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Q. I don't have a degree in English but I am sure I can make sense out of all the times I talk/write. How can I come up with characters and their personalities, scenery, main and 2nd storyline, what kind of research do I need for example if I want to write a script like "What Women Want" wise, etc?
And how long is an average movie/tv script?
And how long is an average movie/tv script?
Answer
A degree in English won't help you anyhow so don't worry. Those who study English do not explore the process of storytelling, unfortunately, but instead study the extrinsics of writing by examining language, code, and text. This used to not be the case. In the early 20th century through the 50s, storytelling was a requisite course for writers just as much as art is for painters or music for musicians. This became lost in the 60s and the loss of the craft of storytelling has been severe for the past two generations who have never learned how to tell a story. But English degree holders can tell you about gender identity, psychology of characters, and other facts that are looking at a story from the outside. But these facts won't tell you how to create a story.
Like a painter who is wanting to paint or a musician wanting to create a symphony, writers learn their craft. But most writers today don't have the luxury of taking courses on storytelling and therefore learn subconsciously by reading and mimicking the structure of what they read. Those who say "just write" as an answer are really saying to apply everything you've learned subconsciously through reading as if the mystery will be revealed. This doesn't work for everyone. And they may bring up example of child prodigies who they don't believe require learning, which if you're a prodigy you wouldn't have asked the question.
Screenwriters still take classes on storytelling in film school to explicitly learn how to tell a story (George Lucas, Tim Burton, etc...). English majors haven't taken these classes for 40 years, and even creative writing courses today focus on extrinsics and expression rather than on dramaturgy and prose arts such as plot and spine.
You should focus on telling a story. This is more important than the format of your screenplay, more important than your title, and more important than finding a publisher. After you've written your story you can then learn about how to do that.
Stories tell us the meaning of life and say, "life is like that!". At least the best ones do.
So, to get you started, below is the process that will show you how a story begins from idea to germination. Then, once you grasp this you can learn how to turn a seedling into a rose bush.
Before you write, you must have something to say, though. There are three things that I believe are important and these three things are often confused with each other:
1) Premise
2) Setting
3) Theme
Let me illustrate the difference so you can easily find the theme of any story by walking through how a writer creates a story. This way you can easily find how to begin the quest. By seeing how a writer creates stories, you can see it from his or her point of view and clearly find the theme and learn to do it yourself.
The controlling idea is the meaning of your story. It is another word for "theme". The premise is what happens. The setting is the place and time where it's set.
For example, when you ask someone who just watched or read "Lord of the Rings" what it's about, they'll probably say something like, "it's an epic story about a hobbit who is given a huge responsibility to take a magical ring into a mountain to destroy it and save the world and elves and men unite to....etc.." Or they may answer "It's about Middle Earth". These are not themes. The first is simply the premise. The latter is the setting. What the story is *really* about is: "Freedom is attained when we risk and sacrifice ourselves." That is the controlling idea (the theme) of the story. Of course, we can debate if that is the true controlling idea but I'm only giving you my interpretation.
Harry Potter's premise contains magic, and the setting is in a fantasy land, but the theme is not about magic nor fantasy. The theme of Harry Potter might be: "Happiness prevails when we are confident of our own gifts and individuality." Discuss. =)
Now you can apply this understanding as I'll explain below with a story to any story you read.
First, I'll explain the premise. This way you'll see the difference.
A writer finds a premise through research and asking "what if" for any situation. If you read the news, one can find many ideas if you simply ask yourself "what if" as you read through it.
For example, I randomly selected a news article on Yahoo News:
Survivors recall horror of flu pandemic
As I'm reading through each line, I'm thinking about story ideas and asking "what if". For example, I read this line:
>> The flu swept through the nation's capital, which had attracted thousands of soldiers and war workers.
Now I'm asking myself, 'what if someone built a virus and orchestrated a large event so they could infect everyone in it to inflict the most damage?'
That's a start, but sounds a bit cliche, but that's okay. Let your mind race and you'll then ask "what if" upon "what if". What if the person accidently released the virus and kept silent while everyone around them died? What if the event was organized by a force where people are called to gather in one location but everyone made excuses for going there without realizing they were being forced -- only a supernatural force could do that -- and the reason is the supernatural force wanted to end the human race? hehe...this gets into some horror or science-fiction if that's your bag. But you can see the magic "what if" at work.
Let's choose the supernatural 'what if' as the premise in this example. Now we're going to start thinking of the controlling idea. This is what is the heart of your story -- the story you need to tell and what the story is *truly* about.
The controlling idea is not a single word; it's not going to be about "viruses" nor "aliens" nor "Civil War". The Controlling Idea tells us, "life is like this!"
The controlling idea will be a sentence that tells us how and why life changes from one condition of existence to another (again, theme and controlling idea are the same -- I prefer to use controlling idea). This change will show up in the climax of the last act of your story. That's where you will find the controlling idea.
Concerning how I came up with Harry Potter's controlling idea, I looked at the last acts' endings of every Harry Potter story. What value changed? Harry went from being unconfident to confident and therefore was happy whereas each story opens with him in a situation and the world crumbling around him and constantly being challenged. Look at the last act's value change.
