Write the Damn Thing!
DAY 7
Howdy, wordsmiths!
First week is done! Today will be the last day of our introductory subjects. So far we’ve gone over the basics of storytelling, but we are missing something important. Maybe the most important part. Can you guess what it is? We’ve talked around it but we haven’t tackled it yet. I’m talking about…
Key aspect of screenwriting: Story Structure.
The story structure is the skeleton of your tale. I’m sure 99% of you have heard about the Three-act structure. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Act. This is how most stories are done, but we are going to do things slightly different here. Being a television show and all, we are going to break our story in four Acts, plus a Teaser and a Tag. Don’t worry, we’ll talk about each one of them when the time comes.
60 minutes dramas are usually broken down in 4 Acts for commercial purposes, we get a commercial break after each act. But this “unusual” structure is actually just the three Act structure with the second act divided in two.
To explain story structure in the simplest way possible I will refer you to this video:
In it, the most fundamental form we can put it like this:
Act 1: Introduce the characters.
Act 2: Have the characters react to the problems and fail.
Act 3: Characters find solutions after failing to resolve problems.
Act 4: Some resolution to the problem, a new question arises.
Remember that in a TV show we cannot resolve the whole issue at the end of the episode. The characters should find some solutions to the problems, but a bigger — and scarier — question needs to be kept hanging like a sword above your character’s head, after the end of each episode.
Day 7 task:
Write down the skeleton of your pilot. What happens in each one of the acts of your story. Remember to keep the tension rising and the character struggling. Be a sadist with your main character. The audience came here to watch drama, give it to them.
That’s all for our first week. Starting tomorrow we’ll start writing our first pages. We’ve done great work so far. Let’s keep it up.
Happy writing!
PS: DAY 6 is here, just in case you need to look over something.
