ScriptNotes - Structure and Character

There's a lot of books about understanding the structure of a screen play through dissecting existing ones. That's the wrong approach, we need to know how to build one from scratch, with the first board. Not what pieces were in a pulled apart house. 

If you follow a strict structural approach, you will probably write a well structured bad script.

Structure isn't the dog, it's the tail. It's the symptom of a characters relationship with a central dramatic argument.

We are all of us storytelling machines, it's how we understand our lives. When we narratize our lives we don't think inciding incident, mid act break, etc all that official story structure crap. We think "this happened then this happened." which gets boring, but the good storytellers add "this happened, making me feel this, and that made me realize this about how I'd been approaching things."  And that becomes a good story because
"Narration helps us move through a changing world, and story is about a change of state."

there are 3 basic ways a story changes. 

1. internal: what is going on inside a character's mind. 

2. interpersonal: the main relationship of your story

3. plot: the things going around.

and all of that is made up of scenes. Scenes that follow a Hegelian Dialectic. Each scene has a thesis "this is the truth", and antithesis "no, this is the truth, and here's why" and then the collision and resolution of those into a synthesis, which becomes the next scenes thesis. 

Each scene begins with a truth, something happens, and you end with a new truth, that begins the next.

Theme is your central Dramatic Arguement

the dramatic argument doesn't have to be revolutionary, it can be "don't judge a book by it's cover" it's your execution that will be interesting.

but the Theme has to be an argument. Not just "brotherhood" but an actual defensible idea "life is beautiful even amidst horrors"

The purpose of the story is to take your main character, your protagonist, from a place
of ignorance of the truth or the true side of the argument you’re making and take them
all the way to the point where they become the very embodiment of that argument and they
do it through action.

The story starts the character is in a steady balance place, where their life is acceptable though imperfect, and they've achieved it through living the opposite of the theme.

Inciting Incident. The mad god writer throws something at the character that is an ironic disruption of their stasis. A problem that specifically will break their soul, because they have grown broken, so you have to break down so they can regrow in the right way (the way of the theme)

fear is the heart of empathy. The character has lived their life to avoid this thing they fear. The inciting incident is shoving them towards their fear, all they want is to get back to how things were. The audience will empathize with the character trying to protect themself from what they feel vulnerable about, they're afraid of being vulnerable and we all know what that's like. 

So you're not thinking of plot, of things that happen. You're thinking of things to prod your character, they spend the 2nd act trying to get back to their anti-theme life. They will experience new things and come out with reaffirmed belief in their antitheme, just making them want to get back to start stronger. But you're also going to introduce a representative of the theme, showing that the antitheme is not the only approach.

Your theme representative and your antiTheme hero will naturally have conflict (which makes good story). But the hero will also be a little attracted to the theme idea, because they are rational.

Midpoint. The hero has a moment of harmony with the theme, either doing it themselves or witnessing it. They see the benefit of the theme, they start having doubt about living antiTheme. 

Dramatic Reversal: then you crush them for straying from their antiTheme ways. Inciting incident all over again, worst thing feared happens. Drive them back to antiTheme. 

The more you punish, the harder you make it, the more interesting it is, and the sweeter the reward for coming to the light at the end. 

Low Point: Crush the hero until they've lost all faith. They don't believe in the antitheme anymore. They don't believe in the theme either, it seems impossible. The goal of getting back to prestory stasis is recognized as insufficient. They're lost. 

 Defining Moment: character has to do something that proves they accept and believe the new theme. Getting them to a new stasis balance point.

There are no acts. No points to hit. There's just one long story of a character who believes the antiTheme and eventually when faced with lots of hard choices, chooses the path that leads them torturously to belief in the theme.

 

How to build Story and Character Twitter thread

Bumped across this twitter thread from Kat Jo Lewis

 

Earlier this year, I took a job as a narrative designer at a video game company. Here are three things I learned while writing video games that made me a better novelist (1/14)

1. Plot is your friend.

External conflict does not work without internal conflict. And for the literary fiction writers out there like myself: internal conflict ABSOLUTELY does not work w/o external conflict. How do you write a story with both external and internal conflict? 

 

Ask yourself two questions: Q1: What concrete thing does my character want? To test that their goal is concrete, it should fall into one of four categories: win, stop, escape, or retrieve. If it doesn’t, it’s not concrete enough and your external conflict will likely be too weak.

 

Q2: What is my character’s core misbelief? This will point to their internal need and works best if it drives their external goal. E.g. AJ wants to rob a bank (a retrieve goal) because his misbelief is that money will give him freedom.

