This time I'm going to talk about some of the
early work you have to do when you are
creating a story. I'm a firm believer in never
ever going to script until you have worked
out your story to a pretty detailed level.
One of the first things you have to do when
you are getting this stage sorted out is work
out four crucial moments in your story:
1. A moment in the first quarter of your
story when something happens to your hero
that creates a chain of events that runs to
the end of the story.
2. An out of the frying pan moment about 1/4
of the way through the story when the hero
thinks he has achieved his goal, only to find
that he now about to face a much bigger, much
more significant battle.
3. A moment ¾ of the way through the story
when the Hero is absolutely at his or her
lowest, when they are in a position where
it seems impossible they could ever survive
what's being thrown at them.
4. A moment right at the end of the script,
where the Hero and the Villain are face to
face, locked in some kind of supreme battle
from which only one of them can emerge the
victor.
You must never, ever start writing a script
without firm ideas for all these beats in place.
They might change as you go through the
story, but this is the bare minimum you will
need for the road map of the writing journey
you are about to go on.
You need strong active visual images for all
of these moments - it's just about possible
to do the first beat in a conversation,
but you should bend your brain to come up
with moments that involve concrete, real world
actions for the last three.
Remember, you're writing in a visual medium,
and dialogue is pretty well always subordinate
to the pictures.
