3:20 "I've written 50,000 words but ended up down the cul-de-sac" What she's probably describing David Mamet calls Second Act Problems (he's not the first, nor does he claim to be). This is what's happened when you see the trailer for a movie and it looks great, but the movie even though a million things are happening is tedious and boring, I won't say any names Weasley Snipes.... Michael Bay.... This happens to all of us. The general idea is that until we learn something about story structure we usually end up getting deep into it and then...well now what do I do? Here's what I think. If you ask Shakespeare what he thought of second act problems he'd look at you and ask, "What's an act?" He never used them. Someone else applied 5 acts to his plays and in most cases it kind of works. What Shakespeare did was know how to tell a compelling story, complicate things, complicate the complications (comedies) or follow the deep deep obsessive desire of a character to his inevitable demise (Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello). It's like a lot of things. Almost everybody knows a great story when we read or watch one, almost everybody can come up with an idea for a great story, some people can start writing down a story, but few people can write out an amazing story without a lot of practice. (A memoir of something extraordinary provides it's own basic structure, This happen, then this almost killed us, then this killed Ed, then this almost killed all of us, then we thought that was an island, it wasn't, then this killed Bob, for a couple of days we seriously considered eating Bob....then it rained, but then we ran out of water again. We saw the plane but were too weak to do more then wave, then we were rescued. ) So we study structure, but we should also understand it's not the law. The other thing you'll arrive at is if you write a great screenplay, it's exciting and Meryl Streep wants to star in it and some producer says, "OK, kid I need to ask you these questions: What's the inciting incident, where are the three plot points, what's the Midpoint Angelic Truth....? And you remember, this is the guy that read a book and somehow got it cockeyed, there isn't an Angelic Truth in anybody's book... What you do is this: It's 125 pages long. Pick anything between page 58 and 68 and say, 'Dats the Midpoint Angelic Truth, it's essential!" He won't know enough to doubt you. I'm taking too long to get to my point. Many great works have been written without outlines, studying structure, plotting, etc... because those writers have read so many books it's now in their DNA, or they rewrote until it worked. I think it's easier to start with structure, follow the basics and the essentials, but don't screw up your story to fit some formula, and you can play with structure, screw around with it. What if the antagonist is killed at the midpoint? Well of course something much worse will step in to get in the protagonist's way. Or maybe it will put a spotlight on the protagonist's being his own worst enemy.
I cannot thank you enough for these videos.
3:20 "I've written 50,000 words but ended up down the cul-de-sac" What she's probably describing David Mamet calls Second Act Problems (he's not the first, nor does he claim to be). This is what's happened when you see the trailer for a movie and it looks great, but the movie even though a million things are happening is tedious and boring, I won't say any names Weasley Snipes.... Michael Bay.... This happens to all of us. The general idea is that until we learn something about story structure we usually end up getting deep into it and then...well now what do I do? Here's what I think. If you ask Shakespeare what he thought of second act problems he'd look at you and ask, "What's an act?" He never used them. Someone else applied 5 acts to his plays and in most cases it kind of works. What Shakespeare did was know how to tell a compelling story, complicate things, complicate the complications (comedies) or follow the deep deep obsessive desire of a character to his inevitable demise (Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello). It's like a lot of things. Almost everybody knows a great story when we read or watch one, almost everybody can come up with an idea for a great story, some people can start writing down a story, but few people can write out an amazing story without a lot of practice. (A memoir of something extraordinary provides it's own basic structure, This happen, then this almost killed us, then this killed Ed, then this almost killed all of us, then we thought that was an island, it wasn't, then this killed Bob, for a couple of days we seriously considered eating Bob....then it rained, but then we ran out of water again. We saw the plane but were too weak to do more then wave, then we were rescued. ) So we study structure, but we should also understand it's not the law. The other thing you'll arrive at is if you write a great screenplay, it's exciting and Meryl Streep wants to star in it and some producer says, "OK, kid I need to ask you these questions: What's the inciting incident, where are the three plot points, what's the Midpoint Angelic Truth....? And you remember, this is the guy that read a book and somehow got it cockeyed, there isn't an Angelic Truth in anybody's book... What you do is this: It's 125 pages long. Pick anything between page 58 and 68 and say, 'Dats the Midpoint Angelic Truth, it's essential!" He won't know enough to doubt you.
I'm taking too long to get to my point. Many great works have been written without outlines, studying structure, plotting, etc... because those writers have read so many books it's now in their DNA, or they rewrote until it worked. I think it's easier to start with structure, follow the basics and the essentials, but don't screw up your story to fit some formula, and you can play with structure, screw around with it. What if the antagonist is killed at the midpoint? Well of course something much worse will step in to get in the protagonist's way. Or maybe it will put a spotlight on the protagonist's being his own worst enemy.
Now that's a pretty interesting point. The best writers are avid readers, after all.