Film Courage: Why do you teach your students three different types
of story structures? You have The Hero's Journey [Joseph Campbell], the three act
structure and then something that was new to me which is the Jule Selbo’s 11-step model.
Pat Verducci, Writing Coach, Teacher and Mentor: There are all these different story
structure models out there in the world and they just have different terms but
they're all basically kind of the same approach to story structure.
Every writer has a different process and a way of thinking about stories. I think it's really
good to expose yourself as a writer to all the different models and see Okay which one helps
me? and I think the important thing to remember is it's they are forms not formulas. It's not
something you should follow like paint by number like here's page 30 this is where the turning
point mid six midpoint is on page 60 like like I really use these story models as inspiration
rather than some sort of set of rules that I have to follow and so I like to give my writers
different tools to put in their toolbox and then to use the ones that are helpful to them and there
are there are three that I really like and there's others too that are really amazing but I just find
it I don't want to give people too many things which just makes them crazy and confused including
myself by the way so I like the hero's journey which we've already talked about and I use that
which is the ordinary world the call to adventure the refusal to the call out of fear
meeting the mentors crossing the threshold blah blah so so for those those people that are really
interested in psychological storytelling and emotional journeys I think that's that's the
number one one and that story model is fascinating because Joseph Campbell who actually identified
that pattern of storytelling he studied myths and fairy tales across all different kinds of cultures
and across all recorded history and it's the same pattern so it it and he sort of likens characters
in these myths and fairy tales to those that Carl Jung found in our unconscious brain and it's like
I think the reason this story model is so powerful is it comes from our human brain
our need to have a story told in a certain way where we're processing our own fears and our own
struggles so I i love that story model it helps me a lot again not a formula it's a form you can move
those and shift those phases around or dr or not have a phase it's up to you to use it creatively
and you can see that pattern in Hollywood movies you can also see it in
more independent character driven slightly experimental films you can find traces of it so
it just depends how much you want to embrace that in your in your structure and then I also talk a
little bit about three-act structure which is kind of the way everybody talks about story structure
ordinary world inciting incident act one turning point midpoint end of act two where the everything
falls apart and then i'm gonna try one more time and then climax and then resolution and that's
just a really simple way to think of feature writing which is mostly what I focus on with
writers so there's that model and then there's the jewel selbo model and i'm gonna get my cheat
sheet oh please do yeah yeah this was new to me but I jules selbo wrote a book I can't remember
the name of it but it's it's j-u-l-e-s-e-l bow s-e-l-b-o and she is wonderful and this
this way of telling feature stories is so simple and so clear and I just find it really helpful so
I’ll share that with you and again if if you find that this is like working for you and you really
are attracted to it like get her book because it explains it in much more detail but she basically
says there are 11 steps in a feature film the first step is the character's overall want and why
so you establish through action what they want and why they want it and then the character logically
goes for it so they take action to try to get that thing that they want but the character is somehow
denied okay they they that's not gonna work they can't they can't get it that way but the character
gets a second opportunity to achieve their overall want but there's danger around that second
opportunity like it's kind of a shady way maybe it's not on the up and up but there's some danger
around it either emotionally or physically okay but they want it so badly at the end of act one
they go for it they decide to go for it again these these forms are the same like they're just
different language around the same turning points and stuff but at the end of act one the character
decides to go for it and now we're in act two right and so all goes well they're going for
it look they're getting what they want oh my god but something happens in the middle of the script
and one thing I would love to share with your viewers is this idea of the midpoint
sometimes the midpoint people think of it as like something happens out of the blue that
that causes everything to fall apart or it's like a false victory and then they have to deal
with its false or whatever but I always think the best midpoints are a moment where the character
just like everything's going okay they're getting what they want but then they get to that cave and
it's like they're in that cave and their fear is around them and they make a decision out of fear
that causes everything to fall apart for them they go back to their old pattern and that actively
gives them like they drive that midpoint and and causes everything to fall apart which in joules
11 step structures called all falls apart right so all falls apart looks like they're going to fail
and then at the end of act two there's a crisis where they again have to make a decision
or a commitment do they go for a new strategy do they give up what do they do usually they
decide to try again and that decision or that crisis decision drives them into act three
and then we have this climax where it's the final attempt to get what they want and
again usually we have a transformation right they do something they never could have done
back in act one they get what they want and then the last phase she calls truth the truth comes out
to make things right and this is where that the character discovers something new about her world
she has some new insight about herself and that usually has the power to heal whatever was broken
back at the beginning of the story and so what I love about this this story model is that it's
really goal driven it's like they want something they decide to go for it they get blocked
they get a second opportunity i'm afraid I want it so much i'm going to go for it it's just it
