Building Stories that WOW

I'm going to share some of the best writing advice I've ever heard. Are you ready for this? Maybe you already know it and this is just useless reading for you, but it revolutionized my writing life.

Figure out the end of the story first and work your way backwards.

Get that? Figure out the beginning of your story before you type FADE IN:

I can't tell you how powerful this advice has been. Why? Because if you have your ending worked out in advance, then everything you write is building toward that ending. Plus you get the added benefit of being able to make the ending as powerful as possible before you've written a singe word.

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show where the ending was a total surprise, but when you re-watched it, there were clues all throughout the story as to how it would eventually end? Knowing the ending in advance allows you to weave all kinds of clues and foreshadowing into the plot organically, without it feeling so forced. It also lets you focus on what's important to the story to propel the characters toward the end and eliminate scenes and sequences that don't really pay-off in the story. An added benefit is that knowing the ending can help keep you from getting stuck along the way, as you'll know what direction you need the story to advance and that will give you a better idea how each scene and sequence should progress.

If your goal is to write lean -- say, a taut thriller or a horror -- knowing the ending at the outset is crucial. Even for love stories and character-driven drama, it can add a whole other level of richness to your story without a lot of extra work.

-The Illiterate Writer

Basic Outlining

To outline or not to outline? Let me save you some time and answer that for you: outline.

Over the years I've heard a lot of writers complain and moan about how the characters live I their head and they're surprised where the story goes while theirs writing it and how they wanted it to end one way but the characters wanted something different... if this is you, just stop it. Not only does it make you sound like a blithering idiot to everyone outside your Facebook group, but it sends signals to decision makers higher up the chain that you're not somebody they can depend on to deliver.

In the real world, where money changes hands and contacts are signed with real legal consequences for breaking the conditions of said contacts, nobody cares about your schizophrenic relationship with writing. In the real world, people with money want to see outlines and treatments, and they want to know that you can write the story they're paying you to write.

If you understand nothing else, understand that Hollywood works like any other industry. You get paid to deliver. You are expected to deliver on time. You better give the person writing the checks what they want if you have any hope of getting more checks later on. Hollywood isn't a place to go experience creative liberty. If total artistic freedom and uninhibited creative expression is what you want, I'm sorry to say, screenwriting is not the path for you. Moviemaking is collaborative, and there are a lot of people who can have a say in the development of the story, not just the writer.

Basic Vocabulary: Step Outline

Step Outline: A document that outlines the major evening hrs in your story from beginning to end-to-end step by step. 

The step outline is used to flesh out the story before the actual writing begins. Some writers spend as much as two-thirds of their time on the step outline and write the script only after the step outline is perfected. Studios will often want to see step outlines as proof-of-concept and proof-of-progress. Step outlines can also be tied to contractual obligations and partial payment may be contingent upon the competition of a step outline.

A step outline is one of those things that each writer does differently. Some use index cards, some scribble I a legal pass, some use Excel, some just sort everything out in their head. Blake Snyder taught a wonderful method in SAVE THE CAT involving index cards and a cork board divided out into acts. For all the other criticisms of Snyder's work, this outlining method alone makes his book worth reading.

-The Illiterate Writer

On Finding Meaning in Story

Sometimes a story is just a story. Sometimes story is a medium for a message. Most often, it's something in-between. 

I personally don't get wrapped up in the whole notion that your story has to say something. A lot of people do. That's fine. What's not fine is using the story as a pulpit to preach a gospel of -- whatever. 

Maybe you feel like rich people suck and you write a story about all these awful rich people breaking the backs of the poor for their own gain while the downtrodden die early deaths, worked too hard by the corporate machine that takes far more than it gives. It's not like we haven't seen this movie before. The Justin Timberlake / Amanda Siegfried film IN TIME was essentially this setup with sci-fi elements thrown in. Yet, did anyone walk away from this film having felt a meaningful change in their life? Maybe, but I've never heard anyone say it influenced their thinking or behavior. 

