Screenwriting

Writing a story

Today we watched a Ted Talk in class by Andrew Stanton about story telling. I have had my doubts about my creation of my story as I am really unsure if my plot lines or how I will deliver it is any good. 

    As someone who has grown up finding comfort in Disney and Pixar movies, this talk really stood out to me, as I know that every movie I take comfort in, is for a reason. Some key points I wrote down were:

•  Storytelling is joke telling. It’s knowing your punchline. Your ending. Knowing that everything you're saying, from the first sentence to the last, is leading to a singular goal and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings. 
• For my story, it's harder to develop this concept in just the first two minutes, but the confidence of knowing what will happen within the first part of the movie can really bring my intro together. 
• MAKE ME CARE. Emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically. 
• I wanted to capture audiences hearts through characters, its almost impossible to do this in the first two minutes, but I can peak their interest in the character slowly but surely. 
• Make a promise: in the beginning, make a promise to your audience, that this story will lead somewhere that’s worth their time.
• This is something I can execute well and have to focus on in my project. I want to be able to promise the audience that I can lead there somewhere to where they're minds will be scrambled and awed at the end of the plot I've introduced. 
•  The audience wants to work for their meal. They just don’t want to know they’re doing that. Meaning, we want to be given the clues to understand the whole story. We want to be told, what is 2 + 2? But we don't want to be told, 2 + 2 = 4. It’s this well organized absence of information that draws us in. make the audience put things together. 
• This is also something I can start to create. The fight scene and the wounds on my character can help the audience piece together the story line, and although it will be very hard to infer the mental illness and the fight are related, there could be a connection if one looks hard enough. 
• Give your character a main goal to pursue.
• The self conflict I am trying to show in my first two minutes will hopefully pull this element through, I can help the audience realize this is a first for the main character through my actors and the shot compositions. 
•  All well-drawn characters have a spine. The characters have an inner motor, a dominant, unconscious goal that they’re striving for, an itch that they can’t scratch. 
• Although I love this statement from Andrew Stanton, I cannot develop my character so much in just two minutes, but in movies that work on character development, they really appeal to me. 
• Change is fundamental in a story. If things go static, stories die, because life is never static. Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty. When you’re telling a story, have you constructed anticipation? In the short term, have you made me wanna know what will happen next? Have you made me wanna know how it will conclude in the long term? Have you constructed honest conflicts with truth that creates doubt in what the outcome might be? Storytelling has guidelines, not hard rules. 
• I like how I have structured my storyline. The fight scene shows the capability that it can show something can and will happen, and the suspense with the sibling at the end shows how there is uncertainty in the reality of the main character. It creates a suspense that there is something there, but we are not sure what exactly. 
• Like your main character. We all live life conditionally. Characters can be good, but have a fatal flaw in them, that doesn’t come out unless their one condition for being nice and kind isn’t met anymore. We’re all willing to play by the rules and follow things along, as long as certain conditions are met. After that, all bets are off. 
• I believe this is an element I need to work on in my story. I need to dedicate time to create the persona of the main character, their outfits, their hair, all the misc en scene of the character. 
• Can you invoke wonder? “That’s what I think the magic ingredient is, the secret sauce, is can you invoke wonder. 
• This is one of the key elements to my story, I really want to get the audience thinking and questioning themselves. 
• Write from what you know. Draw from it. It doesn’t always mean plot or fact, it means capturing a truth from our experiencing it, expressing values you personally feel deep down in your core.
• Although I have never experienced anything like this, I know what it is like to fear the unknown and being alone, to communicate this idea I believe I can express myself through my camera lens. 

This Ted Talk has opened my eyes to the important details and to think beyond just a story. It's going to help my project so much in its story lines and help me communicate what I want to show in the best way possible.