How's Your Premise?: The 7-Step Premise Development Process Workshop

Venue: The Writers Junction
Location: 1001 Colorado Blvd., Santa Monica, CA
When: Sat April 7, 2012
How Much: $65
Time: 1PM–4PM
Who should attend: Screenwriters, Novelists, Nonfiction Authors

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A Storygeeks Workshop

Click to Register: http://7steppremise.eventbrite.com (LIMITED SEATING)

At a Glance

• In-person seminar on how to develop the perfect premise line for any story
• Covers the essentials of premise development, log line development, and premise-idea testing
• Teaches the two essential structures necessary to tell any story
• Come prepared to work on at least one of your premise ideas
• Appropriate for screenwriters, novelists, and creative nonfiction authors
  
  

A solid premise line is essential in writing effective agent or publisher query letters, pitching film production companies or studios, or for having that perfect elevator pitch ready for that unexpected meeting with whoever might be empowered to move your story forward to final publication or production. But, how do you know you really have a story? And how do you know your story will “work”?

The way you know is by learning the real meaning, purpose, and power of the premise line. The premise line is not just a “pitch tool,” it is your canary in the coalmine and when fully mastered can save you time, money, and literally years of writing frustration. In this hands-on course, participants will learn how to master the dynamic process of premise line creation, design and testing which are so critical for validating any story’s narrative integrity. Along with case studies from the movies and literature, participants will take original story ideas and then implement premise building and testing techniques to generate an original premise line, as well as developing a story’s log line.

Over the course of this 3-hour workshop, you’ll learn:

The 2 Essential Structures Needed to Tell Any Story

• The 7 components of the Invisible Structure
• The 7 components of the Visible Structure
• The real definition of “story premise”
  
  

The 7-Step Premise Development Process

• How to determine if you really have a story
• The anatomy of a premise line
• Case studies from film and literature
  
  

Premise Typing: Know What Kind of Premise You Have

• The soft-generic premise
• The 7 components of every high-concept premise
• What is a log line and why you need one
• What is a tag line and why you need one
  
  

The 7-Step Premise & Idea Testing Method

• Learn the Premise Testing Checklist
• Test and validate your own premise idea
  
  

If you are ready to learn real tools that will lead to productive and profitable writing, then this workshop is for you. Sign up today!

Writing and the Archetypes: Are They the Best for Developing Characters?—Part 2

So, in part 1 of this 3-part series I introduced the concept of the archetypes and why writers use them. And, like I said there, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why archetypes might be useful tools for developing characters in fictional settings.

But, here’s the problem: they’re not characters, they’re archetypes!

This is the essence of the problem. Archetypes are by definition not people. They are aspects of people, aspects of being human, aspects of … you get the point (actually, it's the other way around ... we're aspects of the archetypes!). Archetypes make for great traits, characteristics, qualities, but they do not make for whole characters. They make pieces of characters.

Stories are about us. Stories are about human beings and the human condition. Every story, any story, all stories MUST be about a person on a journey. If the story is not about a person on a journey it is not a story, it is something else: a situation, a problem, a predicament to be solved, whatever; but it’s not a story (I’m sure I’ll get some mail on this one).

A human being is a character. A character has traits-characteristics. The human is an aggregate of behaviors and these traits-characteristics. Taken separately (i.e., an archetype) these traits-characteristics-behaviors cannot standalone. They do not have choice, they do not have will, they cannot act in pursuit of a goal, they cannot be flawed by some moral conflict that speaks to some inner lesson to be learned (or not). Only a fully formed human being, a multidimensional person, a protagonist can stand alone to drive a narrative forward. Archetypes help, but they do not drive. Motivation drives a story and a protagonist. Motivation is the crankshaft of every story (or at least the best kinds of stories). Archetypes reflect motivation (i.e., a trickster is motivated to trick), but they are shadows in this regard. Without human desire and choice the motivation is shallow and thin. Only a human gives meaning, significance, and purpose to motivation—not archetypes.

