Lajos Egri

 Premise is to be proven in the story. Premise= Character (foolish generosity) +

conflict (leads to) + and conclusion (poverty). Every line of the play, every move
characters make, must further the premise. Single, active premise. {Theme (Truby)
or Controlling idea (McKee)}
 Three dimensions: physiology, sociology, psychology.
 It is only because a thing contains a contradiction within itself that it moves and
acquires impulse and activity. Every character a dramatist presents must have within
it the seeds of its future development.
 Dialectical approach- The thesis will be the desire of the parents to marry off Irene.
The antithesis will be Irene's intention of being a dancer. The synthesis will be the
resolution: Irene's running away.
 Constant change and development of character under the impact of conflict occurs.
 Usually the 2nd mistake grows out of the 1st and the 3rd from the 2nd.
 Characters who have strength, stamina, to carry this fight to its logical conclusion.
 Character creates plot.
 We want conflict, but only in a way that it proves the premise.
 A good pivotal character must have something very vital at stake.
 Orchestration demands well-defined, strong and uncompromising characters in
opposition, moving from one pole toward another through conflict.
 Conflict should not be static or jumping, it should be slowly rising and
foreshadowing. In every big movement there are smaller movements- transitions.
Analyze a transition to know the characters better.
 First line spoken should start the conflict and the inevitable drive toward the proving
of the premise. It is imperative that your story starts in the middle.
 A lost equilibrium tries to find a new equilibrium.
 In every scene/act/play, rising conflict i.e. crisis, climax, and resolution follow each
other as day follows night, the last one always on a higher plane than the one before.
 Granted that there are many solutions for any given situation, your characters are
permitted to choose only those which will help prove the premise.
 A play is not an imitation of life, but the essence of life. Condense all that is
important, all that is necessary.
 Iron-willed characters, driven by a well-understood and clearly defined premise.
 Two determined, uncompromising forces in combat will create a virile rising conflict.
 Like conflict, dialogue must also be dialectical. The lines must build up as the play
builds up, convey the rhythm and meaning of each scene by sound as well as sense.
 Be an observant man with imagination, common sense. Search for causes.

Sidney Lumet

Ask: What is the story about on an emotional level?

Theme (the what of the movie) is going to determine the style (the how of the movie).
Ask “What happens next?” Good style, to me, is unseen style. It is style that is felt.
An examination of each scene—in sequence. Does this scene contribute to the overall
theme? How? Does it contribute to the story line? To character? Is the story line moving
in an ever increasing arc of tension or drama? In the case of a comedy, is it getting
funnier? Is the story being moved forward by the characters? In a good drama, the line
where characters and story blend should be indiscernible. In drama, the characters
should determine the story. Now, in drama, the story must reveal and elucidate the
characters. In a well-made drama, I want to feel: “Of course—that’s where it was
heading all along.” And yet the inevitability mustn’t eliminate surprise. From a scene-
by-scene breakdown, we move on to a line-by-line examination. Is the line of dialogue
necessary? Revelatory? Is it saying it in the best possible way?

Different lenses will tell a story differently.

Collected Wisdom

 Have setups & payoffs.

 No matter what genre you are writing for, fear is the best and most relatable
emotion.
 Active Hero having a clear want/goal/desire.
 Everything should build to the climax.
 Look for the contradictions in every character, especially in your heroes and villains.
 No character should be what they first seem to be.
 Surprise the audience.
 A screenwriter must invent the images.
 Every scene should contain three elements: the crucial moment of a situation, the
beginning of a new one and the end of the first one.
 There is no terror in a bang only in the anticipation of it.
 Grip attention through suspense. Suspense is created by the process of giving the
audience information that the character in the scene does not have.
 Film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence.
 Lubitsch touch: Joke within the joke (eg. the merry widow scene). Wilder weaved
pain within pain in the broken mirror scene of apartment. Take out the maximum
possible from a moment. Compress ideas & situations into single shots/scenes that
provide an ironic key to the characters and to the meaning of the entire film. Use
visual wit. Suggest more than it shows. Conjunction of lightness & seriousness.
 Lubitsch Touch is the ELEGANT joke, full of character, that becomes…. ANOTHER
surprising joke, which becomes…. AN EVEN FUNNIER joke, which becomes…. THE
ULTIMATE joke you never expected, which becomes… THE MOVIE.
 NEVER BORE. Let the audience add up 2 + 2. You should not see where the cut was.
It should all flow logically & naturally. A gift to dramatize comes natural to
 screenwriters. Grab them & keep the audience hooked with interest. Develop a clean
line of action (motivation leading to conflict) for your leading character. The more
subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer. If
you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act. In doing
voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what
they are seeing. The event that occurs at the second-act curtain triggers the end of
the movie. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last
event and then -- that's it. Don’t hang around. Writing a movie is a mixture of
architecture and poetry. Stake must be a question of life or death.
 Kaufman: Humanity and vulnerability. Opposing desires is a big part of what
characters do in real life. Everything is in a constant state of flux. I think motivation,
character intention to the most miniscule degree, needs to be attended to.
 Take characters to the farthest depth of the conflict imaginable within the story’s
own realm of probability. Put a subtext under every text.
 Ask a character: what are they really afraid of? Ask yourself over and over what’s
going to happen next. Most scenes are rarely about what the subject matter is. You
soon see the power of dealing obliquely or elliptically with situations, because most
people rarely confront things head-on.
 Chayefsky: You generally present a situation in Act I, and by the end of Act I the
situation has evolved to a point where something is threatening the situation. In Act
II you solve that problem producing a more intense problem by the end of Act II. In
Act III you solve that problem, either happily or unhappily. Precision is one of the
basic elements of poetry. The best thing that can happen is for the theme to be nice
and clear from the beginning.
 Schrader: Before I sit to write, I have all the scenes listed, what happens in each
scene. First, you have to have a theme, something you want to say. Another word for
a theme is a personal problem, a problem you want to explore (eg: loneliness). Then
find a metaphor (eg: cabbie) for that theme, one that expresses it. Then find a plot.
You just work through all the permutations until the plot accurately reflects the
theme and the metaphor. You push the theme through the metaphor and you should
come out with the plot. A five-point program. It goes from theme, to metaphor, to
plot, to oral tradition (tell your story to people & see their reaction), to outline.
 If movies provide the symptoms truly, the viewer will supply the causes. 
 Kubrick: A film should be more like music than like fiction. It should be a
progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the
meaning, all that comes later. It almost never is a question of, ‘What does this scene
mean? If the thing is truthful, and you don’t feel anything about it that’s false, and if
it’s interesting, and if it still feels like what you were feeling, I find it’s a much more
intuitive process. Sometimes the truth of things is not so much in the think, as in the
feel of it.
 Nolan: You take an objective approach at times to get you through things, and you
take a subjective approach at other times, and that allows you to find an emotional
experience for the audience.
 Truby: A specific single desire pursued with incredible intensity is important for the
protagonist. At the climax we know whether that is achieved or not. Give at least one
weakness to the character- psychological weakness & moral weakness.
 I think the trick to dialogue is that it’s about rhythm. Reduction of dialogue is what
makes great movie dialogue.
 Coppola: A screenplay has to be very concise and very clear, minimal. A number of
images put together a certain way become something quite above and beyond what
any of them are individually.
 Huston: Scenes have to have beginnings, a crisis, a climax. Dialogue should have as
much action in it as physical motion.
 Mamet: Make every scene dramatic i.e. the main character must have a simple,
straightforward, pressing need which impels him to show up in the scene. Their
attempt to get this need met will lead, at the end of the scene, to failure. This failure,
will, then, of necessity, propel us into the next scene. Each scene must end so that the
hero is either thwarted in pursuit of his goal or educated that another way exists. All
these attempts, taken together, will, over the course of the episode, constitute the
plot.
 The job is not to explain to them what just happened, or to suggest what happens
next but to figure out how to write the scene before us such that the audience will be
interested in what happens next. Drama is the quest of the hero to overcome those
things which prevent him from achieving a specific, acute goal.
 To write a scene, one must stringently apply and stringently answer the following
three questions: Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it?
Why now?
 The camera can do the explaining for you. Let it. If you pretend the characters can't
speak, and write a silent movie, you will be writing great drama.
 Ask: Where does the emotion come from that you feel as you read? 
 Primary goal is to create emotion in audience. Not having enough story is a problem.
Have much at stake. Find the classical structural elements missing in case the script
bores. Character must want something. Character can have conscious, subconscious,
& unconscious objective. Win, stop, escape, retrieve are the only 4 possible character
goals. Only four emotions: mad, sad, glad, scared. Keep different, the entry and exit
emotions in a scene for the character. Provide Beginning Middle Obstacle Climax
(BMOC) at macro & micro level. Good news/ bad news/ ticking clock/raising stakes
at every page keeps audience interest. Build compelling conflict at various levels.
 Great dialogue is like music. Keep your focus on visual storytelling. Many a times
characters hear what they want to hear. Subtext is important. Each character sounds
unique (check word choice-vocabulary).

