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.
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.
In an earlier blog post, I discussed my belief that the basic three-act structure is more helpful by way of story analysis than story development. This is where my hypocrisy will start to show, because now we're going to look at building a rough outline using the three-act structure.
If you haven't read my post comparing three-act structure to basic dramatic structure, take a moment and do so now.
Three act structure will help you build a basic outline because it's built on the principle of beginning, middle, and end. To have a rough outline, you need a beginning, middle, and end. This isn't a major stretch.
A lot of writers figure out the ending of their story before they figure out anything else. That way they have a destination to reach as they're writing the bulk of the story.
Using the three-act structure, a rough outline would begin looking like this:
Let's say we want to write a story about a teacher who is hired at a new school and discovers there's something not quite right with the students there. Our rough outline would look something like this:
This is a rough outline. It doesn't tell us much about our teacher, not even gender. It doesn't tell us what's going on with the students. What it does is gives us a basic frame to build from.
In building a rough basic outline, you can examine each chunk of the story and figure out the best way to approach it. For example, in Act One, should the story begin with the teacher interviewing for the position at the school? Should the audience know nothing about this teacher before this point in the story? Or would having some background on the character help create a bond between character and audience that cannot be made after the teacher is hired into the school?
In all honesty, the story could be successfully told either way. The benefit of the outline is seeing the story told both ways without spending hours writing the actual screenplay only to find that a scene or sequence doesn't work.
In our outline, it says that there is something wrong with the students. What is that something? That can depend on the genre.
Like sci-fi / fantasy / horror? Maybe they're superheroes, and this is a school for mutants ala X-Men. Maybe they're not really humans, but aliens disguised as humans. Maybe they're clones. Maybe they're robots. Maybe they're time travelers sent back to stop some disastrous event or study our "primitive" society. Maybe they were plucked from the past by time travelers and brought to the present in order to build a better society for the future, free of the brain-rot of modern technology and media.
Like thrillers? Maybe these are the kids of high-value government spies and the school is there to protect them as well as educate them. Or maybe the school is part of a religious cult and the kids are forced there to become indoctrinated into a strange belief system. Or maybe this is a school for children picked to be part of a shadow government straight out of an internet conspiracy theory. Or maybe all these kids were abducted by the rich and brainwashed to forget their past, but the memories keep coming back in some of the kids, and they must either be reprogrammed or killed.
Like romance? Maybe the kids know that the teacher is single and they're all conspiring to set the teacher up with another single faculty member? Or maybe the teacher has instant chemistry with one of the other faculty members but the kids don't want to see them get together because the other teacher was hurt really bad in a breakup and they don't want to see them hurt.
Like drama? Maybe a large portion of the kids are being sexually abused by the school headmaster. Or there's a secret society on campus that targets students who step out of line. Maybe the school is owned by the mafia and the kids are there to be protected from retaliation by rival mafias. Maybe the school doesn't exist at all, but is part of a dream during a coma inflicted by the teacher's failed suicide attempt.
Like comedy? Maybe the kids are expected to act like adults and devote themselves entirely to their studies but they really want to sing and dance and act. Maybe they ask the new teacher to help them start a drama department or a show choir. Or maybe the kids all have this secret where they sneak out of the school at night to play street basketball or trade currencies on maybe they started their own underground club in the city or they have a high-end restaurant that nobody knows is run by school kids.
See the benefits of having a rough outline? Keep things fluid and you can explore many possibilities. You can look at the story through different lenses, and you're not too attached to any one direction that you can't explore others.
Once you settle on the direction / genre, you'll want to start building more detail into your outline. Right now, you want to throw as much detail as possible. Some writers talk about creating a "vomit draft" of their work. This is when they sit down at the computer and type words as fast as they can and put whatever comes into their mind onto paper. What I'm suggesting you do isn't so much a vomit draft as a vomit outline, where you type out everything you can imagine as it comes to your mind and build the three acts of the story that way.
Let's build a rough outline of ACT ONE for our teacher story, starting with pre-hire storyline.
Now, this is a rough outline, but notice how we've built up a sequence of events that comprise the beginning of the story. This outline took about 20 minutes to bang together. Notice there are a lot of events, but it is still a rough outline. We still don't know the teacher's gender, for example. Therefore, the story is still fluid. We don't have a lot of time invested in the story, either, yet I'd imagine you can see the events playing out in your mind as clearly now as if you'd written 30 pages of a screenplay.
