Kenneth Lonergan on structure

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  • Re: Kenneth Lonergan on structure

    Originally posted by Cyfress View Post
    So, why did the professor feel that way? Just curious.
    It was just something he noticed, and he said it's something we should be aware of and look for. He wasn't a screenwriting professor, he taught theory, genre, history and analysis. I probably put too much weight on something he just mentioned in passing.
    Just my 2 cents, your mileage may vary.

    -Steve Trautmann
    3rd & Fairfax: The WGAW Podcast

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    • Re: Kenneth Lonergan on structure

      It really stands true in most films. There needs to be that event in the middle that either intros a new character, raises the stakes, or shifts the heros action.

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      • Re: Kenneth Lonergan on structure

        Originally posted by JeffLowell View Post
        Screenwriting isn't becoming a doctor. You don't need a decade of school and study. If you're a storyteller, have a voice, and can come up with compelling stories, it's not an impossible nut to crack. You don't need to slowly learn the craft by aping some structure or paradigm.
        All that really needs to be said on this subject.
        STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I'm a wannabe, take whatever I write with a huge grain of salt.

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        • Re: Kenneth Lonergan on structure

          Jugglers use at least three things to make their routine work to their best advantage.

          Whether three acts or five acts, Shakespeare made good use of acts; his work still stands.

          On forum threads, I hesitate to use the word “Acts” for the reactions it receives that are similar to those of live Trematodes under a light field microscope.

          Screenplays need an Inciting Incident, Trials & Tribulations, and a Resolution. So do other storytelling mediums such as novels, novellas, and short stories, but they have the luxury of writing for the mind's eye and not the film camera, as well as fewer constraints as to number of pages and how they may achieve their various effects.

          Without following any rigid structural plot points in my screenplays, my method is to use an A Storyline, a B Storyline, and a C Storyline where the B and C storylines support the telling of the A Storyline.

          Jugglers use at least three things to make their routine work to their best advantage. I, too, juggle at least three storylines at once when I write a screenplay.

          Perhaps there's a new movie character in this for the DC Comics peeps where Batman — in his never-ending quest to rid the world of crime and criminals — “goes after” The Juggler. Just like my life or any other story, it definitely will have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
          Last edited by Clint Hill; 03-17-2017, 02:08 PM.
          “Nothing is what rocks dream about” ― Aristotle

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          • Re: Kenneth Lonergan on structure

            Originally posted by figment View Post
            I'm not complaining. But reading Jeff's post has left me questioning -- Is this just me? Is this everyone? What are your experiences?
            I said it's not impossible, but it's also not easy.

            Feature writing is almost certainly more difficult. There are just fewer movies made, and a lot of them are huge budget affairs that don't tend to look to new writers.

            But there have never been as many television jobs as there are now. I saw a figure recently - I may be off by a little - that there are close to 500 scripted shows. That's insane. That's probably ten times as many as there were when I broke in.

            But my larger point is that disappearing down a rabbit hole of aping different paradigms isn't usually the route to success. Watch movies/shows. Read movies/shows. Write movies/shows.

            And I don't know if this book exists, but if it doesn't someone should write it: the idea for a movie (or a tv show) is the single most important factor in determining whether or not it sells. A great idea can sell the script faster than anything.

            People spend so much time cranking an average (or bad!) idea through Truby's seventeen Save The Cat Fields formula steps, and ending up with predictably plotted shit.

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            • Re: Kenneth Lonergan on structure

              Anybody doing that has no concept of the craftmanship that goes into writing something resonating.

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              • Re: Kenneth Lonergan on structure

                Originally posted by JeffLowell View Post
                And I don't know if this book exists, but if it doesn't someone should write it: the idea for a movie (or a tv show) is the single most important factor in determining whether or not it sells. A great idea can sell the script faster than anything.
                There are a ton of those books! Google: creating a movie idea.

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                • Re: Kenneth Lonergan on structure

                  i think of a story like JAWS where you have sort of a timid cop who seems to be running away from his nypd job to take a job as a police chief on this small island with no crime (where a cop can make a difference, he tells hooper, while he is drunk because he is scared of the water), and he is literally pulled to his greatest fear (the ocean, where now a monster is swimming in it) when the kintner kid is eaten, and yada yada yada, at the end brody is on a sinking boat, aiming in at the shark with a rifle as it has pieces of quint and a scuba tank stuck in its large teeth and probably hooper in its stomach, and he shoots the shark, it blows up, hooper survives, and they paddle back to shore. i think it is easy to go over a story like that and see why it worked. it seems so easy. anyone could do it.

                  but what is hard is writing a story like that...that works. structure is connected to so much stuff...dependent on so much stuff, needs to be shaky at all times or not, about to fall apart or not, unreliable at times or not, circling like eagles at times or at other times, buzzards, etc. maybe something between a jackson pollock painting and a paint by numbers work of art...staying in the lines and all that.

                  i've wondered what the ending of THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA would have read like, if Hemingway had the fisherman die out on the ocean, maybe his boat floating into shore without him in it, or him dead in it, and the great fish strapped to the side, not eaten by sharks. i wonder if he considered such an ending.

                  i think he absolutely did not. but could be wrong, of course.
                  Last edited by AnconRanger; 03-21-2017, 06:32 PM.

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