Thursday, Mar. 11

Finding the Magic in Your Story

Scott recalls a post from his archives regarding the conflict between structure and heart:

Don’t get me wrong. Format is important. Style is important. Structure is important. As I noted above, it’s a good idea to learn fundamental screenwriting principles. But it’s not like by mastering screenplay format, style, and structure, you will necessarily write a great script. In other words…Screenwriting is not about widgets. In order to write a great script, you have to find the magic.

Totally, totally agree. In my comment, I tried to explain my understanding of how both heart and structure co-exist:

I’m totally obsessed with story structure and story theory, but I could not agree with you more. Worrying about the exact number of scenes or hitting all “fifteen” beats is so backwards to the writing process in my opinion that I think it stifles or at least hinders a great many voices. This, of course, coming from someone who considers the Dramatica theory of story extremely beneficial to writers. Structure is not breaking successful movies down into their similar plot points. Rather, it is a holistic look at the story as one meaningful “whole.” That “whole” must come from the heart, otherwise it truly will be a “hole”.

And if you think otherwise, you’re an a-hole, LOL.