The main story arcs
Story Circle
- character in comfort zone
- want and desire something
- enter a strange situation
- adapt to it
- get what they want
- heavy price to pay
- go back to what they’re familiar with
- change
Jokes are structured: beginning → middle → end (laughter)
The joke is funny mainly because of its structure. The structure solves two problems in creation：What information do you want the audience to know? and when?
Structure is important not only for successful jokes, but also for moving movies.
For example, the early version of “Finding Nemo” is actually quite different from the structure of the final film. The director originally wanted to put the two people’s world life of NiMo’s parents as flashbacks in the whole movie. They meet and fall in love and finally move into the house on the steep slope. These small fragments run through the film. But marlin and Nemo’s main line adventure story is basically consistent with the final film. But in this inverted version of the story structure, it’s not until the end that Marlin’s wife, coral, and her eggs were killed by a pike.When the project team played the film in this order, there was a problem that the audience would not like the role of marlin.Re-examining the structure of the story, we find that in this version of the story, the audience has to wait until the end of the film to understand why Marlin over protected his son.
After the adjustment of the story structure, the audience’s view and attitude towards Marlin have been greatly changed, because the audience knew from the beginning of the film that Marlin had lost his love and how brave he was to find Nemo. So they decided to go back to editing and get rid of most of the memories, leaving only the Barracuda attacking the coral eggs being eaten and leaving only Nemo, all of which were edited to the beginning of the film.
Story Curve
The narrative arc (also called the “story arc”) refers to the structure and shape of a story. This arc is made up of the events in your story — the sequence of occurrences in the plot — and determines the peaks and plateaus that set the pace. The narrative arc is a graphical representation of the organizational structure of events or stories in narrative texts. It is more intuitive to use narrative arcs to express the nature of events. In the narrative arc, the horizontal axis represents the time of the story, and the vertical axis represents the development and change of the story.
For a complete story, the narrative arc can be divided into five stages to show the development and change of the story. The first stage is elaboration or background. The author should tell the readers who is the protagonist of the story, introduce the background of the story, and make an account of the impending difficulties. The second stage is the rising stage, that is, the unfolding of the story. It can weave the protagonist’s efforts to achieve the goal, the protagonist’s confusion, forbearance and persistence in the process, and the foreshadowing suspense before the crisis, which are the process of the characters falling into difficulties and deepening layers by layers, and the accumulation process of the characters’ action and emotional strength. The third stage is crisis, which is the peak of the narrative arc and the action or decision taken by the characters in the face of severe difficulties. The fourth stage is the climax, in which the characters will take action on the crisis, and the climax is a series of events in which the characters solve the crisis. The fifth stage is the descent action / ending, and the story slows down to the end.
Finding NEMO
- There is a fish named Marlin who cherishes his son very much. Marlin did her best to protect Nemo, and she lived a peaceful life for many years.
2. Because Marlin thinks that the sea is full of danger, so he does not let Nemo leave himself, but Nemo yearns for the outside world.
3. Until one day, Nemo was taken away by a deep-water diver.
4. Marlin wants to leave the safe Great Barrier Reef home and set out to look for his son. He is very tangled in the process. He is afraid but more worried about his son.
5. Marlin encountered sharks, jellyfish and all kinds of dangers on the way.
6. Marlin had to pluck up her courage and fight bravely
7. Finally, Marlin learns to let go of her fear and trust Nemo to rescue dolly from her fishing net.
8. From then on, Marlin gave Nemo enough space to grow independently
Moral: parents need to learn to let go in order to let their children grow up
A story can revolve around a character’s struggle with individual demons. A term related to “story arc” is “character arc”, which describes the change and growth of a particular character in one or more stories. An innocent character may become more worldly and experienced. For example, an evil character may change his mind. Even a short story like a sitcom can have multiple arcs of stories or characters. A common example is that adult characters in a sitcom family participate in one story arc, while children participate in another.
Theme
“Structure” is composed of a series of plot key points, which is an important first step. But in the process of creating stories, we will also step back and think about “what on earth connects all the events in the story?” Therefore, we often ask a simple question: what do you want to express?
We hope to find out the theme of the story through this question. The theme is related to the moral meaning, which is the life lesson learned by the protagonist at the end of the story.
When the audience finished watching your film, a month later they mentioned to their friends, “Oh, I love this movie, it tells…”. What do you want this “…” to be?
Before you start to create a story, you must be clear about the protagonist’s goal, which is what they want. Therefore, the protagonist is pursuing what they want. However, they often find that what they want is not the real need, but their needs are more important. The real needs of the protagonist are generally the theme of the film.
