6 | Mastering Structure In Your Screenplay: Part I

Welcome to popcorn talk featuring movie discussion news and interviews popcorn talk we talk movies Hey guys thanks so much for joining us again this week at the screenwriting life we love having you And as we continue to write everything out we're bringing you the show remotely corona corona life today as we mentioned last week we're going to talk to you about structure and the reason we thought we needed to do this was um you know everybody has different ideas of what structure is to them and we decided it was important that you guys know when you're and I say the word structure kind of what we mean and what that means in our brain so just as a base just to lay it down for everyone so that's what we're going to talk about today uh but first we're going to do our section on what power week was morian how was your week well I want to start by saying that uh right now i'm experiencing some brownouts in my house so if uh the power goes out then my internet goes out so make it'll be the make show today so i just i couldn't get my zoom to work on my computer so i'm doing it off my phone and someone keeps texting me a million texts and interrupting of a so if you see me put my finger forward into your face in the camera that's because i'm trying to get rid of the deck so sorry that's life that is the role with the punches yeah that is the kind of week you have you know that is life right now yeah especially right now so my week i you know i i had a general on zoom which was interesting right uh you know and i love meetings i love getting dressed for meetings and picking out what i'm aware and go with there and getting there early because you know i always get nervous i need to find parking and then meeting someone in person and reading the the vibe in the room so like a zoom general it was really hard for me uh you know sort of making sure that i was picking up on who they were and they were picking up on who i was and making sure i wasn't shouting at my computer you know it's it's a whole it's a whole new skill set i have to learn um and i have some more coming up so um it'll be fun it's hard right because you can't energetically it's learning a new way to pick up energy and are they interested are they not like i'm thinking of pitching something and i'm really thinking about how do you do that it's gonna be it'll be interesting to see how we adapt yeah we'll give you any we'll give you any clues audience as we go forward i think what i realized is i need to have the camera set farther back so more of my body is in frame and not just my head because oh my god so i should move it back just watch me right now because um the person i had the general with had it set so i could see from like her whole torso and so i was picking up on body language and posture and so i could read her a little better but i was just um sort of shoulders and up realizing oh i'm closing off a huge part of how i communicate so just sort of sort of figuring that out um and then i uh i am working on this animated project so i got to do art review so i got to give notes which was awesome and then i had some working sessions on that project and then i got notes on another project uh and so that was what it was notes yeah i got notes um and then um you know i've i've been really i've been struggling through my weeks right the Monday start out good Tuesdays okay i Wednesday i have like a full nope day like nope i'm not doing anything i'm not cleaning the kitchen i'm the homeschooling and then Thursdays generally i have this weird crash and yesterday was really bad and i was trying to uh sort of dig into it and articulate what it is and sort of write down all my fears and name it and it comes down to a lot of the stuff i feel as a writer every day i think like comparing myself to other people i'm not measuring up fear of connecting to the emotion of my character because then all of my emotes and will come and gobble me up right behind it but right now it feels so exacerbated and so much bigger so yesterday was just the day of terrible negative self-talk oh no right and so i did all the things i do i reached out to people i wrote a lot of real nonsense words i don't even know what i was writing matter you wrote that's that's important yeah so it's i this is really hard for people you know i have anxiety and depression i have some PTSD around health stuff that happens in my family so this is particularly scary as i'm sure a lot of people are experiencing and it just it's making it hard to see through am i doing enough am i doing not enough is the work i'm doing good enough you know and is this an excuse is this just like i'm okay enough as i am existing surviving so it's for me as a writer i always kind of live in that space you know the the emotional turmoil of it so this is challenging me in a lot of mental health ways so i am you know leaning on all my tools but it's still really hard as i'm sure it's a lot it's hard we're so isolated yeah it is it it's hard normally just to be a writer and any kind of artist and now but it is all exacerbated and i'm trying to see it as an opportunity to hone some skills in terms of all that stuff being up so big right now just the skill of and by the way i don't have