Could be useful Reference

Had a good lecture with Mike and Dave a while back and just thought I'd post up the notes I made during it as I think they are quite useful!

Narrative (complete film, the colour, the editing, the WHOLE film)
Story (or plot, Individual character stories within the Narrative)
Plot (How the individual story is told)
Act (Establish – Complicate – Resolve)
Sequence (Group of 2 to 5 related scenes)
Scene (A complete event – that ‘turns’ a value …Miniature Story)
Beat (An action / reaction within a scene)

Storyboarding – Drawing every beat that is worth while.

Beats build Scenes
Scenes build Sequences
Sequences build acts
Acts build plots
Plots build Story
Story build Narrative



Once upon a time…
Exposition – Introduction to the world and characters. The roles of the world – how the world works. Back story of the world and characters.

There was a…
Exposition - Introduction to the main characters. Central character’s storyline introduced: What they want? (or think they want).

One day…
The Inciting Incident – An event (and with it, a possible later solution upsets the balance in the central character’s life.

But then…
…X happens – Conflict to the central storyline is introduced. (Without conflict there is not story)

So the hero…
Attempts to overcome the conflict – Problems for the central character escalate.

And finally…
The story Resolution / Climax – The central character gets (or sometimes doesn’t get) what they wanted.

The 10 Story Types

1. The Romance (Romeo and Juliet)
2. The Unrecognized Virtue (Cinderella)
3. The Fatal Flaw (Hamlet/Dracula)
4. The Debt that must be Repaid (Buzz – Toy Story 2)
5. The Spider and the Fly (Dangerous Liaisons)
6. The Gift Taken Away (the father in ‘Paris Texas’)
7. The Quest (Luke Skywalker in ‘Star Wars’
8. The Rites of Passage (The boys in ‘Stand by Me’)
9. The Wanderer (Shane in the Western ‘Shane’ – Classic Western)
10. The Character who cannot be put down (Bond, James Bond)


Story Development

Identify the Protagonist –
Who is the central character?
What do they want?
What or who is stopping them? Thus also identifying the Antagonists

Identify the Story Type(s)
Found in the answer to: What the central character wants?
Or from identifying recognizable Story, Beat(s) within your writing.
Research / understand the Beats of that Story Type: the Key moments in the ‘way’ that particular story type is told.

The Problem of Exposition
The balancing act of setting up/ explaining the World, Characters and Stories early in the narrative.

Genre(s) and their Conventions
Identify the genre you are using. Research, use and perhaps break its conventions?
Use of genre helps to set up worlds.

The Inciting Incident
The even that triggers the story – and those points to a particular ending…
…and its ‘Obligatory Scene’

Theme or Controlling Idea
What is your film ‘really’ about?

Idea vs Counter Idea
Explore the opposite or negative side to a chosen controlling idea or thematic statement.
(e.g. ‘Fitting in’ vs ‘Not Fitting in’)

Characterization vs. Character
Or: Who a character appears to be. Vs who they really are.
Revealing who a character really is, or who they have finally become at the end of the story, is the writers, ultimate goal.

True Character (Who they really are)
Is found and revealed through choices made under pressure.
What would they (‘I’) do in X or Y situation?
Developing Character and Developing Story (plot) is the same thing – they are interlinking.

Character is Plot – Plot is Character.

McKee’s Ten Commandments of Writing
From his book ‘Story’
1. Don’t take the climax away. No surprises.
2. 2. Only progress through conflict
3. Dramatize rather than exposition. Convert exposition to ammunition. Use it to turn the ending of a scene, to further conflict.
4. Be instep with the character. You know what he knows and nothing more. Don’t assume that the reader knows something else that the writers do.
5. Respect your audience
6. Research your own world and understand it so that you can put a character in and have authority.
7. Don’t multiply the complications on one level. Use all three, inner conflict, personal conflict, and extra personal conflict.
8. Seek the end of the line. The negotiation of the negotiation taking the farthest reaches and depth of conflict imaginable within the story’s own realm of probability. Find the ending.
9. Don’t write on the nose. Put a subtext under every text.
10. Rewrite.