Film Courage: When you go back into the mainstream population (for lack of a better word) and
you see people who come to classes or whatever and they challenge different beliefs about
story structure or writing or the need to take classes or whatever.
Do you see they are justified in being angry about certain things?
Because you can look at how angry people get over something so innocent as screenwriting
and you say “What’s the justification for this?”
You can take it or leave it.
Take what you like, leave the rest kind of thing.
Some people become so dogmatic about certain things and it almost becomes a fight about
religion when it’s just screenwriting.
Alan Watt, Author, Screenwriter and Founder of L.A. Writers' Lab: Right well those kind
of people don’t stay very long in a class.
And I also have no desire to argue with people or…that’s not true.
My interest as a writing teacher is to get to the truth.
So if someone is arguing with me about something or is staunchly holding a position, my question
is “Is that true?
Is what you’re saying true?
Let’s explore that.
Let’s examine it.”
Because I have no dog in this race.
I’m not dogmatic at all.
I have been teaching a long time.
I’ve been writing a long time.
I’ve got a method that I’m teaching people but I don’t know if I would actually call
it a method…process that I’m teaching but yeah I don’t get into fights with people
about writing.
It’s like you believe that and you’re so staunchly holding that point of view well
then good.
How’s it working for you?
Is it helping you with your writing?
If it is then great, and if it’s not then…
I see it a lot with writing teachers.
I think there are a lot of writing teachers who are…it’s almost like they’ve got
to secure their sort of place in the world issuing everything that isn’t what they
teach and that can be I’ve seen it a lot where the latest thing is that some writing
teachers say the three-act structure is dead it’s, it’s remedial, it’s not going
to…it’s going to squash any creativity.
The problem with that is that they don’t understand what the three-act structure is
because the three-act structure has nothing to do with plotting in my opinion and unfortunately
a lot of story structure is taught by story analysts who are sort of brilliant left brain-ers
and are really adept at deconstructing a masterpiece and sort of the implication is that now we’ve
deconstructed this you should go off and write your masterpiece.
And while there’s tremendous amount of value in studying film theory or…film theory because
it’s deconstructing CASABLANCA or CITIZEN KANE is going to help you understand how a
story was built to some degree.
But it’s not teach you process.
It’s not going to teach you to organize your ideas.
When you look at a movie like CASABLANCA and you think about the Epstein Brothers writing
or structuring this movie I’m interested in the process.
I’m interested in how did somebody come to write this.
In other words you can sort of like just because you deconstruct something so it’s like vivisection
you can’t take something not living and look at all of its existing parts and then
reanimate it.
It’s not going to come back to life.
So just because you can break down this thing into its sort of separate parts doesn’t
mean you are going to uncover the mystery of what the thing actually is.
In other words story structure is really the DNA of your protagonists transformation.
Does that make sense?
Story structure is really the DNA of your protagonists transformation.
It’s not in the midpoint there should be a reversal.
Like I don’t even know what that means?
You hear it all the time with these story analysts that there should be a reversal.
What the hell does that mean?
Does IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE have a reversal?
That’s where Mr. Potter offers Jimmy Stewart a job and Jimmy Stewart says no.
I don’t know?
I think of story structure as not a conceptual model something you can figure out but it’s
more of a experiential model.
In other words you protagonist goes through a series of experiences that lead to a transformation.
And I think of story structure as an immutable paradigm for a spiritual transformation.
It’s immutable, it never changes.
But that doesn’t make it…that doesn’t limit your creativity.
That actually paradoxically opens your creativity.
In other words when you really understand what story structure is it moves you beyond
your limited imagination of what your story is.
I always tell my writers your idea of your story is not the whole story.
It’s not that it’s incorrect, it’s that it’s incomplete.
And so if you were to distill story structure to three words it would be Desire - Surrender
- Transformation.
Show me any story, you are going to have a character that wants something (desire).
You are going to have a character that lets go of the meaning they made out of their goal
(surrender).
You are going to have a character that experiences transformation in other words a shift in perception.
A reframing of their relationship to their goal.
Show me a story that doesn’t have that and I’ll show you a story that doesn’t work
or is really experimental okay.
But that’s when people…it’s happens not when I teach so much as if I do a lecture
to a bunch of people there’s always sort of the contrarian, the person who is like
“You know I don’t agree with that.”
And I’m like “That’s great, let’s talk about that.”
But it’s usually about something that they are trying to work out with themselves and
it’s not really…I don’t know?
It’s usually that they are looking for some kind of fight rather than they are actually
sincerely interested in deepening their process.