You know a movie that did influence culture? PHILADELPHIA, the Tom Hanks movie where he played a homosexual man with AIDS. PHILADELPHIA was released at a time when homophobia was a cultural norm and fear-mongering about the AIDS epidemic was at an all-time high. While the film itself dealt with weighty issues, what I heard more than comments about the story were remarks about watching Hanks'character in the movie made them rethink their attitudes toward homosexuals and victims of the AIDS crisis. 

It's my belief that the meaning of a film comes across through the characters, not the story. When we as an audience see characters we like and can relate with, then we empathize with their choices, their problems -- their situation. 

I'd humbly suggest that if you want your story to have a message, focus less on the message itself and more on the characters you're crafting. Put them into situations where they must live out your message. Don't make life easy on them even when they do the right thing. Let the audience see what it's costing these characters. Let the audience feel your message as the story progresses. That, in my opinion, is the only way a story can truly have meaning. 

-The Illiterate Writer

Basic Vocabulary: On-The-Nose (OTN)

We've covered a lot of basic vocabulary on this blog, but it just dawned on me a few minutes ago that I haven't touched on one of the most basic phrases you'll run into: on-the-nose (OTN). The first time I sent a screenplay to a Hollywood professional for review, it came back with those three letters written all per the place -- probably multiple times on each page.

On-the-nose means, simply, the dialogue is stating what the audience already knows. It's redundant, unnecessary, and off-putting. An example of on-the-nose dialogue would be having a character kick down a door, storm into the room, punch somebody, then say, "I'm mad!"

I did it. You did it too. If you're just starting out, you're still doing it. I've never met a writer who didn't do it. For whatever reason, it's a subconscious response that must be broken. It's also one of the first things a new writer must strive to purge from their writing in order to get better.

-The Illiterate Writer

Basic Vocabulary: Deus Ex Machinia

Have you ever watched a movie where the ending was so contrived and forced that you didn't believe it at all? Maybe the hero is out of ammunition and the bad guys are closing in from all directions and then dam breaks and floods the whole area and our hero is the only one who is able to survive because he grabs a tree branch and floats away. Or maybe the bad guy has completely defeated the forces of good but just before he can deliver the death blow, a little kid comes running out of the crowd and tugs at his sleeve and asks him why he's so mean, so he changes his mind about the whole thing and lets the good guys go.

Congratulations, you've experienced Dues Ex Machina. 

Wikipedia defines Dues Ex Machina as: "The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Depending on how it is done, it can be intended to move the story forward when the writer has 'painted himself into a corner' and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or as a comedic device."

Note from the Wikipedia definition above that a writer may choose to create a Dues Ex Machina situation, and that it could potentially be used to benefit the story. Think about a Mel Brooks comedy, where the Dues Ex Machina ending is part of the joke.

Even as a comedic device, Dues Ex Machina is difficult to pull off without looking lazy. My advice? Stay away from it. Use foreshadowing and logical story progression to bring your story to a logical close. 

Then again, what do I know?

-The Illiterate Writer

The Page-a-Minute Rule

In Hollywood, one page of a screenplay is approximately equal to one minute of screen time of a finished film. This is why screenplays are formatted the way they are, with dialogue indented the way it is.

Most screenwriters learn this page-a-minute rule fairly early on. Often, novelists will overwrite and spend pages describing what should only be a paragraph or so in a screenplay. It gets beat into their heads through repetition that they must tighten up their writing.

So what happens when they get it too tight?

Keep in mind that screenplays are evaluated for production. There are costs associated with putting a screenplay into production. A lot of that cost depends on figuring out how long the movie will run -- something that should be as easy as reading the page number on the last page.

If your writing is too tight and you're putting two minutes worth of action onto the page, it will throw the projections way off. Write too tightly and your 90 page screenplay could end up translating to 150 minutes on screen -- two and a half hours, nearly double what was expected. Of course, good producers are going to spot this right away, before a dime is spent. Odds are, they'll pass on the script because they don't want to deal with figuring out how long it's actually going to be.