Goldman

 If all that’s going on in your scenes is what’s going on in your scenes, think about it.
 In a screenplay, you enter each scene as close as you can to the end. You also enter
your story as late as you can.
 I ask myself before I begin: 1. WHAT’S THE STORY ABOUT? E.g. a guy who loses a
job. 2. WHAT’S THE STORY REALLY ABOUT? E.g. There is no place for the artist in
the modern world.

Rajabali

 Don’t commit to the first idea that comes to mind.

 Meaningful stories address human condition.
 Premise: The Dramatic Centre/ Expansion into Plot. Premise is the interplay
between the protagonist and the central situation (conflict). The plot is the dramatic
progression of the character and the central situation. A good twist is the one that
surprises you but in retrospect it’s inevitable.
 For a rewarding character arc, put your characters in the worst situations and dire
places. Let them dig deep and find their way out.

King

 The simplicity of noun-verb construction is useful. eg:-Rocks explode.

 Notice how much simpler the thought is to understand when it’s broken up into two
thoughts.
 Good description usually consists of a few well- chosen details that will stand for
everything else.
 Hemingway- See exactly what the action was that gave you the emotion. Then write
it down making it clear so the reader will see it and have the same feeling as you.
Baxter on Subtext

 Use parallelism, metaphor, association, allegory, reference, implication.

 Objects can mirror a psychological condition.
 Genuine desires hide beneath the superficial ones.
 Often it’s best when the subtext is as congested as possible. “Congested” here to
suggest a complex set of desires and fears that can’t be efficiently described.
 Self-contradiction is common and thus a wonderful source of stories.
 Our times are marked by mishearing and mis-cueing and selective listening and
selective response—features associated with information glut and self-inflammation.
Parallel-play monologues disguised as dialogue.
 Stories thrive on bad behaviour, bad manners, confrontations, and unpalatable
characters who by wish or compulsion make their desires visible by creating scenes.
 The subtext might be invisible and reside deep within the unconscious but affect the
character’s actions, emotions, and choices. 

Smith

 People behave according to their script – often ignoring the events of the real
world that don’t support the scripted beliefs.
 In general, a system resists change, and prefers status quo.
 Within each of us there is Parent state, Adult state, and Child state. (id/ego/
superego). Three roles which people take up and invite others to fill the other
positions: Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer. More conflict and drama happens when
characters change their position in the triangle.
 Fight/Flight/Freeze response comes to play significantly when faced with
conflict.
 Stages of grief that a person may go through, however not necessarily in order.
Sometimes only focussing on one or two are necessary in a story:
1. Shock/Denial – a disbelief about what has happened
2. Physical Reaction – trembling, weak knees, chills
3. Emotional Response – crying, wailing
4. Anger
5. Idealisation – seeing only the good in what was lost
6. Guilt – feeling responsible for the loss
7. Behavioural Issues – acting out in disruptive ways
8. Realisation – understanding that what was lost was not perfect
9. Learn new ways of being
10. Find a new place in the world
11. Acceptance – accepting the new world without what was lost
 Often we find the qualities we dislike in ourselves the most objectionable in
others and the easiest to decry in others.

Mamet

 In the perfect play there’s nothing extraneous to his single desire. Every incident
either impedes or aids the hero in the quest for the single goal.
 A loose abstraction allows audience members to project their own desires onto an
essentially featureless goal.
 The progression toward the climax, denouement, conclusion accelerates in tempo.
 Solutions to the problem of the middle act are the test of character.
 Belly of the beast (Campbell): The beginning goal is transmuted into a higher goal, in
which the true nature of the struggle asserts itself.
 Eisenstein: The juxtaposition of two disparate and uninflected images in order to
create in the mind of the viewer a third idea, which would advance the plot. (A man
who’s walking down the street turns his head and reaches tentatively in his pocket;
shot of a store window with a sign that says SALE ; the viewer thinks, “Oh, that man
would like to buy something.”)
 To generate interest, raise questions in the mind of the viewer and answer them.
 On Directing- David Mamet

 Get into the scene late, get out of the scene early, tell the story in the cut.
 A movie script should be a juxtaposition of uninflected shots that tell the story. E.g. A
shot of a teacup. Let the cut tell the story. Because otherwise you have not got
dramatic action, you have narration.
 There is a super-objective of the scene. Then there is objective for the individual
beat. The beat objective is reduced to the bare essential beat goal and an uninflected
un-cliched juxtaposition of images is imagined to achieve it. Keep it simple and blunt
and don’t try to make interesting. What’s the next beat? The answer is guided by the
scene super-objective. Never play the same beat twice.
 Don’t try to tell it in the shot. We want to tell it in the cut. By the way, we didn't say
these beats had to be uninflected. We said that the shots had to be uninflected.
 The scene is the correct unit of study.
 The guy has two reasons to sell the pig, which is not as good as one reason to sell the
pig.
 Don't do the same thing twice. This circularity, or repetition of the same incident in
different guises, is antithetical to the dramatic form.
 Any good drama takes us deeper and deeper to a resolution that is both surprising
and inevitable.

Gulino

Conflicts and issues raised in a sequence are only partially resolved within the sequence, and when they
are resolved, the resolution often opens up new issues, which in turn become the subject of next
sequences. 2-4-2 sequence respectively in 1-2-3 act.

Four basic tools to keep audience interest (in dec. order of importance):

1. When a character wants something, a question is implied: will the character get it or not? This is the
dramatic question. Three parts: The posing of the question. The deliberation. The answer.
2. Dramatic Irony: When audience knows more than one or several characters.
3. A cause that would not have its effect until later- it would in effect dangle in the audience’s mind.
4. Telling the audience explicitly what would happen. Create interest/surprise. Ticking clock.
Man will do the easiest thing first, and only if it fails he will try a more difficult course of action.

There are variations, but for starters, sequences are divided as follows:

Sequence A: Use curiosity- Most successful movies begin by posing a puzzle to the audience, raising
questions in their minds and promising an answer. Gives a glimpse of protagonist’s life before story itself
begins- in medias res. By the end of 1st sequence, occurs inciting incident.

Sequence B: Focus on setting up the main tension & dramatic question that will shape the rest of the
picture. Protagonist attempts this time grappling with the destabilizing element introduced earlier.
Whatever solution protagonist attempts here, leads only to a bigger problem, marking the end of the 1 st
act & setting up the main tension, which occupies the 2 nd act.

Sequence C: First attempt at solving the problem posed at the end of 1 st act. May solve it, but as said
earlier, it leads to much bigger and deeper problems.

Sequence D: First attempt at resolution failing, and sees the protagonist try one or more desperate
measures to return his life to stability. It’s end leads to 1 st or the midpoint culmination. This may be a
revelation or reversal of fortune that makes the protagonist’s task more difficult. Successful scripts at this
juncture often give the audience a very clear glimpse(actual or mirror image) of an answer to the
dramatic question- the hope that protagonist will actually succeed at solving the problem only to see the
circumstances turn the story the other way.

Sequence E & F: The protagonist works on whatever new complication arose in at the first culmination.
This and Sequence F are sometimes occupied primarily by subplots, if there are any.

Sequence G: Still higher stakes and a more frenzied pace, and its resolution is often characterized by a
major twist.

Sequence H: Contains the resolution of a picture.

Recapitulation scenes: Carefully repeating important information. Occasionally, an entire scene is used
primarily to review important information and then set up future action.

Character Arc: Character begins the second act with a conscious desire and an unconscious need. During
the course of pursing his desire, he suffers sufficiently to become conscious of his need and let go of his
want. This transformation is the arc and determines the theme.

