Post by James on Jul 4, 2008 22:49:30 GMT -5
Get stuck in your writing? Here's something I found that might help:
www.indietalk.com/archive/index.php/t-4026.html
This is a few years old and directed more towards screenplays, but it seems to me like it can work in general writing too.
I'd like to highlight this one suggestion out as well:
clive
05-04-2004, 02:27 PM
Most screenplay concepts come with a couple of really clear scenes. I have a friend who always knows how his will start and end, but not what happens in the middle. With me, it's always almost always a key moment for the main character, usually related to a philosophical exploration of morality.
However, this then has to be translated into a whole story, which to be fair, is the hard part.
Thre are two tools that help with this:
1) The beat sheet
2) The treatment
The beat sheet is the story broken down into events, described in single sentences. For example
Pongo and Purdy the Dalmations have a litter of dalmation puppies
Cruella DeVille wants to buy the puppies, but the owners won't sell
Cruella hire two incompetent burglars to steal the pupies
Purdy is very unhappy, so Pongo sets off to find and rescue the puppies
etc (Hmm, if I replace the word puppy with word Nemo does this still work?)
Now the great thing about this, is that you can write it from any direction. You can start from a scene in the middle and work out what must have happened before this scene, or you can int he normal direction to the end. In each case you just work out what happened before or after the event you already know about. The trick is to remember that each scene hould happen because of what happened previously.
The great thing about this approach, is you can do it in a note book, pretty much anywhere and you can rewrite the story dozens of times in a relatively small space of time.
A good trick is to transfer the beats onto individual file cards, you can then change the order of the scenes and see what it looks like. it also makes it easy to weave in subplots.
Once you're happy with you beat sheet, fire up the wordprocessor, take each of the beats and write a descriptive paragraph of what happens, how the characters react and what the film looks like. This is your first draft treatment
If your beat sheet runs to about two pages, 12 point courier single spaced and your treatment runs at between 10 and 30 pages, then you've probably got a feature length story.
All you have to do next is fire up Final Draft, look at the description you wrote in your treatment, describe the locations and action, write down what the characters say as dialogue and it should top out somewhere about the 120 page mark.
On the other hand, you could just find someone who likes doing this stuff to write it for you. In my opinion it's more fun to write it yourself.
www.indietalk.com/archive/index.php/t-4026.html
This is a few years old and directed more towards screenplays, but it seems to me like it can work in general writing too.
I'd like to highlight this one suggestion out as well:
clive
05-04-2004, 02:27 PM
Most screenplay concepts come with a couple of really clear scenes. I have a friend who always knows how his will start and end, but not what happens in the middle. With me, it's always almost always a key moment for the main character, usually related to a philosophical exploration of morality.
However, this then has to be translated into a whole story, which to be fair, is the hard part.
Thre are two tools that help with this:
1) The beat sheet
2) The treatment
The beat sheet is the story broken down into events, described in single sentences. For example
Pongo and Purdy the Dalmations have a litter of dalmation puppies
Cruella DeVille wants to buy the puppies, but the owners won't sell
Cruella hire two incompetent burglars to steal the pupies
Purdy is very unhappy, so Pongo sets off to find and rescue the puppies
etc (Hmm, if I replace the word puppy with word Nemo does this still work?)
Now the great thing about this, is that you can write it from any direction. You can start from a scene in the middle and work out what must have happened before this scene, or you can int he normal direction to the end. In each case you just work out what happened before or after the event you already know about. The trick is to remember that each scene hould happen because of what happened previously.
The great thing about this approach, is you can do it in a note book, pretty much anywhere and you can rewrite the story dozens of times in a relatively small space of time.
A good trick is to transfer the beats onto individual file cards, you can then change the order of the scenes and see what it looks like. it also makes it easy to weave in subplots.
Once you're happy with you beat sheet, fire up the wordprocessor, take each of the beats and write a descriptive paragraph of what happens, how the characters react and what the film looks like. This is your first draft treatment
If your beat sheet runs to about two pages, 12 point courier single spaced and your treatment runs at between 10 and 30 pages, then you've probably got a feature length story.
All you have to do next is fire up Final Draft, look at the description you wrote in your treatment, describe the locations and action, write down what the characters say as dialogue and it should top out somewhere about the 120 page mark.
On the other hand, you could just find someone who likes doing this stuff to write it for you. In my opinion it's more fun to write it yourself.