it i'm trying to get it um okay which voice am i listening to right now right and how do i turn down the volume on the negative voice and here the bigger older wiser you know beyond your ego voice that is as old as the universe that knows that you're valuable that knows that no matter what you write today or what note you get or don't get your value is not actually attached to that that is a completely separate thing outside of you it's very hard to attach to that voice and sometimes the only way i can get there is by writing because somehow getting into your character and your storytelling i think that is a more ancient beautiful creative part of universe so it's that's where i'm going but i'm also then going to eat the donut so either way so many donuts so many chips i mean you know i i'm trust me i've got my uh issues uh in terms of where we all hide but um sugar is my favorite go to um especially with bread but um i hear you uh i i wanted to share two phrases i heard this week that i thought were so great um one was um i heard that um if you know when things are or people are in your life and they are challenging you um this psychiatrist said it was uh it was like a podcasty kind of thing and he said um he thinks of it as a tor mentor to think of it tor mentor to break up that word and to hear the word mentor in it that these challenging things are coming to mentor you and that your tor mentor is actually mentoring it is bringing a life lesson it's bringing something that can help you evolve and i thought that was such a great word and the other one i was talking to a great writer his name is Justin Marks and um i had a zoom with him and he mentioned that when he was working as a writer with John Favreau they were at a point um in the writing process where John Favreau said dude you just have to go and hug the cactus and i was like oh my god that is so amazing but at every point in the writing process you just sometimes have to go hug the cactus and you're gonna get all the needles in your arms and it is just gonna happen and i mean think about it you guys that's like John Favreau like one of the you know most accomplished talented people and he still sees it as hugging the cactus you know it's not about ability it's not about talent it's about process this is the process because we are doing the big deep work the cathartic artist work is hugging a cactus i just love that phrase so um i think that applies to so much in life sometimes you just gotta hug the cactus um i feel like both those things the tormentor and hugging the cactus are both so inspiring and deeply deeply terrifying and upsetting oh no there's also a big being spying but but but because it's so challenging right because it's like oh but like the intellectual idea of doing it sounds great yes i love that emotionally the idea is like core terrifying right like i know but because you have to get through to the other side when you get through to the other side and you hug the cactus you go oh it wasn't that bad it's like being so afraid for the shocked and then you're like oh my god the shot wasn't even that bad but you spend so much energy avoiding the shocked right i mean i my husband teased me all the time because do not talk to me on the way to the airport because my anxiety is so high get not in that plane and as soon as i'm on the plane and they shut the door i'm like oh well okay we're done we're in where's nothing you can do about it my anxiety completely goes away meaning with sometimes the thing that you are amping up about is actually stopping the writing and you get into a loop and so you just have to jump off the cliff and the more you jump off every day the easier that jump gets and you start to realize it's not far it okay there are days that it's far i'm not gonna lie there's days that you're like oh my god this going i'm just going down and down on the writing but that's that's that's the process so i i hope you guys just don't feel alone I hear that it's emotional and hard, but you know, you're not alone from the top to the bottom of experience. Everybody is in the same boat. On my projects this week I got notes and I realized, oh, I really, something really important about myself in terms of the tormentor part of it. I, they were really good notes, by the way. It wasn't the quality of the notes and the ideas. I just realized that emotionally I need time. Number one, as I'm waiting for the person to read, my brain kind of fractures and it's very hard for me to write because some part of my brain is unconsciously working on, do they like it? Are they going to blow it up? If they blow it up, what are we going to do? Like how much time do we have? Like I just start to, some part of my brain is moving and spinning. And then once the notes come in, and again, these were perfectly fine notes, smart notes. If anything, I was like, oh, I should have thought of that. I still need a day before I start writing, just to let it soak in. And sometimes I don't have that time because I might be on a, on a deadline, but it was good to know that about myself, right? And not judge myself, but that's how my brain processes notes and getting feedback, and even a little bit of space up front and on the back end. And that's just what I'm going to have