At this point in the process, you're still not locked into a genre. The story can take an almost infinite number of directions still. And you're not even locked into what you've written on your outline. You can cross things out, add more events. Don't think the school-provided housing is realistic? Then scratch it out. Don't think the teacher should go to jail? Scratch it out. Think the teacher should get knocked out while breaking up the fight instead of being accused of misconduct? Then change it.
Using this basic outlining technique, you can have your entire screenplay plotted out in a day. There's no gimmicks here. I'm not selling you any method that requires weeks of study to master. You literally write out sentences that describe the events of your story and you play with that outline UNTIL you're happy with it.
As you're constructing your basic outline, keep in mind that ACT ONE and ACT THREE are roughly the same length, and ACT TWO will be roughly half your story. If you find, for example, that your ACT ONE is much longer than the rest of your outline, you know that you've either A) over-written the beginning of the story or B) you've under-written the rest of your story.
Basic outlining is a good way to get the major story elements nailed into place fast and easy. It's a good way to discover if your story works as a movie. Wouldn't you rather discover major problems now, after a few hours of work, rather than after you've invested weeks (or months) in writing a screenplay from scratch?
Remember, this basic outline is literally for your eyes only. It's a tool to help you shape what will become the story without going through the effort and pain of actually writing a screenplay only to scrap most of it in subsequent rewrites.
Still not convinced you should outline before you write? Ultimately, it's up to you. However, I'd say for writers, outlining is the epitome of the expression "Word smarter, not harder".
-The Illiterate Writer
If you haven't read my post comparing three-act structure to basic dramatic structure, take a moment and do so now.
Three act structure will help you build a basic outline because it's built on the principle of beginning, middle, and end. To have a rough outline, you need a beginning, middle, and end. This isn't a major stretch.
A lot of writers figure out the ending of their story before they figure out anything else. That way they have a destination to reach as they're writing the bulk of the story.
Using the three-act structure, a rough outline would begin looking like this:
ACT ONE:
Establish the world / define normal. Establish the protagonist.
ACT TWO:
Establish the conflict. Establish the stakes.
ACT THREE:
Resolve the conflict. Establish the new normal.
Let's say we want to write a story about a teacher who is hired at a new school and discovers there's something not quite right with the students there. Our rough outline would look something like this:
ACT ONE (BEGINNING):
Teacher is hired by a charming private school.
ACT TWO (MIDDLE):
Teacher realizes there is something wrong with the students. School administration tries to keep her quiet.
ACT THREE (END):
Teacher exposes the school to the world. School is shut down. Students are sent to a new school.
This is a rough outline. It doesn't tell us much about our teacher, not even gender. It doesn't tell us what's going on with the students. What it does is gives us a basic frame to build from.
In building a rough basic outline, you can examine each chunk of the story and figure out the best way to approach it. For example, in Act One, should the story begin with the teacher interviewing for the position at the school? Should the audience know nothing about this teacher before this point in the story? Or would having some background on the character help create a bond between character and audience that cannot be made after the teacher is hired into the school?
In all honesty, the story could be successfully told either way. The benefit of the outline is seeing the story told both ways without spending hours writing the actual screenplay only to find that a scene or sequence doesn't work.
In our outline, it says that there is something wrong with the students. What is that something? That can depend on the genre.
Like sci-fi / fantasy / horror? Maybe they're superheroes, and this is a school for mutants ala X-Men. Maybe they're not really humans, but aliens disguised as humans. Maybe they're clones. Maybe they're robots. Maybe they're time travelers sent back to stop some disastrous event or study our "primitive" society. Maybe they were plucked from the past by time travelers and brought to the present in order to build a better society for the future, free of the brain-rot of modern technology and media.
Like thrillers? Maybe these are the kids of high-value government spies and the school is there to protect them as well as educate them. Or maybe the school is part of a religious cult and the kids are forced there to become indoctrinated into a strange belief system. Or maybe this is a school for children picked to be part of a shadow government straight out of an internet conspiracy theory. Or maybe all these kids were abducted by the rich and brainwashed to forget their past, but the memories keep coming back in some of the kids, and they must either be reprogrammed or killed.
Like romance? Maybe the kids know that the teacher is single and they're all conspiring to set the teacher up with another single faculty member? Or maybe the teacher has instant chemistry with one of the other faculty members but the kids don't want to see them get together because the other teacher was hurt really bad in a breakup and they don't want to see them hurt.
Like drama? Maybe a large portion of the kids are being sexually abused by the school headmaster. Or there's a secret society on campus that targets students who step out of line. Maybe the school is owned by the mafia and the kids are there to be protected from retaliation by rival mafias. Maybe the school doesn't exist at all, but is part of a dream during a coma inflicted by the teacher's failed suicide attempt.
