Why Linear Story Structure Is A Bad Thing — Andy Guerdat
Film Courage: What is linear story structure?
Andy Guerdat, Television Writer, Producer, Instructor, and Podcaster: A linear story structure to me is a bad thing because linear means in a line and I don’t think it’s a useful mental image for a writer to have, to think of their story as being a straight line. I like to tell my students to think of it as a zigzag because your purpose in telling a story and structuring a story is to try to keep ahead of the audience, keep the audience off balance. I tell them to think of themselves, picture it as being more like a you’re like a broken field runner in a football game and you’re trying to elude tacklers, you’re trying to stay ahead of them, you’re trying to zigzag. That’s a more useful mental image.
Linear to me (which is the way a lot of people teach you how to write) is there’s a straight line, here’s where the end of act one is, here’s where the end of act two is, here’s the midpoint, here’s where that and there’s little hash marks that you’ve got to hit at a certain point it tends to make the the the story flat…
