Popularity: 4%

Georges Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations… Part 2.

Well by now, your head should be literally spinning with new ideas for plot and plot twists…

So… Where did we leave off? Oh yeah… You should have created a list with at least 40 to 65 dramatic situations for your screenplay.

Right?

So now it’s time to REALLY ORGANIZE… So even if you’re not quite sure what the actual order of these dramatic situations should be in, go ahead and give it a try…

IF IT FEELS GOOD, DO IT!

That’s right, based on WHATEVER structure you personally use, go ahead and try putting your list of dramatic situations in some kind of STORY ORDER according to the structure you use for writing screenplays.

Now, having said this, please don’t ask me whether or not you should be able to completely plot out your entire screenplay… It’s definitely possible but not probable and definitely NOT the point of this post.

The point being to simply give you a springboard if you will… A jumping off spot to plotting out your story.

Questions to ask yourself while making your list…

Tips to consider while making your list…

Remember, you’re not really trying to figure out your ENTIRE story and plot with this exercise… If you do, GREAT but you’re simply trying to brainstorm some outstanding plot points and plot twists that you can incorporate into your story.

Once your list is complete, you need to starting thinking about . In other words, once you have as many outstanding plot points and plot twists as you can make up from brainstorming the 36 dramatic situations, you can now start going IN BETWEEN… Kind of like that animators do with their animation cells… Figuring out what goes in between certain cells to give the animation the best looking flow of image…

So you’ve brainstormed a or from one or more of the 36 dramatic situations and you know where it goes but you DON’T know what comes after… This is where you use CAUSE AND EFFECT to figure out what happens next.

Figure out what happens next… Don’t worry if what you come up with is … Go ahead and come up with it and then tweak the cliché so it is no longer cliché.

This exercise SHOULD get you well on your way to coming up with some pretty good plot points, subplots, etc. Again, don’t expect to figure out your entire story but you should be able to come up with quite a bit to work with.

The most important thing to remember is to brainstorm these 36 dramatic situations WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF YOUR STORY AND CHARACTERS.

Unk

P.S. Download the expanded version of the 36 Dramatic Situations here… Complete with hyperlinks just in case you don’t understand a particular word Polti used… It’s a PDF document.

Download here: 36 Dramatic Situations Expanded Version

Tags:




Monday: 4 September 2006|0246|Under Uncategorized

Print This Post Print This Post
 

Comments

2 Responses to “Georges Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations… Part 2.”

  1. Mystery Man on Thursday: 7 September 2006|0443

    Loved it. Great posts (part 1 and 2), and the .pdf document is very well organized. I’m going to give you a “shout out” about this sometime soon if you don’t mind…

    -MM

  2. Dante Kleinberg on Tuesday: 12 September 2006|0632

    Awesome PDF file! Nice work!

    I keep meaning to do something with the 36 dramatic situations, but it might have to wait until I’m not the middle of so many other projects (if that’s even possible for me).

    What I really want to do is put each of the 36 on a separate sheet of paper, then concieve of an entirely new plot or concept for each one. I’ve never been one that could fill notebooks with dozens of viable ideas, instead getting one idea every once in a while and polishing it until it shines or wears away to nothing.

Leave a Reply