Horton on CCS

 Beyond core characteristics and experiences, there is a mystery and a realm of the
unresolved- that area that we cannot fully know.
 Character as process (state of becoming).
 Character as polyphony (multiple voices interacting in diff. ways at diff. times).
 Character as a social discourse that interacts with a culture and its many voices.
 Carnivalesque: Not that your characters will change radically from moment to
moment. But your characters must constantly be capable of surprising you even
when you think you know them well as they & are made up of so many voices that
often do not have the chance or means to be expressed. This is not to suggest that
 you should do away with all the motivations, rather to say that you should not be a
slave to simple/obvious motivations.
 Core characteristics/core experiences: There are those experiences, pleasurable or
painful which tend to be repeated or which gain importance because they give
further insight into the complexity of the character.
 The dance between the known & unknown gives us a never ending feast of possibility
and becoming in a character.
 Bresson: Your imagination will aim less at events than at feelings while wanting
these latter to be as documentary as possible.
 Character arc: the projection of a character’s overall development given his general
character tendencies & background, core characteristics & experiences.
 Keirsey classification of characters: Extroversion/Introversion; intuition/ sensation;
thinking/feeling; judging/perceiving.
 At a point a character is one of: Victims/Saviours/persecutors (may change)
 A tendency is a voice among many that tends, for whatever deep structural
characteristics, to surface more frequently than others.
 Messengers/Mediators/Muddlers: These are the functions of minor characters.
 We never come to know the core characteristics of Hannibal Lecter completely. It
helps in carnivalesque.
 Practice the free play in carnivalesque: Listen to other “voices” & question yourself
constructively. This shall lead to freedom from stereotypes & clichés.
 Every scene needs at least two levels or reasons to exist.
 Humour can make a dramatic moment even sharper/ deeper. Opposite is also true:
i.e. deepen the comedy with drama.
Campbell

Every story begins with a poignant question which strikes a spark to the engine that
ignites the heart. This starts up the energy of the story; it rolls the story forward.

The son is against the father for the love of the mother.

The rites of passage.

Separation—Initiation—Return.

Popular tales represent the heroic action as physical; the higher religions show the deed
to be moral.

The World Navel is the symbol of the continuous creation.

Find, in the end, that the father & mother reflect each other, and are in essence the
same.
AUM: the sound A represents waking consciousness; U dream consciousness; M deep
sleep. The silence surrounding the syllable is the Unknown, Unmanifest Transcendent.

What is cut off the boy is really the mother. The glans in the foreskin is the child in the
mother.

The delusion-shattering light of the Imperishable is the same as the light that creates.

The essence of time is flux, and the essence of life is time.

The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to
such a degree that beholds the face of the father, understands —and the two are atoned.

The hero who goes beyond the last terrors of ignorance attains Divine state.

God created man in his own image- androgynous.

The third wonder of the Bodhisattva myth is that the first wonder (namely, the bisexual
form) is symbolical of the second (the identity of eternity and time). For in the language
of the divine pictures, the world of time is the great mother womb.

Symbols are only the vehicles of communication; must not be mistaken for the final
term.

The three central truths: that there is a spiritual world existing in parallel with the
physical; that the ultimate goal of physical existence is to connect with that spiritual
world; and that truth is both explored and defined through the universal human
experience of myth.

Life is filled with dualities: physical/spiritual, conscious/subconscious, universal/

individual, male/female, nurturing/destructive, and others.

Hero’s Journey

Departure (Symbolic of infant’s separation from mother)

1. The call to adventure: By chance, desire, or destiny. Herald is the announcer.

2. Refusal of the call: Due to inertia, fear, or ignorance.
3. Acceptance of the call: After reflection or persuasion.
4. Supernatural aid: Who guides or helps.
5. The crossing of the first threshold: Thresholds are often guarded.
6. The belly of the whale(monster/evil): It’s the center of the new world. Rebirth.
(Death of mentor can be included at any critical stage.)

Initiation
 1. The road of trials: Brother or dragon battle, dismemberment, or crucifixion.
2. The meeting with the Goddess: It completes him.
3. Woman as Temptress: It can be a trap.
4. Atonement with the Father: Father represents our deepest fears. Hero must
embrace the very annihilation of body & ego.
5. Apotheosis: Hero’s divinity or highest self is revealed ego-free.
6. The Ultimate Boon: It’s the achievement of the purpose of original quest that
symbolizes ultimate transformation. It may be used to fight the final villain.

Return

1. Refusal of the return: temptation of not returning.

2. Magic flight/fight: the climax generally including fight with the main villain.
3. Rescue from without: It’s just a bare minimum assistance.
4. Crossing the return threshold
5. Master of two worlds: Hero lives in the original world but not contained by it.
6. Freedom to live: No fear state. Ego already transcended. Detachment.

Void >Space>Life (Male +Female)

Myers

1. Always ask- What if? Step 2: Brainstorming Step 3: Research

2. Look at scene description more as poetry than prose.
3. We can look at story: structurally in terms of plot, thematically in terms of
symbolism, visually in terms of imagery, or as a psychological journey.
4. Want is the Protagonist’s conscious goal. Need is his unconscious goal.
5. Set-ups and payoffs are terrific tools for screenwriters.

Big-ticket items: Characters. Themes. Structure. Pace.

Sub-Themes support the Central Theme, amplifying its many varied aspects.

Structure is comprised of both the: Plotline (External World) and the Themeline
(Internal World). Want shapes the Plotline. Need shapes the Themeline. Events in the
External World influence the character’s attitudes in the Internal World which causes
them to grow which in turns impacts their actions. What is the point of the scene as it
relates to the Plotline? What is the point of the scene as it relates to the Themeline?

Consider the emotion that is in play in each scene.

Nemesis – The Protagonist’s Shadow. Attractor – The Protagonist’s Heart Mentor –

The Protagonist’s Head. Trickster – Tests The Protagonist’s Will

Poetics:
1. Build a chain of cause and effect that leads to that end.
2. Evoke fear and pity in an audience. BUT do it all in a way that keeps the audience in
the semi-dark, guessing, wondering, worrying, hoping.
3. These type of twists, especially as endings, featuring two aspects: Surprise & Cause
and Effect.
4. Reversal: A dramatic change in plot circumstances to the point where it can be seen
to come full circle. Recognition: An awareness of some key realities or truths on the
part of characters within the story. Reversal slots into the External World.
Recognition is most connected to the Internal World.
5. Genre + Style = Narrative voice.
6. Emotional Logic ultimately trumps Rational Logic.
7. The scenes must have meaningful conflict.

Protagonist: 1. A deep, dark state of Disunity. 2. Deconstruction: beliefs and behaviors —

get knocked about and pushed around. 3. Reconstruction. 4. Unity

“Be Specific”. Specific character traits, specific backstory events, specific ways of talking
in dialogue, specific themes, specific moments and beats, etc.

Character archetypes

1. Protagonist: It is their journey that creates the spine of the Plotline.

2. Nemesis: they work in opposition to the Protagonist.
3. Attractor: connected with the Protagonist’s emotional growth.
4. Mentor: connected with the Protagonist’s intellectual development.
5. Trickster: tests the Protagonist’s will
Strong verbs convey more action and flavor than weak verbs.

MCKEE

Content and form mutually influence one another.

Movements of desire, forces of antagonism, turning points, spine, progression, crisis,

climax—story seen from the inside out.

Negatives: Lack of progression. Convenient coincidence and weak motivation.

Unrelated tensions that could shape into subplots never do. Characters are never
revealed to be more than they seem. Not a moment's insight into the inner lives of these
people or their society. Redundant characters Positives: The first act builds to a
sudden climax that spins off into a superb weave of plot and subplot. Sublime
revelations of deep character. Vivid images. Sharper dialogues

Grand questions: Who are these characters? What do they want? Why do they want it?
How do they go about getting it? What stops them? What are the consequences?
The mark of a master is to select only a few moments but give us a lifetime.

A SCENE is an action through conflict in more or less continuous time and space that
turns the value-charged condition of a character's life on at least one value with a degree
of perceptible significance.

BEAT: smallest element of structure. It is an exchange of behavior in action/reaction.

Beat by Beat these changing behaviors shape the turning of a scene.

STORY CLIMAX: A story is a series of acts that build to a last act climax which brings
about absolute and irreversible change.