So, herein lies the problem. All those great writers out there who have written books on this, who have built careers on pushing the archetypes as the foundation of all storytelling, who have banked their entire story-development theory on the primacy of archetypal development are not bad and wrong, but they are gilding the lily in my opinion. You can write a great trickster character, but that will take you just so far. You can write a great villain, but that will take you just so far. You can write a great ally, but—

Maybe this metaphor will help clarify the relationship between a pattern (archetype) and the thing is generates (human being):

Say you are a knitter and you want to make a quilt. So, you buy a knitting pattern that comes in the mail and when it arrives you open it and hold it in your hand. You are not holding a quilt, you are holding a patten for a quilt. The pattern is a piece of paper with instructions, knitting code, and directions: i.e, it is an abstraction of something it will help to create. It is the raw material for making a "real" quilt, which is something you can use to warm yourself or lay on a couch to look pretty for the neighbors when they come over to spill coffee all over it.

Let's take this one step further. You are a writer (okay, a stretch, but go with me) who wants to write a story about a quilt. Which is going to be the most useful to you as a storyteller: the abstract pattern, or the physical quilt? Obviously the latter and not the former. Having a big, warm, wooly quilt gives you a fully dimensional object that you can describe and interact with as a writer. A pattern for this object cannot do those things; it's just a pattern.

And so the difference between the Enneagram and the archetypes. The Enneagram is the fully dimensional and realized object that functions in the world with form. The pattern (archetype) is the function without form. The pattern is essential, the pattern will inform, the pattern will guide, but the pattern is not as rich or useful as the thing it helps to create. Patterns can exist without the things they represent. The things they represent can not exist without the patterns. We can't exist as human beings without the archetypes, but they can exist (and do) without us.

And this is how using archetypes as the foundation of story development can derail and undermine your process, rather than support it. Using patterns of human behavior to cobble together a whole character is not unlike a Victor Frankenstein approach to storytelling. You can't piece together a great character or a great story like a quilt. You must find the crankshaft for motivation and you must find it in the full dimensionality of a protagonist, if he-she is going to drive a story from beginning, through the middle, to the end. Archetypes give wonderful, recognizable, and universal conceits all humans can recognize despite culture or upbringing. But they can’t carry the narrative. For that you have to find what I call the “narrative crankshaft."

In the world of character development (and in story structure, in my opinion) the best tool for discovering, developing, and implementing motivation in a narrative is the Enneagram System. The Enneagram is, in fact, the best tool available for describing human motivation and its related behaviors—period. This is why it has become one of the most popular tools today used by therapists, organizational development consultants, coaches, and a host of other personal-growth and business-development gurus.

I can already hear the objections. “Oh, really? So, all the other personality-typing systems out there (MBTI, DIsC, BPP, etc.) are all chopped liver?” No, of course not. But, they are personality-typing systems. They do not cover motivation; they describe behaviors and traits, not unlike the archetypes. The Enneagram System is not a typing system (despite what many Enneagram practitioners think). It is a holistic paradigm for modeling what motivates human behavior, thought, and feeling in all realms of life. That's what makes it such a gold mine for writers and storytellers. And this is the essential difference between the Enneagram and all other "personality systems," including the archetypes.

When it comes time to write a story and develop characters, a writer needs to be able to see the whole picture, not just the pieces of what is under the hood. Archetypal models won’t do the job, nor will running characters through some personality-typing test. What will do the job, however, is the Enneagram because only the Enneagram shows you the crankshaft for human personality; it is not personality, but it is the driver of personality. The Enneagram, not the archetypes, drives human action and thus creates the narrative crankshaft responsible for driving a story from beginning to end.

In part 3 of this series we’ll look at the Enneagram more specifically and why it is not only a fantastic tool for character development, but also for discovering a story’s natural, right, and true structure. This is something I call the Enneagram-Story Bridge™ and it can be the springboard for liberating any constrained writing process.