to schedule in because that's how my, that's how my brain processes. And then I thought, feel fine as soon as I start writing, I'm like, okay, I'm dealing with it now. I'm starting to deal with it. And it always gets better. So meaning the notes, whether you like them or not, they challenge you to make it better. And the last thing I'd say about my week that I wanted to share with you guys was, I'm really trying to carve out space for my passion project, which, and I realized it helped to have a deadline, as I've talked about. And so I've got a friend to give me a deadline, which is today. And the other one was, I realized I was feeling frozen about it because I was so worried that I was wasting time on it by choosing the wrong story idea that I wanted to do. Meaning I'm trying to outline a pilot and it's from a book. So I really have to make some big choices about what goes in this pilot and what goes later. And how do you do it visually on on screen versus internally in the book? And I have to make some big choices. And I got so frozen about making the choice, but it's what if it's wrong. And I'm wasting all my time doing this. And it's wrong. And then I was like, so I'm not doing it. Like either way, I'm wasting time. And it just became this very strange loop. And I just realized I had to just keep going over what I'm sure is in there. And just tossing in ideas to see, I just want to have to pick people. I'm going to just have to pick and do an outline. And if it's wrong, quote unquote, and there's no such thing, because it's just information. It's so funny taking my own advice is what I guess I'm trying to say. I just have to not worry about it being wrong and do and know that I have five more drafts of this to like Rubik's Cube it, right? Like keep turning it and turning it and turning it until I feel my gut. Oh, that's right. And then give it to people and get notes. And do it all over again. And again, so those are the things in my week that I thought might be shareable, interesting somehow to you guys. So that's our week, right? Yes. That's the week. And before we get started talking about Sturkshire, we did want to thank everybody for listening to the show. And for going to Apple Podcasts and leaving reviews, we got some wonderful reviews. And so just wanted to shout out some people who left us comments. Allie James and Kegan and LA Scribe who took the time to listen and give us five star reviews and write reviews. And we love that because we love doing this show and the more positive reviews we get on Apple Podcasts, I think I'm super tech scrubby. I don't know. Yes, that's right. The more people notice the show, the more traffic we get, and then we can continue to do it. Yes. So we want to keep doing it. We also have our Facebook page where you can come and talk to us. You can talk to us by our emailing us to the screenwriting life on Gmail at gmail.com. We really do read it all. We love hearing your questions. We're going to answer as many as we can. And it helps us to know working for you. Like what is helping you? We can do more of. And so we're enjoying ourselves and one keep doing it. So keep talking to us people. Keep talking to us. Let's talk about structure. Again, there's a lot of different ways to think about structure. There's no right or wrong. It's kind of whatever works for you. I'm we're going over how Lori and I use structure in our writing as a base for you guys. When we throw out that word to have a sense of what we mean. For more advanced writers, this will be stuff that you can't quote no. But honestly, even I and preparing for this was like, oh right. I should think about that. It's stuff that you have to constantly come back to over and over and over. There it's a they're very deep wells. So I hope that this is helpful for you guys. You know, for myself, and I think I can speak for Lauren, character is structure and structure is character. To me, structure is in something that's outside of the character that you're laying on top of them. Structure is coming from the center of the character and their evolution. And the structure is literally just checking in where the character is in that evolution, the points of the character. So that you as a writer can have touch points of tracking that character. So it's still first coming from theme what we talked about because what is theme? Theme is the emotional character transformative, you know, arc or whatever word you want to use. Their transformation is the theme, the thing that they're learning. They're going remember from unconscious to conscious about something very personal and emotional. That movement is structure too, right? Because they're going to start and act one one place and they're going to end and act three in a different place. And act two is how they got there. Act two is the evolution. So as we talk through these structure points, we're talking about character. Every word should go back to how the character sees it. So for example, if you follow heroes journey and you like the word normal world, there's many different words for these things. Let's just use the word normal world. Where are we starting? How are we meeting your character? So in structure terms, I want to know what is the tone? You have to know the tone