Week Two:
Conflict
Definition? Opposition of persons or forces
Issue/Disagreement/Hostile encounter
Internal: Problems/Issues within one self
E.g. Someone who is insecure about his or her looks
External: Family pressure/ Other people/ Financial situation/Something that is not within your control
It is the interaction of opposing ideas, interests, or wills that creates the plot.
Types of conflict
Dramatic conflict is the protagonist’s struggle against someone or something.
• Man VS Man
• Man VS Environment (beast, storm, disaster)
• Man VS System (education, government)
• Man VS Self (inner struggles ;most often it tests the hero’s beliefs, values, morals)
Variations of conflict can arise from gender, age, religion, culture.
Causes and effects of conflict
Conflict arises when there is a CHANGE.
Changes may be minor or major.
While change is universal and common, but it is not always accepted.
Examples of changes: Seasons, lives, relationships, feelings, bodies, locations, technologies
Conflict arises when people resists changes.
The intensity of conflict depends how people react to the change.
People must learn to cope with change if the want to survive.
The action in a drama depends on a conflict.
Importance of conflict
Plot cannot be constructed without conflict.
Conflict is the essence of drama.
It is the central feature of the screenplay.
As your characters attempt to reach their goals, they come into conflict with each other.
Give characters→ drives, needs to make them dangerous
The end of the story nears when the protagonist and antagonist approach their goals and the conflict rises to generate maximum suspense and excitement.
Week 3:
Writing for an audience
• Screenwriter=storyteller
The cinematic experience is not just made up of text on paper, but the audiences’ emotional reaction to that information.
• Director to people? Writer to people? Camera to people?
Director to people. Writer to people. Camera to people.
It’s people to people.
What is the writer’s purpose?
• Connect the audiences:
Themselves. Their unique vision. The material/Issue. The drama. Others.
Audiences want to be transported by a screenplay.
Where do you look for a story?
Within yourself, e.g. Experiences, memories, emotions.
Practice observing, ‘listening’ and reading body language of people.
Figure how to connect your viewers to your story through emotions, characters,etc.
Review exercise2: 50 word stories
• Difficulties- what were they?
Getting started. No inspiration.
• Restrains-Did they help?
50words. Change of story or plot.
Do constraints help you to be a better writer?
Week Four:
Group A:
1. When and where did Aristotle live?
Aristotle lived in Greece, between 384 and 322BC.
2. What was Aristotle’s Poetics?
Aristotle stated that poetry could be divided into 3genres, tragedy, comedy and epic. ‘Poetic’ focuses on tragedy.
3. What is the definition of Greek tragedy?
Tragedy is an ‘imitation of an action’, according to ‘the law of probability or necessity’.
4. What is an example of a movie or a play that follows Aristotle’s definition of tragedy? Explain your selection.
Group B:
1. Seek out and find Aristotle’s 6 required parts of a tragedy.
Plot, Characters, Thought, Diction, Melody, and Spectacle.
Diction has something to do in the tone. Difference between sound, design and music? E.g. Make the whole scene quiet and increase the sound of the footsteps.
2. What is the “cause-and-effect” chain?
According to Aristotle, tragedy creates a cause-and-effect chain that clearly reveals what may happen, arouses not only pity but also fear, because members of the audience can imagine themselves within the cause-and-effect chain.
3. How can a good plot create a “unity of action”?
Unity of action is an arrangement of incidents, NOT the story itself, the way scenes are presented to the audiences.
Group C:
1. Aristotle thought episodic plots were the worst kind of storytelling. What is an episodic plot and why did Aristotle think this way?
An episodic plot is one, which succeeds one another without probability or necessity.
The only thing tying together the events in such an episodic plot is the fact that they happen to the same person.
2. Definition of Katharsis:
Purgation/ Purification/ Clarification
3. Definition of Mimesis:
Imitation/ Representation
4. Seek out and find Aristotle’s 6 required parts of a tragedy.
According to Aristotle,
Tragedy: Bad things happen due to character’s decisions, goal, etc.
Misadventure: External factors that causes bad things to happen.
Group D:
1. What is the difference between a simple and a complex plot?
Simple plot is a ‘change of fortune’.
Complex plot has a reversal of intention ‘peripetieia’ and recognition ‘anagnorisis’ connected with the catastrophe.
2. What can scriptwriters today learn from the opinions of Aristotle?
There is a structure to any form of writing.
3. The Greek word peripetieia means:
It means reversal.
Group E:
1. What is the responsibility of characters in an Aristotelian tragedy?
Character supports plot.
Personal motivations are connected to the cause-and-effect chain.
Protagonist in a tragedy should be renowned and prosperous, so his change can be from good to bad.
2. Aristotle originated the concept of the three-act structure. What is it, and how does it apply to scriptwriting?
Advantage of working in three-act structure is it breaks down the story and makes it more manageable.
1st act: set up
Story begins with a goal-oriented character introduced at a point of crisis.
The characters meet roadblocks produced by the plot and the antagonist.
2nd act: confrontation (you need the protagonist or ‘hero’)
Action intensifies.
An event happens which forces the character to make his or her choice.
3rd act: resolution/ conclusion
Level of effort rises to new heights.
But the main character, either achieve or does not achieve his goal.
3. What is the definition of anagnorisis?
Week 5:
Storytelling experience:
• A storyteller should be concerned with the potential of every experience.
• Everything about you-where you are born, what food you eat, the bump on your forehead-your experiences are unique and irreplaceable.
