Film Courage: Jill we often hear that story structure is easy and that it doesn’t require much effort. Do you agree?
Jill Chamberlain, Script Consultant/Author/Writer: I think it’s to get the right structure for your story, that’s 90% of the work. Is it easy to do that? It depends on how good you are with story structure but it’s everything right? I obviously was not the first person to say this but story is structure. To get it right is all the difference between a story being effective and not being effective or drawing us in or boring us. That’s what it is.
Some people have a real hangup about the idea of structure. Even the word seems to offend them. I was at a party one time where I ran into a student of mine and she introduced me to a famous documentary filmmaker (who I’m not going to name) and introduced me as her teacher who wrote this book on story structure. His attitude to me was a little bit like structure schmuchture! I was amused and I said Let me understand something, for your documentary films, do you just stick a camera on one person and…
