Try this: Sit down and write a story. No limits, you can write about anything.

Then try: Sit down and write a story that in some way has to do with “Restraint.” You can take it any way you want, it just has to be about the theme of Restraint in some way.

Powerful difference right? (Tell me if its not.)

My brain starts working on a whole different level with this technique. I don’t have to get caught up thinking about the infinite possibilities, instead I can focus on creating something in the context of the theme.

So if this works for you, use it often, but note, not all themes are created equal.

For a theme to work, I find it must have a metaphorical quality to it, it must present the territory of the creative work, rather than being merely a detail within the story.

For example, “obsession” is a great focusing theme, and it can be used to create many different creative works, where as “a salt shaker” is not. Yes I can put a salt shaker in a story, but it is unlikely a story could be defined by this theme. It would merely be an included detail and therefore not very helpful in focusing the creative process.

More examples:

• Monster is a detail. Monstrous is a focusing theme.
• Heart surgery is a detail. Death is a focusing theme.
• A penny is a detail. Luck is a focusing theme.

A good theme contains the context of a story within it, where a bad theme is just an included detail to a story.

Note that a good theme can become a bad theme if used incorrectly. For example, the color blue could be powerful if the creative work is centered around the emotion of sadness, but if blue is just the color of a coffee cup in the story, the effect is less useful.

I feel like I’ve talked disparagingly about Theme before, because they can encourage empty retelling of similar stories over and over, however, I think if you pick a good theme (as noted above) and then strive to express it in a unique and personal way, the results can be remarkably positive.

If you find yourself straying into generic territory, pick a theme that is difficult to link to cliched material. Instead of Envy, try “Tactile.”

Give it a shot, and post the results!

Okay lets get to this.

Question: Why does this blake snyder beat sheet encourage me, while all other attempts to create a formula piss me off.

Answer: The Blake Snyder Beat Sheet strikes the right balance of specificity.

I’ve read books that talk about formula; on the 3rd page you make a character state the theme – boring generic shit, and it really doesn’t fit because you’re basically just forcing these elements in there. The audience looks at film and goes, yes you included all the right elements, and there is a story happening around them, bravo, bravo! No they look at the screen and go, why are there pieces of shit in my cereal. The moral of the story is, great cereal and great fertilizer do not create great cereal/fertilizer.

On the other hand, I’ve read books that go the other way and talk about arcs and theme. Theories that are so top down and overhead that all the characters look like ants. You can’t see what the hell they’re doing there, but somehow this is supposed to help you divine your story. It doesn’t help.

Both these ends of the spectrum inspire nothing from me.

But for some reason this beat sheet, is inspirational material. I feel like I can take any rough story idea that I want, put it next to this list, and the combination of the new story and the set structure would just spark ideas as if by magic.

This is the first thing I’ve read that made me think that story and structure can be separated. And because they can be separated, you are free. You can take a story, and give it several different structures. Or you can take a structure and apply it to several different stories. All with different awesome outcomes.

But do I think this blake snyder beat sheet is THE WAY to make films? No. But it points at this idea: you can take structure from whatever story you want, and apply it to your story to get a new way of telling a story.
Structure helps you think of where to take the story next. And you need that when working on a feature film. It’s either that or instincts. Relying on your own instincts to write a screenplay isn’t just wishful thinking, its lazy.

Unless it works – and that’s the real test of any theory.

I just watched Tropa De Elite and was deconstructing from a story perspective, trying to really get at the process for creating such a story.

Okay I’ll assume you haven’t seen Tropa De Elite, so I’ll just say it’s the kind of story with several different character’s whose paths intertwine, morphing the characters and arriving at a shocking conclusion.  It’s a great story to deconstruct, because it has such a powerful structure.  Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to do my favorite thing in the world.  Hate on the story-gurus.

Robert McKee

First we have Robert McKee.  He would probably say, that first the author had to figure out what kind of story he wanted to tell.  In this case, a story about a man changing into a monster.  Next you have to fit it in a specific environment.  In this case, an elite police squad in Brazil.

It’s at this point that I call bullshit.  No one can write a story in this backasswards manner.  At least I can’t.  For example, why the hell would you want to tell a story about a man changing into a monster?  To amuse yourself?  To win an award?  Cause it certainly can’t be because you’re at all interested in that idea. It’s so generic, and has been done so many times before, there would be no purpose.  And why the hell would it occur to you to set in Brazil?? That’s just random.

But lets assume that’s the case.  Well it still doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t provide a good motivation for creating the story the way it is.  There is no way an author sat down to tell a story about a man changing into a monster and ended up with this complex narrative, set in such a dynamic backdrop, and involving so many interesting characters.  They’re just unnecessary.  If this is how stories really are made, then the really good films would be 15 minutes long, and anything that reached an hour would be full of unnecessary boring ass shit!  Okay I’m done here.  Next!

Syd Field

Next we have Syd Field, who seems to believe that the point of a screenplay is the end.  The ending is what decides everything that comes before it, and without it, all of the buildup means nothing. To write a screenplay in this way, you’d have to start at the end, and add on elements until you reached the beginning.

Again this is crap.  I’d say anyone who really knows their ending, or thinks it is the whole point of the story, is going to write the most boring, contrived screenplay ever, and the only point of any scene will be to lead the audience to the next scene and the next and the next, until they get to the final scene, in which they are so shocked by the beautiful ending that they choke on their popcorn and die of euphoria and kernel asphyxiation.  Writing this way would never cause someone to create the nuanced twists and turns of Tropa De Elite.  After all, you’re just trying to get to the end right?

