If you are looking for a method to get your screenplay written, this book will take you step by step from concept to completion. Simply follow the instructions and by the time you are finished, you will have written your script. At the end of the process, you’ll have a fully developed story filled with memorable characters, a riveting plot, powerful theme, and a new spin on your genre. Each step asks you to consider or perform just one task that moves your screenplay a step closer toward being a finished script. In this way, no step is ever confusing or too complex and yet your story is ever growing and evolving as you go. Some steps are informational, and others direct you to write, re-write, or work out a concept for your story. The first step is an informational one and outlines the overall method, which is divided into four key stages in the story development process.
About the author:
Melanie Anne Phillips is the author of Write Your Novel Step By Step, creator of StoryWeaver Step By Step Story Development Software, and co-creator of the Dramatica Theory of Story Structure. For the past quarter of a century she has taught thousands of writers from around the world, including award winning writers, producers and directors.
In Step 11 you made a list of all the characters explicitly named in your revised synopsis. Now list all the characters that your synopsis doesn’t specifically name, but that would almost be expected in such a story. Include any additional characters you intend to employ but didn’t actually spell out in your synopsis. Again, list them by role and name if one comes to mind.
Example:
Suppose a story is described as the tribulations of a town Marshall trying to fend off a gang of outlaws who bleed the town dry.
The only specifically called for characters are the Marshall and the gang, which you would have listed in Step 10. But, you’d also expect the gang to have a leader and the town to have a mayor. The Marshall might have a deputy. And, if the town is being bled dry, then some businessmen and shopkeepers would be in order as well.
So, you would list these additional implied characters as:
Gang Leader
Mayor
Deputy (John Justice)
Businessmen
Shopkeepers
Don’t list every character you can possibly imagine – we’ll expand our cast in other areas in steps to come. The task here is no more than to list all those characters most strongly implied – the ones that the plot or situation virtually calls for but doesn’t actually name.
Add these new characters below those in you listed in Step 11. Then, in the next step we’ll add some more.
Congratulations! You’ve completed the first part of your journey toward a completed novel. It was a heck of a lot of work, but it is all about to pay off.
From here on out, we’ll be drawing on material you’ve already created. What’s more, each step from this point forward is far less complicated, requires far less effort and is shorter to boot!
In this step, for example, we’re going to look for characters in the material you’ve already created. You don’t have to invent anything new. In fact, it is important that you don’t!
Read through your revised synopsis from Step 10 while asking yourself “who’s there?” Make a list of all the characters explicitly called for in your story, as it is worded.
To be clear, don’t list any characters you have in mind but didn’t actually spell out in your work – just the ones who actually appear in the text.
You may have given some of these characters names. Others, you may have described simply by their roles in the story, such as Mercenary, John’s Wife, Village Idiot, etc.
If a character does not yet have a role, give them one as a place-holder that more or less describes what they do, who they are related to, or what their situation is.
If a character does not yet have a name, don’t hold yourself up trying to think of one now. Well have a whole step devoted to inventing interesting character names down the line.
For now, just list the characters actually spelled out specifically in your synopsis as it stands.
Example:
John – The Mercenary
An Archeologist
Painless Pete – A Dentist
A Clown
A Freelance Birdwatcher
Do NOT include any characters you have in mind but didn’t actually mention. Do NOT include any characters who may be inferred but aren’t actually identified. All those other characters will be dealt with in the next few steps.
So, get on with it and answer the burning question, “Who’s There?”
Is your story a good enough conversationalist, or does it need to go back to finishing school with another draft before it is ready for prime time? You have days, months, perhaps even years to prepare your story to exude enough charisma to sustain just one conversation. How disappointing is it to an audience when a story’s personality is plain and simply dull?
As an author, thinking of your story as a person can actually help you write the story. All too often, authors get mired in the details of a story, trying to cram everything in and make all the pieces fit.
Characters are then seen only as individuals, so they often unintentionally overlap each other’s dramatic functions. The genre is depersonalized so that the author trying to write within a genre ends up fashioning a formula story and breaking no new ground. The plot becomes an exercise in logistics, and the theme emerges as a black and white pontification that hits the audience like a brick.