Big words, I know. But, it’s a pretty big bridge.

Writing and the Archetypes: Are They the Best for Developing Characters?—Part 1

A friend recently asked me to refer her to a “good” book on how to use the archetypes to write stories. I referred her to the book that has cornered the market on this area of writing: Christopher Vogler’s The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Chris’s book is great and it presents a seamless examination of how some archetypes work with the classical myth structure, specifically the hero’s journey. Based on the seminal work by mythologist and teacher Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Vogler’s book has been a staple around Hollywierd for years (in fact, that’s where it was born—long story).

I’m not trying to give a sales pitch for The Writer’s Journey, though you should buy it—it’s wonderful stuff. No, my point is to explore a broader issue, an issue raised by my friend’s innocent request. The issue is: are the archetypes really the best source for developing characters and developing stories? My response to this question is a resounding, no.

But first, a digression: what the hell are the archetypes and what the blazes do they have to do with writing? This is a topic worthy of several books in and of itself, but to give you the Cliffnotes version, read on:

What is an archetype?

The word can be broken down into two parts: arche and type. Arche, from the Greek means origin, beginning, primal, and tupos means pattern, stamp, or model. So, an archetype is a primal stamp, the first or original pattern of “something,” usually describing a human behavior or characteristic (i.e., trickster, magician, villain, etc.). The great psychologist Carl Jung made the term famous. Jung’s Analytic Psychology broke away from the rigorous mechanics of Freud’s Psychoanalytic approach around 1912; indeed, Freud was Jung’s mentor for many years, before the two had an intellectual falling. Nonetheless, Jung went on to found his own “school” and is responsible more than any other person for popularizing the idea of the archetypes in everyday life (i.e., father complex, anime-animus, etc.) His version of the archetypes is the basis of the popular, and often used by writers, personality typing system call the Meyers-Briggs Typing Inventory (MBTI).

What do the archetypes have to do with writing?

A lot. There are many fine books written about the archetypes and their relationship to writing, especially in developing characters. The archetypes represent the essential patterns of human behavior and personality (according to many). The archetypes are a part of every human being, and we find them in every culture in every human anywhere on the planet. They represent part of the “monomyth,” i.e., the common myth that can be found weaving its way thorugh every human culture throughout time. For Joseph Campbell (and by osmosis Chris Vogler), that monomyth is the hero’s journey. What better tool to use to create characters, right (wrong)?

For example, according to Vogler, every story is populated by archetypes. They are the recurring patterns of human behavior symbolized by standard types of characters in any story (Source: Wikipedia):

1. Heroes: Central figures in stories. Everyone is the hero of his or her own myth.

2. Shadows: Villains, antagonists or enemies, perhaps the enemy within. The dark side of the Force, the repressed possibilities of the hero, his or her potential for evil. Can be other kinds of repression, such as repressed grief, anger, frustration or creativity that is dangerous if it doesn’t have an outlet.

3. Mentors: The hero’s guide or guiding principles, for example Yoda, Merlin, Gandalf, a great coach or teacher.

4. Herald: One who brings the Call to Adventure. Could be a person or an event.

5. Threshold Guardians: The forces that stand in the way at important turning points, including jealous enemies, professional gatekeepers, or your own fears and doubts.

6. Shapeshifters: In stories, creatures like vampires or werewolves who change shape. In life, the shapeshifter represents change or ambiguity. The way other people (or our perceptions of them) keep changing. The opposite sex, the way people can be two-faced.

7. Tricksters: Clowns and mischief-makers, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy. Our own mischievous subconscious, urging us to change.

8. Allies: Characters who help the hero through the change. Sidekicks, buddies, girlfriends who advise the hero through the transitions of life.

(List Source: Wikipedia)

It does not take a rocket scientist to see the potential benefits from relying on these “primal patterns” to shape and build fictional characters. Indeed, for many the archetypes help shape the very structure of a story itself, as in this case with The Writer’s Journey.

