Braveheart: A story about a man who wants to secure freedom for Scotland.Here are some examples of one line story sentences: (Check out some of our favorite resources on loglines here.) This is the bare bones premise of your story. Those are different animals entirely and require much more thought and effort. To begin expanding your story, it helps to distill it first into one sentence. While this may appear to be an improbable over-simplification, you can test it for truth. If you’re not sure how to brainstorm, here’s a link to some more brainstorming resources to help you get started.Īs screenwriting professor Michael Hauge clearly explains in his lectures, every movie can be boiled down to a single sentence: It’s a story about a _ who wants to _. We call it the Brainstorming Guide – Phase 1 (pretty obvious huh?). We call it Phase I and we designed a guide to help you through this part of your screenplay. This is the first, and most basic brainstorming phase for screenwriters. If you don’t already have one, check out our Screenwriter’s Toolkit here. Most writers’ rooms use whiteboards and sticky notes or index cards extensively. If you have a whiteboard or corkboard, use it. Write down your idea and concept in as much detail as you can. But most of us need a more detailed idea of where our story is going. A scarce number of writers, (known as ‘pantsers’ because they write from the seat of their pants) only need to know the beginning, middle and end and they write the middle bits on their screens. They have to look forward to the middle and the end of their script. Some may plan in their head, or on a napkin, or in a notebook. If you don’t understand the basic formula, your cookies will fail.Įvery screenwriter outlines their screenplays to some extent, even those who say they don’t. There is a definite structure (recipe) to a feature film or a television sitcom. But the basic recipe stays the same, so the end result will be tasty cookies and not a hot mess. For talented bakers and chefs, a recipe is just a guide for them to play with, to add or substitute those ingredients that will enhance it. Wtf? I love macadamia nuts and I’ll add them to my damn cookies whenever I feel like it. That’s like suggesting that if you follow a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, you can’t add macadamia nuts. And you’ve likely come across this –in my view ridiculous– proclamation. If you’re like most new screenwriters, you’ve spent countless hours exploring the cavernous rabbit holes of the internet searching for gold nuggets of writing wisdom. The end result will be will be formulaic and blah. When we grasp this fully, it’s easy to understand how the visual depiction of our story line at the outlining stage is vital to the story’s telling.īut wait! If I plot out my story on a beat board, it will stifle my creativity. We crave that visual representation of the sound waves that penetrate our minds. We spend hours travelling to crowded stadiums, to get pushed and shoved and covered in spilled beer to listen to our favorite bands play the music we could easily listen to at home. One type of event demonstrates this in spades: concerts. This is why we flock to movies and art exhibits and the ballet.
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