So You Want to Be a Writer? - Part 2 #amwriting

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Alex, here! Happy September, Britcrimers! 

September means back to school, and as it happens, I’ll be teaching my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshop as one of the novel writing Masterclasses at the Bloody Scotland Crime Festival this week.

I’ve been teaching this workshop for writing groups and conventions all over the US and internationally for several years now, to aspiring authors and bestselling authors alike (as well as teaching these story structure techniques to film students in Los Angeles). Because I have limited time to teach (I’m a full-time crime novelist and screenwriter) I’ve also compiled all the information from my workshops into three writing workbooks. The newest (and biggest!) is out this month, and we’re giving a copy away here as well as on my website:

Buy the Print book 

Buy the e book

Enter to win a copy of the book

Another chance to win

Get free Story Structure extras and movie breakdowns

I’ve found that writers at all levels catch on to the concepts instantly (really, within five or ten minutes!). Because what I teach is something you already know. You just need someone to point it out to you.

What I teach is how to write novels by learning from your favourite movies.

The thing is, film is such a compressed and concise medium that it’s like seeing an X-ray of a story. In film you have two hours, usually a little less, to tell the story. It’s a very stripped-down form that even so, often has enormous emotional power. Plus we’ve usually seen more of these movies than we’ve read specific books, so they’re a more universal frame of reference for discussion.

It’s often easier to see the mechanics of structure in a film than in a novel.

Film and television are based on a Three-Act, Eight-Sequence structure, a rhythm of storytelling that began thousands of years ago with the great classic plays of ancient Greece, and refined in the 20^th century by the technical requirements of film and then television.

And there’s a really, really good reason to be aware of the rhythm of film and television structure.

Because your reader or audience knows this rhythm, too.

How can we not, after all the thousands (yes, thousands!) of films and TV shows we’ve seen over the course of our lifetimes? Your readers or audience have been absorbing this structure all their lives, and unconsciously EXPECT it. Which means if you’re not delivering this rhythm, your reader or audience is going to start worrying that something’s not right, and you have a real chance of losing them. You don’t want to do that!

I know, I know. You’re writing a book, right? But successful authors use this rhythm, too, whether they’re aware of it or not. Film has had an enormous influence on contemporary novels, and on publishing. And not just structurally. Editors love books with the high concept premises, pacing, and visual and emotional impact of movies, so being aware of classic and blockbuster films and the film techniques that got them that status can help you write novels that will actually sell in today’s market. If you’re indie publishing, it’s even more important to use every trick in the book to make sure that your novel stands out from the crowd.

So authors can give themselves an edge by stealing— I mean using —some of these film techniques to make their stories more immediately appealing and easily marketable — and by the way, to create better, more engaging books. I’ve seen this in action: any novelist, from aspiring to multiply published; traditional, indie, or hybrid; and aspiring screenwriters as well, can benefit from these screenwriting tricks of the trade.

Even beyond that, studying movies is fun, and fun is something writers just don’t let themselves have enough of. If you train yourself to watch for some of these structural elements, then every time you go to the movies or watch something on television, you’re actually honing your craft (even on a date or while spending quality time with your loved ones!), and after a while you won’t even notice you’re doing it.

When the work is play, you’ve got the best of all possible worlds.

If you’d like to follow along with the Masterclass, this is the first exercise I always have my students do:

> List ten books and films that are similar to your own story in structure and/or genre (at least five books and three movies if you’re writing a book, at least five movies if you’re writing a script.).

Or if you’re trying to decide on the right project for you to work on, then make a list of ten books and films that you wish you had written!

I have my students make these lists because I think it’s important that when you start to study movies, you’re looking at examples that have had the most emotional impact on you, personally.

In my next blog here I’ll help you analyze what that list means about the book that you’re writing!

And if you’d like to know more about the Three-Act, Eight-Sequence structure, we’re giving away two copies of STEALING HOLLYWOOD this week: here and on my website.

Buy the Print book 

Buy the e book

Enter to win a copy of the book!

Another chance to win

Get free Story Structure extras and movie breakdowns

Alexandra Sokoloff is the bestselling, Thriller Award-winning and Bram Stoker and Anthony Award-
nominated author of twelve supernatural, paranormal and crime thrillers. The New York Times has called her "a daughter of Mary Shelley" and her books "Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre.

As a screenwriter she has sold original suspense and horror scripts and written novel adaptations for numerous Hollywood studios (Sony, Fox, Disney, Miramax), for producers such as Michael Bay, David Heyman, Laura Ziskin and Neal Moritz.

She is also the workshop leader of the internationally acclaimed Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshops, based on her Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbooks and blog. 

Her Thriller Award-nominated Huntress Moon series, following a haunted FBI agent on the hunt for a female serial killer, is out now from Thomas & Mercer, and has been optioned for television (Huntress Moon, Blood Moon, Cold Moon)

http://AlexandraSokoloff.com

#amwriting #Screenwriting Tricks for Authors: Three-Act Structure

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Before I was a full-time crime author, I was a full-time screenwriter, and because I have both backgrounds I'm often asked to teach story structure to both filmmakers and authors. There are simple and powerfully effective storytelling tricks to be stolen - I mean borrowed - from Hollywood. I've had two workbooks out on these methods in e format for a while, but I've finally compiled all the material and expanded it into a print textbook as well.