But, the bolded-italicized text above (which introduces the list) flags the central flaw in this approach. Any approach relying on archetypes must be reductionist, not additive. Characters are based not on their complexity, but rather on "standard types" and "recurring patterns of characteristics." This is a house of cards waiting to fall, in my opinion. Where is desire? Where is motivation? Where is choice? Nowhere is where. There's nothing wrong with using patterns and recurring characteristics, but they can't be the starting point for real characters, let alone structuring a story.

As we will shall see in part 2 of this 3-part series, while there are great benefits from using the archetypes in writing, there are also huge dangers that can derail your story and cripple your characters before they even get started. Stay tuned for part 2 and learn why the archetypes should not be a writer’s first choice for story or character development. That all-important choice should instead be something called the Enneagram System.

Show, Don't Tell: Another Writing Conundrum

How many times have you heard wise drama sages and story gurus proclaim, “Show, don’t tell!” There are many transgressions one may commit as a novelist or screenwriter, but none will bring down the hammer of criticism as hard and fast as telling and not showing. So, don’t do that, we are told. This is bad writing, and who wants to be a bad writer? BAAAAAAAD WRITER!

On the surface this sounds like excellent advice. In a visual writing medium (I contend all writing is visual), like screenwriting, it makes good sense to show as much as you can. Good sense, like “eat your peas,” or “after eating your peas, wait a half an hour before going into the water.” And, everyone understands what showing vs. telling means, right? It means character through action; your plot is what your characters do, not what they think inside their heads. You “see” the story unfold directly in real time, story time; not hear about it second hand or have it handed to you through some literary/cinematic device. You, as the audience, experience the story through your perceptions directly, as the characters do the “showing” through their actions, thus demonstrating actively what they are about.

Simple. Basic. Everybody knows this. End of the discussion. Well no, not exactly. Here’s the problem with “show don’t tell”: it’s not either-or; it’s both. In film, TV, and book writing the point is not to avoid telling, it’s about knowing when to do one vs. the other. There are times when it is correct to tell and times it is incorrect. What do I mean?

Consider the story of the lowly kung fu student who is taken under the wing of the crusty, yet compassionate priest for training. He comes to the master a young boy and leaves a teenage killing machine. His transformation from child to killer takes years. If you showed this in a literal way your script would take you fifteen years to write. You can’t show this, you have to tell it. The main tool used in film for telling is the montage. In half a page you can tell what happens to this kid, through exclusion, and then pick the story up when he’s at the right age. The fact is, screenwriters tell all the time by making story choices to edit out, or not, specific scene material. Whenever you as a writer edit down a scene, exclude exposition, or expand a scene with exposition you are telling your story. Anything that breaks the dramatic time line of the story immediately shifts the mode of storytelling (and writing) from the dramatic to the narrative.

What is the difference between dramatic vs. narrative storytelling (this is part of understanding the "show, don't tell" conundrum)? Narrative storytelling has a narrator; someone telling or describing to the audience what is/has/or will be happening. Certainly, the most blatant form of narrative storytelling in film is the literal narrator. Beyond the montage, a more subtle form of this can be found in scene transitions: cut to, dissolve, smash cut, etc. These are all forms of narration. When a scene transitions from one location to another in a non-linear way, some anonymous narrator is choosing for the audience where they leave the story and where they will reenter. This edit suddenly leaves things open to the imagination (what happened during that dissolve?) and while the viewer is not seeing anything dramatic unfold, they are, nonetheless, fully engaged in the telling of the story. Essentially, film editing is narration.

In contrast, dramatic storytelling is scene level action that happens in real-time, while an audience watches. The audience sees events directly unfold with no breaks in space or time. In addition, these events are filtered by the audience through their perceptions, not through those of a narrator. Using our teenage killer example, each scene where the audience watches him breaking boards, fighting opponents, etc. are all real-time events observable and interpretable by the viewers themselves.