The revelation of true character in contrast or contradiction to characterization is

fundamental to all fine storytelling.

The function of STRUCTURE is to provide progressively building pressures that force

characters into more difficult dilemmas where they must make more difficult choices
and actions, gradually revealing their true natures.

Thou shalt save the best for last.

Aesthetic emotion—the simultaneous encounter of thought and feeling.

Premise (What if), the idea that inspires the writer's desire to create a story, and
Controlling Idea (i.e. value change +cause of it. Also theme), the story's ultimate
meaning expressed through the action and aesthetic emotion of the last act's climax.

PROGRESSIONS build by moving dynamically between the positive and negative

charges of the values at stake in the story.

Sequence by sequence, often scene by scene, the positive Idea and its negative Counter-
Idea argue back and forth, creating a dramatized dialectical debate. At climax one of
these two voices wins and becomes the story's Controlling Idea. This simple dynamic
can become very complex, subtle, and ironic.

Ironic Controlling Ideas "Up/down-ending" stories expressing our sense of the complex,
dual nature of existence.

If at climax the life situation of the protagonist is both positive and negative, how to
express it so that the two charges remain separated in the audience's experience and
don't cancel each other out, and you end up saying nothing?

Characters, in the pursuit of any desire, at any moment, will always take the minimum,
conservative action from his point of view.
THE GAP: Story is born when his action provokes forces of antagonism that open up
the gap between his subjective expectation and the objective result. He must gather
himself and struggle through this gap to take a second action. The second action puts
him at RISK. He now stands to lose in order to gain. What's the worst thing that will
happen to the protagonist if he does not achieve his desire? This pattern repeats on
various levels to the end of the line, to a final action beyond which the audience cannot
imagine another.

How to progress the scene? To build a next beat, the writer must move out of the
character's subjective point of view and take an objective look at the action he just
created. This action anticipates a certain reaction from the character's world. But that
must not occur. Instead, the writer must pry open the gap. To do so, he asks the
question writers have been asking themselves since time began: "What is the opposite of
that?"

The Inciting Incident is the primary cause for all that follows—Progressive
Complications, Crisis, Climax, Resolution.

The first principle of cast design is polarization.

If the protagonist has no unconscious desire, then his conscious objective becomes the
Spine.

We stretch toward the "bests" and "worsts" because story is not about the middle
ground of human experience.

A story must not retreat to actions of lesser quality or magnitude, but move
progressively forward to a final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine
another.

Feeling/mood makes emotion specific.

A Turning Point is centered in the choice a character makes under pressure to take one
action or another in the pursuit of desire. The choice between good and evil or between
right and wrong is no choice at all. True choice is dilemma. It occurs in two situations.
First, a choice between irreconcilable goods. Second, a choice between the lesser of two
evils.

A two-sided conflict is not dilemma but vacillation between the positive and the
negative. Add a third corner.

Subtext: If the scene is about what the scene is about, you're in deep shit.

In scenes, each action/reaction tops the previous exchange, demanding more from all
the characters. Ill-written scenes may lack conflict because desires are not opposed, may
be anti-progressive because they're repetitious or circular, lopsided because their
Turning Points come too early or too late, or lacking credibility because dialogue and
action are "on the nose." Analyse a scene to test beats against scene objectives, altering
behavior to fit desire or vice-versa.

We should sense a causal lock between Inciting Incident and Story Climax.

Alternation between tension and relaxation is the pulse of living.

As we head toward act climaxes, we take advantage of rhythm and tempo to

progressively shorten scenes while the activity in them becomes more and more brisk.
Scenes of major reversal are, in fact, generally long, slow, and tense.

4 Progressions: SOCIAL PROGRESSION: Widen the impact of character actions into

society. Spread the effect gradually through the progressions. PERSONAL
PROGRESSION: Drive actions deeply into the intimate relationships and inner lives of
the characters. As the work progresses, hammer the story downward —emotionally,
psychologically, physically, morally—to the dark secrets, the unspoken truths that hide
behind a public mask. SYMBOLIC ASCENSION: Build the symbolic charge of the story's
imagery from the particular to the universal, the specific to the archetypal. IRONIC
ASCENSION: Turn progression on irony. In story, irony plays between actions and
results— the primary source of story energy, between appearance and reality— the
primary source of truth and emotion.

Ironic patterns: He gets what he's always wanted but too late to have it. He's pushed
further from his goal only to discover that in fact he's been led right to it. He throws
away what he later finds is indispensable to his happiness. To reach a goal he
unwittingly takes the precise steps necessary to lead him away. The action he takes to
destroy something becomes exactly what are needed to be destroyed by it. He comes
into possession of something he's certain will make him miserable, does everything
possible to get rid of it only to discover it's the gift of happiness.

Crisis means decision. Crisis with a capital C is the ultimate decision. This moment of
dangerous opportunity is the point of greatest tension in the story as both protagonist
and audience sense that the question "How will this turn out?"

The central Crisis must be true dilemma—a choice between irreconcilable goods, the
lesser of two evils, or the two at once. If there's been any doubt about which value is
central, as the protagonist makes the Crisis Decision, the primary value comes to the
fore.

Climax must be full of meaning. Meaning Produces Emotion.

MEANING: A revolution in values from positive to negative or negative to positive with
or without irony—a value swing at maximum charge that's absolute and irreversible. The
meaning of that change moves the heart of the audience. The action that creates this
change must be "pure," clear, and self-evident, requiring no explanation.

All scenes must be thematically or structurally justified in the light of the Climax.

The key to all story endings is to give the audience what it wants, but not the way it
expects.

An ending must be both "inevitable and unexpected."

A protagonist and his story can only be as intellectually fascinating and emotionally
compelling as the forces of antagonism make them.

For the primary value in the story, generally, progressions run from the Positive
(Justice) to the Contrary(unfairness) in Act One, to the Contradictory(Injustice) in later
acts, and finally to the Negation of the Negation in the last act.

Convert exposition to ammunition. Reveal only that exposition the audience absolutely
needs and wants to know and no more.

Powerful revelations come from the BACKSTORY— previous significant events in the
lives of the characters that the writer can reveal at critical moments to create Turning
Points.

We may make the audience cry or laugh, but above all, we make it wait.

In Mystery the audience knows less than the characters. Mystery means gaining interest
through curiosity alone. In Suspense the audience and characters know the same
information. Suspense combines both Curiosity and Concern. In this relationship we
feel empathy and identify with the protagonist, whereas in pure Mystery our
involvement is limited to sympathy. In Dramatic Irony the audience knows more than
the characters. Dramatic Irony creates interest primarily through concern alone,
eliminating curiosity about fact and consequence.

The dramatization of inner conflict on screen is exclusively in the subtext as the camera
looks through the face of the actor to thoughts and feelings within.

Why does your character want what he wants? In truth there are no definitive
explanations for anyone's behavior. Generally, the more the writer nails motivation to
specific causes, the more he diminishes the character in the audience's mind. Rather,
think through to a solid understanding of motive, but at the same time leave some
mystery around the whys, a touch of the irrational perhaps, room for the audience to use
its own life experience to enhance your character.
Image is our first choice, dialogue the regretful second choice.

Iglesias

The three storytelling emotions:

 Voyeuristic emotions relate to our curiosity about new information

 Vicarious emotions: when we identify with a character, we become them.
 Visceral emotions: interest, curiosity, anticipation, tension, surprise, fear,
excitement, laughter, etc.
The clearer the conflict, the better.

What’s the worst thing that happens to your character?

Contrast environment and character (fish out of water)

Add a second idea to the mix.

Take it to the extreme.

Show your theme in action, and make the reader feel it instead of telling him.

Chayefsky: The best thing is for the theme to be nice and clear from the beginning.

Turn theme into a question, not a premise. Let the story provide the answer. Emotions
unite people and ideas divide. This is why the writer is advised to make the reader feel
the theme instead of making him think up-front. It’s a common technique for the main
character’s inner change to represent the theme. Contrast the hero and villain
thematically. Each subplot as an aspect of the main theme. Have each character reveal a
facet of the overall theme.

Four types of protagonists:

 The Hero is superior to the reader. We fantasize about being them.

