Read it here!

I also have thoughts in my head that have bounced around for decades, but mine are mostly angry diatribes I wish I had delivered when I had the chance. My enemies have escaped, and now there is only the torment left.

The writing process refers to the steps taken and techniques used to go from idea to manuscript. It’s one thing to be able to connect the thoughts in your mind with the raw horsepower of typing to generate words per minute, pages per day, and stories told. If generate lots of horsepower but the stories make no sense, or are not entertaining, then you may as well drive your car off a cliff. (Please don’t drive off a cliff, regardless of your ability to write stories.)

This is an overview of the main writing processes:

• Explore and Pursue — Start writing, pursue what comes out of your mind. You may hit on the opening line that leads to a great story, or you may not find that opening until you are a year into something else, but at least you’ll know it came from your heart.
• Topic outline — Hierarchical list of the topics to be covered in the discourse, dominated by the story events.
• Narrative outline — Description of the story events, including character studies and all plot points.
• Deep character studies — Identify and explore all aspects of the primary characters, and urge the story and plot from character interactions. This is best explained by Noah Lukeman.
• Dramatica Analysis — Use of Dramatica story guides which weaves multiple plot aspects (character interactions, themes, and plot events).
• Mini-movies — Chris Soth’s technique of eight major plot segments, and the continuous and generous use of maintaining tension by playing hope versus fear.
• Anatomy of Story — John Truby’s masterpiece of masterpiece analysis that breaks down all the elements of great story telling, and explains how to put them back together again.

This is the order in which I have developed my writing process. The dirty little secret of these approaches is that they all can, and probably should, be used for every story. The last three, Dramatica, Mini Movies, and Anatomy of Story, are not all that different from each other, and truly one or another may work better for you, so I urge you to research and investigate them all.

I studied and used Dramatica for years. The most likely reason it didn’t work out well for me is because I was immature at the time, and did not have good enough ideas or habits to develop stories.

I use a combination of the last two. mini movies are useful for pacing and keeping the tension during the story; anatomy of story is especially good for knowing what needs to be in the story.

A bit of background: the story was borne of a conversation about story concepts. We wanted to do a comedy, and we wanted it to be either a mafia story or a cop story. I proposed a number of premises to Glass Cage, and together we settled on “unnamed project.” I then went about the business of refining the premise, inventing characters, and dreaming up potential story lines. I’m a big fan of Noah Lukeman‘s discussions about creating story, so I pursued character studies, allowed those to change the story, and then I tweaked and changed all the elements until I got to what seemed a good approach.

I put the project on hiatus for several months while I finished a romantic comedy. During that time, I had unnamed project on my mind, and the character’s voices spoke to me at various times. This itself is another technique–allowing a story to grow on its own in the recesses of your mind. I started the story a number of times, but it fell flat and I abandoned the efforts quickly. Also during this time, I was learning about the Beat Sheet from Nail your Novel, and Anatomy of Story, and worked with Steve Kaplan. (This is turning into another whorish post, but all these people are a great influence!)

At last, I began to focus my attention on “unnamed project.” The entire Anatomy of Story work has taken almost a month, with this last week the most demanding, because “Scene Weaving” calls into question all the work you’ve done previously, and you may have to adjust your ideas. It’s frustrating and humbling. But now that I’ve hammered unnamed project into a cohesive outline, I’m surprised at the result and anxious to get started with the first draft.

But first, I must revise my romantic comedy for a few contests.

Very, very handy.

I’ve blathered before about Truby’s Anatomy of Story, and it’s the combination of his Scene Weave exercise with the Beat Sheet that worked for me last month. Granted, it was a story I’ve wrestled with for 18 months, but with the revised scene weave built in Beat Sheet format, AND mounted on a poster board and placed above my desk for constant reference, I cranked through the new version. It’s better than ever.

I’m working on a new story for Glass Cage Productions, based on an idea we conceived last summer. I was panicked for a while because the evolving story had left the premise, but the new premise is much improved thanks to what I learned from Steve Kaplan.

So today I will work on the new beat sheet/scene weave. It may take a week to get it right, but it’ll be smooth sailing after that!

I finally read their front page and, by gosh, there’s an interesting article there about some of the common story structures for screenplays. I had been thinking about doing something similar, but I plan on writing about the process of developing story. Structure is one part of that. Still, I will break down Chris Soth’s mini-movie method and Truby’s Anatomy of Story, when I do, into their structural components.

Meanwhile, bookmark Trilane.

Watch the interview here.

This is a list of some of my favorites:

• Addams Family Values
• Animal House
• Back to School
• Beetle Juice
• Caddy Shack
• Easy Money
• George of the Jungle
• The Quest for the Holy Grail

I was worried because movies with beautiful people have a challenge in that sometimes it’s hard to feel sorry for the really good looking people because, regardless of circumstances, they’re probably going to be good looking. So the filmmakers did a clever thing in keeping total success slightly out of their reach.

I was relieved to see that Paul Rudd’s character makes his own mess. In my book, that leads to better humor. If there’s a true flaw, it’s that he isn’t actively working on achieving something, except maybe getting along with his family. That’s fine, but it isn’t made clear until the third act.

In my mind, it falls into the same place I store “Little Miss Sunshine” and “The Fisher King” for the type of jokes, and the style of delivery. In terms of structure, I think when Paul’s character goes back to prison, it’s in the same place as when Alan Arkin’s character dies of an overdose in “Little Miss Sunshine,” or Robin Williams’s character goes back to the asylum in “The Fisher King.” I think they could have elevated the tension a bit with Paul’s character in prison, and landed a few more jokes. It wasn’t bad–far from it–but I think they might have left some money on the table.

And I have to say that Steve Coogan was funny naked.