is being established in act one. We could do five shows on tone. Tone for me means how does it feel? So think about comedy, right? There are so many tones of comedy. Adam Sandler movie is different in tone than a cone brother's comedy, right? There's some tone, right? It's not locked. So the tone is established in act one. We can talk about that more. Just ask if you need some more information about tone. You're going to set up the world, right? So you leave the world around all the time, especially in animation, but in every world, you're setting up a world. To me, it's from how does the character view their world? That is what's important. That is what's essential. How does your main character see the world and taking the taking the audience into the world as the character experiences it? How would they believe the rules of that world are and how they believe themselves and who they are in that world? What can what change can they affect in that world? How does that world act upon them and how do they act in that world? Right? So you're establishing also in act one, what their belief systems are, which again is what I'm talking about. How did they see the world? How are they perceiving it? I want the audience to perceive the world in the same way. We've probably heard a lot of want and need, right? That's another thing you're establishing in act one. What do they think they want versus what do they need? What they need is the emotional transformative, somatic stuff we talked about. What they want is how they might be trying to avoid that because they don't want to go into consciousness about it. They don't really want to change. So the want, actually, they don't understand it is taking them further from that. If you think about inside out, she wants to control it. She wants to keep Riley happy, but what does she need? She needs to allow sadness to come in, and that's what Riley needs. And Joy needs to open up and allow other people and allow Riley to have a greater emotional impact or experience. Right? But that's not what how she starts. She starts. You attach the audience to who the characters want. You can think about what are the characters' strengths? Actors especially love this. Think about what are the characters? What are they good at? Do they have a skill? Right? Boy, actors love this. They love the free work character, have a really strong skill. What are their weaknesses? Some people might say flaw. Jody always taught me that flaws really just something that the character has a great energy towards or a great, almost a positive that they're using kind of in a negative way in order to avoid something. Like that's what your flaws and something you cut out, right? It's something that this character needs to recognize and assimilate back into themselves. That's just how I think about flaw. usually coming from fear or shame. You can think about their mask. You can think about how are they performing to everybody else in the world, but we in the audience get to see behind them, behind that mask, to their vulnerability, right? That's so, so important. What is their vulnerability? What makes them feel vulnerable? Somebody wants that. Go start, go ahead, Maureen, jump in. - Oh, so lately, and I don't know why. I've been thinking a lot about the movie Groundhog Day, right? And all this stuff that you're talking about, we love to him at the beginning of the movie, right? Because he's so funny, and he's kind of, and he's mean with his funny, but we're in his point of view, right? That's his world, right? And so it's, but we like him, even though that's sort of his flaw or weakness, right? That's where keeping people at a distance with this mean humor. - You enjoy it. You enjoy the flaw, and in a weird way, it feels like a strength, right? He's got control of his life. He gets exactly what he wants. That flaw feels like a strength. He has to realize it's a flaw as we realize it's a flaw. - Right. - And I also, you somebody once said to me, what's your character's longing? I thought, oh, that's such a great word, right? What are they longing for deep in their heart? And Andrew Stanton once said to me, people who love characters that are trying, right? They're trying. That's who we're starting. We connect to the effort to that try. So that's all that we're starting, right? That's normal world, in structure, all of that stuff. And then the inciting incident comes usually about page 10, 'cause this is minute marks, pages are minute marks, right? So about 10 minutes in, the inciting incident arise. Well, what is that? It's a disruption in that world that you've now established into that belief system that you've established, into that character that you've established, right? And it's probably triggering all of their survival strategies, or it's triggering that longing, right? In the hero's journey, they call it the call. That's fine, whatever you wanna call it, it is something that's coming in and offering the character the opportunity to raise their consciousness, right? Now listen, what can also come into your life and ask you to raise your consciousness is a tormentor, right? It might be that tormentor walking in. It might start be starting that see a tagine as to who's walking in with the inciting incident. But