Culmination of the Character Archetypes Unit Arc. By this time students will realize that they are as original and capable as the rest of the screenwriters who make every movie we open our wallets for every year. The only difference between us and them is experience. Students are instructed to either invent or adapt (because everything comes from everything before it) a screenplay of their design. Every student is expected to come up with a story pattern, design concept, six key scenes, and then present this story to a bigshot movie director (that's me) in a five minute story sales session.
Stories Have Patterns, Stories Have Shape - Use This As You Learn
Handout: Vonnegut's Shapes of Stories - Maya Eliam
Handout: Blake Snyder Beat Sheet - Explained - NYC Screenwriters Collective
Movie Trailer Shape
Video: How To Make A Blockbuster Movie Trailer - Auralnauts - Craven Moorhaus and Zak Koonce - August 14, 2017 (“Bwaaa” is a low brass swell, "Booj" is a heavy sub-bass synth sweep.)
Three Act Structure
Video: The Avengers - Defining an Act - What is the most useful way for a writer to think about act structure? - Lessons From The Screenplay - Michael Tucker - January 26, 2018
Genre - There are Only So Many Kinds Of Stories - They Have Infinite Variation
Handout: Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker
Handout: Save The Cat! Goes To The Moves - At A Glance - Blake Snyder
Video: Every Story is the Same - Will Schoder - November 23, 2016
You/Establish A Protagonist, Need/Something Ain't Quite Right, Go/Crossing the Threshhold, Search/The Road of Trials, Find/Meeting With The Goddess, Take/Meet Your Maker, Return/Bringing It Home, Change/Master of Both Worlds.
A character is in a zone of comfort, But they want something. They enter an unfamiliar situation, Adapt to it, Get what they wanted, Pay a heavy price for it, Then return to their familiar situation, Having changed.
Need to find my Hero's Journey stuff
Characters - There Are Only So Many Kinds of People - They Have Infinite Variation
Reference: A Gallery of Archetypes - Caroline Myss
Website: List of Stock Characters - Wikipedia
Website: Characters As Device - TVTropes.org
Video: Black Panther - Creating an Empathetic Villain - Lessons From the Screenplay - Michael Tucker - July 24, 2018 (Challenging the protagonist's deeply held beliefs, Attacks the hero's weaknesses, Attacks the hero's beliefs emotionally)
Video: Hidden Figures - The Power of Subplots - Lessons From the Screenplay - Michael Tucker - November 21, 2017 (Subplots resonate the theme of the main plot, Flesh out the story world, Symbols of Change)
Video: Writing Characters Without Character Arcs - (Many characters start stories believing a lie about the world and then overcome it. Some stories have one character that has it right in a world that believes the lie, and then that character changes the world.) - Just Write - Sage Hyden - August 10, 2018
Naming Your Characters
Naming a character does not have to be an exercise in memory, it should be an exercise in research. If you can determine the age of a character, and perhaps even where they were born and where their parents are from, you can look up the top hundred baby names for their birth year in a database. Name choices, particularly for Everyman characters, should be one of the more common ones for the time.
Requirement: One character must be named meaningfully and with full author choice. We will research the meanings and histories of names in class. The audience will probably not pick up on the reasons why a character is named meaningfully. This is fun for the authors.
Article: The Meteoric Rise of Boys' Names Ending in 'n' - Proofreader.com - David Taylor - April 7, 2014
Video: Evolution of US Boy Names: Bubbled - Abacaba - June 25, 2015
Video: Evolution of US Girl Names: Bubbled - Abacaba - March 14, 2015
Video: Popularity of Baby Names by US State - Abacaba - October 11, 2015
Infographic: Disproportionately Common Names By Profession - Verdant Labs - 2015
Image: The Politics of First Names - Verdant Labs - No Data Year Provided (Probably near 2015)
Characters Have Needs and Wants - Always Know What Every Character Wants
Video: The Last Jedi and the 7 Basic Questions of Narrative Drama - (Analysis of The Last Jedi based on questions from an editorial from writer Film Crit Hulk about Man of Steel) - Just Write - Sage Hyden - May 31, 2018
What does this character want?