Once you’ve identified the theme, the message you want to convey, you can create a series of dramatic events and tests that push your protagonist to realize that he or she needs to change and to understand what the movie’s theme says.
Up
The most prominent feature of the film is the romantic life of Carl and Allie, who jointly establish their new home. They climb the hillside together, make an appointment to watch the waterfall in South America, and sit at home reading and talking with each other. The whole film let us see the romantic color of their love. The audience saw the true feelings, revealing Carl’s true love for Allie, and also saw that the real love is mutual attraction and mutual trust. Therefore, it is worthy of love to support and accompany each other for a lifetime, which is the crystallization of love embodied in the film.
Secondly, the common topic of Carl and Russell is to fulfill their dreams, pursue what they want, and not leave regrets for themselves. In the film, his wife dies and Carl’s house is to be demolished. Carl is reluctant to leave the house with his wife’s good memories. Therefore, Carl flies the house to the waterfall with a balloon to realize their dream. In the flying house, unexpectedly, a lively, playful, mischievous little fat Russell, who claims to be an explorer, gets along with each other and reaches a consensus to challenge the waterfall in South America. In the adventure, he became good friends with animals and met with unscrupulous Explorer Charlemagne. Finally, Carl completed his dream of his wife. Russell also realized his dream of bringing medals to himself by his father. The ending was perfect.
The film highlights Kevin’s kindness before, which can also drive the friends around him, and also symbolizes the truth, goodness and beauty of the film. At the same time, this picture has become a positive energy in real life, and has become the eye of the audience; therefore, the real pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty can also realize the meaning and value of one’s own life. It shows the emotional changes of the characters in different periods, makes the characters more rich and full, and gives the audience a strong attraction.
How to make a good story
For a character, you should praise his perseverance, not his success.
Always remember to talk about things that interest you as an audience, not as a writer. There is a big difference between the two.
Try a theme boldly, but you can’t see what the story really says until the end of the story. This is the time to rewrite it.
A long time ago, there was one__ , every day__ One day__ Because of that__ Because of that__ At last In a specific time and space, a specific person, a normal life, is suddenly broken by some factors, and a series of causal events are produced, leading to some final result.
Simplify, focus, merge characters, cut corners and straighten. You’ll feel like you’ve lost a lot of valuable things, but it’ll let you go. ” Life or material is complex, if you directly to copy, there is no way to start. If you refine, simplify, eliminate the false and retain the true, remove the rough and extract the essence, summarize and summarize, you will feel much clearer and help you to create smoothly.
What are your characters good at? What do you like? Throw them the opposite thing and test them. How do they deal with it? Heroes are set off by crisis, goodness is tortured by evil, steel is forged by fire, chronic and acute are shown by contrast.
Think about the end of the story before you come up with the middle of the story. It’s important, the ending is usually difficult, think ahead. Explain that the story is conceived backwards. First think about the end, then the middle, and then the beginning. This is not only because the ending is the most difficult, but also because the ending represents the climax, represents the theme, and represents whether the story has weight and value. Even, the ending is the direction of the story!
Let your characters have their own ideas. It will not easily let you drive and command, it has independent will and characteristics, you have to do your best to conquer it, this is a good script!
Why do you have to tell this story? What is the story that makes this belief burn in your heart? This is the core. To write a work, one must be in a state where one has to write. To find the reason why we have to write is the reason why the audience has to see it.
If you were your character, what would you think in this situation? Honesty can bring credibility to incredible situations. We often use one word: authentic. In fact, these are two concepts! In art works, the reality is virtual, which is not important. What matters is credibility. Many unreal (such as supernatural, science fiction, etc.) we still feel believable and moved. The best way to deal with credibility is to assume that I am him!
No work is in vain. If you can’t, give up and think about something else – they’ll come back and be useful one day. The materials, ideas, solutions, wonderful dialogues, props, fantastic ideas, etc. you have considered in your writing sometimes find that they can not be used. They are very reluctant to use them. It’s a pity to discard the negation. In fact, they should be given up if they are not suitable. It doesn’t mean waste. Even mistakes contribute to success.
Let your character happen to be in trouble. But it’s not letting your character happen to solve the problem. It’s cheating.
Temper: find the parts of your movie that you don’t like. How to rearrange them to your satisfaction?
Incorporate your stories and characters, not just cool stuff. What makes you do what you do in a movie?
What is the nature of your story? Can it be described in the most concise way? If you can do that, you can build on that. One sentence story synopsis, the core story model, character setting and theme are summarized.
