Film Courage: Is there a chapter that you were surprised that people commented on? They
had questions or even from Amazon reviews? Was there is there a point in
the book [WRITING TREATMENTS THAT SELL: How To Create And Market Your Story Ideas To The Motion Picture and TV Industry] where people...of where it's just a topic of conversation more so
than others? Dr. Ken Atchity, author/producer: You know, I love to say that there is but honestly we got in pretty
strong response positive response to the whole book but I think the parts that
that cause people that make people the most curious have to do with our
analysis of a movie of the week and that when we first wrote the book there were
a lot of movies of the week in which we talked about the seven act structure of
a television show and the 7x structure you know there is a three X direction or
two stories all stories have a three act structure but in the Renaissance for
example stories had five acts and that's because they divided the horrible act
two that everyone hates I call it the Serengeti Plain because it's you know
it's the hardest part of the writing they divided it into three acts and now
there's a five acts story and it's easier to write because each act has
some beginning middle and end and each act can be subdivided into twists and
turns and scenes so television goals goes even further and makes it seven
acts and that's because of commercials that have to come after each act etc so
people were curious to see that but when they saw that that the executives at the
studios actually had a chart some of them actually took the chart into a
pitch meeting and wrote down jotted down what you know in the chart what the
writer what the pitch was saying about what happens in each act and so on so
here's the filled out one I'm based on a movie that we produced and it shows
one-liners of the scenes that occur in each act and I think people realized
that this was they didn't realize how mechanical it was and honestly when I
hear that which I do often from writers when I'm in the Old Lace at least when I
was teaching at university extensions all over the country I realized that
they have them inhale any to be writers so
they be given a great example well mama named Millie Meir god rest her
soul wonderful wonderful lady he was a client for years came up to me at a
Riverside UC Riverside workshop after and she goes I didn't want to say
anything in front of the class guy didn't want people make fun of me but I
took my favorite book The Grapes of Wrath and I outlined it and is that
stupid and I said no you're the only craftsman in the class I mean that's
what a carpenter would do if he wanted to make a table he would take a table
apart and see how it was put together that's what a mechanic would do if he
wanted to build an engine he'd take an engine apart so that's exactly what you
do and that when they see this kind of breakdown they understand you know
exactly how the mechanics of it work and honestly until you get to that point
you're really not ready to be a professional writer because if you
thought that writing was a magic you know magic trick that you have to pull
off every time or a miracle which I guess most writers probably would think
a miracle rather than magic trick then it's impossible right but it's not
possible I mean in a sign impossible it's possible to be a writer
people have been writers for centuries they've been storytellers and and
storytellers tell stories in parts and they know what the parts are and they do
them in a way that makes sense and so the sooner you get down to the mechanics
of how it works the better and that's what we try to do when our books is to
show people the mechanics I'm looking through for another there's another page
in here where we show what we call an intensity chart where you kind of type
one-liners of your whole story on it on a single piece of paper one-liners of
all the important scenes in the story then you go between the lines and let's
say you put hyphens two hyphens for a non dramatic scene or a scene with
relatively little drama and like five hyphens for a scene with much more drama
and ten hyphens with maximum drama right so now you've got a page that has all
these hyphens on it under the sentences right then you draw a line
across the hyphens connecting the hyphens and then you turn it on its side
you turn the piece of paper on its site in which you've got is something that
looks like a roller coaster and because it shows you the ups and downs and your
stories based on the drama the intensity of the drama in your stories and that is
a great diagnostic tool because if you see that there's a whole slope that in
which the thing keeps going down down down and doesn't go up for a while or it
levels off then you know you need to work on that part of your story so
that's what I call the mechanical approach you know what I mean by
mechanics like when you when you want it outline a screenplay or a book you just
use three three by five cards and you put on those three by five cards the
obligatory scenes in the book and you won't fill up a whole card because it'll
just be a couple of words on each card and what you understand when you start
doing that is that creation of the literary work is what araceli called an
imitation of reality it's not reality you're not rebuilding the cider house
and the world around the cider house you're faking it you're making the
reader believe it's there and you do that mechanically by like I would if I
were making the movie I build a house front that looks like this outer cider
house right but it wouldn't have a back because I'm only gonna shoot the front
of it so that's what you're doing when you're writing your you're just doing
what's necessary to create the illusion that you're trying to create and the
audience believes that the lusion is real because it wants to believe that
and you've given them enough evidence to make them believe it so you know when
you're watching one of the old movies when they were just nobody was dealing
with production value the way we do now you know it just takes a little bit to
make you believe in the story even if the acting is bad right even if the set
is laughable but you still are in the story if the story is good you know if
if the characters are the dialogue is good and that's one of
the things that we try to instill in writers has learned that I can't accept
it because it's easier than then you make it you're not having to recreate a
whole world you're you need to do the right strokes to make the painting look
like a person and that's what we try to do and you know the treatment book
you