Appreciating the distinctions between these two modes of storytelling, perhaps you can see how declaring “show, don’t tell” has little or no value. As a writer you could not effectively narrate the kung fu story without dramatically showing action, anymore than you could only show action without narrating some information to the audience. The story needs both these methods to properly tell the story. Knowing how much of one vs. how little of another to use is the craft and art of screenwriting.

My personal feeling is all of the above applies to novel writing and narrative nonfiction as well. You have more leeway and fewer constraints in these forms, because screenwriting is inherently claustrophobic and burdened with limits (page length, screenplay language, IQ of the producers, etc.), but the same principles should apply. Good commercial pop-fiction like Caroline Leavitt, Masha Hamilton, Steven King, Orson Scott Card, J.D. Robb, and others all show and tell their work and it comes off visually for the reader. They write very cinematically, and literately as well, because they “get” that it isn’t about following some stupid rule or mantra dictated to them by the writing gurus, they write visually because they understand the issue is about balance and they walk the tightrope of showing and telling like a flying Wallenda (famous high wire circus family—look them up!).

So, I’m telling you, the next time somebody lectures you to “show, don’t tell,” show them to the door and tell them to get lost.

Premise Line–Log line Conundrum: Aren’t They the Same Thing—NOT!

Wending one's way through the language of the story development jungle is one of the most crazy-making issues faced by new authors and screenwriters. This problem is wonderfully exemplified by the phrases “premise line” and “log line.” Yes—now is a good time to go running screaming down the hall.

We hear these phrases used interchangeably all the time. Well-intentioned advice given by so many writing teachers and gurus becomes migraine material when "premise line" and "log line" are actually used in the same sentence referring to the same thing. I’ve actually heard this done by story consultants, “Yes, you need a great premise line. In fact, the log line is the key to any good premise. So, take the time to develop a great premise line.” Still running screaming down the hall, FYI.

Okay, I didn’t hear this exact exchange; I paraphrase. But this is what happens. Writing teachers mix these two critical concepts up and spew them out as if they were Twiddle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Premise line and log line are two DIFFERENT tools, two DIFFERENT concepts, and two different skills. Okay, stop running down the hall now and listen.

So, what is the difference?

The premise line is your story. Period. The premise line is a complex and subtle construction that reveals not just a main character and an adventure; it actually delivers the basic structure of the story to the reader-viewer. The art of the premise line is the art of precision and clarity of ideas. A well-formed premise will “click” when you read it to someone and they will say, “Yeah, I see that story. I’d read that.” They “see” the story in just a few short lines. But, getting those lines just right might take hours, days, or even weeks. I’ve known some to take months. What is it they “see”?

The premise line gives them a clear vision of a protagonist acting with a purposeful desire toward a goal that is opposed by some force, and all this leading to some dénouement. This is a simplistic definition, but it captures the essence of what a premise line accomplishes. I will be writing a later post that breaks this down specifically with examples, but for now, know that the premise line is the structure of your story told as a single sentence (that’s right—1 sentence; and not a long run-on sentence sprinkled with comma splicing!) that has forward movement and gives a sense of the story’s beginning, middle, and end (no, don’t give away the ending).

Here is an example of a good premise line (three guesses what book/movie):

When the innocent, youngest son of a powerful mafia godfather discovers his beloved father has been shot as part of a turf war, he agrees to join the family to exact revenge and re-establish the family’s honor, until his actions force him to cross a line he was never meant to cross, dooming him to become the next Godfather.

Contrast this to a log line. The log line is your story’s high concept in a short sentence. If you don’t know what high concept means (yes, it means something) then check out my post on this concept.

