Pat Verducci, Writing Coach, Teacher and Mentor: And I think writers should
challenge themselves like what's hard for you?
Make yourself do that thing, make yourself do it even if you're scared of doing it.
Film Courage: When you are writing a story, what type of structure do you use most often?
Pat: Hero's Journey. I use that structure probably the most because again it helps me
track the emotions of my character. What are they afraid of? What do they want? How do they have to
face that fear? I'm writing something now and I decided to do something I should probably not
have done which is like I'm going to go free! I’m just to just start writing this thing and I just
barfed it out which is actually good for me because I need to actually do that because
I tend to be over here in my left brain a lot. I barfed this thing out and it's like 70 pages.
I'm not even really sure what it is except it is a detective themed thing. But I read through
it again and now I'm going Oh okay I think this is what it is. This one little part over here,
that's where the juice lies and so now I'm taking that little juicy thing and going okay how can
I sort of approach the rewrite with more of a map and a view to now what I think it's about.
Usually I make a very loose outline. It's not detailed it really just says the major action
beats. What happens in the inciting incident or the call to adventure and whether the person
pushes away from it out of fear. Then what happens next to pull them in but I want to
leave it not detailed because then that leaves things for me to discover when I'm writing. s
Film Courage: Is it harder for you to not be organized and invested in structure?
Pat: Yes, it's very hard for me to be free. That's why I think I gave myself that challenge of just
Pat step away from the outline, step away! I needed to just go blah. When I did that I actually
found really interesting things happening that I didn't expect
and again that's where I found that little spark that was like Oh, this is what it's about. For me
(and I think writers should challenge themselves) what's hard for you? Make yourself do that thing,
make yourself do it even if you're scared of doing it. Make yourself do it and then get
more comfortable with it because there's something in there that's scaring you
and that's good. You need to go there, you need to go into your own approach to the cave as a writer.
I work with a lot of people who are writing memoir books (I work with authors as well).
A lot of the times they're like I think I'm going to change this so that it's not about the person
so that when they and I'm like what this is your draft no one's going to read it but you write
every single thing that happened, write the truth because if you're holding back we're going to know
that you're being untruthful with us. Now after you get out this version where everything (the
truth) is everything everybody did is on the page, then you can go back and modulate and figure out,
but you have to tell the truth. If you were writing a script that is based on experience
and you find yourself going I don't want to write that scene. You’ve got it, you’ve got to go there,
that's the scene, that's what your movie's about. You're afraid to go there because
there's something in there that you just don't want to look at.
Film Courage: For a right-brained writer who's messy and chaotic and everything's sort of
based on intuition then what would scare them is probably structure, rules, numbered sequences?
Pat: Right and and I’ve worked with a lot of right-brained writers and
it's not like they do it 180 and suddenly become like I'm have detailed outlines.
Usually it's just getting them to a place that is comfortable for them to organize
something so that they don't get lost in the weeds. Their right brain is their strength
it's like their superpower, but it can also lead them into the darkness and down tangents and out
into the woods and then they don't know how to get back and oh my where's the flashlight!
Helping them find something that's comfortable in terms of organization but not too detailed.
Sometimes it's even just a matter of talking through the character's emotional journey and how
they change that gives them enough in their head to guide their writing as their writing. Maybe
they don't even write an outline, they just talk it through so that they know where they're going.
Film Courage: I wouldn't know anything about it.
Pat: Is that your…
Film Courage: I'm your right brain tried and true.
Pat: Check out The Hero's Journey.
Film Courage: Okay yeah. I love the interview that Bill Moyers did with Joseph Campbell. It’s
excellent. The two of them together were a great team in terms of the interview.
Pat: That's a great piece. I'm so glad they recorded it for posterity.
Film Courage: Wouldn't you say that if writers and filmmakers follow these structures that
their films will be predictable? That's often something we get in our comments “This is why
Hollywood produces these formulaic movies.”
Pat: Yes, yes…that's always the danger, that's always the danger. You know when you're watching
a formulaic movie, you know exactly what's going to happen in the climax on 10 minutes, you know
that movie is going to fulfill those expectations. There's a couple of ways to approach that idea of
cliché and predictability. If you're writing the predictability doesn't just lie along structure
lines, it also lies along genre lines, that certain genres hold have conventions that
become familiar patterns. The trick is to look at these forms whether it's a structural form like
The Hero's Journey or three-act structure as a form and not a formula that it's just there to
give you some landmarks to help work through the story with your character. Then if you're writing
in a specific genre if I'm writing a horror movie and it doesn't have scary stuff in it like
that's going to be a failure I have to understand the genre I'm working in and what the expectations
of my audience are and I have to deliver that in a way that feels fresh. The audience is coming to
your movie with expectations of the conventions of that genre, they're going to want to see in
the romantic comedy the mistaken identity or the misheard thing or the kiss at the end or whatever.
How do you deliver those things without making them feel like boring and clichéd and well trod.
That's your challenge as a writer to either embrace the conventions and make them feel fresh
or subvert them. I just watched a movie last week. It's not a great movie but it's good and it's very
like lovely. The Mitchells Versus The Machines on Netflix. It's an animated movie and one thing they
did at the ending which I thought was really funny is in The Hero's Journey the way that
they combated this idea of like And now this is going to happen, and now this is going to happen!
What happens is in The Hero's Journey in the climax when you're facing off against the bad guy.
It looks like you're going to die. Oh no they died but then they live! What they did in the movie is
they face the robots and the family's fighting and they beat the robots and it's like they
destroy the bad guy and it's like yay, but then the main character has fallen into this pit
and the family gathers around it's like oh my goodness Katie! No! And it looks like she's
dead and she just pops up, she goes “Just kidding.” They're mocking that story moment
in The Hero’s Journey and so they're acknowledging it and they're making fun of it and we laugh.
There's ways of embracing things at the same time that you're going Yeah I know what I'm doing.
I know that that is that moment I'm going to have fun with it so I think you have to find
your way toward originality. Some people say there's movies that don't embody some sort of
three-act structure which is absolutely true. There are films that are mini-plot or anti-plot
but the thing that people have to understand is that mini-plot and anti-plot are a response
to arch-plot which is three-act structure. They are responses to the classical form so they take
elements of three-act structure and twist them and use them in different ways. In a mini-plot movie
you might get all this information except what you're used to getting in a normal
movie. They're messing with your expectations of information that you get about the character or
the main character in the mini-plot play or the anti-plot play or movie may not change but
the audience has a shift, has a transformation. They're taking these elements and turning them
around and using them in different ways but in order to do that successfully you
have to actually understand arch-plot. For those of you who are interested in doing
really cool weird things with structure, just learn what classical structure
is and then think about how you're subverting it or playing with it, or commenting on it because
that's where really interesting stuff starts to happen structurally in dramatic storytelling.
Film Courage: Can you think of a movie that does this?
Pat: Tarantino does that all the time. He plays around with these conventions
of ways that we're normally used to seeing movies and he just messes with them. He makes chapters,
he flips time zones, people are commenting, we circle back, where are we? He does a lot of fun
with structure because he understands what he's playing with. If people are interested
in Jim Jarmusch also creates movies that are not the normal structure that we're used to. These are
people who are doing like really cool experimental stuff but they also understand movies, all kinds
of movies and that's why they're so successful breaking the rules and subverting the conventions.
Film Courage: So that old adage Before you can break the rules, you have to know the rules?
Pat: That's right, I believe that.
What story structure do you prefer?