Foundations of Story Blog 7: Principles and Techniques of Story Writing

The process of writing a movie is a very complicated thing, and can be gone about in a nearly infinite amount of ways. No way are really right or wrong, but there are some principles and theories that I’d prefer to use than others. I like McKee’s idea of characterization and character, and that a person’s true character is only revealed when they have to make a touch decision – That can add a lot of drama to a movie. I feel like the decision in my group’s story isn’t good enough or hard enough or telling enough to really matter. The change in him almost seems unwarranted, and the explanation given through the story for it isn’t all that good. Having a choice that defines this character and hits him to the core would be very beneficial for his arc, which itself is really the biggest problem we had with our idea. We kind of had to jump through hoops to make him jump his own hoop – one that might have been placed ridiculously high for a short film – and it ended up feeling flimsy. We also had trouble really deciding what the tone for the film was going to be. I chose The Social Network as a good comparison to what I personally wanted it to be: A movie with a tone of relatively straight drama with some comedy in it, but considering how well the small amount of comedy that actually made it into my treatment worked (In my opinion), we’re thinking of taking it in the direction of a dark comedy now, which should be interesting.

The idea of set-up and pay-off is also a sure-fire way to make a good story. However, it’s becoming increasingly hard to do nowadays and the trappings of a short film means it also might not be the best thing to put in my group’s idea. Even so, I like it a lot and would like to sprinkle it and subtext throughout any screenplays I may attempt to write in the future, since a lack of complexity is a major problem I have with my own ideas for movies.

Egri’s idea that every story needs a premise is useful. Knowing what your project is about could really help you decide, well, what your project is about. I imagine that what I would do would be to write much of a screenplay, and then decide from that what I think the premise it, write the rest accordingly, and then go back to the beginning to see if I want to change anything. His character bone structure also looks like an important tool – you may need to know more about your character than you actually show in the movie to portray them correctly.

A principle I don’t see myself using too much is that of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. It’s really just a condensed version of the Hero’s Journey, which is much more useful anyway, it’s the classical story structure and every writer should look to it for guidance when they’re writing any sort of story.