 The Average Joe is equal to the reader. We sympathize & identify with them.
 The Underdog character is inferior to the reader. We’re inclined to protect, help,
or console them.
 The Lost Soul, also known as the “Anti-Hero,” is a character who’s the opposite of
the reader—the character who takes the wrong turn, who goes down the wrong
path. This character evokes fascination since we’re intrigued by glimpses of the
dark side.
Desire is the power that drives your script.
Why does he want it? (need, motivation) Motivation begins with what’s meaningful to
the character. It could be anything, based on attitudes, beliefs, feelings, or needs, the
important thing is that motivations must be compelling and worthy of empathy.

Conflicts between goal and need provide compelling moments where difficult choices
must be made, often resulting in personal growth for the protagonist.

What happens if he fails? (high stakes)

The more emotional the stakes, the more the reader will care about the character, and
the more he’ll want them to achieve their goal.

Character arc is often about fulfilling an inner need or conquering a self-defeating flaw
that works against achieving a goal. This change can be physical, behavioral, mental, or
emotional.

Three ways you can contrast character: within himself, with others, and with his
environment. Contrast within himself is where you can reveal a character’s inner
conflict—contrasting traits, flaws, desires, needs, and feelings, which create
contradictions and thereby increased interest.

Three ways to connect with character are:

1. Recognition (understanding and empathy)- Empathy means to feel with a character,

share and understand their situation, feelings, and motives.

2. Fascination (interest)- There are several ways to accomplish this on the page:

The difference between Backstory and Ghost is that the first molds the character’s
personality, whereas the latter is still an open wound which haunts the character in your
story and affects his inner need.

3. Mystery (curiosity and anticipation)- Mystery in the emotional sense, as in “What will
this character do next?”

Jeopardy- Any threat is an effective device.

We care about victims—characters we feel sorry for, characters with humanistic virtues,
characters with desirable qualities

If the obstacles are too easy, the reader won’t care. Remember, conflict is desire against
obstacle.

Every story, every scene, and every beat is about a change—a change in knowledge, and
change in actions caused by character decisions.
Set up story questions. Every story/act/sequence/scene raises a dramatic question.
Without questions, there’s no script, and without answers, there is no emotional
satisfaction.

Hitchcock: “There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.”

In fact, a plot is a series of events designed to create anticipation in the form of curiosity
(what will happen), suspense (will it happen or not), tension (when will it happen), hope
(looking forward to it happening), or worry (not looking forward to it happening). And
when the anticipation is fulfilled, there’s another array of potent visceral emotions,
depending on the payoff: surprise (unexpected anticipation), disappointment (not
getting what was hoped), or relief (not experiencing what was feared). Anticipation
should always be fulfilled or else you risk creating dissatisfaction in the reader.

Vonnegut: Always have a character want something, even if it’s a glass of water.

Make sure that a problem is not resolved before another starts.

Suspense should be everywhere in the script: At the story level. At the scene level. And at
the beat level. The formula for suspense is as follows: Character empathy+ Likelihood of
threat+ Uncertainty of outcome = SUSPENSE.

Tension is about delaying anticipation of outcome.

Once you know the goal, curiosity disappears and suspense takes over.

Control the balance between frustration and reward. Make sure your character wins
some and loses some to avoid predictability.

If you plan to have scene of concentrated tension, it’s always a good idea to have tension
releases, like laughter or crying, or any sort of relief. Slow scenes.

You can take advantage of the reader’s tendency to look ahead, thereby avoiding
predictability through surprise.

You can create character surprises by revealing unexpected flaws.

Red herrings and mis-directions.

We expect tragedy so we brace ourselves for the shock, but when nothing happens, we
relax, then tragedy strikes, and we’re shocked.

Freud said that our simplest impulses are sex and aggression.
Three acts: Beginning, middle, and end. From a plot point of view: Set-up, Conflict,
Resolution; from an emotional point of view: Attraction, Tension, Satisfaction; and from
a thematic point of view: Subject, Development, Fulfillment.

The midpoint is often a highly intense pivotal moment, twist, or reversal that re-
energizes the hero on his quest. The midpoint is often when the hero decides to stop
being reactive and becomes a more active hero, or is forced into being one. He becomes
fully committed to his goal and takes more desperate actions.

Real conflict is not a static argument. It’s a clear obstacle to a goal with a smooth
progression from beat to beat towards a climax.

Every beat in a scene should be a dance between action and reaction, with bonus points
if the reaction is unpredictable.

A scene is a mini-story. Because the point of a scene is change, the scene should end
with the reverse charge of the beginning.

The most common technique is to end the scene with a hit of visceral emotion, such as
curiosity, anticipation, tension, or surprise. This automatically creates the desire to
know what happens next. Could end with a surprising reversal. Choice revealed in
another scene. Could end with a question.

The specific emotions felt by the character. Try not to repeat the same emotions. If your
scene has ten beats, use ten emotional cues, or a progression of ten sub-emotions from
one major emotion, like from indifference to anger. Show the emotion; don’t tell the
reader how a character feels through description or dialogue.

Flip the expected emotional response into an unpredictable one.

By giving different scripts, agendas, or contexts to the characters in the scene, you
automatically create compelling conflict

Contrasts within the scene- Contrasting characters. Contrasting character with

environment. Contrast scenes in a plot. Contrast beats in a scene. Beat durations
(long/short). Beat tempos (fast/slow). Contrast emotions within a scene. Contrast
objectives.

Sorkin: “Tension and discovery—it’s what rivets an audience, holds its attention and
makes a story absorbing.” Each discovery should be a tiny reversal that changes the
direction of the scene’s energy, and should have an emotional impact.

Beginners often make the mistake of introducing a character and revealing most of their
traits in one long scene. This makes subsequent scenes flat and uninvolving. A better
strategy is to reveal whenever possible a new facet of a character in every scene.
Brando: Every scene has a cliché; I always try to find that cliché and get as far away from
it as I can.

No description in your script should be “just okay.” Each sentence should have some
sort of emotional impact.

Great screenwriting is often called “visual poetry.” Your craft is to evoke images, not
necessarily describe them.

Choosing a concrete detail over a generalization adds impact to your writing.

Movement is the essence of films.

Use actions that imply the adjectives. “A loud man” becomes “The man roars.” And “a
happy dog” turns into “The dog wags its tail.”

Study the sports pages: for dynamic, high-energy active verbs, such as kick, blast, strike,
and pummel.

Study poetry: for its evocative language and for the emotional impact it achieves with its
succinctness.

Robert Towne-“Good dialogue illuminates what people are not saying.”

Emotional response is by far the most critical aspect of great dialogue. The dialogue you
find in great scripts, written by masters, has punch, wit, and sparkle. It’s interesting,
unpredictable, and evokes curiosity, laughter, tension, and anticipation in the reader.

Towne: The more it means to the character, the more difficult it is to say. If there’s no
restraint, no inhibitions, no guilt, no shame, there’s no drama.

Physicalize the emotion: e.g. Louise’s jaw tightens. The car speeds up.

Hemingway: Find what gave you emotion, what the action was that gave you
excitement, then write it down, making it clear so that the reader can see it too.

Truby

Audiences love both the feeling part and the thinking part of a story.

In the dramatic code, change is fueled by desire. Once a character has a desire, the
story "walks" on two "legs": acting and learning.

Theme (Moral Argument): (Controlling idea for McKee) The theme is your moral
vision, your view of how people should act in the world.
PREMISE:(“What if” question for McKee) It is the simplest combination of character
and plot and some event that starts the action, some sense of the main character, and
some sense of the outcome of the story.

Designing Principle: Your overall story-telling strategy.

Central Conflict: "Who fights whom over what?"

Single Cause-and-Effect Pathway: A leads to B, which leads to C, and so on.

Character Change: WxA = C. The basic action should be the one action best able to
force the character to deal with his weaknesses and change.

Theme is your view of the proper way to act in the world.

Give your hero a moral need as well as a psychological need. To have a moral need,
the character must be hurting at least one other person at the beginning of the story. In
good stories, the moral need usually comes out of the psychological need.

Need has to do with overcoming a weakness within the character. Desire is a goal
outside the character. (Desire here is McKee’s “conscious desire” & need above is
similar to “unconscious desire”)

This crucible of battle causes the hero to have a major revelation about who he really is.
This step, like need, comes in two forms, psychological and moral. Structurally, the step
with which self-revelation is most closely connected is need. Need is the beginning of the
hero's character change. Self-revelation is the end-point of that change.