 

An effective story would show how AJ’s misbelief is false (internal conflict) as he progresses toward his concrete goal (external conflict).   

 

2. Theme is key. You might be asking, “How do I find my character’s misbelief?” Misbelief is tied to theme. Before writing game narratives, I thought theme was something that naturally manifested in a story. I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

 

Theme drives the story’s tone, pitch, and audience. Theme is only effective if it drives your characters too. To find the misbelief, find your theme first. What lesson does the protagonist need to learn? Write down your theme, then write down the opposite. That’s the misbelief.

 

Let’s continue with the bank robbery example: Theme: Greed is a prison. Misbelief: Money gives you freedom.

 

3. Outlines improve pacing and save time in revision. If you’re a discovery writer and your process is working, feel free to keep scrolling. I used to be a discovery writer, but it did not work for me for three reasons:

 

(1) throwing out countless pages in revision felt like a waste of time, (2) that feeling made me hostile toward the revision process, and (3) improving the pacing of my novel felt tedious because I was constantly going down the wrong path before I found the right one.

 

Writing video games taught me that finding a story structure that resonated with how I understand narrative was not a useless constraint. Instead, structure gave me the freedom to be more creative and enjoy the writing process because I had a framework to make sure that:

 

(1) the story finds an effective pacing in earlier drafts and (2) the protagonist is constantly making progress toward their concrete goal (external conflict) while battling their misbelief (internal conflict).

 

There are a lot of different story structures out there to explore. I personally use the 3-Act Structure as described in Save the Cat (check out the novel version if you write prose) and the Hero Goal Sequences Paradigm from Eric Edson’s The Story Solution. Links below.

Link Dump

 Bunch of links I've been holding on to. 

Using Procreate to make an AR scene

 

An essay on different story structures throughout the world, beyond just 3 acts

Games for Change - Gamemakers trying to make games that make the world better

Game VFX Forum

WorldBuilding

Found this tumblr with this great advice, pasting it here because how long will tumblr survive? (or blogs :P  )

 

 

Hey btw, if you’re doing worldbuilding on something, and you’re scared of writing ~unrealistic~ things into it out of fear that it’ll sound lazy and ripped-out-of-your-ass, but you also don’t want to do all the back-breaking research on coming up with depressingly boring, but practical and ~realistic~ solutions, have a rule:

Just give the thing two layers of explanation. One to explain the specific problem, and another one explaining the explanation. Have an example:

Plot hole 1: If the vampires can’t stand daylight, why couldn’t they just move around underground?

Solution 1: They can’t go underground, the sewer system of the city is full of giant alligators who would eat them.

Well, that’s a very quick and simple explanation, which sure opens up additional questions.

Plot hole 2: How and why the fuck are there alligators in the sewers? How do they survive, what do they eat down there when there’s no vampires?

Solution 2: The nuns of the Underground Monastery feed and take care of them as a part of their sacred duties.

It takes exactly two layers to create an illusion that every question has an answer - that it’s just turtles all the way down. And if you’re lucky, you might even find that the second question’s answer loops right back into the first one, filling up the plot hole entirely:

Plot hole 3: Who the fuck are the sewer nuns and what’s their point and purpose?

Solution 3: The sewer nuns live underground in order to feed the alligators, in order to make sure that the vampires don’t try to move around via the sewer system.

When you’re just making things up, you don’t need to have an answer for everything - just two layers is enough to create the illusion of infinite depth. Answer the question that looms behind the answer of the first question, and a normal reader won’t bother to dig around for a 3rd question.

Writing Banter & Flirting

 Notes from a Reddit thread about writing Banter between Characters

 

My personal rules:

1. Banter should never happen as dialogue for its own sake. You may think that by doing so you're giving your characters richness and depth, but what's actually happening is that they're having fun swapping in-jokes while your reader twiddles her thumbs. This relates to:

2. Banter begins when someone takes a dig a someone else, or tries to antagonise, poke fun or trick them, in the course of talking about other things. These 'other things' should be relevant to the story. By all means have the banter grow legs and derail the conversation.

3. Pay attention to where and when you use banter: it can serve you in several ways:

Prior to a sudden calamity, to enhance the impact.

During a calamity, to show the characters trying to bolster each others' spirits even if they know it won't work.

To distract the reader while you slip in an important clue or piece of information that they will kick themselves for not spotting later.

To end a conversation or scene that otherwise has no clear off-ramp.