The log line, unlike the premise line, does not show the overarching shape of your story, it does not give you the action line of the protagonist, nor does it give you a sense of the big picture. No, the log line’s job is to grab you and get your mind and emotions churning. There are seven components to a high-concept idea:

• High level of entertainment value
• High degree of originality
• High level of uniqueness (different than original)
• Highly visual
• Possesses a clear emotional focus (root emotion)
• Targets a broad, general audience, or a large niche market
• Sparks a “what if” question
  (Excerpted from my book The Anatomy of a Premise Line: 7 Steps to Foolproof Premise and Story Development. Bookbyte Digital, publication date 2012)

When a story has one or more of these components, then it can say it is high concept. The more the merrier. If it only has one or two, the claim can get iffy. Each of these bullets means something specific and are important to understand. Please refer to my post for more explanation. But, for the purposes of this post understand that the log line exemplifies these seven components of the high concept, and it does so in few words. Here are some examples:

• A monster shark terrorizes a small coastal town [Jaws, Peter Benchly]
• A cop battles uber-thieves when they take over an office building. [Nothing Lasts Forever, Roderick Thorp (film: Die Hard)]
• A young boy discovers he’s a wizard and goes off to wizard school. [Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling]
• A man saves a pregnant woman in a world where women no longer give birth. [Children of Men, P.D. James]

None of these tell you about a hero or heroine, none of them give you any idea about the journey to be traveled, but they do grab you and get you wondering “what if.” That’s the job of the log line.

These are the differences between the two tools. It does not take a rocket scientist to see how they work together to form a powerful effect in pitching a story. One grabs you and the other satisfies the “what if” with a bit more detail. Together they sell the story and get you that next meeting.

So, to summarize: premise line and log line are two different tools that work synergistically to create a powerful image of your story. They were built to work together, not separately. If you build them well, you will take many lunches—and you won’t have to pay either.

Now go be brilliant.

High Concept: Yes—It Actually Means Something!

As writers we have all come up against the agent, publisher, studio hack or fellow writer who, when asked to give feedback on our story retorts, “Yeah, good idea, but … it needs to pop more. There’s no high concept.” Sigh. And what the heck does that mean? What are you supposed to do with that? People throw this phrase around like the definition is common knowledge.

But when asked to explain their sorry selves, these same people only deliver cliches, like:

• It’s your story’s hook
• It’s what’s fun about your story
• It’s your story in a single image
• It’s your story’s heart
• It’s your story as a movie one-sheet
• It’s the essence of your premise
• And so on …

All of these have some truth to them. All of these speak to the idea of a high concept, but none of them really explain the darn thing. “High concept” has become a term d’art that everyone uses and that no one really understands.

After much hair pulling, moaning, and sleepless nights analyzing this idea, I have stumbled upon an elegant construct that I think will with both define the term accurately, but also give writers a tool for testing their ideas to quickly see if there is a high-concept component present. It goes like this:

High concept applies to any idea: motorcycle design, toothpaste, cooking, comic books, novels, movies, the list is endless. High concept is about essence; that visceral thing that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and doesn’t let go. From a writing perspective, a story idea that is high concept captures the reader’s or viewer’s imagination, excites their senses, get’s them asking “what if,” and sparks them to start imagining the story even before they have read a word. High concept drives the commercial book business, as well as the film and television industries. A high-concept idea has the following seven qualities:

The 7 Qualities of a High-Concept Idea™:

• High level of entertainment value
• High degree of originality
• High level of uniqueness (different than original)
• Highly visual
• Possesses a clear emotional focus (root emotion)
• Targets a broad, general audience, or a large niche market
• Sparks a “what if” question
  (Excerpted from my book How Not to Write Your Self-Published Book: Top 25 Writer Fails & Fixes. Xela Opus Press, publication date 2013)
  

Let’s look at each of these to get a better idea of what they mean:

High-level of entertainment value: This can be elusive. Defining “entertainment value” is like trying to define pornography; it’s in the eye of the beholder. Simply put, you know if something is entertaining, or not, if it holds your attention and sparks your imagination. If you are distracted easily from the idea or interested purely on an intellectual basis, then it is safe to say that the idea may be interesting, engaging, and curious, but not entertaining.