Now imagine that you are sitting down to dinner with your story. For convenience, we’ll call your story “Joe.” You know that Joe is something of an authority on a subject in which your are interested. You offer him an appetizer, and between bites of pate, he tells you of his adventures and experiences.
Over soup, he describes what was driving him at various points of his endeavors. These are your characters, and they must all be aspects of Joe’s personality. There can be no characters that would not naturally co-exist in a single individual. You listen carefully to make sure Joe is not a split-personality, for such a story would seem fragmented as if it were of two or more minds.
While munching on a spinach salad, Joe describes his efforts to resolve the problems that grew out of his journey. This is your plot, and all reasonable efforts need to be covered. You note what he is saying, just as an audience will, to be sure there are no flaws in his logic. There can also be no missing approaches that obviously should have been tried, or Joe will sound like an idiot.
Over the main course of poached quail eggs and Coho salmon (on a bed of grilled seasonal greens), Joe elucidates the moral dilemmas he faced, how he considered what was good and bad, better or worse. This is your theme, and all sides of the issues must be explored. If Joe is one-sided in this regard, he will come off as bigoted or closed-minded. Rather than being swayed by his conclusions, you (and an audience) will find him boorish and will disregard his passionate prognostications.
Dessert is served and you make time, between spoonsful of chocolate soufflé (put in the oven before the first course to ready by the end of dinner) to consider your dinner guest. Was he entertaining? Did he make sense? Did he touch on topical issues with light-handed thoughtfulness? Did he seem centers, together, and focused? And most important, would you invite him to dinner again? If you can’t answer yes to each of these questions, you need to send your story back to finishing school, for he is not ready to entertain an audience.
Your story is your child. You give birth to it, you nurture it, you have hopes for it. You try to instill your values, to give it the tools it needs to succeed and to point it in the right direction. But, like all children, there comes a time where you have to let go of who you wanted it to be and to love and accept who it has become.
When your story entertains an audience, you will not be there to explain its faults or compensate for its shortcomings. You must be sure your child is prepared to stand alone, to do well for itself and to not embarrass you. If you are not sure, you must send it back to school.
Personifying a story allows an author to step back from the role of creator and to experience the story as an audience will. This is not to say that each and every detail in not important, but rather that the details are no more or less important than the overall impact of the story as a whole. This overview is one of the benefits of looking at a story as a Story Mind.
Some time ago, I wrote a short article describing the four P’s of character: Psychology, Personality, Persona and Perception.
Psychology was described as the underlying structure and dynamics of a character’s given mind set. Personality were the interests and mannerisms of a character that define the specific areas to which its psychology is applied. Persona is the face a character presents to the world – its apparent personality which enhances some things, diminishes other and adds or eliminates traits and attributes that don’t really exist in its actual personality. Finally, Perception is how a character tailors or applies its persona to adapt to or manipulate specific people and/or situations.
My understanding of the four P’s emerged from my work on a new book entitled, The Story Mind, which is intended to document and advance the concept that every narrative operates as a model of the mind’s operating system.
In fiction, this means that characters represent facets of the overall mind of the story itself in addition to being real people in their own right. In the real world, it means that people automatically self-organize into groups structured by narrative in which each participant evolves into a role within the group an a facet of the group mind, becoming the voice of reason, for example. In this manner the problem-solving capacity of the group as a whole is enhanced by having each member specialize in a different aspect of problem solving, rather than simply being a collection of parallel processors all trying to attack the central issue from all sides as general practitioners.
In the ongoing development of the Story Mind book, I have come to focus more and more on the real world implications of narrative theory. In fact, so much new material is emerging that I felt it would be worthwhile to jot down this quick article outlining some of the more intriguing applications.
For some twenty years we have described how a main character in a story who is by nature a do-er, would be an uncomfortable participant in deliberation/decision story in which they are required to soul-search and perhaps superficially adopt an attitude in order to affect the participation of others and even as a requirement to achieve the goal.
Similarly, a main character who is by nature a be-er would be uncomfortable in a story that required them to take action rather than influence others in order to achieve the goal.
Yet new understandings indicate that even archetypal objective characters such as Protagonist, Antagonist, Reason or Emotion, who are not the main character (not the individual grappling with the story’s central message issue or moral) may still suffer internal dissonance in fulfilling their structurally mandated role within the greater Story Mind.
