How do you know if you have enough story?

Show Notes

In this episode, Chas, Stu and Mel attempt to answer a listener question: “In your own pre-writing process, how do you know you have enough for a feature? And do you have a specific pre-writing method you’re going to?”

Thus we launch into a discussion on our writing processes and the varying usefulness of tools such as log lines, turning points, beat sheets, synopsis, treatments, and scene breakdowns. We also tackle the challenges encountered while developing an idea to first draft, such as balancing the pace of the story, developing distinct character voices, character choices, plot changes, pacing, and thematic clarity.

Is this backmatter? Or is it development tools? You decide! Hahaha.

Thanks so much to Chris Walker for his excellent editing on this episode!

"for me, that’s actually in a lot of ways easier to write. You don’t need to conclude anything. And you can hopefully if you sell it, then you get a room of people and then it’s all of your problems, you know, as opposed to just your problem and you’re banging your head up against the wall on page 80 going, Oh my God, what have have I done?"

— Mel Killingsworth | DZ-106: How do you know if you have enough story?

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As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

Resources

Transcript

Read the transcript for this episode.

Chapters

00:00:00 – Cold Open
00:00:16 – The Listener Question: Do You Have Enough for a Feature?
00:00:30 – › Why features demand a known ending before you start
00:02:38 – Our Development Processes
00:05:20 – › Deciding format before asking if you have enough story
00:09:20 – › Narrative fuel as a concept and when to test it
00:13:42 – › Why the midpoint is the first structural tent pole to find
00:17:35 – › Cards, brainstorming, and capturing scenes before plot
00:20:06 – › How TV bible development differs from feature outlining
00:25:15 – Developing from Concept
00:28:53 – › Mel's four-stage process from voice note to scriptment
00:33:06 – › Theme as the organising principle before you outline
00:38:55 – › Character and plot as mutually dependent in development
00:44:09 – › Loglines from other characters' points of view
00:45:26 – Sponsor: Arc Studio Pro
00:48:12 – Expanding Your Idea
00:51:24 – › Sequence structure as a test for narrative fuel
00:55:34 – › Turning points driven by character decisions, not events
01:00:01 – › When genre dictates how fixed your major beats should be
01:06:19 – › From bullet outline to scriptment: when to move to pages
01:09:36 – › Summarising dialogue scenes before writing them
01:15:29 – Long Short Documents
01:20:34 – › The therefore-and-but test applied to outlines
01:23:07 – › Prose treatments as a low-cost pitch and development tool
01:27:22 – Consistent Problems with First Drafts
01:28:53 – › Pacing imbalance between over-written and under-written sequences
01:31:27 – › Character voice, empathy, and choices that don't land
01:34:28 – Many Thanks to Our Patreons!

Episodes in the Development Tools series

KEY IDEAS

The Midpoint Test for Story Fuel

"For me, often when I'm structuring stuff, the first one of the early questions for me structurally is what is the midpoint? Because the midpoint will help me work out whether I've got enough juice."

— Stu Willis (00:14:22) · Midpoint · Plotting

Theme and Ending as Starting Points

"I don't even bother doing any work on a story until I know how it ends and what theme I'm exploring, whatever theme means to me. So, I need to know those things just from like, you know, doing the dishes or in Mel's case, is going on a run or something like that. I need to have that in my head as inspiration before I even start doing other work."

— Chas Fisher (00:40:15) · Theme · Development

Development Through Multiple Story Tellings

"What I'm constantly trying to do is just tell the story in a bunch of different ways as it slowly gets more and more embellished. [...] A prose version of the story, particularly with a feature, can give you an idea of, is this flowing as a narrative?"

— Stu Willis (01:08:36) · Treatments · Development

Scriptment as Emotional Checkpoint

"The scriptment phase, the idea for a scriptment is this needs to be fun it needs to be interesting I may find at the scriptment phase that this is is boring or I'm not emotionally invested or something like that. And then I haven't really invested enough. I'm very happy to abandon it and it lives in my graveyard folder."

— Mel Killingsworth (00:28:53) · Generative Tools · Development

Questions and Answers Drive Scenes

"I do think it is related to plotting, and you can actually write your plots out like that. There is a question that the audience asks if the character is in pursuit of something that is answered by the end of the scene, and that answer ends up setting up the new scene, right?"

— Stu Willis (00:22:20) · Scene Structure · Plotting

Log Line as Inciting Incident

"I think what is useful about the log line is the traditional kind of log line of when something happens to this protagonist, they must blah, blah, blah, blah. It's essentially, it's talking about your inciting incident."

— Stu Willis (00:12:31) · Loglines · Plotting

Sequence Questions Persist Across Drafts

"I'm talking about the questions being posed in an act or a sequence and how those questions get resolved those to me sure stay very much the same throughout the process."

— Chas Fisher (01:05:30) · Sequences · Rewriting

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DZ-106: How do you know if you have enough story?