High degree of originality: What does it mean to be original? Some common words associated with originality are: fresh, new, innovative, novel (no, not a book). Think of originality as approach-centric. The idea may be centered in a familiar context, but the approach (original take) offered to get to that familiar context has never been used before, for example:

Frankenstein:
Familiar idea: evil monster terrorizes the humans.
Original take: the monster and humans switch moral ground and the humans terrorize the monster.

Dog Day Afternoon:
Familiar idea: man robs a bank for money.
Original take: man robs a bank to get sex change for his transsexual lover and wins the hearts and minds of the people.

Lord of the Flies:
Familiar idea: survivors shipped wrecked on an island.
Original take: the survivors are proper English schoolboys who abandon all civilized norms reverting into primitive savages.

So, originality is more about finding new ways to present the familiar, rather than inventing something new from scratch.

High level of uniqueness: Whereas originality is about approach and fresh perspective, uniqueness is about being one-of-a-kind, first time, and incomparable. Being original can also involve uniqueness, but being unique transcends even originality.

Highly visual: high-concept ideas have a visual quality about them that is palpable. When you read or hear about a high-concept idea your mind starts conjuring images and you literally see the idea unfold in your mind. This is why high-concept books make such good films when adapted. Books with cinematic imagery are almost always high-concept stories.

Possesses a clear emotional focus: Like imagery, high-concept ideas spark emotion, but not just any emotion, usually it is a primal emotion: fear, joy, hate, love, rage, etc. There is no wishy-washy emotional engagement of the reader. The involvement is strong, immediate, and intense.

Possesses mass audience appeal: The idea appeals to an audience beyond friends and family. The target market is broad, diverse, and large. Some ideas are very niche, appealing to a specific demographic, but this is usually a large demographic. High-concept ideas are popular ideas, mass ideas, and often trendy ideas.

Usually born from a “what if” question: What if dinosaurs were cloned (Jurassic Park)? What if women stopped giving birth (Children of Men)? What if Martians invaded the Earth (War of the Worlds)? High-concept ideas are often posed first with a “what if” scenario and then the hook becomes clear. The hook is that part of the high concept that grabs the reader. It is often the one piece of the idea that is the original concept or the unique element. In the three examples just given, each of them has a clear hook that leads to a high-concept premise line (the "premise line" will be the subject of a later post).

Do you have to have all seven qualities for an idea to be high concept? No, but the more of them you have, the more likely you will have a strong high concept. When the idea of high concept is put in the context of these seven qualities, it becomes easier to see that commercial ideas and literary (i.e., soft) ideas often have a clear line of demarcation. That line is the high concept. The next piece of this concept concerns the log line, which is a practical tool for realizing the potential of your high concept. In other words, your log line (different than a premise line!) is your high concept stated in a short, concise sentence. But, this is the subject of a later post.

I hope this helps. It sure helped me when I figured it out.

Now, go be brilliant.

Attack of the Three-Act Structure: Run for Your Lives!

As writers we have all been bamboozled! We have done the one thing we, as writers, should never do—assume. We have assumed that because someone writes a bloody book and gives advice about writing that: 1) they know what the hell they’re talking about, 2) they are right, 3) because they wrote a book they have something original to say.

All of these assumptions are dead wrong. And you can extrapolate all this to writer-bloggers (including me!). Like I always say, my mantra if you will: listen to everyone, follow no one. So listen up—

One of the great lies we have all swallowed, only because the source of the lie spoke with some authority or sold books or screenplays, is the lie of the three-act structure. The idea that a story is told in three acts is about as true and real as Area 51, or the Legion of Doom, or Elvis still being alive (sorry, he’s really dead). Three acts have NOTHING to do with storytelling. However, three acts have a great deal to do with physical stage production. Let me explain.