think of it as a call to action to raise their consciousness. They don't know that, but that's really what's happening, right? And it could be exactly what they want or they could be reluctant about it. That's really about your character. And then we go into the end of Act One, where they, so now we're about 20 minutes in, used to be 30, now it's 20, 25. Now, for me, Act One is so important because it is about setting the goal. And I know that's a word people throw around a lot. Well, why is that important? Because it means the character wants something that you've helped me and the audience want to. That's so important. I can't tell you how many young writers don't get this. I have to watch what the character wants. Otherwise, I'm not with them emotionally. I'm just waiting for them to figure out that they have a dumb watch, right? I want what they want. I have to want it as an audience member or a reader of your script, deepen my bones. Like, you've made it so like, I want it to go get the bank money, right? Whatever it is, right? And so that wants, it also creates a drive for the main character to be active. Think about that, you guys. If it's not a clear plot goal, they can just start reacting to everything you're throwing at them and act too, right? But structurally, by page 25ish, you've set an active main character. I want that, right? So you've set the wants. You've probably hopefully also set the conflict to it. It's not going to be easy, right? If it's a road trip, it's because it's 3,000 miles away. You've got three days to get there and you've got this jerk with you that you've got to drag around. And you've got no car, like all the problems and all the challenges or the actual antagonist, if it's an actual person, that's set, the conflict to the goal because the goal and the conflict create the narrative question. It creates a question in the audience. How are they going to do that? I have to have a question at this end of this act, right? That is, that I'm deeply invested in that question, right? The other thing I really recommend that you have, just as a writing experiment structurally at the end of Act One, is your main relationship set? Do I know who the main character is going to experience act to with? Now, if it's an ensemble, obviously, it's going to be a lot of people. But even in that, the scarecrow really is, right? Kind of a main-- Yeah. --down inside of that ensemble. They're still always unnamed. Who are they transformed? Who is helping them along in Act Two in their transformation? It might be the antagonist. It might be a supporting character. But know who that main relationship is by the end of Act One. And the other thing I'd say about the end of Act One is that there's a plan. There's a plan to how they're going to get the goal. I.E. the yellow brick road. It's not like Glinda arrives and goes, go to the wizard by and leash. Because you'd have to have like scenes of like, well, how do I get there? I don't know. They'd be wandering around, right? She goes, follow the yellow brick road. Why? Because the yellow brick road is Act Two. So when people pitch me their movie ideas, what I'm listening for-- the first thing I'm listening for is, why is it emotional? Why do you care about it? Who's the main character? And what's their transformation? And what do they want? And what's Act Two? What is the yellow brick road? So many people pitch me the first Act. And I don't know what the movie is. Because there's no-- what's the yellow brick road? What are we seeing in Act Two, right? So that's the movie. The movie is the plan of how they're going to get the goal. I'm going to get a bunch of people together to rob the bank. And I'm going to lead it. And we're going to do it by this is how we're going to rob the bank. OK, I got it. Now let's move on and let's watch that happen. Or probably not happen, because it's a bad idea. And the plan can go awry. It's just the spine that we can hang on to as we're-- because it's really, again, it's about structure is about keeping your character active. It's about keeping that evolution moving inside of them and externally. You're constantly pushing them to transform, to behave into a choice, right? So this part of, let's say, the end of Act One, now we're in Act Two to the midpoint. I really like the Save the Cat guy's idea that he called it "funning games." I think that's super great way of thinking of it. It doesn't have to be fun in games, but it's a great way for my brain, meaning-- even it's not a tone thing. They're now moving through from Act One to the midpoint being challenged on that goal and they're starting to evolve. But it feels maybe it's hard, but it's still oddly fun, right? It's still like possible, right? Their conscious is starting to move. That relationship is starting to open them up, right? With the antagonist, the conflict is starting to change them, right? And that's a really-- sometimes there's a point of page 45, like the mid of 2B. So when people say 2B, what they mean is, from the end of Act One to the midpoint is-- I'm sorry, is 2A of Act Two, right? And then 2B is midpoint in the end of Act. That makes sense what I'm saying. So if people throw that out at you, 2A and 2B, that's what they're talking about. No, I think it's