QUANDARIES
If you’ve worked a few ideas through the story points I outlined yesterday, then it should be fairly obvious which ideas are closer to being ready for April’s foray.
If you only have a few story points for an idea, and lots of gaps, then you simply need to develop the idea more. Ask yourself questions, like:
What attracted me to this idea?
What is my hero trying to get?
Does this raise questions, such as, will the hero succeed, will he find the truth, will he stop the bad guys, will he find his father, will he realize he’s not wearing pants, etc.?
What stands in the hero’s way? Is it a significant challenge?
This is a very small list and I’m sure you can come up with more. If you’re idea is thin, and you need to develop more story, sit down and ask yourself all kinds of questions.
Hopefully, you were able to develop one or two of your ideas into full stories, or if not, you’ll be able to do so by asking yourself questions.
SCENE LIST/BEAT SHEET/(GRONE) OUTLINE
I know, outlines, who needs them? Isn’t that against the spirit of Script Frenzy? How can things be frantic if you have them planned out?
Don’t worry, we’ll leave plenty of room for distress. At the very least, pound out the major beats of your story. Take the seven points you outlined yesterday, and add in the significant events, challenges, and arcs, that brought your story to those points.
Go into however much detail you’re comfortable with, but don’t write more than 1-3 sentences for each beat.
Also, you’ll need to decide on what level of detail you’ll use for your outline. You can make a scene list, that lays out around 30-45 scenes, or you could write in story arcs, that layout 10-15 major arcs, or stages. Most arcs will be comprised of multiple scenes.
To use American Beauty as an example again, when Lester blackmails his boss and applies at the burger joint, this might be an arc called, Lester gets a new job. The scene list would read:
1. Lester blackmails his boss for a severance package.
2. Lester goes through the drive in at Smile’s; decides to
3. interviews with the manager for a position (with the least amount of responsibility possible).
Take your favorite ideas, work out the beats, and re-write your logline as necessary, as you discover new and interesting ways to shape your story.
FAR BETTER ADVICE THAN MINE
I thought I’d add a few places to gain wisdom, from writers with much greater credentials than my own. These are two of the best web resources I’ve run across:
WordPlayer.com - (http://www.wordplayer.com/) - Read the Column section for loads of advice from the screenwriting team that wrote Pirates of the Caribbean, Aladdin, Little Monsters, and more.
JohnAugust.com - (http://johnaugust.com/) - Screenwriter of Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and more. If you scroll to the bottom, you can use the tags feature to read all the posts on the Writing Process. Also, the download section is priceless.
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