Way back in the days of the Greeks, we’re talking pre-default days—circa 500–300 B.C.—drama was king. Theater, in the form of epic poetry, was the Comic-Con of the age. Physical plays performed by human beings on a stage that required moving sets and technical setups (some amazingly elaborate) were an unavoidable part of physical production of a play. Even then it was not thought smart to have the audience sit and watch the sausage being made, so some enterprising Greek came up with the idea of curtains or screens that could be put into place to shield the audience from the gross happenings between transitions. Curtains were one way to not break the mood, to not lose the tempo, etc.

Thus, acts were born. Writers started writing to accommodate these changes in the physical requirements in their plays. Acts were sometimes three, sometimes two, and sometimes ten! Even 2500 years ago there was no hard and fast rule about the number three. So, the idea of acts is not an idea related to telling a story, it is an idea related to a specific form of delivering a story: i.e., a stage play. Acts are about the constraints of physical production, not writing or storytelling. 

Commercial television is another place where acts make sense, because of commercials.  Every 17 or 20 minuets you have to break the story to sell soap—thus an act.  TV shows have anywhere from 4–6 acts due to commercial breaks.  Again, not a part of storytelling; a part of selling soap, i.e., how the story is delivered due to the constraints of the storytelling environment! (Remember, TV is not an entertainment medium, it is a sales medium—TV shows exist so you'll watch the commercials, not the other way around.)

So, where the hell did we get this cockamamie idea that screenplays or novels should be told in three acts (or four or six)? “Oh,” replies the literary critic, "it comes from Aristotle. In his foundational work Poetics he laid out the necessity of three acts in drama and comedy.”

WRONG!

Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) never talked about acts. He talked about a beginning, middle, and end in any drama or comedy, but he laid down no such rule about acts. So, don’t blame him.

Not to point fingers, because I think the actual origin of this in modern times is impossible to “finger,” but one influential source for this monstrosity of an idea is Syd Field. We all have a debt of gratitude to this man for trailblazing the field of screenwriting for popular audiences. He is a great man and he deserves his place in the pantheon of marketing mavericks. Yeah, I know … here comes the “but.”

But—Syd, more than anyone, popularized the idea of three acts through his “Paradigm” theory; the idea that stories are told in three acts, but that the second act should be broken up into parts A and B. And because he was "the first," and because he was articulate and made sense, people assumed this must be true; this must be the way of things. In Hollywood this notion of three acts took hold like a pernicious weed. To this day, at the highest levels of creative power, creative executives all talk about three acts. Agents, managers, all manner of industry blowhard talk about three acts. Even, sadly, we screenwriters smoke this nasty weed. In the publishing world, the problem is less pronounced, but it is still an issue. Literary novels, especially, are less prone to this infestation, but commercial, genre fiction is more likely to succumb.

Run, run, run—for your creative lives! Three acts have nothing to do with storytelling. Shake loose this idea and free yourself. Three acts will not serve you or your story, unless you’re a playwright. So, what should you do instead? How should you structure your story?

What story development tool is best for you is a highly personal and complicated issue. There are some good story structure teachers out there (“story gurus”—see my post http://bit.ly/qW9Bww) who have alternative approaches to the three-act structure. Many of them do some modified version of the three or four act structure, but some like the fabulous John Truby (The Anatomy of Story) have created real solutions to the problem. Chris Vogler (The Hero’s Journey) is another. I can’t recommend John Truby highly enough, though. His work is truly seminal in the field. My own methodology is also good (Enneagram-Story Bridge™), but my approach is better suited for building a development foundation that can then be ported over to a more determined system, like Truby's or Vogler's. For now, I will just leave it at that, as this topic of story-structure methodology deserves a more detailed examination all its own—at a later time.

Just know that there are useful alternatives out there and that you will be hugely benefited in your creative process if you just walk away (nay, run) from the model of three acts, and look instead for an approach that focuses on classic story development and not the same ol’ same ol’, story-structure straightjacket.

Now, go be brilliant!