allows you to really find that goal for your character and let them pursue that in the story
that's awesome and who was jewel salvo jules selbo is an incredible writer I can't say enough
great things about her she's a friend she's a wonderful woman she's super talented writer
I met her as just a colleague as a writer and a person who worked with screenwriting students
she's written a bunch of different movies she did a lot of animation she's writing novels now she
just wrote a new kind of like detective novel that just came out and she's phenomenal and I think
she's still teaching but she really just looked at all this material out there and she said i'm
going to make up my own version of this that's really simple it's really character and goal
driven and i've used that 11 step story structure a lot in my own work and with clients now you have
a film that you wrote and directed that starred alicia silverstone yes and it's a true crime it's
called true crime okay yes please don't watch it it's not very good oh no no no I would love to
tell my true crime story if people are interested if any if any of your viewers are interested in
being filmmakers in addition to being writers like wanting to make your own films because I actually
started out and I wanted to be a director and I went to ucla film school I was in the directing
program there I got my mfa there and I was positive that that's what I wanted to do until I
directed a movie called true and I just found it was it was a great experience like I learned so
much but I also realized i'm not a director like I don't enjoy being kind of the focus of everybody's
questions and lots of stress and all that stuff I really realized like oh my gosh I had such a
great time writing the script like i'm the right i'm the writer i'm not the director but it was it
was a great experience and what it taught me as a writer is because because I was directing it too
and it was pretty low budget at the time we had like 18 days to shoot it so it was kind of crazy
what i've what I found is and I wish I had known this before I actually directed it
is how important it is if you're actually making your own scripts like you're and you're kind of
doing it diy I mean I had a studio that I think the budget was 1.2 million dollars which at the
time was it was a decent low-budget movie but what I wish I had known and I wish I had listened
to people who told me is make it contained don't have a lot of different locations really
boil your script down to only the scenes that you absolutely need to tell your story because what
ended up happening is that we would have company moves and I just I every day I lost scenes where
the producers were just like we can't shoot that scene because we're not enough time and so it
was just very frustrating to to watch my story eventually it kind of makes sense in the editing
room we had to kind of rewrite the movie to to fix all the things that we couldn't shoot but and it
kind of worked out but what was great about it is I learned I didn't want to be a director I really
learned that I am a writer through and through I like being alone yes I like being with other
people in a room too but I do not like being on a set and being in charge of a bunch of people
it was just extremely uncomfortable for me sure I mean sometimes the idea of something sounds
wonderful and the title of it and then once you actually get into doing it then you realize that
okay this isn't for me but is it for me i'm gonna get through this and I had done it in film school
I had directed several films which I loved doing but it was on a much smaller scale it was just
my friends and I making a movie and it was great but when it became this big thing I just realized
I don't have the temperament to really deal with all the stress sure sure now what prompted you to
write the story the that story oh that was that this is actually might be really interesting for
your viewers I got out of film school and I I said I was in the directing program so I
had a couple short films that I had made but my agent said you need to write something you
need to write a feature and I was like okay what should I write about I have no idea and
I remembered back to something that happened to me when I was a little girl when I was like 9 or
10 years old I was at my grandparents house and I was I don't know I was looking for something
and I went to my grandfather's closet and I found the stack of true detective magazines
which back in the day were like the way we have true crime now it's all over television well
back in the day it was kind of this secret thing and there were these magazines right
and I was like oh what are these magazines i'm like a 10 year old oh and I open them up and it's
like literally photos of like bodies with like black strips over their eyes and I was just like
ah what is this and then I was reading and that they described like how the person got and how
the detectives went after them and figured out who had committed the crime and everything and part
of me was like this whole ugly world of like the real world was opened up to me but I also was like
this is cool like detective stuff like I like this but my grandfather was like patty and I
was like oh put it away pretend like I never thought what i'm innocent but I also it really
ignited in me this interest in true crime which I still have but as I was thinking of what I
want to write I was like oh maybe I could write about like that thing of finding those magazines
so I ended up fictionalizing it and I just made it about a high school girl who's obsessed with
true crime magazines and a girl at her high school gets and she decides she's gonna find
out who the bad person was so it's kind of like a Nancy Drew kind of beast b-level movie about
this girl who wants to find the bad person and it's kind of a coming-of-age story really but it
came from my own experience and and a lot of the stuff that I write it it may not be technically
literally what happened to me but there's always something in there that did happen to me and so I
think when you're looking for a story you always want to have that personal connection somehow
because that's kind of where the juice is for you as a writer especially if you're
scared to write it that's a good thing well the million dollar question is what was the theme
I think the theme ended up being be careful what you wish for
be careful what you wish for interesting you think the way the world works
little girl you have no idea so it's kind of dark it was kind of a dark theme.
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