Jun 13, 2024 

General Tips for Storytelling

1. Maintain Audience Interest:
   • Capture and sustain interest through time and reward it at the climax.
   • Balance curiosity and concern to appeal to both intellect and emotion.
2. Use Curiosity Effectively:
   • Create open questions and patterns to engage the audience’s intellectual need for answers.
3. Leverage Concern:
   • Appeal to positive values like justice, strength, and survival to emotionally engage the audience.
4. Establish a Center of Good:
   • Ensure the protagonist or central characters embody positive values to elicit empathy.

Techniques in Narrative Structure

5. Mystery, Suspense, and Dramatic Irony:
   • Use mystery to create curiosity by having the audience know less than the characters.
   • Use suspense by aligning the audience’s knowledge with the characters’ knowledge.
   • Use dramatic irony to create concern by giving the audience more information than the characters have.
6. Avoid Coincidence in Resolutions:
   • Introduce coincidences early to build meaning.
   • Never use coincidence to resolve the climax, avoiding “deus ex machina.”

Comedy

7. Design Comedy with Care:
   • Comedy should stem from narrative drive and the gap between expectation and result.
   • Use comedy to highlight truths and reveal human folly.
8. Balancing Satire and Farce:
   • Employ satire to critique and reveal societal issues while using farce for exaggerated humor.

Adaptation

9. Understand the Medium:
   • Adaptation requires understanding the strengths of prose, theatre, and film.
   • Preserve the spirit of the original work while being open to reinvention.
10. Dramatize Inner Conflict:
    • Novels excel at internal monologue and description, whereas film and theatre excel at visual and auditory dramatization.
11. Be Faithful Yet Creative:
    • Maintain fidelity to the original’s essence but adapt creatively for the new medium’s strengths.

Handling Melodrama and Holes

12. Avoid Melodrama:
    • Write with strong motivation for actions; melodrama arises from weak motivation.
13. Close Story Holes:
    • Address logical inconsistencies by creating links between events or admitting and compensating for them.

Exposition

14. Integrate Exposition Seamlessly:
    • Reveal necessary background through dialogue and action without disrupting the narrative flow.

Practical Tips

15. First Principles of Adaptation:
    • Adapt the purest forms of novels and plays with attention to their inherent conflicts.
16. Read and Immerse:
    • Fully immerse in the source material to ensure a deep understanding before adaptation.
17. Be Willing to Reinvent:
    • Retain the original’s spirit while reordering and adapting scenes creatively for film.
18. Respect the Audience:
    • Trust the audience’s intelligence and avoid over-explaining.
19. Focus on Character Development:
    • Spend more time with characters to deepen audience empathy and engagement.
20. Embrace Visual Storytelling:
    • Use the visual power of cinema to express complex emotions and conflicts effectively.

Problems and Solutions

The Problem of Interest

1. Introduction
   • Capturing and maintaining an audience’s interest is critical.
   • Requires appealing to both intellect and emotion.
2. Curiosity
   • Satisfies the need for answers and closure.
   • Hook the audience with open questions and rising stakes.
3. Concern
   • Appeals to the need for justice, strength, and survival.
   • Deep-rooted in human nature to seek positive values.
4. The Center of Good
   • Essential for protagonists to embody.
   • Audience must empathize with the characters’ positive qualities.
   • Examples from films like “The Godfather,” “White Heat,” “The Night Porter,” and “Silence of the Lambs.”

Mystery, Suspense, Dramatic Irony

1. Mystery
   • Audience knows less than the characters.
   • Builds curiosity and interest through withheld information.
2. Suspense
   • Audience and characters know the same information.
   • Focuses on the outcome, keeping the audience engaged through empathy.
3. Dramatic Irony
   • Audience knows more than the characters.
   • Creates concern and emotional engagement by revealing outcomes beforehand.
   • Examples from films like “Sunset Boulevard,” “Betrayal,” and “Casablanca.”

The Problem of Surprise

1. Introduction
   • The audience seeks new experiences and insights.
   • Surprise must be true, not cheap.
2. True Surprise
   • Results from a genuine gap between expectation and outcome.
   • Offers a rush of insight and revelation.
3. Cheap Surprise
   • Relies on manipulation and unpredictability.
   • Fails to provide meaningful or lasting impact.