Like comedy? Maybe the kids are expected to act like adults and devote themselves entirely to their studies but they really want to sing and dance and act. Maybe they ask the new teacher to help them start a drama department or a show choir. Or maybe the kids all have this secret where they sneak out of the school at night to play street basketball or trade currencies on maybe they started their own underground club in the city or they have a high-end restaurant that nobody knows is run by school kids.
See the benefits of having a rough outline? Keep things fluid and you can explore many possibilities. You can look at the story through different lenses, and you're not too attached to any one direction that you can't explore others.
Once you settle on the direction / genre, you'll want to start building more detail into your outline. Right now, you want to throw as much detail as possible. Some writers talk about creating a "vomit draft" of their work. This is when they sit down at the computer and type words as fast as they can and put whatever comes into their mind onto paper. What I'm suggesting you do isn't so much a vomit draft as a vomit outline, where you type out everything you can imagine as it comes to your mind and build the three acts of the story that way.
Let's build a rough outline of ACT ONE for our teacher story, starting with pre-hire storyline.
ACT ONE (BEGINNING):
Alarm goes off. Teacher wakes up. Teacher gets shower, gets dressed. Teacher lives alone in a cramped apartment.
Subway station. Teacher buys coffee.
On train. Train, teacher spills coffee on the way to work.
Inner-city school. Teacher lectures a class. Students are riveted.
Teacher interacts with students. Teacher encourages a sad student. Teacher delivers a test to a student and smiles as they cheer about their grade.
Fight in the hall. Two boys too big to be called boys going at it. Teacher steps in between them, pushes them apart before they really hurt each other.
Principal's office. Boys and teacher are lined up. Boys accuse teacher of touching them inappropriately.
Police arrest teacher.
Teacher meets with lawyers.
Teacher goes on trial. Teacher is found guilty.
Teacher goes to jail.
Time passes.
Teacher gets out of jail.
Teacher looks for a job.
Teacher goes on job interviews. They go badly because of the arrest record.
Teacher works in crappy electronics store to make ends meet.
An old friend / teacher / colleague comes into the store and suggests teacher apply at a private school upstate.
Teacher fills out application.
Teacher gets call.
Teacher drives upstate.
Teacher is interviewed at private academy. Administration is impressed with the arrest because it demonstrated fearless character. Teacher is hired on the spot, school wants teacher to start immediately.
School offers housing for teacher. Huge apartment. Victorian. On campus.
Teacher gets coffee on way to first class. Spills it walking through campus.
Teacher lectures class. Class is riveted. Another teacher watches, approving.
Teacher interacts with students in hallway. All of them are happy, having fun. All but one.
That one student sulks away unnoticed by everyone except the teacher.
Now, this is a rough outline, but notice how we've built up a sequence of events that comprise the beginning of the story. This outline took about 20 minutes to bang together. Notice there are a lot of events, but it is still a rough outline. We still don't know the teacher's gender, for example. Therefore, the story is still fluid. We don't have a lot of time invested in the story, either, yet I'd imagine you can see the events playing out in your mind as clearly now as if you'd written 30 pages of a screenplay.
At this point in the process, you're still not locked into a genre. The story can take an almost infinite number of directions still. And you're not even locked into what you've written on your outline. You can cross things out, add more events. Don't think the school-provided housing is realistic? Then scratch it out. Don't think the teacher should go to jail? Scratch it out. Think the teacher should get knocked out while breaking up the fight instead of being accused of misconduct? Then change it.
Using this basic outlining technique, you can have your entire screenplay plotted out in a day. There's no gimmicks here. I'm not selling you any method that requires weeks of study to master. You literally write out sentences that describe the events of your story and you play with that outline UNTIL you're happy with it.
As you're constructing your basic outline, keep in mind that ACT ONE and ACT THREE are roughly the same length, and ACT TWO will be roughly half your story. If you find, for example, that your ACT ONE is much longer than the rest of your outline, you know that you've either A) over-written the beginning of the story or B) you've under-written the rest of your story.
Basic outlining is a good way to get the major story elements nailed into place fast and easy. It's a good way to discover if your story works as a movie. Wouldn't you rather discover major problems now, after a few hours of work, rather than after you've invested weeks (or months) in writing a screenplay from scratch?
Remember, this basic outline is literally for your eyes only. It's a tool to help you shape what will become the story without going through the effort and pain of actually writing a screenplay only to scrap most of it in subsequent rewrites.
Still not convinced you should outline before you write? Ultimately, it's up to you. However, I'd say for writers, outlining is the epitome of the expression "Word smarter, not harder".
-The Illiterate Writer
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