All characters connect and define each other in four major ways: by story function,
archetype, theme, and opposition.

Always make the archetype specific and individual to your unique character.

Each character is a variation on the theme; each deals with the same moral problem in a
different way.

Only one desire line. Single overriding goal that he pursues with greater and greater
intensity. The more specific the desire, the better.

Four-Corner Opposition: (ref- McKee’s Principle of antagonism)

Each opponent should use a different way of attacking the hero's great weakness. It
guarantees that all conflict is organically connected to the hero's great flaw.

Try to place each character in conflict with every other character.

Extend the four-corner pattern to every level of the story. For example, you might set up
a unique four-corner pattern of opposition within a society, an institution, a family, or
even a single character.

The more meaning you condense in the story, the more the story expands in the minds
of the audience.

Use visual oppositions in the physical world as well.

The world should embody, highlight, or accentuate your hero's weakness or draw it out
in its worst form.

Feeling->symbol->feeling in the audience. (slightly) changed symbol->stronger feeling

in the audience.

By going through the crucible of final battle, the hero usually undergoes change. For the
first time, he learns who he really is.

The sequence of revelations must build in intensity. The reveals must come at an
increasing pace. The most powerful of all reveals is known as a reversal. This is a reveal
in which the audience's understanding of everything in the story is turned on its head.
They suddenly see every element of the plot in a new light. Check that each reveal causes
your hero to change his original desire in some way.

The storyteller should not be all-knowing at the beginning. Instead, the storyteller
should have a great weakness that will be solved by telling the story, and thinking back
and telling the story should be a struggle for him.

Order the scenes by structure, not chronology.

The beginning of the scene should frame what the whole scene is about. The scene
should then funnel down to a single point, with the most important word or line stated
last.

Ask: Where does this scene fit within the hero's development (also known as the
character arc), and how does it further that development? Occasionally, the characters
or the audience (or both) are surprised by what happens in the scene.

The final scene becomes, like the opening scene, a miniature of the entire story. The
audience has a thematic revelation.

Hauge

The element common to all good descriptive writing is detail.

Actors look for opportunities to shine, scenes where they can react to real obstacles,
reveal inner conflicts, and convey multiple layers of emotion.

Vogler

 Men's journeys may be in some sense more linear, proceeding from one outward goal
to the next, while women's journeys may spin or spiral inward and outward. ..
 Two questions are helpful for a writer trying to identify the nature of an archetype: 1)
What psychological function or part of the personality does it represent? 2) What is
its dramatic function in a story?
 The Ordeal in myths signifies the death of the ego. The old boundaries of the Self
have been transcended or annihilated. In some sense the hero has become a god with
the divine ability The Greeks called this a moment of apotheosis. In a state of
apotheosis you are the god.

If your story is about the single quality of trust, the possibility of suspicion immediately
arises. Suspicion is necessary to test and challenge the concept of trust.

Every aspect of the Hero's Journey is polarized along at least two lines, the inner and
outer dimensions and the positive and negative possibilities for each element. These
polarities create potential for contrast, challenge, conflict, and learning.

Aristotle says the sudden reversal of a situation for the protagonist can produce the
desirable emotions of pity and terror in the audience; pity for someone who suffers
undeserved misfortune, and terror when it happens to someone like us.

In a well-constructed story these repeated reversals accumulate power, adding up to the

emotional impact that Aristotle claimed was the point of it all: catharsis, an explosive
and physical release of emotion, be it tears of pity, shudders of terror, or bursts of
laughter.

By Aristotle's theory, these drumbeats were supposed to accumulate tension in the

bodies of the audience members until the biggest beat of all, at the climax of the play,
released a pleasurable shudder of emotion that was believed to cleanse the spirit of
poisonous thoughts and feelings.

A polarized relationship of opposites may temporarily reach a state of equilibrium or

balance, but most polarized systems don't stay balanced for very long. Energy is always
flowing, creating change. According to the ancient Chinese philosophy of the I Ching,
the doctrine of changes, things are always in the process of flowing into their opposites.
Extreme idealists can turn into cynics, passionate lovers into cold-hearted haters. This
eternally changing feature of reality is described by the Taoist symbol of Yin and Yang,
the two comma shapes flowing into one another, each with the seed of its opposite deep
in its center.

A’s comfort zone- rigid & controlling. Z's comfort zone- loose & relaxed. Under pressure
from Z, A begins to oscillate, experimenting with extremes of behaviour. A experiences
temporary reversal of polarity, pushing Z towards opposite pole. A and Z return to
natural comfort zones, but closer to the center, with expanded possibilities allowing
experience of both sides of the polarity. This is considered a more stable state, more
desirable than extreme polarization.

Polarity seeks resolution by converting into something else, a third way that resolves the
contradiction between the two elements. We could say the protagonist's point of view or
style of living is the thesis of the story. The anti-thesis is the antagonist's opposing
viewpoint and style. The synthesis is whatever resolves the polarized conflict at the end.

Be careful- Polarity can be misused to oversimplify situations that may actually be quite
complex.

Bell

It’s all about trouble and its two best friends—conflict and suspense. Conflict is a clash
between at least two incompatible sides. One of these sides must have the ability to
exercise conscious will. Suspense arises out of conflict.

The stakes in an emotionally satisfying novel have to be death. There are three kinds of
death: physical, professional, psychological.

The chain of emotional conflict looks like this: CONFLICT (Possibility of imminent
death) +ACTION (Steps to avoid death) +SUSPENSE (Unresolved tension associated
with action) =EMOTIONALLY SATISFYING EXPERIENCE.

Justify the bad guy’s position. No matter how bad it seems to you, the bad guy thinks
he’s in the right. The opposition does not have to be evil.

Everyone needs to feel something along the fear continuum.

Frustration is a key element. It gives us the dynamic of every scene as well.

A great tool for creating instant conflict in dialogue is the Parent-Adult-Child model (id-
ego-superego). It is helpful to consider what role each character is assuming in a scene.
How do they see themselves? What is their actual role?

Cliff-hanger is any moment of unresolved danger, either outside or inside the character.

Kooser
 The poem is the device through which the ordinary world is seen in a new
way—engaging, compelling, even beautiful.
 You have a glimmer of feeling about it. At first you may not recognize or be able
to elucidate that emotion, but as you work with your words the feelings can be
expected to come forward.
 Revision, and I mean extensive revision, is the key to transforming a mediocre
poem into a work that can touch.
 Imp- And if it has grown dark outside, dark enough to make a mirror of the
window, the speaker, or presence, sees very little other than his or her own
reflection. In such a poem, presence is pronounced and superior to what is
outside.
 .
 One of the hardest things to learn is how poems can express strong feelings
without expressly stating those feelings.
o .
 Words should be looked through, should be windows. The best word
were invisible. .
 If we want to engage our listeners and readers, we need to shake off
generalization and go for the specifics. It's the details that make
experiences unique and compelling.
 .
 It's often an unexpected or unpredictable detail that authenticates a poem.

 Most poets wish to achieve some definite effect upon their readers.
 There are many ways, of course, including form and rhythm and tone and
vocabulary, but one important way is to try to limit the variety of
associations a reader may have. You can do this with modifiers, specifically
adjectives.
 .
 Keep in mind that every noun in a poem evokes a complex of associations in your
reader's mind. Never put in a noun without thinking about its possible
associations. Then use adjectives sparingly and with precision to exclude the
associations you don't want.
 Writing with nouns and verbs makes for a strong and forceful poetry,
and that adjectives and adverbs tend to weaken your writing*.
 A metaphor or simile should be used to clarify a poem.
 ."
 Swenson plays upon the ways the two sides are alike and is careful not to include
how they differ. Any detail on one side of the metaphor that could not be
mirrored in the other side might have broken the back of the poem.
 Another term for expanding upon a single metaphor is "follow through," meaning
that once the comparison is set up you try to extract everything you can from it.
 1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said poetry is the best words in the best order.