A reluctant Protagonist or an emotionally-driven individual forced to function as the Reason archetype will suffer a growing angst caused by their situational inability to respond in a manner appropriate to their true make-up, their true underlying psychology.
Similarly, an actor in a role in an ongoing television series or long-term stage production may find that the character they portray chafes at their inner self if it is a poor fit. Depending on the magnitude of this dissonance an actor may be unsuccessful in being able to continue to portray their character in the long term – partially due to the internal strain and partly due to their declining ability to show the character to the audience with complete integrity.
Even if an actor in dissonance with their character can overcome their internal angst and continue to portray that fictional psychology, their own blind spots will provide weak spots in their presentation in which inconsistent attributes belonging to the actor may slip into the performance unnoticed, thereby rendering a character that the audience will see as not ringing true. In addition, things a given character would certainly do may never come to the mind of the actor if the fit is too poor.
Conversely, if the fit is close but not exact, continued portrayal may cause the actor to gradually alter their own underlying psychology to match that of the character, losing themselves in the role. In this case, once the role is over, the actor has become the character in real life, at least in a psychological sense, and even during the role the actor may begin to respond more as the character than as themselves. In fact, method acting is all about immersion in a role, but the psychological process of behavioral modification is always at work. In the real world this leads to such scenarios as the Stockholm Syndrome in which a victim comes to side with the perpetrator.
Naturally, the degree of dissonance and the length of the portrayal are the essential moderating factors which determine if an actor will be successful in playing a given character and whether or not the actor will be altered by the process and to what degree.
Taking all of this into consideration, we can see that fictional characters must illustrate this dissonance within the narrative itself. At the next level, an actor must not only portray that dissonance, but be alert to the actual dissonance which may grown within themselves. And finally, in the real world, we should all take stock, from time to time, whether our Psychology, Personality, Persona and Perception are (individually or in some combination) creating dissonance with and alteration of our essential natures in our own lives, for good or for bad.
For more information on real world narratives, read my article The False Narrative
Our newest book from Storymind Press – Write Your Novel Step By Step – is now available in paperback on for Kindle. Click the book for complete details:
In Step 6, you found holes and inconsistencies in your story as it stands so far by looking at it as an audience would, rather than as an author and asking questions about what was missing or didn’t make sense.
In this step you’ll file those holes and fix the inconsistencies by answering these questions to make your story more complete and to tune it up so it rings true.
Recalling the “Creativity Two-Step” method you employed in Step 4, you can see that the questions you’ve just asked about your synopsis are the first part of that technique. Just as before, your task in this step is to come up with as many potential answers for each question as you can (within reason).
And speaking of reason, just a reminder that the “two-step” method works because it alternates between logic and passion; between the analytical mind and the creative mind.
Asking questions about your synopsis is an analytical endeavor: you are trying to make sense of the story and noting everything that doesn’t.
Coming up with a grab bag of answers for each is a creative endeavor: you are turning your Muse loose to invent new concepts with no restrictions at all.
It is important to keep in mind that any answer is a good one, even if it is patently ridiculous. No matter: the most nonsensical idea, though it may never be used itself, can spur the inspiration of just the idea you need, which never would have occurred to you if you hobble your Muse in advance and force it to work within constraints of any kind.
The Muse hates limits, and cannot be directed any more than one can herd cats. Asking the questions is a focused and critical process, but answering them should always be completely free-form in order to achieve the best results.
So, refer to the questions about your story synopsis you just asked in the last step and see how many interesting answers you can bring forth. The more unusual the answer, the more likely your story will avoid following a cliché path and will stand out as original and intriguing.
Example:
Answers to Questions About Snow Sharks
From the synopsis:
A transport plane carrying them [the snow sharks] crashes in a storm high in the Rocky Mountains, just above a high-priced ski resort for the rich.
Questions:
What kind of plane?
Constellation
B-2 Bomber
Modified 747
B-17
Blimp
Dirigible
Bi-Plane
Glider
Rebuilt flying saucer from Area 51
How many sharks was it carrying?
1
17
300
A mating pair
Do they all survive?