An Alternative

So what then?  Well, now allow me to unveil my ultimate theory on story creation.  I used to believe writing was all about the emotional moment, but in that case films would simply be a series of vignettes, every scene trying to capture something new.  But this doesn’t necessitate a plot line of any kind.  So here is my revised theory:

First you find a world that interests you, then you find what makes that world unique, then you explore emotional moments that bring out the contradictions and contrasts of the world you’re exploring. From this perspective, the creative choices in Tropa De Elite start to make sense.  The authors got deep into their subject matter, found out what made it unique, and pinned down that struggle into a single plot line punctuated by emotional moments between characters on the outskirts of that world.

The meaning of the story is discovered in the environment, not before the environment is created.  The ending is simply the culmination of the events, and the completion of the intertwining of events.  It allows us to see everything that has happened in perspective, to really get our hands around the thing, but it is not the whole point.

I’m getting really worked up here.  I should really write a screenplay.

Stories work the same way. While it is important to have characters with dramatic need whom give the story focus and interest, do not shy from creating characters whose inclinations which aren’t as strong. These are the characters who can provide unexpected turns in a story which otherwise might be too obvious.

A nervous laugh is a way to escape from social tension. To bring humor back to the situation, to allay seriousness, and create a comfortable mood. Whenever a situation contains an incongruity between whats going on in our heads and what’s happening in reality, tension is created. 2 things can happen at that point:

1. You can shatter the tension by attempting to correct the lack of congruity or
2. you can pull on the tension, stretching it, using it to heighten emotions, and create excitement.

This is the essence of social tension, sexual tension, joke tension, goal tension, and dramatic tension.

Imagine:

• …watching a film which resolves intriguing plot lines immediately after presenting them.
• …watching comedian that laughs immediately after telling a joke, or tells a joke too soon.
• …going on a date that never slips into innuendo and undertones.
• …observing an entrepreneur getting bored and abandoning a product before it’s finished.

In all of these cases, tension has not been used to any advantage. Instead it has been pushed away, eliminated, given up in favor of a more comfortable emotional environment.

It’s our ability to not just tolerate tension but heighten it that makes life exciting, and gives us motivation and drive. It’s the difference between standing on a tightrope 1000 feet in the air, or 5 inches from the ground.

We all have different levels of comfort with tension, and we all have methods for getting ourselves out of it prematurely.

How much tension can you stand? What is your nervous laugh?

But maybe the most valuable learning involves creating the theory as you go along.  So I’m scrapping the dogma and creating my own theories on story creation.  Here’s 3 concepts that feel right to me.  Feel free to try it on, but I’m of the opinion you’ve got to make it your own before it fits.

1. The only way to bring a unique emotion into reality is to have someone experience it themselves.  This is done by taking facts and stringing them together to create emotional moments, and then stringing those together until you achieve the right amount to create the one unique emotional moment you’re looking for.  If your story doesn’t have at least one unique, emotional moment, it’s probably just a series of facts (Murder, Shouting, Crying, Shock) and ultimately, not worth telling.
2. It takes more time to create a good short story than a long story. Therefore don’t seek to create a short focused piece during the learning process.  Create long stories that combine too many ideas, and then eliminate, bit by bit.
3. To generate internal conflict, take a character with 2 core characteristics and put them in a situation where they must sacrifice one for the other.  For example, “the desire for revenge” vs. “safety of a loved one”, or ambition vs. ethics.  All decisions are about sacrificing one thing for another, but the really tough ones are those which involve two things we don’t want to part with.

First, consider the creative process as a race. On one side you have the beginning, the inception of the work, and on the other the completion. In the middle you have pain, to get from the start to the finish requires plowing through this pain.

But there is something unsettling about this. By this representation you accept that art is pain, and that completion is simply a matter of becoming accustomed to self torture and become resistant to it. This doesn’t work for me, I like art, I enjoy creating, and I’m not a masochist. I have no interest in desicrating something I love. Also, I feel if you’re just working on something to fight through the pain of doing it, the result doesn’t tend to be anything worthwhile. You do it to get it done, and then all you feel is the hollow victory of completion. This is creation through fighting pain.

The second representation of the creation process is like a race where you’ve got to reach the finish before the pain catches up with you.

Unfortunately this means reaching completion as quickly as possible, and if the pain catches up with you, you’re finished, and you might as well give up, as every step from that point onward will have you consumed with pain. Projects completed in this way tend to be fun and small with the rush of creating without a full developed creation to show for it. But there are plenty of projects that haven’t been completed with this process, as they are ceased as soon as pain is felt.  This is creation via running from pain.

Then I considered work in the past that I’ve completed that I’ve enjoyed. That’s when I realized that these works were not set up as a marathon, with a start line and a finish line on either sides. Instead they appeared as this.

You work on a project until it starts to become painful, and then you take what you’ve created and you tie it together.  The pain becomes tolerable when you know that in just a few steps you can reach completion.  It’s like a runner who sees the finish line and is able to suddenly pull an extra 10 percent out of no where to finish strong. But try asking that runner to do the same thing when there is no finish line in sight and see what response you get. Impossible. It can not be done.

The key is to make sure that the projects you tackle are ones that can be shortened and still be made worthwhile.

A project begins with a grand vision, but while that grand vision can motivate for a time, inevitably it becomes as a huge unscalable mountain. Once this feeling is felt, you must look for the finish line where it can be found. Cut off all extraneous appendages, tie off the wounds, and you can still have a living creature. It may be smaller than intended, but it is no larger than it needs to be. Otherwise, watch your potential creation decay from the outside in, or come into form as a rotting diseased monster.  Amputation is the finishing touch of a successful project.

Over time, works may increase in size and scope, but in the meantime you’ll be finishing projects, pushing a little more each time.  This is the balance which allows us to create without learning to hate our craft.