Character Design
Shape and personality
On the one hand, they are external characteristics, that is, their design, dress, appearance. What’s more interesting is their intrinsic characteristics. Are they insecure? brave? Or jealous? Role creation must come from real human emotion and experience. But you don’t have to take yourself as the prototype. You can also refer to the people around you and your daily life.
Desire
It’s important to know what your character wants because it will affect the content of the story. If you don’t know what they wanted in the first place, the adventure is aimless, but it’s the story. “Want” drives the role to act. In order to satisfy his own desire, the character will go all out to put it into action. “Need” refers to what we must do or learn in the process of growing up or pursuing success.
For example, HOUDY of Toy Story wants to be Andy’s favorite toy and always will be. But what he needs is to learn to share, to share friendship, and to understand the truth of “friendship first, competition second”. Sometimes, the character wants something at the beginning of the story, but he knows what he needs during the journey.
For example, Sally (monster power), he wants to rise in the company, just like everyone wants – promotion and pay rise, to be the elite in his industry. But we got in the way and joined the role of Abu (little girl) to disrupt his plan. This is something he doesn’t want to manage. But because the little girl depends on him, it goes against his goal. If he is found by the company that he has taken in human children, his promotion plan will be blocked and his future will be ruined. So the career he wants and the things he needs to take care of right now are going to destroy each other. But he gradually cared more about abdo’s future, and his heart became soft. In fact, he did not care about his career at all. He chose the needs of his life – the fetters of another man, and he wanted Abu to stay in his life.
Obstacles
The core of a story is not only about the desires and needs of the protagonists, but also their obstacles and the conflict points of the story.
Marlin’s obstacle is his fear of the sea. He often tells you that you should stay in the reef and it’s safe here. However, in order to find Nemo, Marlin has to break her own comfort zone. Since then, all the obstacles we have set up are to force marlin out of the comfort zone, finally reunite with her son and learn to trust his son.
Character Arc
In fact, in many movies or stories , at the beginning of the story, the characters appear in their embryonic form and are still in a state of need of improvement. At the end of the story, these characters will be upgraded to higher versions of themselves and become better. If not for the challenge, they may not have such a change. This pressure forces them to become better selves Self. Without obstacles, the character’s experience is a horizontal line. When obstacles arise, the experience develops into an arc. At this point, the character can complete a metamorphosis. So if there are no obstacles, I don’t think the arc of character development will exist.
Types
Iconic
This type of character is polar. Most of them are cute ones with big eyes and even no nose. Many of them are mascots for public welfare or business promotion.
Simple type
It is a little more complicated than the logo logo above, but it also takes a simple programmed circuit, which is very suitable for flash promotion, and is also convenient for expansion and application in newspaper comics, network and TV.
Common type
The most common type of role. Focusing on animation or cartoon style, it can have more rich expression changes than the previous types, which is suitable for exaggerated and humorous media such as animation and cartoon.
Complex type
Although it seems to have exaggeration and cartoon appearance, the proportion and expression of single character are more realistic. This type of character can be seen in Disney or other high-end animated films, because they are more likely to resonate with the audience than simple cartoon characters.
Real type
The most realistic type of character modeling is often seen in Hollywood special effects movies and HD games. His goal is to pursue the reality, and shock the audience and players with super realism.
Hero characters
- Simba (The Lion King)
- Merida (Brave)
- Pocahontas (Pocahontas)
- Judy Hopps (Zootopia)
- Woody (Toy Story)
- Ariel (The Little Mermaid)
- Anna (Frozen)
- Ralph (Wreck-It Ralph)
- Rapenzel(Tangled)
- Mulan (Mulan)
Villain characters
- Scar (The Lion King)
- Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty)
- Ursula (The Little Mermaid)
- Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmatians)
- Jafar (Aladdin)
- Gaston (Beauty and Beast)
- The Evil Queen (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)
- Hades (Hercules)
- Evil stepmother (Cinderella)
- Queen of hearts (Alice in Wonderland)
Three act drama structure
The first part of the story consists of three parts
- Once upon a time
- Every day
- Until one day
Once upon a time
In this section, the audience meets the main character of the story, the “protagonist”, and learns when and where the story takes place. For example, in “Finding Nemo”, the audience learned at the beginning that marlin and Nemo live on the safe Great Barrier Reef, and understand why marlin is always worried about the dangers of the sea. Through the first act, the audience can also know what kind of film it is, whether it is a science fiction film, a romantic comedy, a historical drama film, or something else.
Every day
In this section, the audience will learn more about the world in the story, and continue to take “Finding Nemo” as an example. The audience will get to know other residents of the Great Barrier Reef Waters and their daily life.
