Story

STORY IS WHAT HAPPENS. Your beginning, middle and end. 

Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and cracked his head open. Jill fell down right after him. They both died. No one got any water. It’s a tragedy. 

You need to be able to tell your story that simply. At this stage in the process, don’t think about being a great screenwriter. Think about being a great storyteller. 

A great story has character transformations, high stakes and a CATHARSIS (a purging of emotion), i.e. you need to make me feel something.

NOW, CONSIDER THIS: Aristotle tells us: YOUR STORY IS AN ACTION. Some might call the “action” of your story - an action line, or a through-line, or the spine of your story. If you had success with Vonnegut’s “shapes of stories” worksheet in the prep section, the “shape” of the story can be considered the action line. Personally, I like Joseph Campbell’s take: a story is about A SOUL IN TRANSFORMATION. 

So, if your story is what happens: the beginning, middle and end, and we also know that your story is an action… then what we’re really saying is: 

The beginning of your story is when the action begins, the middle is when, in trying to achieve the action, things significantly change and can never go back to the way they were when the story started, and the end is the resolution after the action has ended. 

Now, let’s dig deeper. A screenplay is around 110 pages on average.  How are you going to fill 110 pages using the above paragraph paradigm? 

You are going to challenge your protagonist’s transformation at every turn, giving them flaws to overcome and insurmountable conflicts and antagonists to beat… or maybe your protagonist doesn’t change but that’s to their destruction, or maybe they don’t change but they change everyone around them (this is called “a catalyst hero”)… Unless you’ve done this a dozen or so times, you’re probably going to need help charting all of this, so you don’t get overwhelmed or lost in the “weeds” of your story. To be honest, I HAVE written a dozen or so screenplays and I STILL take all the help I can get. STORY IS HARD! It’s not supposed to be easy! That’s what makes it so rewarding when you succeed.

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