Clark

 Begin sentences with subjects and verbs. Make meaning early, then let weaker
elements branch to the right. By delaying the main subject and verb, the writer
tightens the tension.
 Place strong words at the beginning and at the end.
 Activate your verbs.
 Active verbs move the action and reveal the actors. Passive verbs emphasize the
receiver, the victim. The verb “to be” links word and ideas.
 Use adverbs to change the meaning of the verb.
 Establish a pattern, then give it a twist.
 avoid long words/sentences where short ones “will do”.
 Choose words the average writer avoids but the average reader understands. Obscure
words should be defined in texts or made clear from context.
 By the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all,
to make you see.
 Seek original images. Reject clichés and first-level creativity. Never use a metaphor,
simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print,” writes George
Orwell. More deadly than clichés of language are what Donald Murray calls “clichés of
vision,” the narrow frames through which writers learn to see the world. He lists
common blind spots: victims are always innocent, bureaucrats are lazy, politicians
are corrupt, it’s lonely at the top, etc.
 White space is the writer’s friend—and the reader’s.
 Choose the number of elements with a purpose in mind. One, two, three, or four: each
sends a secret message to the reader. THE LANGUAGE OF ONE: It is this effect of
unity, single-mindedness, no-other-alternativeness, that characterizes the language
of one. e.g. Jesus wept. Tom Wolfe once told that if a writer wants the reader to think
something the absolute truth, the writer should render it in the shortest possible
sentence. 1. Use one for power. 2. Use two for comparison, contrast. 3. Use three for
completeness, wholeness, roundness. 4. Use four or more to list, inventory, compile,
and expand.
 When the topic is most serious, understate; when least serious, exaggerate. Orwell
explains that “good prose is like a window pane.” When we peer out a window onto
the horizon, we don’t notice the pane, yet the pane frames our vision just as the writer
frames our view of the story. If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.
 Climb up and down the ladder of abstraction. Two questions will help you make this
tool work. “Can you give me an example?” will drive the speaker down the ladder. But
 “What does that mean?” will carry him aloft. Notice how concrete words and images
in music express abstractions such as love, hope, lust, and fear.
Ironic juxtaposition is the fancy term for what happens when two disparate things are
placed side by side, each commenting on the other.
 Foreshadow dramatic events and powerful conclusions.
 To generate suspense, use cliffhangers.
 Build your work around a key question. Stories need an engine, a question that the
action answers for the reader. Good questions drive good stories. Some stories are
driven not by what questions, but by how.
 Place gold coins along the path. Reward the reader with high points, especially in the
middle. How do you keep a reader moving through your story? We have described
three techniques that do the trick: foreshadowing, cliff-hangers, and story engines.
 Purposeful repetition links the parts.
 Prefer archetypes to stereotypes. Use subtle symbols, not crashing cymbals.
 Smart writers continue to learn, by reading work they admire again and again “to see
how it works.” Think about how it works.
 How writers work: Idea >Collect>Focus>Draft> Clarify. Conceive an idea, collect
things to support it, discovers what the work is really about, attempt a first draft, and
revises in the quest for greater clarity.

Rilke

As if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.

Irony: Don’t let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments.
When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of life. Search
into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends. Under the influence of serious
Things it will either fall away from you (if it is something accidental), or else (if it is
really innate and belongs to you) it will grow strong, and become a serious tool and take
its place among the instruments which you can form your art with.

Kowit

 Concrete, sensory details allow readers to form vivid pictures in their minds.
 Dylan Thomas: Poetry is the rhythmic, inevitably narrative, movement from an over-
clothed blindness to a naked vision.
 Good writers often try to capture the complexity of human emotion, rather than
settling for an easy and simple label.
 Tell us the truth—not necessarily the literal truth, but the emotional truth.
 The poem's theme or main idea is also, ultimately, a matter of the author's viewpoint,
for it is an interpretation imposed upon the story by the author.
 It is important to remember that the power of poetry rests to a large degree on the
emotional intensity it generates.
 Don't tell us explicitly what the mood is, that mood must quickly and clearly be made
known to the reader.
 Do not try to tell us all the things that happened but find the three or four details that
will bring the situation to life.
 Don’t try to be fancy; try to be accurate and to write with liveliness and precision.
 There is only one essential rule for writing: it must be interesting to read.
 The less you talk about emotions in general terms, the better. The more you describe
events that convey emotions, the more effective your writing will be.
 Use Clarity, Simplicity and Directness.
 Sometimes the most effective ending is several lines—or stanzas—earlier than the
poem's current ending.
 Essential qualities of poetry—precision, emotion, grace and honesty.
 Richly ambiguous doesn't mean it's unclear, but that it contains a complex of
meanings.
 Hyperbole: that is to say, conscious exaggeration for effect.
 Personification: projecting a human characteristic onto an inanimate object.
 Matsuo Basho: When you see an object, you must leave your subjective preoccupation
with yourself, otherwise you impose yourself on the object, and do not learn. The
object and yourself must become one, and from that feeling of oneness issues your
poetry.
T.S.Elliot on Objective correlative: The only way of expressing emotion in the form
of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation,
a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when
the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is
immediately evoked.

Make sure you do not write a generalized poem about your sorrow, but find an event, a
physical locale, and concrete objects around which to shape your poem.

Poetry so transparent that we should not see the poetry, but that which we are meant to
see through the poetry, poetry so transparent that in reading it we are intent on what the
poem points at, and not on the poetry, this seems to me the thing to try for. To get
beyond poetry, as Beethoven, in his later works, strove to get beyond music. —T.S. Eliot.

Oliver

 Stone has a mute near the beginning of the word that then is softened by a vowel.
Rock ends with the mute k. That k "suddenly stops the breath." In my mind's eye I see
the weather-softened roundness of stone, the juts and angled edges of rock. Poets
select words for their sound as well as their meaning.
Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm
we hope it will continue.

Negative Capability: It was used by Keats to characterize the capacity of the greatest
writers (particularly Shakespeare) to pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when it
leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for
philosophical certainty over artistic beauty. 

Imagery means, generally, the representation of one thing by another thing. Figurative
language is another term for imagery. We "see" (we understand) something about the
unknown in the light of the known. Figurative language can give shape to the difficult
and the painful. It can make visible and "felt" that which is invisible and "unfeelable."

Card

We have one personality at work, another on the phone, another with the children, still
another alone with our spouse.

The ones that make the strongest impression, are the first three: what the character
does in the story, what his motives are, and what he has done in the past.

Make sure your readers know exactly what the question is, even if they
don’t know the answer.

The questions you’ll need to ask are mostly about causes and results.

What could go wrong? -is one of the basic questions you ask to get a story or
situation out of an idea for a character.

Who suffers most in this situation (without dying or being

incapacitated?)?

Believability in fiction comes from the readers’ sense of what is plausible

— what is likely to happen.

To raise the readers’ emotional stake:

The character who suffers pain and the character who inflicts it are both made more
memorable and more important. Also, if your characters cry, your readers
won’t have to; if your characters have good reason to cry, and don’t, your
readers will do the weeping.

The greater the jeopardy, the stronger the pain when the dreaded event actually occurs.

Sexual tension is so vital, but dissipates after sexual union.

The most daring course, yet the one most likely to transform your audience, is to keep
Eastman sympathetic throughout, while facing him with an opponent who is also
sympathetic throughout the story. The audience will like both characters — a lot — and
as Eastman and his opponent come into deadly conflict, your readers will be emotionally
torn. This is anguish, perhaps the strongest of emotions you can make your
audience experience directly (as opposed to sympathetically mirroring what your
characters feel). In having to choose between characters they love, the readers will be
forced to decide on the basis of the moral issues between them. Who really should
prevail? When you separate sympathy from moral decisions — exactly what a judge and
jury must try to do in a trial — you can’t be sure that your audience will reach the “right”
conclusions; you can’t be sure that they’ll agree with you. You’re going to need to know
how to arouse audience sympathy or antipathy toward a character.
As a general rule, audience sympathy increases with the importance of the character’s
dream and the amount of effort the character has already expended to try to fulfil it.

The root of sadism is not the love of pain — it is the love of power .

One way or another, the bad guy has found a way to justify his actions to himself, and
if you’re going to depict him honestly, you have to let your readers know his version of
events.

The character may wear the mask of the common man, but underneath his
true face must always be the face of the hero.

THE COMIC CHARACTER: CONTROLLED DISBELIEF. Comic characters

cannot be believable in the same way that other characters are. They can’t be
unbelievable, either. But comedy almost always deals with pain, and comic characters
almost always suffer. Something is made deliberately “wrong” about the character, so
that we know we aren’t supposed to react with sympathy. Instead we’re supposed to
laugh.

