The CSSC has been busy this week.?
A well deserved congratulations to everyone who made the Top 53 this year.? Each and every one of you as earned the right to take a second out of your busy day and bask in the glory that is yourself.? And to everyone who didn?t make it, I would also like to congratulations you because you deserve it as well.? You handed your heart and soul wrapped in a story for others to judge.? The ability to do that does not come easy but it?s an important step in becoming a writer.? So keep writing, keep creating, and I hope to see you in the Top 53 or 58 or whatever number it is next year.
As well as the announcement of the Top 53, regular readers of THE Blog will also have noticed that Surita Parmar is raising momey for her upcoming film, Render.? Surita placed 2nd in 2009/10 CSSC with her script Minus Laura and now she looks to have another wonderful film on her hand.? If you get a chance, give the site a look.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1250301361/render
Alright, today I have structure on the mind again. ?Importantly the the incident that triggers the story.
An incident is one of many parts of a story.? An incident is the catalyst or the starting point of your story, so to speak.? If you want to write a story about a crossing guard who is hit by a car, then that will be your incident.
The incident is often the idea I come up with and is the first place I work my story from.? Everything before the incident is the set up and everything afterwards builds to your conclusion.? So before the incident, show what a normal life for the characters is like.? Show the balance in their life, let the audience know who they are, what they do, what they stand for, anything relavent to establishing who they are has human beings (or animals or aliens or whatever your characters may be).? Then disrupt this balance with the incident and spend the rest of the story picking up the pieces until in the end when you bring balance once again to the characters lives.
Disrupt the normal flow of life and then make your characters work to bring balance to their life once again.? This is the basics of structure and the bases for all stories.
When the incident goes unresolved, the script reads as underdeveloped and flat, the story tends to end more abrubtly than it should and the audience is left feeling unsatisfied with the results, they feel that there is more that should have been said. ?A story needs to come to some sort of resolution.? Everything doesn?t have to be perfect in the world, but a stable life that has been accepted by the characters has to be established.? But an incident doesn?t bring closure, it doesn?t bring a resolution, it does the opposite.? It disrupts and causes chaos.?? So develop the incident, bring the story to a conclusion.
In features it is often said that the incident must occur at around page 10.? This gives 10 minutes of film time to establish the balance in the characters lives.? Now if a feature script is apprioximatly 100 pages long then the incident occurs 1/10th of the way into the story.? Which means if you write a 10 page script, then following the same logic, the incident should occur on page 1.? Giving you 1 page to establish the character?s lives.? And a 5 page script should have the incident at 0.5 pages into the story.? Which doesn?t give you a lot of space to establish the character?s lives, but it?s all the space you have.
What I want you to take away from all of this is twofold.
1) The incident must occur early in the story.? Stories are built off conflict.? In the opening of your story, everything is in balance and though the real world and your story world is never free of all conflict, the conflict that occurs is manageable.? It isn?t until the incident that the conflict reaches a level that requires action from the protagonist.? So you can?t dwell on the introduction for two long, you can?t meander through a conflictless world, or else the audience will get bored.? So bring your incident in early.
2)? Find the perfect place for your incident.? First of all, ask yourself what in your story is throwing your protagonist life out of order.? Whatever it is, that is your incident.? Then take that incident and put it as early as you can in your story.? Finding the right spot for you incident can take some practise and is dependant on your story.? But what I recommend is that as soon as you have established everything your audience needs to know about the protagonist life in order for them to appricate what kind of change the incident has caused to the protagonist?s life, then you have found where your incident should go.? Depending on the length of your story, this could be after one paragraph, or up to ten pages.
I hope this helps, keep writing and I will see you next week.
Evan Jobb is a screenwriter and producer and is the current Writer Laureate with the Canadian Short Screenplay Competition. He placed 4th place in the 2009 Canadian Short Screenplay Competition an 9th in the 2010 Competition. His short film, "Those Forgotten" is currently making it's rounds in the festival circuit. When he isn't writing he works with kids after school and teaches first aid. Evan graduated in 2010 from Dalhousie University with a bachelor's degree in Biological Engineering. He currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.evelyn lauder devin hester devin hester shayne lamas cain velasquez dos santos waterboarding
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.