What does this character need?
How do those wants and needs conflict with each other within the character?
How do they conflict with the outside world?
How do they conflict with other characters?
How does the character change through those conflicts and how does the resolution affect them?
What impact does that change have on everyone else?
Video: The Soul of Good Character Design - Lessons from the Screenplay - Michael Tucker - February 11, 2011
Handout: Character Design Worksheet
Infographic: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - Tim van de Vall - timvandevall.com
MacGuffins
Video: How MacGuffins Can Ruin Movies - (Try not to make it a weapon of mass destruction, Build mystery around the MacGuffin, Use an Anti MacGuffin, Make the MacGuffin a character we like, Make the MacGuffin symbolic of the theme ) - Just Write - Sage Hyden - December 18, 2017
Backstory/The Ghost
Video: Avatar: The Last Airbender - How to Write a Compelling Backstory - (The most compelling back story is one where something bad happened to the main character and they blame themselves for it) - Just Write - Sage Hyden - November 24, 2017
Website: Evil Virtues - TVTropes.org (I'll turn this into a handout eventually, villains have good qualities!)
Horrible Things Happen to Main Characters - You Want This To Happen
Authors are people who torture fictional people for a living. A new author needs to practice torturing fictional people.
Video: Independence Day - What Makes It So Great - (Epic Antagonist, The Action is About the Characters, Be Mean to Your Characters) - Lessons From The Screenplay - Michael Tucker - June 21, 2016
Video: The Dark Knight - Creating the Ultimate Antagonist - (Exceptionally Good at Attacking the Hero's Greatest Weakness, Pressuring the Protagonist into Difficult Choices, Competing for the Same Goal as the Protagonist) - Lessons From The Screenplay - Michael Tucker - August 23, 2016
Common Rookie Mistakes - How To Avoid Them
Infographic: 300 Scripts - profound_whatever
Handout: Advice from Pixar Storyboard Artist Emma Coats - Emma Coats
The Allegorical Character
Optional Requirement: One character must be an allegory, but the author is not required to hit the audience over head with the abstract concept. Strongly defining one character with an abstract concept starts that character's drives/wants/needs/decisions off well and assists in the formulation of a core thesis.
Presentation: Personified Characters
Seven Deadly Sins - TVTropes.org
Seven Heavenly Virtues - TVTropes.org
Sample Beat Sheets (The Blake Snyder Formula)
Sample Beat Sheet - Frozen (2013) - Buddy Love (Incomplete Hero, Counterpart, Complication)
Sample Beat Sheet - Gravity (2013) - Dude with a Problem (Innocent Hero, Sudden Event, Life or Death Battle) - Nature Problem
Sample Beat Sheet - Pacific Rim (2013)
Sample Beat Sheet - Man of Steel (2013)
Sample Beat Sheet - Despicable Me 2 (2013) - Whydunit (Detective, Secret, Dark Turn) - Cop Whydunit
Toy Story 3 - http://www.writersstore.com/toy-story-3-save-the-cat-beat-sheet/
Beat Support
Opening Image (1) – A visual that represents the central struggle & tone of the story. A snapshot of the main character’s problem, before the adventure begins. Often mirrors the Closing Image.