Some of the devices we use to signal the audience that it’s all right to laugh:

1. The simplest way of signaling comic unbelievability is to talk directly to the audience.

2. EXAGGERATION

3. DOWNPLAYING

4. ODDNESS

Motive is at the story’s heart. It is the most potent form of causal connection. So every
revision of motive is a revision of the story. Each new revelation of a main character’s
motive is not a simple matter of adding more information —it revises all the information
that has gone before.
Motive tells why he acts as he does; attitude is the way he reacts to outside
events.

WHY PEOPLE CHANGE: In real life we never fully understand why people do these
things. We have names for some of the changes -midlife crisis, growing up, going
through a phase, nervous breakdown, finding herself, a selfish streak, showing his true
colours, born again, going off the deep end -but these labels are at best an attempt to
reassure ourselves. We have to revise again our understanding of the world. This doesn’t
mean that your fictional characters have to change. One of the common themes in
fiction is that people’s fundamental natures don’t change, no matter how much you wish
they might. If they ever seem to change, it’s because you didn’t really understand them
in the first place.

You Can’t Change or Other Things Change You or You Change Yourself.
There is no “right” way to justify changes in character, but you should keep in mind that
the more important the character and the greater the change, the more time you will
have to devote to explaining the transformation.

There is an exception to the rule that you must explain why characters change. A fourth
fictional theme is that changes in human beings are random, absurd, uncaused.

Storytellers constantly have to choose between showing, telling, and ignoring. Films
would be dead if they showed everything. “Showing” is terribly time-consuming.

Jung

The “anima” is the female element in the male unconscious. (the “animus” in the
female unconscious).

In addition to memories from a long-distant conscious past, completely new thoughts

and creative ideas can also present themselves from the unconscious—thoughts and
ideas that have never been conscious before.

It often seems that even inanimate objects co-operate with the unconscious
in the arrangement of symbolic patterns.

Sensation (i.e., sense perception) tells you that something exists; thinking tells you
what it is; feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not; and intuition tells you
whence it comes and where it is going.

Something that is of a more or less unknown nature has been intuitively grasped by the
unconscious and submitted to an archetypal treatment.
Faust aptly says: “In the beginning was the deed.” “Deeds” were never invented,
they were done; thoughts, on the other hand, are a relatively late discovery of man.
First he was moved to deeds by unconscious factors; it was only a long time afterward
that he began to reflect upon the causes that had moved him.

Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning
to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe.

Archetypes are, at the same time, both images and emotions.

Just as the ego contains unfavourable and destructive attitudes, so the

shadow has good qualities—normal instincts and creative impulses. Ego and
shadow, indeed, although separate, are inextricably linked together. Before the ego can
triumph, it must master and assimilate the shadow.

The hero’s task is to liberate the anima as that inner component of the psyche which is
necessary for any true creative achievement.

The typical hero figures exhaust their efforts in achieving the goal of their ambitions. In
contrast to this, the novice for initiation is called upon to give up wilful
ambition and all desire and to submit to the ordeal. He must be willing to
experience this trial without hope of success. He must be prepared to die.

A slow, imperceptible process of psychic growth—the process of individuation.

Individuation is a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective
unconscious are brought into consciousness (e.g., by means of dreams, active
imagination, or free association) to be assimilated into the whole personality.

Jung called this center the “Self” and described it as the totality of the whole
psyche, in order to distinguish it from the “ego,” which constitutes only a
small part of the total psyche.

The actual processes of individuation—the conscious coming-to-terms with one’s own

inner center (psychic nucleus) or Self—generally begins with a wounding of the
personality and the suffering that accompanies it.

Through dreams one becomes acquainted with aspects of one’s own personality that for
various reasons one has preferred not to look at too closely. This is what Jung called
“the realization of the shadow.” Shadow- the dark side of the ego-personality. The
shadow is not the whole of the unconscious personality. It represents
unknown or little-known attributes and qualities of the ego.
The anima (like the shadow) has two aspects, benevolent and malefic (or negative).
Just as the character of a man’s anima is shaped by his mother, so the animus is
basically influenced by a woman’s father.

The animus, just like the anima, exhibits four stages of development. Moves from
purely physical to romance to knowledge to spirituality.

Attending to the unconscious makes people antisocial and egocentric.

Everything can assume symbolic significance: natural objects, or man- made things , or
even abstract forms (like numbers, or the triangle).

Primitive man must tame the animal in himself and make it his helpful
companion; civilized man must heal the animal in himself and make it his
friend.

The circle (or sphere) as a symbol of the Self. It expresses the totality of the psyche in
all its aspects.

The symbolic alchemical concept of the squared circle (circle within a square)—symbol
of wholeness and of the union of opposites. The circle is a symbol of the psyche (even
Plato described the psyche as a sphere). The square (and often the rectangle) is a
symbol of earthbound matter, of the body and reality.

Two poles: (1) great abstraction; (2) great realism

The idea of the “death of God” and its immediate consequence, the “metaphysical
void,” had troubled the minds of 19th-century poets.

The association of two (or more) apparently alien elements on a plane alien
to both is the most potent ignition of poetry.

The more horrifying this world becomes the more art becomes abstract; while a world
at peace produces realistic art.

One can sometimes discover unexpected treasures in the unconscious, and by

bringing them into consciousness strengthen his ego and give him the psychic
energy he needs to grow into a mature person.

If dreams are not wish-fulfillments (as Freud taught) but rather, as Jung assumed,
“self-representations of the unconscious”.

Bickham
The pattern of every stimulus-response transaction – in deepest reality – is: STIMULUS
– INTERNALIZATION – RESPONSE.

The persons in conflict should continually be shifting their tactics, changing their
approach, trying different lines of logic, etc.

The scene question cannot be some vague, philosophical one. It must be definite, clear-
cut, specific goal which appears to be immediately attainable.

1. The goal of each scene must clearly relate to the story question in some way.
2. The conflict must be about the goal.
3. The conflict must be with another person or persons, not internally, within oneself.
4. Disaster moves the story forward by seeming to move the central figure further back
from his goal, leaving him in worse trouble than he was before the scene started.

1. Never allow a lead character to enter a scene with a lackadaisical attitude.

2. Make sure you have provided enough background for the opposition character to
justify his opposition to the lead character in the scene.
3. Remember, in building conflict in the scene and in devising your disaster, that
people are not always entirely rational, especially in stress situations.
4. Always be alert for ways to raise the stakes in a scene, as long as you don’t turn it
into Armageddon.
5. Never let your characters relax or feel comfortable in a scene.

Structural component besides the scene are essentially two: transition and sequel.
Transitions can be as simple as the following: It was the following Tuesday when they
met again. Something bigger and better than a simple transition is the sequel.

A sequel begins for your viewpoint character the moment a scene ends. Just struck by a
new, unanticipated but logical disaster, he is plunged into a period of sheer emotion,
followed sooner or later by a period of thought, which sooner or later results in the
formation of a new, goal-oriented decision, which in turn results in some action
toward the new goal just selected. And you have conflict – you are into the next scene.
(non-stageable)

Partial list of things that can go wrong:

1. Circularity of argument.
2. Getting off the track.
3. Inadvertent summary.
4. Loss of viewpoint.
5. Unmotivated opposition.
6. Illogical disagreement.
7. Unfair odds.
8. Not enough at stake.
9. Inadvertent red herrings.
10. Phony, contrived disasters.
1. The scenes will move the viewpoint character farther and farther away from any
quick shortcut to the original goal.
2. The scenes will develop through a series of disasters which heap new and unexpected
woes on the character’s head, but do not obviously relate to one another. The new
disasters that have taken him further and further afield are not obviously related in a
domino-falling relationship.
3. The scenes will develop in such a way that the hero must take on some entirely
unrelated, shorter-term goal-quest to clear the decks for an eventual return to the
original story line.
4. The scenes will be arranged in an interleaved pattern with scenes representing other
plots – subplots – most of which will relate in some distant way to the central quest.

Scenes started by a non-viewpoint character must occur sometimes in fiction. From the
standpoint of the non-viewpoint character, the pattern of the scene is Goal – Conflict
– Success. Always end your scenes to make things worse on the hero.

Multiple-agenda scenes generally should be avoided.