Until one day
This episode is often referred to as the “inciting incident.” this event will lead to major obstacles, force the protagonist to face it, and promote the whole story. Nemori’s father was forced to open the sea to save the water.
The first act can also lead to “adversary”. When the opponent is a certain character, it is known as “villain”. But the opponent also has many forms. Generally speaking, the opponent is the resistance that hinders the protagonist from realizing his wants and needs. Marlin’s opponents are things that hinder her progress, that is, the ocean and Marlin’s fear of it.
It’s crucial to sort out the first act, so listen to Pixar’s creators.
In the first act, you’ve given the audience what they need to know, and you’ve laid down a challenge for the character’s adventure. Now the characters are going to set out to achieve their goals. Now let’s take a look at the second act of “story skeleton.”.
In the second act, the protagonists usually fall into a complicated dilemma. The obstacles in front of them force them to make difficult decisions, because what happens on the road (i.e. the journey) is linked to each other. The main point of the second act is to make decisions and take actions to overcome the obstacles.
In the second act, you need to crack down on the protagonist. You can’t make the protagonist feel better. Otherwise, there will be no conflict in the story. The story will not develop without conflict and lose the rhythm and motivation to move forward. So you have to constantly throw out problems, let the protagonist learn from it, overcome many obstacles, in fact, in order to let them grow step by step. So the second act witnessed most of the growth of the protagonist.
By the end of the second act, the protagonist will be in a terrible predicament, forcing them to face up to the problems that emerge at the end of the first act. This is the significance of the second act. In the third act, the protagonist’s coping style will be displayed, so that both the audience and the protagonist will realize that this is a real change. The “second act” usually starts immediately after the “incentive event”. Finally, there will be a series of obstacles that the protagonist must overcome to get close to the target. To the point of the second act, in the middle of the whole story, the protagonist often has to make a choice which we sometimes call “point of no return.”There may also be a “nadir” in the second act, which usually marks the end of the second act
In the third act, the story will be full speed into the final crisis (crsis), that is, the inevitable climax. This is the most tense moment for the protagonist in the film, because they are going to lose everything they care about most. At this time, the audience should be nervous together. In the first and second acts, the protagonist is driven to make a choice, but now he will face the final test. After the climax of the story, the characters and the world will return to tranquility and may become more perfect, which we call resolution.
In the third act, the protagonists abandon the need to be successful. They are aware of their problems, and now is the time to show change. You should put the protagonist through multiple tests, and then let the audience see that the protagonist really learned something, something that reflected the theme of the story, that is, why you decided to create the story in the first place. In the third act, the problems in the film should be solved. Sometimes the ending will be unexpected but satisfying.
Equilibrium and linear story
1 . Linear narrative
Linear narrative is a classical narrative means, which pays attention to the integrity of the story, the unity of time and space, the causality of the plot and the coherence of narration, which is easy to be accepted by the audience. The existence of flashback is to better serve the linear narrative. It can also be regarded as linear narration if only multi line advancement is adopted for the sake of the tension of the plot.
From the perspective of clues, linear narrative can be divided into linear single line and linear double line.
Linear single line: a single and uninterrupted narrative. Such as 12 angry men, godfather 1, Shawshank’s redemption
Linear double line: it has long existed in Chinese traditional Chapter style novels — “two flowers bloom, each represents a branch”; in film, there is a double clue Godfather 2
2. Non linear narration
（1） The definition and overview of non-linear narrative
Since the 1990s, nonlinear narrative structure has been popular in commercial films. The so-called deconstruction belongs to the deconstruction of the so-called non-linear, that is, the deconstruction of the narrative style. In the postmodern performance, the director deliberately disrupts the time or space order of the story, reorganizes the events, and expresses it to the audience in a non-linear narrative way, highlighting and clarifying the theme
In short, nonlinear narrative abandons the coherence of time and space. Will be linear, people and things that happen. It is rearranged by montage. This not only reconstructs the concept of time and space of film. At the same time, it also increases the difficulty for the audience to understand the plot
（2） Classification of non-linear narration
A three act structure different from the traditional film or drama. According to research, there are several types of non-linear narration at present
Non single clue structure: usually a clue line runs through the film. Multiple clues break this pattern. It can be divided into parallel multiple clues and cross multiple clues
Non linear time structure: the traditional concept of drama. Film and drama should have ups and downs. It has a complete time line chain. The order and irreversibility of modern commercial films have been subverted. The well-known annular structure (head and tail closed) fragment structure. (regrouping after crushing)
Nonlinear spatial structure: linear films tend to shift the space of the lens according to the causal logic. However, nonlinearity ignores the internal logic of space-time transformation by blurring reality and virtuality. So as to diversify the architecture space.