To introduce the reader to a genuine point of tension between two characters when one oversteps the mark. LOTS of value here, with all manner of different shadings depending on how they and their other companions handle the overstep.

4. It's not necessary for characters to have a lot of history together before they can engage in banter, but in that case the character who STARTS the banter is revealing themselves to be cocky or seeking to dominate the conversation. Again: lots of value here since it puts the relationships between the characters on an ambiguous footing, creating space for them to grow together or apart as the story continues.

5. Whatever else you do, for the love of God DON'T banter about things the reader was not there to see. Banter is not funny to an outsider; it actively makes them feel excluded. So I guess there's an exception: if your intention is for the reader to feel the MC's isolation and exclusion or inexperience, drop in some banter that neither they nor the MC understand. But don't overdo it. Fair game for banter are events or character traits that the reader has already witnessed for themselves. In a real pinch you can reference a past event not witnessed by the reader in order to expose hypocrisy and puncture an ego that way, but try try try to avoid it if you can.

 

 

Banter can be written easier when you as the author know way more about the characters than the readers. I'd recommend you free write backstories attributes for your characters in order to help shape them into more dynamic personalities.

I'll also say that the banter I write in stories is necessarily connected to what's happening in surrounding events--or used intentionally to display some attribute of a character that I can't display otherwise.

 

 

There's really only two rules I can think of.

First up, don't have your guys break character just for the sake of delivering a good line. Not everyone is witty, not everyone has the same sense of humour, and not everyone cracks jokes in inappropriate situations. If you're doing banter and repartee all over the place you run the risk of erasing your characterisation and ruining the tone and drama of your scenes (I'm looking at YOU Girl Genius).

Second up, and this applies to comedy in general: it takes a shitload of time and drafts and rewrites.



How to avoid "Telling" when your character is expressing their inner thoughts?

You can't avoid it entirely, but as a general rule, compare something like "This made me feel angry" to "In that moment, I wanted to slap him." Both are just telling you how the character feels, but the less direct method feels better.

Give the reader bits and pieces of their inner monologue, but not the whole thing. A fun thing to do is play around with the contradiction between their inner thoughts and their actions.

You prick, you utter arsehole, I hate you so much thought Sam, as he shook the man's hand and said "Lovely to finally meet you" with a smile.

vs

Sam hated the man but he shook his hand and smiled because he knew it would be a bad move to upset them.

'narrate vs. dramatize' is that you narrate scenes that are better told and dramatize scenes that are better showed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5neBuGANxIk&t=291s

 

I like to break down flirting into two styles:

Compliments: This is when someone says something that's generally positive. It can be 100% genuine and kind or it can have more edge (ex. sexual comments about someone's body or behavior) or it can even be compliments disguised as insults.

Insults: This is when someone says something that's negative. It can range from light-hearted teasing to actually mean. The way to temper insulting style is with body language. Sort of a "forget what my mouth is saying and look at what my body is saying" thing.

You can have a bunch of different combinations of flirting (with book examples):

• Person A and Person B say things that are positive/complimentary/genuine (Autoboyography by Christina Lauren)

• Person A and Person B say things that are teasing/negative/insulting (Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, The Hating Game by Sally Thorne)

• Person A uses compliments and Person B uses insults (White Hot Kiss by Jennifer L. Armentrout, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green)

• Person A uses either compliments or insults and Person B is oblivious (Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson)

• Person A and Person B like to mix things up (Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston is sort of an example. The characters flirt one way in the beginning and shift over time)

Obviously, you need to mix things up to keep it interesting, but I think people generally have a flirtation style and it will depend on your character. If you are doing the last one, with one oblivious character, it makes sense that Character A would try a bunch of different things to see what gets a reaction.

People that are genuine, open, confident, and kind will be more comfortable doing the compliment flirting. People that are defensive, cautious, contrary, and snarky are more likely to use the insult style flirting.

I think of flirting as having a push/pull interaction. When someone says something flirty the goal is to either push the other person off-balance (to catch them off guard) or to pull them in. Compliments and insults can be used both ways. While most people will generally stick with one style of flirting (compliment or insult), they will almost always do a combination of pushing and pulling to keep the other person engaged.

Also, I don't think you should focus solely on how their flirtation works in the first meeting. Flirting is a way a couple communicates, so it builds over time. It also creates a nice sense of anticipation for your reader, so if you can keep your love interests flirting, but not actually getting together for a while, you can string along your readers longer and create some great tension.