Only one survives
6 survive
They all survive
Just the mating pair
An even dozen
Where was the transport taking the sharks?
Hawaii (for disposal)
An arctic research station
A secret base in Colorado
Russia (they were being stolen)
To NASA for a mapping expedition on one of Jupiter’s moons.
You may have noticed that a few of the answers actually provide more information than was asked in the questions, for example:
Question 4 – Where was the transport taking the sharks?
Answer d. – Russia (they were being stolen)
When I answered “Russia” arbitrarily, I thought of the Russian Mob, and it occurred to me that organized crime might be trying to hijack and resell these biologic weapons.
If additional material comes to mind when answering a question, don’t be afraid to include it just because it goes beyond the expected answer. It’s all part of the creative process, and it never pays to squelch a good idea.
The more questions you answer, the fewer holes and inconsistencies in your story, and the more answers you come up with, the less cliché your story is likely to be.
Conversely, don’t feel pressured to answer everything and never – absolutely NEVER – do more work that you find interesting and pleasurable. The best way to kill a story is to kill your interest in writing it.
Though producing more answers enriches your story, it may also deplete your drive to get your novel completed if the process becomes work and ceases to be fun.
So, let your Muse loose, without restrictions or quotas, and whatever shakes out will both add to your story and add to your motivation to tell it.
Now – spice up your story by peppering it with new material! Then, in Step 8, we’ll put it all together and integrate your original concepts and best new ideas into a revised synopsis.
This article is based on our StoryWeaver Step-by-Step Story Development Software that guides you through more than 200 interactive Story Cards from concept to completion of your novel or screenplay. Just $29.95 for Windows or Macintosh.
Shakespeare just wrote as himself, and you should too. While trying to emulate another famous writer can be useful as an exercise (just as an artist might copy the Mona Lisa as a “study”), that approach is never useful in creating or advancing your own art.
Sure, read what other write, dissect their work, and practice their techniques – even in your own creations, but ONLY if those techniques also fit your own personality and style. The best way to achieve Writer’s Block is to try and write like someone else. When you do, you are hobbling your Muse; locking her in irons. You are trying to play a role for which you are unsuited.
Of course we all want to be beloved successful writers, but we are not all going to be. You are only as good as you own talent – GET OVER IT!
Why are you writing in the first place? To make a buck? To make a name for yourself? Or perhaps, just perhaps (Lord help us) because you actually like writing? Or maybe, just maybe, because you want to like writing, but don’t, try as you may?
Fact is, while money and fame are good motivators for any career, be it singing, dancing, playing a sport or writing, if they are the Prime Motivators, you won’t have a very good time doing it, whatever “it” is.
The Wise Man famously said, “Work at what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” The important aspect here is that he didn’t expect to become a famous wise man when he said it. It just occurred to him as part of his personally satisfying manner of thinking. Just as it occurs to me to say, “Don’t blame the weather – its’ only humid.”
Now that clever little phrase is never going to make me rich OR famous. But I did have a really enjoyable time telling it to you. And that, dear readers, is the very essence of the writing life to which we should all aspire.
Unless you truly enjoy laboring over a single book for your entire life, word by word, with endless rewrites and improvements, then just write it out as you feel it. Plot doesn’t make sense? Come back to it later when you know your story better. Characters dull and derivative? You’re not going to fix them by micromanaging them.
Give it up and get on with it. Write endlessly. Write until your fingers fall off. Keep an archive somewhere to put all the stuff the world should never see and then post the bulk of the rest on your blog. (You DO have a blog, don’t you? All real writers have a blog…..) And for those gems – the occasional piece that just zings and sings and hits the mark – well those you send off to a publisher, magazine or agent.
If you’re looking for gold, you won’t find as much by sifting the same sand through a finer and finer mesh as you will by marching from one dig to the next in search of nuggets. So be prolific, knock the blocks out from under your tires, throw open the stop-cocks and let loose the dogs of words.
This article was inspired by our StoryWeaver Step-by-Step Story Development Software that guides you through more than 200 interactive Story Cards from concept to completion of your novel or screenplay. Just $29.95 for Windows or Macintosh.
Write Your Screenplay Step by Step
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