I live in Hollywoodland and occasionally go to talks and take seminars in my hobby of screen writing. So I've learned a lot about the theory and practice of the art. Some of it translates directly into fiction writing, some indirectly. (And some not at all.) Story telling is essentially the same regardless of the medium.
The following helps me a lot when I write a story. Maybe it'll help you. Maybe not.
A screen play tells a story with "shots" at the most fundamental level. A single camera setup, showing a view of a subject. Most often the subject is moving, movies being about movement.
Even when the subject is unmoving (as in a view of a moment during a sunrise) the overall sense of several related shots is of movement: the sun slowly rising. So the second level of a play is the "scenelet": a big chunk of the overall scene.
"Scenes" are several shots/scenelets strung together. They have a definite space/time start point and end point.
"Sequences" are several related scenes. Maybe a chase made up of intercut scenes from the viewpoints of the chaser and the chased.
Finally comes several sequences which make up an "act."
A stage play usually has three acts, or four acts with an intermission in the middle. TV plays often have a short "tease" act and a "tag" act at the start and finish of the story. A half hour TV play often has three middle acts, an hour TV play often has six middle acts. (Gotta make way for commercials, you know.) A screen play is on average two hours, so it has about a dozen acts.
I'll bet you know all this, subconsciously at least. You've watched many thousands of stories, large and small. Your subconscious is an absolute genius about learning and organizing knowledge so that you can use it instantly and intuitively.
That's how we create stories, intuitively, rarely thinking about structure. When we do the result may be disastrous. A centipede could never crawl if it had to control each leg's actions consciously.
Still, I occasionally stop a few moments after a page or half page and wonder: Did my paragraphs/shots show movement of some kind? Maybe physical movement, maybe non-physical movement?
When I write a story I use this to help me organize my thoughts. I almost literally see a play and transcribe it. A shot becomes a paragraph, for instance. A sequence becomes a chapter, and so on. This has the advantage that when a story is done it's mostly "shown."
Though I may summarize some scenelets or scenes, if they are not important enough to be fleshed out. I "tell" them, not "show" them. Or if a scenelet/scene is really unimportant, and can be guessed by my readers, I'll leave them out entirely, the literary equivalent of a jump cut in a movie.
Plays and novels are two art forms, so this approach is only a handy tool. Novels have several advantages over plays. Among them we can get inside someone's head, which is very hard to do in a play.
What about you? Do you do something similar?
The following helps me a lot when I write a story. Maybe it'll help you. Maybe not.
________________________
A screen play tells a story with "shots" at the most fundamental level. A single camera setup, showing a view of a subject. Most often the subject is moving, movies being about movement.
Even when the subject is unmoving (as in a view of a moment during a sunrise) the overall sense of several related shots is of movement: the sun slowly rising. So the second level of a play is the "scenelet": a big chunk of the overall scene.
"Scenes" are several shots/scenelets strung together. They have a definite space/time start point and end point.
"Sequences" are several related scenes. Maybe a chase made up of intercut scenes from the viewpoints of the chaser and the chased.
Finally comes several sequences which make up an "act."
________________________
A stage play usually has three acts, or four acts with an intermission in the middle. TV plays often have a short "tease" act and a "tag" act at the start and finish of the story. A half hour TV play often has three middle acts, an hour TV play often has six middle acts. (Gotta make way for commercials, you know.) A screen play is on average two hours, so it has about a dozen acts.
I'll bet you know all this, subconsciously at least. You've watched many thousands of stories, large and small. Your subconscious is an absolute genius about learning and organizing knowledge so that you can use it instantly and intuitively.
That's how we create stories, intuitively, rarely thinking about structure. When we do the result may be disastrous. A centipede could never crawl if it had to control each leg's actions consciously.
Still, I occasionally stop a few moments after a page or half page and wonder: Did my paragraphs/shots show movement of some kind? Maybe physical movement, maybe non-physical movement?
________________________
When I write a story I use this to help me organize my thoughts. I almost literally see a play and transcribe it. A shot becomes a paragraph, for instance. A sequence becomes a chapter, and so on. This has the advantage that when a story is done it's mostly "shown."
Though I may summarize some scenelets or scenes, if they are not important enough to be fleshed out. I "tell" them, not "show" them. Or if a scenelet/scene is really unimportant, and can be guessed by my readers, I'll leave them out entirely, the literary equivalent of a jump cut in a movie.
Plays and novels are two art forms, so this approach is only a handy tool. Novels have several advantages over plays. Among them we can get inside someone's head, which is very hard to do in a play.
What about you? Do you do something similar?
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