The Problem of Coincidence

1. Introduction
   • Coincidence appears meaningless but is part of life.
   • The challenge is to dramatize it meaningfully.
2. Bringing Coincidence in Early
   • Coincidence should be introduced early to build meaning.
   • Example: The shark in “JAWS” becomes a symbol of evil.
3. Avoiding Coincidence in Endings
   • Avoid using coincidence to resolve the story.
   • “Deus ex machina” is seen as a writer’s greatest sin.
4. Examples and Warnings
   • Coincidence can be meaningful if it shapes the story and characters.
   • Must not rely on coincidence for the climax or resolution.

The Problem of Comedy

1. Introduction
   • Comedy must be more than trivial satire or farce.
   • Comedy points out that humans find ways to screw up.
2. Comic Design
   • Comedy involves narrative drive and audience expectations.
   • Examples from “Little Shop of Horrors,” “The Gold Rush,” and “A Fish Called Wanda.”
3. The Nature of Comedy
   • Comedy is not just about making people laugh; it reveals truths.
   • The gap between expectation and result creates humor.
4. Comedy Writers’ Role
   • Writers must balance satire and serious commentary.
   • Examples of successful satire in films like “Trading Places” and “Stripes.”

The Problem of Point of View

1. Introduction
   • Point of view (POV) affects how the story is perceived.
   • The choice of POV influences audience empathy and engagement.
2. POV Within a Scene
   • Describes physical and emotional angles within scenes.
   • Examples of different POV choices in a father-son argument scene.
3. POV Within the Story
   • Telling the whole story from the protagonist’s POV creates depth.
   • Emphasizes the importance of sticking to a single POV for stronger storytelling.
4. The Impact of POV
   • Spending more time with a character enhances empathy.
   • More opportunity to witness choices and emotional involvement.

The Problem of Adaptation

1. Introduction
   • Adaptation is complex and requires understanding the medium.
   • Differences between prose, theatre, and film are highlighted.
2. Personal Conflict in Novels
   • Novels excel in dramatizing inner conflict.
   • Prose uses description and internal monologue to convey depth.
3. External Conflict in Theatre and Film
   • Theatre and film excel in visual and auditory dramatization.
   • They focus on external conflict and use subtext to convey inner conflict.
4. Challenges in Adaptation
   • The difficulty lies in translating inner conflict to visual media.
   • Example: “Blade Runner” and its visual storytelling.
5. Principles of Adaptation
   • Maintain the spirit of the original work.
   • Be willing to reinvent while preserving the essence.
6. Examples of Successful Adaptations
   • Pierre Boulle’s “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”
   • Works of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

The Problem of Melodrama

1. Introduction
   • Avoiding melodrama is about balancing big scenes with motivation.
   • Melodrama is not overexpression but a lack of proper motivation.
2. Effective Use of Drama
   • Write with sufficient motivation for big actions.
   • Examples from great writers like Homer and Shakespeare.
3. Elevating Characters’ Actions
   • Ensure characters’ actions match their motivations.
   • Aim for high drama that feels earned and believable.

The Problem of Holes

1. Introduction
   • Holes in the story are lapses in logic or motivation.
   • They can detract from the narrative’s credibility.
2. Closing Holes
   • Forge links between illogical events to close holes.
   • Avoid unnecessary scenes that don’t serve the story.
3. Examples of Story Holes
   • “Chinatown” and its intricate plotting.
   • “Casablanca” and acknowledging its logical gaps.
4. Handling Holes in Storytelling
   • Admit holes if necessary and compensate with strong narrative drive.
   • Example: “The Terminator” and its logical inconsistencies.

The Problem of Exposition

1. Introduction
   • Exposition can be challenging and often disrupts the flow.
   • Essential for providing necessary background and context.
2. Techniques for Effective Exposition
   • Integrate exposition seamlessly into the narrative.
   • Use dialogue and action to reveal information naturally.
3. Examples of Effective Exposition
   • “The Terminator” and its narrative drive.
   • Balancing exposition with storytelling to maintain audience engagement.