The sequence of Nolan’s works is basically included in crime films and science fiction. The early films follow (1998), memory fragments (2000) and white night pursuit (2002) all focus on crime and human nature. Later, he developed in Hollywood and launched a series of well-known and popular commercial blockbusters: the mystery of Batman’s shadow (2005), the fatal magic (2006), the Dark Knight (2008), inception (2010), the rise of the Black Knight (2012), Star Trek (2014) and Dunkirk (2017). Since 2005, most of Nolan’s films are science fiction films There are changes in the type, but the core of the film is to retain Nolan’s original tendency of creation — the cause of criminal behavior and the thinking of social humanity. Nolan is good at building a story environment and putting the ever-changing characters into it. But all films are always exploring a proposition, which is especially obvious in crime films, that is, the game between people. This theme runs through the whole creative career of Nolan. Game is a thinking activity that integrates wisdom, means and challenges. There are many situations in social life that are faced with game. There are both commercial behavior and political position. The game method that is more suitable for showing on the screen is criminal behavior. Crime films can open up a wide space for game, while science fiction films are the re creation of story environment and story elements.
Timetable and Background
Timetable
In fact, the study of narrative time includes three aspects: the choice of time, the arrangement of time sequence and the deformation of time.
1 . Time choice: the infinite possibility of the real world and the infinite possibility of the development of the film story force the narrator to arrange the time. In the limited time, the narrator can not narrate all the infinite story time, so the choice becomes the first problem in the narrator’s handling time.
The narrator’s choice of narrative time has two aspects: diachronic choice and synchronic choice. Time, in fact, is always associated with the activities of the characters in the film.
2 . Arrangement of time sequence: because story time is multidimensional, but narrative can only be one-dimensional, so how to narrate multidimensional, entangled and synchronic events in a sequential way is the problem to be studied in time sequence. The processing methods of time sequence are: sequence, flashback, interlude and so on.
1) . Preface
The most common timing in movies. The sequence of events in the narrative is the same as that in the story. Narration is one of the most commonly used plot films. It strictly follows the natural flow of time and shows events in the original sequence of story time. In order to emphasize the narration, some films even use subtitles to highlight the order of time.
2) . wrong time
When it comes to time reversal, I think there are mainly two kinds of inversion, flashback and flashback. Flashback refers to a narrative time arrangement method in which the narrator narrates the reason or the whole story after narrating the result or key plot of the story. The part of flashback is generally complete and systematic, and the duration may be longer. Compared with flashback, flashback is more short-lived in terms of time, and the causal connection between the top and bottom of the plot may be less logical, but it emphasizes the inner emotional relationship or style similarity between the upper and lower.
3) Interlocutory phrase
There is a temporal or logical relationship between the flashback or flashback paragraph and the central event, but there is no time or causal relationship between the event described in the interlude phrase and the central event. The more important thing for the narrator to expand the meaning of the film is to expand the meaning of the film. Although the inserted lens is attached to the central event, the entry of the narrative phrase is obviously not for the story’s emotion Therefore, this kind of interlude is also called signifying interlude phrase.
3 . The possibility of speed is divided into four categories: pause, scene, outline and ellipsis.
In the analysis of film narrative, the narrative speed can be divided into three ways: the expansion of time, the omission of time and the recovery of time.
1) The expansion of time
It refers to the situation that the narrative time is greater than the story time. For special aesthetic purposes, the narrator deliberately prolongs the time in narration, which makes the narrative time far exceed the time required for the story. At this time, time is inflated. The narrator is often inflated by the change of lens speed and lens angle in the film. High speed photography is a common means in the film.
2) The omission of time
Of course, it refers to the situation that the narrative time is less than the story time. Because of the infinite possibility of story time and the limitation of narrative time, the omission of narrator is inevitable. “Cut” is the most common ellipsis technique in movies. It has become a common sense means to jump time by cutting. Before the 1950s, the common methods of omission or time transition included “melting”, “fading in” and “fading out”.
3) Recovery of time
It refers to the one-to-one correspondence between narrative time and story time in narration. As a medium, because of its closeness to reality, the receiver sometimes feels that the story is spontaneous in the film, and the narrator does not exist. Time follows its own flow, and no one is influencing it or controlling it.
Background
In fact, it refers to the depth of the scene, the depth of the scene and the composition of the film. The narrator should control the content of the picture in a sense. The space of modern film is more unrealistic and creative.