Fine writers filter everything they write through the controlling idea and then work up to the last climax -- look at the value that exists throughout the story because there will be themes that come and go. For example in Harry Potter he often seeks to befriend those who try to do him harm so we learn that "Trust is earned when we love our enemy" -- or because that didn't always work we could say, "Evil prevails when we try to love our enemies" but either of these is not the c
A degree in English won't help you anyhow so don't worry. Those who study English do not explore the process of storytelling, unfortunately, but instead study the extrinsics of writing by examining language, code, and text. This used to not be the case. In the early 20th century through the 50s, storytelling was a requisite course for writers just as much as art is for painters or music for musicians. This became lost in the 60s and the loss of the craft of storytelling has been severe for the past two generations who have never learned how to tell a story. But English degree holders can tell you about gender identity, psychology of characters, and other facts that are looking at a story from the outside. But these facts won't tell you how to create a story.
Like a painter who is wanting to paint or a musician wanting to create a symphony, writers learn their craft. But most writers today don't have the luxury of taking courses on storytelling and therefore learn subconsciously by reading and mimicking the structure of what they read. Those who say "just write" as an answer are really saying to apply everything you've learned subconsciously through reading as if the mystery will be revealed. This doesn't work for everyone. And they may bring up example of child prodigies who they don't believe require learning, which if you're a prodigy you wouldn't have asked the question.
Screenwriters still take classes on storytelling in film school to explicitly learn how to tell a story (George Lucas, Tim Burton, etc...). English majors haven't taken these classes for 40 years, and even creative writing courses today focus on extrinsics and expression rather than on dramaturgy and prose arts such as plot and spine.
You should focus on telling a story. This is more important than the format of your screenplay, more important than your title, and more important than finding a publisher. After you've written your story you can then learn about how to do that.
Stories tell us the meaning of life and say, "life is like that!". At least the best ones do.
So, to get you started, below is the process that will show you how a story begins from idea to germination. Then, once you grasp this you can learn how to turn a seedling into a rose bush.
Before you write, you must have something to say, though. There are three things that I believe are important and these three things are often confused with each other:
1) Premise
2) Setting
3) Theme
Let me illustrate the difference so you can easily find the theme of any story by walking through how a writer creates a story. This way you can easily find how to begin the quest. By seeing how a writer creates stories, you can see it from his or her point of view and clearly find the theme and learn to do it yourself.
The controlling idea is the meaning of your story. It is another word for "theme". The premise is what happens. The setting is the place and time where it's set.
For example, when you ask someone who just watched or read "Lord of the Rings" what it's about, they'll probably say something like, "it's an epic story about a hobbit who is given a huge responsibility to take a magical ring into a mountain to destroy it and save the world and elves and men unite to....etc.." Or they may answer "It's about Middle Earth". These are not themes. The first is simply the premise. The latter is the setting. What the story is *really* about is: "Freedom is attained when we risk and sacrifice ourselves." That is the controlling idea (the theme) of the story. Of course, we can debate if that is the true controlling idea but I'm only giving you my interpretation.
Harry Potter's premise contains magic, and the setting is in a fantasy land, but the theme is not about magic nor fantasy. The theme of Harry Potter might be: "Happiness prevails when we are confident of our own gifts and individuality." Discuss. =)
Now you can apply this understanding as I'll explain below with a story to any story you read.
First, I'll explain the premise. This way you'll see the difference.
A writer finds a premise through research and asking "what if" for any situation. If you read the news, one can find many ideas if you simply ask yourself "what if" as you read through it.
For example, I randomly selected a news article on Yahoo News:
Survivors recall horror of flu pandemic
As I'm reading through each line, I'm thinking about story ideas and asking "what if". For example, I read this line:
>> The flu swept through the nation's capital, which had attracted thousands of soldiers and war workers.
Now I'm asking myself, 'what if someone built a virus and orchestrated a large event so they could infect everyone in it to inflict the most damage?'
That's a start, but sounds a bit cliche, but that's okay. Let your mind race and you'll then ask "what if" upon "what if". What if the person accidently released the virus and kept silent while everyone around them died? What if the event was organized by a force where people are called to gather in one location but everyone made excuses for going there without realizing they were being forced -- only a supernatural force could do that -- and the reason is the supernatural force wanted to end the human race? hehe...this gets into some horror or science-fiction if that's your bag. But you can see the magic "what if" at work.
Let's choose the supernatural 'what if' as the premise in this example. Now we're going to start thinking of the controlling idea. This is what is the heart of your story -- the story you need to tell and what the story is *truly* about.
The controlling idea is not a single word; it's not going to be about "viruses" nor "aliens" nor "Civil War". The Controlling Idea tells us, "life is like this!"
The controlling idea will be a sentence that tells us how and why life changes from one condition of existence to another (again, theme and controlling idea are the same -- I prefer to use controlling idea). This change will show up in the climax of the last act of your story. That's where you will find the controlling idea.
Concerning how I came up with Harry Potter's controlling idea, I looked at the last acts' endings of every Harry Potter story. What value changed? Harry went from being unconfident to confident and therefore was happy whereas each story opens with him in a situation and the world crumbling around him and constantly being challenged. Look at the last act's value change.
Fine writers filter everything they write through the controlling idea and then work up to the last climax -- look at the value that exists throughout the story because there will be themes that come and go. For example in Harry Potter he often seeks to befriend those who try to do him harm so we learn that "Trust is earned when we love our enemy" -- or because that didn't always work we could say, "Evil prevails when we try to love our enemies" but either of these is not the c
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