Do yourself a favor. As you're writing, imagine the scene in your mind and try to figure out how long it will play on screen. If it's fifteen seconds, then don't use more than a quarter of the page, but don't write the whole thing out in a single terse sentence, either.  Give your story room to breathe. Respect the page-a-minute rule both ways.

-The Illiterate Writer

Basic Vocabulary: Conflict

Ask Google the definition of story and you'll get the image above. What this definition leaves out is the word conflict. I want you to take a leap of faith with me here: without conflict, you don't have story.

The Primary Dramatic Question

Popular storytelling advice says that your story should raise a question that must be answered in the mind of the audience. Often this is presented as a singular question that drives the story throughout the second act. Let's call this the primary dramatic question.

What does the primary dramatic question look like? In a love story, for example, a man and woman might meet and fall in love during Act I, but at the beginning of Act II, they break up. The primary dramatic question question throughout Act II will be, then: Will our man and woman ever get back together? Yes, other things will happen in the story. Our man and woman may pursue career goals, they may wrestle with personal demons, they may even meet other people. None of this should make the audience forget the primary dramatic question. If need be, the man and woman must be thrust together (mind out of the gutter, please) repeatedly, against their will, in order to remind the audience of the primary dramatic question.

The answer to the primary dramatic question is usually obvious. In our example above: Yes, they get back together. Otherwise, what's the point? This is the answer the audience is hoping for. In fact, the audience will be disappointed if it doesn't work out the way they want. Therefore, the job of the writer isn't so much to ask the question, but to create a sense of uncertainty about the answer. Once that uncertainty is set in place, the audience will hang on through the rest of the story just to make sure things will work out the way they want them to.

Why It's So Hard to Break In

Call this the dream-killer post. 

There's a formula for success, and it's this:

SUCCESS = (TALENT x WORK) + (OPPORTUNITY x LUCK)

Do you get that? Without work, talent is useless. You can't control how much talent you have. What you can control is how much work you put into developing that talent. Learn what good writing looks like, figure out what makes good writing good, and practice writing in ways that improves the quality of your work. 

Opportunity is largely about putting yourself in the right place at the right time. Without luck, opportunity is useless. People don't like to acknowledge the role of luck because luck is out of our hands. It's a big part of success. 

I see hundreds if not thousands of self-identified screenwriters on Twitter and Facebook. There's an entire cottage industry of books and videos and classes on how to write screenplays. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of contests that promise to make your career if you win. 

Screenwriting is the rock star career of writing. Big money, relatively short works. If you want to make money writing, Hollywood is where you go. 

Your odds of selling a screenplay are not good. If you maximize your abilities by working hard, and you put yourself in the right places at the right times, then your odds improve dramatically. 

- The Illiterate Writer

Basic Vocabulary: Falling Action & Resolution

So you've done your job as a writer, you've created a story world with logical rules and you've created rich, fully-developed characters to inhabit that world. You've set up a problem / opportunity and escalated conflict through the story. You've created a satisfying climax that does everything the audience expects and now... now what?

After the climax, you have a period of falling action and resolution. Falling action is where you wrap up any loose ends. Did the protagonist treat someone badly along the way? This is where they kiss and make up. 

This is also where you have an opportunity to reward the audience by giving them what they've wanted for most of the movie. Has there been a romantic interest that eluded the protagonist throughout rising action and climax? Now is when that romantic interest can be swept off their feet.

Objectivity

One of the most frustrating things I've ever done is offer advice to young writers and filmmakers. And, like the definition of insanity, I've done it time and again, always expecting a different result. 

Most writers suck. Nearly all writers suck when they're starting out. The only way to get better is to acknowledge you suck and work on getting better. 

Fun fact: Most screenplays never get made into movies. 

Do you want to sell a screenplay? Then take advice wherever you can get it. Learn. Grow. Get better. It won't guarantee success but it can't hurt either. 

Most writers are blinded by their own work. They can't be objective. They think they're already great when they're not. That's why they will never get better. 