important to talk about what we mean when we say an active main character. Right. And the difference between an active and reactive. Yes, choices are being made, but who is driving it, right? And how are they pushing the story forward? Right. And because I think just your character doing something isn't enough, right? It's about that goal. It's about how they are dealing with the conflict. But mostly, I see when I get scripts to read, it's characters reacting to things coming at them. And so, yes, the story is being pushed, but by other forces. Not-- Right. And that just gives a very flat story, because what I'm tuning in for is to see that main character change the plot. The only way your plot should change is because the character made a choice and did something. And therefore, the plot changes. And now, it could be the antagonist responding, or the story responds with, it's OK. Now, forcing your character back into another choice, OK. We'll give him that choice. I'm taking the left road. Well, the left road means this story, right? I mean, think about those kids' books, right? Choose your adventure. Well, that's the main character of literally choosing. It's constant. And that's how we get to know who they are. Right. We get to know who they are because of how they're shaping the plot. Nobody else would have this plot, only this character, given who they are against these challenges, would therefore have this experience in this plot. And I talk to a lot of people who they say, well, this main character doesn't want to change, and so they don't want to do anything. And I just have to say, go watch the movie Blue, which is the most active main character trying not to do anything. It doesn't-- It doesn't watch with me. The masters can do it. And what you're talking about, it takes a master's skill to show a character who is adamantly inactive, but is active because what are they choosing? Inactivity. They are choosing over and over and over. So if you want a character who is adamantly inactive, your job is to beat them up by forcing them to choose an activity over and over and over until they-- you are chipping away at it. Watch the movie Blue, then talk to me about that. So this is it's a really important point and structure helps you know if your character is active because you have to know where they are in the structure points emotionally how where is that evolution happening. So so do you think we should stop here at midpoint and do that as a section tonight in our next podcast. Yeah, we can get to some questions. We'll do part two. I think we have time for a question. Yeah, question. I think so. So we got a question from Anita. And thank you, Meg, for talking us through structure. I always feel like I am reminded of things I'm working on a screenplay right now and I'm in act two and I'm like, oh right, oh right, like I get. So, so Anita asks. First she says she's a little embarrassed to ask this question because it's so basic and I just want to say. Please don't be embarrassed to ask us or anyone else questions because we're all sort of evolving and learning through this as well. Like I just admitted that I'm learning things on this podcast. So. Yeah, there's no basic questions. We all have. There's no such thing. So she said last week, Meg talked about chunking out and outline. Can you go over what chunking is? Well, that's just me in my heart, but what I mean by that is. I don't like I'm using it for this passion project and trying to take this book and make it into a pilot. And I just have so many pieces that I'm literally just in my document chunking out to me is I write whatever comes next in my head. So I'm writing and the character takes over and we go to the right and also in my head and like I have no idea why I'm here. And I write down all the questions I have about it. I write down all of the crazy ideas. Like literally I was right. I was like, well, what if what if he's a ghost? I literally wrote that I was like, what if he's a ghost? What would it go? So would that be a problem? Would that work? And then I write that and then I go, okay, back to where I was. Forget that for a second. And I chunk out. Just all my ideas. Does that make sense? I'm chunking out the big ideas. Think about it. I'm like churning up clay for me to go back and later with the, you know, clear mindset going. No, I'm not going to do the ghost. Or I'm going to go this way and oh, this is a really good question. Here's the question that I asked that I need. So chunking out for me is just when I'm in a process of needing to figure out what I have. What, what is this and doesn't have to be from a source material. It could just be what do I have in my head? Like I have this character. I have this kind of world. There's a thousand questions I have about the world. Write them down. It's just getting it out of my head and the kind of like buzzing of my head onto a piece of paper helps me. See it helps me feel like it's real. Like I can now work with this. I know I can start working with this. And what I do next is I've been, I've chunked out the whole pilot. And now I've got, I've got my whiteboard and I'm going to start using my structure that we talked about as character movement. And I'm going to start working with this character.