• Many of your experiences are universal and translatable and can be used in any location. (E.g. Love)
• Tip: If you don’t know what to do with a character, make him yourself for a while.
• Sees how he relates to the world he has been thrown into.
• Tip: Plunder your own personal background
• The things that happen to you as you grow up and the things that are currently happening to you make terrific story sources.
Week6:
Purpose of letter to the past:
==> The letter is a practical, personal example of how a character-YOU-undergo an inevitable process of change.
==> This process of change is an essential ingredient of any effective story.
In dramatic writing, the very essence is character change.
• Record your experience.
• Reflect your past and present.
• Recall how you feel/felt.
• Relish reliving the moment.
All people have fragments of stories.
These potential stories prompt your desire to know more.
Respond intellectually and emotionally to what you heard.
Good stories are born in the heart, not the head.
Remember the role of an audience.
After all, you are the audience.
What do audience want?
• Taken on a ride/journey
• Discover something new
• Connect to the characters
Your memory is a wonderful cabinet of past incidents which you have experienced or been told.
These memories are points of reference to your own past existence.
Tip:
• WRITE what you don’t know because you’ll find some part of you that does know
• THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR PERSONAL DISCOVERY.
What is the difference between memory and experience?
Memory and experience may not always be identical. Simply put, memory can be manufactured; it becomes what you want it to be. E.g. someone can suppress all the bad things that his father did to him and remember only the good things. Experience is something you went through.
How do we use memory to build creative content?
Use some of it to spark off stories.
Week 7
Purpose of writing ‘’True Or False”
• A true story is not necessarily a good one.
• Good stories have to be worked and re-worked.
• True-life stories do not offer neat and relevant endings.
• Life is unpredictable.
• In a story, we can and must control the events and sequences so that it gives the appearance of being like life.
Characterization: Defining the character
• Every story starts with a character. (If we don’t start with a character, we can sometimes start with an event such as an accident or an explosion, a setting). It can be a human being such as Indiana Jones or a fish such as Nemo fish.
• The character is… … the heart, the soul and the nervous system. (In other words, the character should have life).
• It is through your characters that the viewers experience emotions.
• It is through your characters that they are touched.
• <Without a character, there is no action. >
<Without action, you have no conflict. >
<Without conflict, you have no story. >
Developing a character, ask yourself:
1. Personality traits such as temper, whether he is truthful.
2. Their likes and dislikes. It can be something simple or complex…
3. Background such as education, family, status in life.
4. How he communicates and his manner of speech, his circle of friends. Is he coarse? Is he refined? Does he stutter? The people around him?
Who is your character? What does he want? What is his quest? What drives him to the resolution of he story?
• Establish your main character
• Characters should have a 3D structure.
a) Physiology- Sex, Age, Height, Weight, Color of hair, eyes or skin, Posture, Appearance, Defects, Abnormalities, Deformities, Birth marks, Diseases, Heredity
b) Sociology- Class (Upper, Lower, Middle), Occupation (Type of work, Hours of work, Income, Condition of work, Attitude towards organization, suitability of work), Education (Amount, kind of schools, marks, favorite subjects, poorest subjects, aptitudes), Home life (Parents living, Earning power, Orphan, Divorced parents, Parents’ habits, Parents’ mental development, Parents’ vices, Neglect, Character’s marital status), Religion, Race, Nationality, Place in community (Leader among friends, Clubs, Sports), Political affiliations, Amusements (Hobbies, Books, Newspapers, Magazines he or she reads)
c) Psychology- Sex life, Moral standards, Personal Premise, Ambition, Frustrations, Chief disappointments, Temperament (Choleric, Easy-going, Pessimistic, Optimistic), Attitude towards life (Resigned, Militant, Defeatist), Complexes (Obsessions, Inhibitions, Superstitions, Phobias), Personality (Extrovert, Introvert), Ability (Languages, Talents), Qualities (Imagination, Judgment, Taste, Poise), I.Q, What is the deep and personal secret this character has which he is desperate to protect/ hide? (E.g. Forest Grumps. The only person who told him that he was clever was his mother. He was very confident of himself and never thought that he was dumb.)
Developing characters
1) Separate the components of his life into 2basic categories:
a) Interior (Back ground)
b) Exterior
The interior life takes place from birth until the moment your story begins.
It is a process that forms character. [When you start formulating your character from birth, you see your character build in body and form.]
• How old is he when the story begins?
• Where does he live?
• Does he have siblings?
• What kind of childhood did he have?
• What was his relationship to his parents?
• What kind of child was he?
• Is he married, single, widowed, separated or divorced?
The exterior life takes place the moment your story begins to its conclusion.
It is a process that reveals character.
• Who are they can what do they do?
• Are they sad or happy with their life?
• Do they wish their life were different? Another job, another wife?
You must create your characters in relationship to other people or things.
All dramatic characters interact in 3ways:
1. They EXPERIENCE CONFLICT in achieving their dramatic need. [E.g. Need money-Rob bank, rob store, rob person?]
2. They INTERACT with other CHARACTERS. [Either in an antagonistic, friendly or indifferent way]
3. They INTERACT with THEMSELVES. [E.g. He overcame his fear of being caught by pulling off the robbery successfully]
How do you invent characters?
-Try turning them UPSIDE DOWN.
E.g. A monk who is devoted to his religion… but he is a football fanatic. Or. A serial killer… whose obsession is to kill other serial killers. Or. A common street rat… who loves to eat and cook only fine food.
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