.

In order to DO THAT however, you gotta be IN SHAPE! You have to be prepared! You have to be running the 100 yard dash in a competitive time otherwise, you have no fucking business even being at the race.

Not yet anyway.

Structure does that for you. You start off with a great structure as your compass… Your roadmap. But somewhere along the way, other adventures pop up and you go after them with a vengeance and the story goes into a different direction — hopefully a direction you never even considered before. This is growth. This is organic structure. This is YOU writing YOUR story differently from everyone else even though you may have started off with a structure similar to other movies.

On the other hand… When you don’t start off with a valid structure to point you in the right direction, you can easily miss adventures and landmarks that you should definitely not have missed and you owe it to us — your eventual audience to, at the very least, be aware that these adventures and landmarks exist.

It will be up to you and your characters to decide whether or not they really do fit in the grand scheme of things but you at least want to know about them up front so you can make that educated decision somewhere down the line.

A good solid structure is your .

But you can do it any way you like… .

Unk

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