Do you want to get better? Then be objective. Take advice and learn from those around you. 

-The Illiterate Writer

Pixar's Rules of Storytelling via @ScreenCraft

Pixar’s #Storytelling "Rules" pic.twitter.com/fuVK5q6ce7 http://t.co/ILZmZKxR8w #screencraft #screenwriting

— ScreenCraft (@screencrafting) March 5, 2015

Basic Vocabulary: Climax

Climax is exactly what it sounds like. It feels perverted to say, but climax is the orgasm of your story.

Anyone who has ever experienced anticipation knows the joy of climax. Waiting for Christmas as a child, saving to buy a car or a house, searching for a job after college. 

What happens if that car you saved up for turns out to be a lemon? Or if that job turns into a dead-end scapegoat position? Or if you got socks for Christmas instead of the toy you really wanted?

The last thing you want your audience to feel is let-down. They've invested in your story for exactly this reason. All the breadcrumbs you laid in rising action lead a trail to this moment. The audience knows what they're expecting. 

Your job is to give them what they're expecting without giving them what they're expecting. 

If the audience can guess the climax beforehand, they'll feel let-down. They'll feel like you didn't do your job as a writer. 

What is your job as a writer? Simply put, never bore the audience, EVER.

Basic Vocabulary: Character Arc, Traits, and Habits

Not to start a debate, but all stories are character-driven. Some are just more character-driven than others.

Characters don't necessarily have to be human. Cartoons personify objects all the time, from the cars of CARS to the animals of Disney movies like FINDING NEMO and BAMBI.

Throughout the course of a story, a character goes through an arc. A character arc is merely the process by which a character transitions from the character we see at the beginning of the story into the character we see at the end of the story. To discuss this arc, you must know the milestone events that evoke this change in the character.

A well-developed character has a handful of behavioral traits (no more than six, no less than three). I like to break these traits down into natural traits and learned traits. It is also more interesting if we see conflicting traits in the character. For example, a character's natural trait may be violence but they've learned pacifism. A natural trait may be extreme intelligence but a learned trait may be ineptitude.

Let's look at a trait-set and see what possibilities present themselves for story development:

The KEY to a Good Story...

There's one simple key to a good story. It can be stated in one word: Change.

For a story to be compelling, something has to change. Either the protagonist changes, or the world around them changes. Sometimes, the meaning in a story comes from the protagonist's refusal to change even though the world around them is radically changing.

There's nothing worse for an audience than investing an hour and a half or two hours into a story where nothing changes. Nothing changes = nothing happens in the mind of the audience. It's like getting on a plane, circling the airport for two hours, and ending up at the same airport you left from.

Change doesn't have to be sweeping. It can be subtle. It can be limited. But it must be dramatic and meaningful.

-The Illiterate Writer

Basic Vocabulary: Rising Action

Earlier, we talked about basic story structure. If you haven't read that yet, go back and do so now.

Rising action is the single largest component of the basic five-part story structure. Effectively managing rising action is a huge part of effective storytelling. In many ways, it is what separates wannabes from professional writers.

Rising action is a series of complications that stops the protagonist from getting what they want and / or need. It begins at a point known as the inciting incident and ends at the story climax. 

The inciting incident can be one single action or a series of events that culminate in the moment raising action begins. 

Rising action is a burning fuse connected to a stick of dynamite. The fuse burns out at the climax and the dynamite explodes. Rising action, then, is the process of watching the fuse burn with a growing sense of dread, knowing the inevitable is awaiting. 

That said, the purpose of rising action is to show the audience what the dynamite looks like.

Basic Vocabulary: Opening

Your story opening is important. This is where you gain or lose your audience. Your establish your characters and your worlds in the opening. Basic questions like time and place are answered here. You create the rules for the situation that will drive your story. You set the tone for the story.

