#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.
#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
Kaynak için ise buyrun.
Listedeki maddeler gerçekten faydalı, roman olsun, senaryo olsun her türlü hikaye oluşturmada izlenmesi gereken maddeler.
Ama bu adreste, pixar çalışanı Stephan Vladimir Bugaj'dan kendisine gelen bir e-posta'yı hepimizin okuması için yayınlamışlar.(tamam, başlıkta mektup demiş olabilirim ama öyle daha bir hoş başlık oldu sanki.) Postada Bugaj bu 22 maddeyi detaylı anlattığı, incelediği bir pdf oluşturduğunun haberini vermiş. Bu belki de hikaye, karakter yaratmada başucu olacak bir kitap olmuş benim gözümde, özellikle Pixar filmlerinin başarılarını düşününce, kesinlikle altın değerinde. Üstelik sadece 75 sayfa ki, göz açıp kapayana kadar bitiyor. Kitaba aşağıdan ulaşabilirsiniz.
Pixar's 22 Rules of Story
Ayrıca bir fikir vermesi açısından, zaten diğer sitede paylaşılmış diye, ben de buraya eklemek istedim.
Rule 16:
What are the stakes? Give us reason to root
for the character. What happens if they
don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
This particular rule is so essential it probably should be
rule #1, because it is the most character-centric statement
of the idea: “what is the story about?”
What the character will lose if she is unable to overcome
all obstacles, internal and external, is the main tension
line of the entire story. It’s this impending possibility
of loss that will make an audience sympathetic to a
character, even one who is a bit of a bastard. The stakes
are the core of the story, the palpable outcome of failing
to resolve the central question.
Stacking the odds against the protagonist makes the
audience not only feel more empathy towards her, but it
also makes a victory feel earned (or, in the case of a
tragedy, a failure feel justified).
A common question producers and other professionals ask
about stories is “why this particular character in this
particular situation at this particular time?” What they’re
really asking is “what are the stakes?”
The protagonist’s flaw, her wrong choices, the actions of
any external opponents, and all the external circumstances
should be obstacles that block or divert the protagonist
from resolving the central question in their favor.
Internal obstacles — character flaws and the bad decisions
they lead to — are also crucial.
Yet the protagonist, however flawed, still needs to be
deeply invested in her own success so that the audience
cares not only about that victory itself, but also about
her being able to change in the ways necessary to win.
So the more the protagonist has to lose, the more the
audience will get invested in her fate. And the greater the
obstacles to success, the more likely she is to lose.
Each step the character takes away from success, and
towards the doom scenario, raises the stakes and makes the
audience more excited about getting to the resolution.
So does broadening the risk, a common, melodramatic example of
which is the protagonist discovering that not only will she
die if she fails, but “life as we know it will cease”.
Active, intelligent opponents are usually the most
compelling obstacles, and they work best when they have
opposing stakes. Opponents need to be equally as invested
in their own success as the protagonist is, and therefore
determined to bring about the protagonist’s failure in
order to achieve their own goals.
Most importantly, the opponents need to have the advantage.
If the advantage is too great, the protagonist needs to
acquire allies in order to make a successful outcome (if
there is one) believable, but it’s far worse for the
dramatic tension if the opponents are too weak to pose a
credible threat to the protagonist.
This is a particular problem with “hack n’ slash” action
films where sheer numbers of dumb, aimless, weak opponents
tries (usually quite unsuccessfully) to make-up for an
intelligent, driven, strong central opponent.
Quantity alone doesn’t make the odds greater, opposing
strength does. If a single soldier in a Sherman Tank goes
up against a thousand Roman legionnaires, the audience
won’t be terribly concerned about that tanker’s fate
despite the number of opponents.
But if a single Roman legionnaire goes up against a squad
of Sherman Tanks, the odds are very much stacked against
the Roman and an audience will be intrigued to find out if
he’ll somehow prevail (or, given most audience members’
exposure to story trends in our culture, how he’ll
prevail).
It’s also important that how the character overcomes these
seemingly insurmountable odds be motivated by that
character’s personality, take advantage of her strengths,
and be plausible -- not necessarily realistic, but
believable and consistent with the story world you’ve
created.
Making the character’s victory (or defeat) too sudden,
spurious, or simple will undermine all the tension you’ve
worked to create up to that point, wiping it all away in
one bad choice. The victory moment must be a struggle,
and a narrow victory is generally more sympathetic than an
overwhelming one (of course there are exceptions).
Keeping that tension going until the very moment of the
protagonist’s victory will enable the audience to stay on
board with the character until her plight is ultimately
resolved. The moment things start going overwhelmingly in
favor of the protagonist there’s only a moment left before
the audience will just sigh and say “okay, I get it, she’s
going to prevail”.
And if the protagonist will be defeated in the end, the
audience will feel the tragedy more acutely if there was a
moment of true hope she might prevail rather than just
mowing her down with overwhelming opposing forces.
Ultimately the stakes are the heart of both story and
character, and without clearly stating what they are the
audience will become lost and disaffected.
Even worse, if you don’t know what the stakes are you will
end up creating a story that is muddled and just kills time
until its conclusion.
This is why a lot of writing advice says to start at the
end: all the conflict in the story flows backwards from the
resolution of the stakes question. Knowing the conclusion
of the story and how the protagonist and opponent are each
changed in the end will enable you to make sure that every
moment in the story is a building block towards resolving
the stakes, not “just business”.
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