Video: Opening Shots Tell Us Everything - Now You See It - July 31, 2015
Set-up (1-10) – Expand on the opening image. Present the main character’s world as it is, and what is missing in their life. Stasis = Death, the “before” life of the protagonist is such that if it stays the same, he or she will figuratively die. In addition, the main character’s flaw, his problem that needs fixing over the course of the story, is revealed. (In many stories, it is not the main character’s flaw, but another central character’s flaw that is presented for him to resolve over the course of the story – for the character to ‘arc’)
Video: Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Solve Them - Act One - Tyler Mowery - Oct 28, 2019 - (The story has no conflict before the Iniciting Incident, The story doesn't set up the genre, The story has unnecessary or overly long dumps of expository information, The characters have no clear want or reason for wanting, The story has no meaning)
Want To Become A Serious Screenwriter? - Read These Books (And Everything Else)
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (1997) by Robert McKee
The Anatomy of Story (2008) by John Truby
Creating Character Arcs (2016) by K.M. Weiland
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000) by Stephen King
Save The Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need (2005) by Blake Snyder
Screenplay: The Foundations of Writing (1979) by Syd Field
Screenwriting 101 (2013) by Film Crit Hulk
The Art of Dramatic Writing (1946) by Lajos Egri
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) by Joseph Campbell
The Negative Trait Thesaurus (2013) by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
The Positive Trait Thesaurus (2013) by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
Dumping Ground and Notes Area
https://www.the-numbers.com/market/genres
The rest of the exercise has a great deal of freedom. In the first semester we were introduced to Freytag's Diagram to assist with the breakdown of tragic play narratives. In this exercise we will be using Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet to construct a formulaic narrative design. The six key scenes that must be written up in detail (a page or more each) are: Starting Point - Act I (1), Catalyst (12), Break Into Act II (25), Midpoint (55), All is Lost (75) and Finale (85-110).
Lessons from the Screenplay - Michael Tucker
Add the Get Out Video - [ Alert!: Profanity in an interview section, Will Not Be Shown In Class ]
Video: The Matrix - Exposition in Action (Make the Audience Curious, You Have to See it For Yourself, Building on the Established Rules)
Video: Game of Thrones - How to Evoke Emotion - [ Alert!:Graphic Violence, Will Not Be Shown in Class ] (What is a Scene?, Desire Action Conflict Change, Transition of Emotional Values, Toying with the Audience's Expectations) - Lessons From The Screenplay - Michael Tucker - July 14, 2017
Just Write - Sage Hyden
Transitioning Documents - Pardon the Dust
Handout: The Last Sheet
Presentation: Personified Characters
Presentation: Types of Conflict
Presentation: Allegory - Vices and Virtues (Incomplete)
Come back and farm:
Blake Snyder Beat Sheet - NYC Writers Collective Message Board
http://www.scriptmag.com/
https://litreactor.com/magazine
Duality https://nofilmschool.com/2017/11/co-creator-deadpool-making-your-own-authentic-superhero
https://nofilmschool.com/?page=26
Backstory/Truby's "The Ghost" https://medium.com/@pirangy/22-steps-ii-ghost-and-story-world-a1faeef64a47
Sanderson's 318R Takeaways
How Rowling Writes Msytery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Y0NFHNhgg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mocMtHZCZKY
Video: Extreme Ownership | Jocko Willink | TEDxUniversityofNevada
Sanderson's Laws of Magic https://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws_of_Magic
Law #1: An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.
Law #2: Limitations > Powers. Flaws are more interesting than powers.
Law #3: Expand on what you have already, before you add something new. Go deeper into a magic instead of wider.
Law #0: Always err on the side of awesome.
Characters are going to be good at some things. Then you are going to create a story that tests them in ways they are not prepared for. The story is about what they can't do or what is hard for them to do rather than about what they can do.
Superman stories are about:
Something that takes away his powers (Kryptonite)
Someone equally powerful
Problems that powers can't solve
yes but no and
Characters who Succeed often need conflict sources so...
character succeeds but problem bigger than they thought
character succeeds but the solution causes unintended consequences
Sanderson's BYU 318R Class
#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8 Magic Systems, #9
Detective Story Beats - Introductions, Murder, Investigation, Epiphany, Explanation
Crime Story Beats - Innocence, Crime, Evasion, Mistake, Final Battle
Video: How to Write a Space Battle - Spacedock - April 2, 2020
Video: Three Decades of Akira Slide Homages - Badspler - September 28, 2021
Video: Here I Come: A "Walking Towards the Camera" Montage - Zach Prewitt - August 26, 2012
Video: Hit By A Bus* - The Supercut - hh1edits - February 5, 2013 - Can't use this one because of profanity. Deus ex machina level stuff and completely overused trope.
Video: "Let Her Go": The Movie Cliché Supercut - HuffPost Entertainment - September 30, 2014 - Lots of guns unfortunately. Damsel in Distress trope extension.
Video: You missed. Did I? Supercut/Compilation - idle resonance - September 8, 2022