Print book 

e book

Enter to win a copy of the book!







Here's one of the most basic lessons every writer and filmmaker should know:

What is the Three-Act Structure, anyway, and why should you care?

Pro author, aspiring author, and reader alike have probably heard at least vaguely about the Three-Act Structure. But not everyone is completely clear about what the Three-Act Structure really is - and why it's crucial for every writer to understand.

So here’s a little —very short!—practical history.

Three Act dramatic structure comes from theater, which was around WAAAAAY before novels, film, and television; the golden age of Greek theater was, oh, 500-300 B.C., and in this period was developed the dramatic structure on which plays, novels, film and television are based.

Dramatists would be the first to point out that three-act structure is really the natural structure of a story, period, and has been employed since cavemen came back from the hunt and insisted on recounting their huge life-threatening adventures out there to the cavewomen (who naturally had great adventures of their own during the day, but were wise enough to understand even back in those cave days that there are some things men just don’t need to know).

It is often said that the essence of dramatic structure is: “Get the hero up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Get him down.”

That’s three acts right there. A little simplistic for my taste, but it does give a basic rhythm: Introduce a main character and a problem, intensify the problem, then solve it.

Another bare-bones structure summation that you hear a lot is: someone wants something very badly and is having trouble getting it (but eventually does.) Again, three parts: a heroine with a desire, opposition to the desire, and eventual triumph (or failure).

Well, that basic three-part rhythm of storytelling was set into a standard form by the ancient Greeks and is still largely the same today, not just in plays, but in all dramatic media.

Now, wait a minute, you may be saying. Shakespeare’s plays have FIVE acts.

Well, yes. But if you look at Elizabethan plays, their Acts I and II constitute what we’ve been talking about as Act 1, their Acts III and IV comprise our Act II, and Act 5 is Act 3 (shorter than the others, remember?).

Plays were THE form of storytelling for thousands of years, because most of the populace of any country couldn’t read, and there was no television yet. So, until the invention of the Gutenberg press (1436, and yes, there was moveable type in China century in 1041, but it didn’t have the world impact that the Gutenberg press did), which made the printed word available cheaply, plays were THE entertainment (music and sports are different media). The novel wasn’t even invented until – well, that’s up for debate, but anywhere from 1007 to 1740: you decide:

Candidates for the world's first novel in English
The Tale of Genji

So because they were the reigning form of dramatic entertainment for thousands of years, plays have had an indelible influence on ALL of the dramatic media. And what’s important to understand about the structure of plays is that they’re based on how long human beings can reasonably sit in one place without getting bored, restless, hungry, thirsty, and just numb in the posterior - and walking out on the show.

Right?

Same with movies. Admit it – anything over two hours and you’re going to start looking at your watch.

So plays built in the concept of intermissions, so that people could have breaks and go out and – uh - refresh themselves, and sponsors could hawk their wares and make money off the show. Commercials have history, too.

But the trick about intermissions is that once people are out in the lobby drinking and flirting and smoking and doing what they do on a Saturday night, their natural tendency is to want to keep drinking and flirting and all those things that drinking and flirting hopefully lead to.

So it was absolutely crucial for the playwright to end each act, before the intermission, with something so great that the audience would come right back into the theater when the lobby lights blink, and not just go carousing into the night.

And that’s how the cliffhanger was born. The “curtain scene”, or just “curtain”, had to be so explosive – such a startling revelation or reversal, such a dramatic shift in the power dynamics of the characters, that the audience would want to come back in to the theater after intermission to find out what happens.

And that curtain scene is alive and well today as ACT CLIMAXES. In movies it’s not quite so evident because the film doesn’t actually stop for a break at the act climax, but that rhythm is definitely there. In network television, you do actually have a curtain and an intermission, called a “commercial”, and woe betide you if you want to work for television and don’t understand the concept of a cliffhanger before the act break, or “act out”. (I am not a TV writer, and this is not a TV writing article, and I’m being horribly simplistic, but the actual timing of these breaks varies according to where the commercials are set, and internet delivery of shows is going to change that drastically. For further information, TVwriter.com is a great resource for aspiring TV writers.)

Now, when you’re reading a book, you can take your intermission any time, and you do. But as an author, you still have to lure your reader back to your book. My point here is – why not understand the concept of the curtain and possibly use the tricks that have kept audiences coming back into the theater, and back from commercial breaks, for thousands of years?

So I implore you – see a good play once in a while. No one does cliffhangers and reversals and revelations better than the great playwrights. Shakespeare, obviously, but any good playwright understands how to do this. For example, I find Lillian Hellman’s curtains just breathtaking – the whole power dynamics of a ruthless family can turn on a dime, and you can’t wait to get back into the theater to find out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

And that – is what we’re after, right?

Once you've got the hang of act climaxes, you can move on to a much better-kept secret of film-writing: the eight-SEQUENCE structure. But that - is another post!


Question for the day – can you give me examples of great curtains or cliffhangers – theatrical, filmic, or novelistic?

    -  Alex



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