Ever watch a professional drag race? Before the race ever starts, drag racers perform a burnout. They spin the back tires, throwing up plumes of smoke and revving the engine loudly in the process. Fans of the sport love it, but that's not why they do it. A pre-race burnout actually performs a vital role in the race. This burnout warms the tires up so the tires are as sticky as possible and it cleans dirt off the tires. If the tires slip, it doesn't matter how powerful the engine is, the car won't go down the track.

Think of the screenplay opening as your burnout.

The opening of a screenplay must serve two purposes. It must dazzle the audience. It must also perform the following four functions at a minimum: establish the world, establish the rules of that world, establish the protagonist, and establish the protagonist's wants and needs.

On Screenwriting Books...

Browsing through screenwriting books on Amazon, I've noticed a number of negative reviews on just about every book I've looked at, all with basically the same comments attached: "This book is no different than other screenwriting books I've read, there's nothing new here, I didn't learn anything from reading this, it's just a rehash of old ideas."

If you've left a review like this, or if you're buying screenwriting books and finding yourself saying these things, let me say this loud and clear:

THE PROBLEM ISN'T THE BOOK — THE PROBLEM IS YOU.

If you've read that many books, why are you throwing money away on more!? Seriously? You know what, don't even answer. You'll probably just lie to yourself anyway.

You're either buying these books because A) You're not good enough to make a living as a writer and you're looking for a bandaid to fix whatever's wrong, or B) You're not actually writing and trying new things, you're just looking for someone else to tell you what to do. In either case, the only way to get better is to write more, not read another book.

Most screenwriting books are written for beginners who want to learn the craft. The truth is, with every writer I've ever met, once you learn the basics of the craft, you're better off writing and having other writers critique your work than you are reading another book.

Leave the books (and websites like this) to the newbies. Go out and write something.

-The Illiterate Writer

Basic Vocabulary: Opposition = Conflict / Tension / Stress

You'll often hear writers talk about conflict in story. Conflict can be achieved in a number of ways, from outright physical action to complex emotional turmoil.

Make no mistake, conflict is the fuel that powers the engine of story. Without conflict, you don't have story, you have a character study. 

In terms of story, conflict is the result of characters not getting what they want / need. If Bob gets fired from his job and can't pay his rent, conflict would be all the things that frustrate Bob's efforts to get a new job or get his old job back. 

The word conflict brings to mind images of people fighting, combatants fighting on a field of battle. This is a great, vivid way to portray conflict in a story. It is not the only way to achieve conflict.

Basic Vocabulary: Protagonist & Antagonist

A story needs one character, whether it's a person or animal or animate object. This character needs to be a focal point, someone for the audience to identify with, empathize with, and ultimately care for. It's vital that the audience feels sympathy for this character's struggle. If the audience doesn't care, then they won't have any investment in the outcome of the story. Without this investment, your audience will likely give up and move on.

This character is your protagonist.

Think about a time you've started a new class, a new job, a new church—any social setting where you don't know anybody. More than likely you developed a connection with the first person who was nice to you. It's no different for audiences watching a movie, they connect with the first real "good guy" they encounter.

Even in ensemble stories with a cast of multiple good guys, there should be one focal character who the audience can attach to and identify with. This is the one character the story cannot exist without. Maybe you have two characters the story can't exist without—then your job becomes choosing which one is your protagonist and which ones are supporting characters. That doesn't mean your supporting characters are any less important than the protagonist, or any less rounded, it just means your protagonist takes on the role of leader for the ensemble. Typically, this will be the strongest character within the ensemble, although they may not yet have ascended to a place of power within your story yet.

The key to creating a good protagonist is identifying what they want and / or need. The more basic, more primal, more animalistic their wants / needs, the broader the audience that can identify with it. This is why so many movies revolve around sex, revenge, and survival, because these are some very primal wants / needs. Every adult an understand sex, revenge, and survival.

What happens if the protagonist doesn't get what they want / need?  It is vital that the audience understands this because these are the stakes of your story. This is what will be lost forever if the protagonist doesn't get what they want / need. Again, think primal and basic. In a well-crafted story, the stakes are life-altering.