So between grad school and whereismh370 I’ve been a little too busy to work on shafiq28 or similar. However, I am making use of shafiq28 for something related and would appreciate some editing help.
I’m adapting this short story about Sabila and Faizal’s decision to raise Ayesha primarily in English (based on a personal true story) into a 10-min performance piece for presentation at my MFA showing in April, as well as potentially the Short + Sweet Theater Festival.
Short + Sweet doesn’t allow fanfiction, so I’m rooting the story in more realistic terms, and it’s quickly turning into historical fiction: both parents survived the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War in their own way.
I haven’t written a short play in a long time, and a lot of the war information is news to me too. I want to make sure I get the language right, as well as make it presentable. It doesn’t have to be pitch-perfect or super polished, but I would like it to be good at least.
If you’re willing to help look over the play, please let me know! You don’t need to know Bengali or even have any particular experience in playwriting, though that helps.
“THE BASICS OF STORY PLANNING” is based in a screenwriting seminar by Dany Campo, A writer of cinema and advertising, analyst of scripts for movie producers and also independent producers and finally a scriptwriting teacher in various colleges and on his Youtube channel, and also by a seminar I gave in the writing Discord server “Whisper Of Words”.
This seminar will focus on the basics of story planning and the elements that conforms it.
Now, how can this help you improve your writing? Aren’t these too obvious? Well, it’s no secret that these things are known to most but not for everyone, and it’s so easy to make a mistake in one of the essential elements that can it make your work hard to understand or less attractive to spectators in search of a juicy story. Which is why I believe it’s important to master the basic knowledge to understand your work, since these elements are what your story is trulyabout
Two thousand years ago, there was a man called Aristotle, whom you’ve probably already heard of, who asked himself some the questions we are making ourselves today: Why are there stories that endure time and others that are forgotten? Why are people attracted to these that are still remembered today?
To find the answers to these questions, he did a field research, studying the stories that had endured time until then, two thousand years ago. THE POETICS was product of this investigation, one of the first essays about narrative. He discovered that many of these stories had a series of common elements that can be resumed in the following.
There was a character, whom he called hero, with a goal and a dream.
The hero does things to reach his dream.
And on the way to achieve his goal, difficulties, obstacles appear which then created a conflict for the hero and the spectator. This conflict was what defined the center of the story.
To briefly explain this theory, the first act serves to understand the protagonist and the goals he wanted to accomplish, the second act has to do with what they do to face the obstacles that’s on their way and finally, the third act in which they overcomes the obstacles, the protagonist goes towards the culmination of his journey and the “achievement” of their goal.
A clear division of the story. The approach/statement, the development and the outcome. A clue to this theory in proportion is that the second act is the double of the first and the last. It means that while the 1st and 3rd act could be 25%, the middle act will be 50%. It is important to note that these measurements will not be always exact as they just are a reference.
Now, other forms to tell a story have appeared throughout history such as the Dramatica Act Structure, Michael Hauge’s “Six Stage Plot Structure”, John Truby’s “Twenty-two Building Blocks” and Freytag’s Pyramid “Five-Act Structure”; but so far, this has been the most rentable and effective way to tell a story as it has been demonstrated for thousands of years and is still being used today. But of course, it also depends on the writer rather than just the theory alone.
The three-act theory was constantly reformulated as the time went on, especially when the industry of cinema came to be, and it ended in a quote which will help us to build everything and the most important of this seminar.
Do not forget it.
Someone wants something with intensity and finds obstacles to get it.
This quote alone resumes the core of a story and its respective elements that facilitates story planning for both plotters and pantsers. To have a better understanding of the key sentence of this seminar, it could be explained like the following:
A protagonist is someone who does things to achieve his goal for a reason; the conflict is when we face two options: a bad one and a worst one. And finally, once the conflict is overcomed and a solution is found, it must be put on practice and achieve the goal, leading to the conclusion of the story.
As I established previously, there are other methods to plan a story but this is one of the most basic and known ways to do so, and thus, you are not obliged to strictly follow a certain method.
“It depends on the storyteller who needs to know how to apply the knowledge they have acquired rather than just the theory itself.”
The upcoming posts will explain in detail all the elements contained in the quote: the protagonist, the goal, the motivation, the conflict and the ending; the 5 basic elements in story planning.
Denise Miotke is a mom, a real estate agent, a reader for the Austin Film Festival, one of my oldest friends - and a screenwriter. I loved talking with her about her writing journey - she’s wise and funny and you’re going to love her.
In this episode we talk found family; fence disputes; Bronte inspiration; how poetry and screenwriting are linked; how bad screenplays are all similar; authenticity; and so much more.
Amanda Overton is a television writer with credits on series like Marco Polo, Severance, andEdge of Normal. She worked on Riot Games’ and Fortiche’s recent hit League of Legends animated series Arcane,where she is credited as an executive story editor and wrote the fifth episode “Everybody Wants to Be My Enemy.”
Overton has made a point to talk about the series and her work on it on Twitter and Reddit, telling fans how she and the other writers went about crafting the richly detailed world of Runeterra and set the story in motion. I recently did a public interview with Overton on Reddit about her work on the first season of Arcane,the series’ production, and its LGBTQ+ representation. Here was our discussion:
You have spoken about there being nine people in the writers’ room for season one of Arcane. Can you walk us through a little bit of how that environment looked? How much did you all collaborate vs. go off to work on different scenes and episodes separately?
As far as writers’ rooms goes, this one was pretty typical in that the whole group, all nine of us, worked together to shape the story. But it was atypical in that there was a mix writers with all different areas of experience. We had a few writers that had been working at Riot for ten years and really knew the lore and Champions, and had even helped to write or create them. We had a writer with an animation background and one with a feature writing background, and a few writers, like me, that had live action TV experience. It was a really great mix backgrounds and perspectives.
One thing we had in common was just how much we love video games, and how we all desperately wanted a video game adaption to tell a great, character driven story. To do this, the first thing we did was talk about who the characters are, what their wants and attitudes are, and create backstories for them that were both inline with their lore and filled in gaps that were missing, but were necessary to tell our story. For example, I was lucky enough to give Caitlyn her last name, she didn’t have one before, and with that we filled out a lot of details about her parents, family and upbringing.
This was the verse I desperately held onto during many years of all sorts of deep pain (i.e. both physical & emotional). But our God. Being our good good Father, was the strength amidst my weakness & exhaustion and surely surely my portion then, today, and shall be forevermore,
![The One whom my soul adores,[instagram: pg7inc]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/7a4eafe8f72c99ea031ba76ebac5914c/tumblr_ofkoe5BdnY1te57wno1_1280.jpg "The One whom my soul adores,[instagram: pg7inc]")
