UPDATE

My writing has slowed down significantly lately. Maybe it's due to the covid lock downs. Maybe it's because of my new understanding of the story and character structure in movies and screenplays. It's forcing me to take 3 steps back before taking 1 step forward. Nevertheless my understanding is reaching critical levels that will propel me to a higher and more professional standard.

Moving forward, I will be adopting a new paradigm that I will term as the Storyteller's UNIFIED STORY THEOREM. It will help answers that have plagued not just me but all aspiring writers. I'm going back to fundamentals and breaking it all down to see how it all works. How do you design a character flaw? What is the villain's goal? How to work through the dreaded 2nd half of Act 2? How to weave your subplots in with your main plot and make them complement each other? How do you design your secondary cast (mentors, allies, rivals, antagonists etc.) around the protagonists? How do you add subtext to dialogue? etc. I believe each stage can be represented graphically with a design template.

My ultimate, lofty goal is to design a writing process that is almost like a major car factory assembly line mixed with Pixar. Get an idea, put it through the rigorous design and assembly process, and out comes a quality ideas vehicle. Sounds a bit ambitious, but after putting some initial work into it, I think it might actually will work.

Recently my friend asked me write a top ten movie list:

My personal top 10 Movies  that  are (almost) perfect in what they were trying to achieve with their idea, and sometimes going beyond.

1. Terminator 2 - Greatest Sci-fi/Action

2. Se7en - Creatively Dark and Shocking which includes the Best Unexpected Ending

3. Matrix - Mind Blowing Ideas and Action

4. Good Will Hunting - Best Crafted Script

5. Gattaca - Best Underdog Movie/Perfect Theme and Subplot Construction

6. A Few Good Men - Best Acting and Drama. Killer cast and Aaron Sorkin's first script.

7. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Pure Imagination and Childish Wonder

8. Ninja Scroll - Best Animated Action Movie

9. Amelie - Best  Foreign Film

10. Saving Private Ryan - Greatest War Movie

I have analysed these movies with the UNIFIED STORY THEOREM and was amazed to find most of the principles are true and found in the best works!

Encouraged and buoyed by this result, I will applying the new model to all my future projects. I'm applying it to The Last Ninjas and the Mutants of Chernobyl which has resulted in completely redesigning and rewriting Acts 2 B and 3.

Ping - Short Film

Ping - starring Kristen Schaal - written and directed by Phil Traill from phil traill on Vimeo.

Imagine Impact Australia

It's been awhile since my last post and that's because I've been busy! I've been preparing my application for Imagine Impact Australia.
https://www.imagine-impact.com/accelerator/australia
Worked about two weeks on the rather comprehensive online writing application. I used it to flesh out a lot of the backstory for my feature length idea, Martingale. I'm pretty happy with it overall, other than submitting my excellent short film script, Future Mail, over a rather sloppy feature script. I'm pretty happy with my submission. Excellent practice for next years open submission anyways.

It did force my One Red Paperclip project back a month though. But fear not, I'm working it on right now (and polishing it for the next month). Getting my Talentville membership tomorrow to be eligible for the monthly competition.

One Red Paperclip - pre-Final Draft

The One Red Paperclip script approaching its final form. 131 pages at the moment. Need to cut it down to below 129 at least. 120 would be ideal but I'm not sure how I'm gonna cut another 13 pages with out affecting the pacing and story too much.

But yeah, very happy to almost crossing the finishing line. Will meet the March 1 deadline and hopefully finish the top three for the monthly competition.

EDIT: 

So I got four reviews for One Red Paperclip... and it's the worst score I've ever received. Some criticisms include the length, lack of character arc, unlikable girlfriend, too many characters, too many trades, staying to faithful in the adaption of the book etc. 

I'm going to take a break from the script and return with a new eye some time down the track.

A Company dedicated to Writers and Storytellers

https://hbr.org/2008/09/how-pixar-fosters-collective-creativity
https://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/inside-the-pixar-braintrust

I have a vision of a big company for writers in the future. It would be open to any writer around the world.

Each project would have a project manager that pick and chooses the written ideas from the many around the world. E.g. Sci fi concept with chipmunks in space. The project manager would then pick the best concept based on the requirement. And then they would move onto the next part e.g. the character design of the protagonist.

Each writer would be repaid by a % of the overall participation on the overall finished product.

The would be many projects open at any one time. The goal is to have the best ideas coming from anywhere and the cheap and vast labour pool would result with astonishingly fast turn around. E.g. current estimation of a completed final draft script would need about 3 months to complete if a writer were to work alone.  The open source project could finish it in a week.

And if script sale is a minimum of say 90k, this could yield a minimum of $4.68 million in sales per annum.

One Red Paperclip Update

Missed the soft February deadline, but it's okay. Will be on course for the hard March deadline.

-It's at 135 pages at the moment. Will try to cut it down to at least 129 pages for now and 120 pages eventually for the final draft.

-implementing all notes pass.

-the finish line is indeed in sight!

On Mixing Genres and Breaking Writing Conventions

https://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/get-published-sell-my-work/the-dos-and-donts-of-combining-genres

https://www.servicescape.com/blog/144-genres-and-subgenres-for-fiction-writing

Mixing genres and breaking writing conventions is the best way to produce something fresh.

The easiest way to write a memorable scene would be to break a genre or writing convention or cliche. Some of the obvious examples are:
- Psycho and recently Cop Cam - killing off the main character early to mid way through the story.
-Quentin Tarantino breaks numerous writing rules in his movies. Writing rule #1: keep your scenes short as possible. In Inglorious Basterds, he famously breaks this with the looooong milk intro scene, and the meeting scene in the basement. Writing rule #2: Show character through their actions. Quentin prefers to show his character through extended dialogue e.g. Reservoir Dogs opening discussion on Madonna's song Like a Virgin and tipping etiquette, Jules in Pulp Fiction with his many famous conversations (Say what again! Royale with Cheese, Ezekiel 25:17). He breaks the heist genre convention in Reservoir dogs by not showing the actual heist. I'm sure there are a lot more...
- Se7en (SPOILERS - lol) - is probably the best and most memorable example of breaking genre conventions. The two detectives does not catch the killer. Instead Andrew Walker has John Doe walking into the police precinct, covered with blood, screaming for the detectives attention, before handing himself over. This also changes the story from a who dunnit to why dunnit and where are the last two bodies (car ride scene). Then in the climax we have one of the good guys killing the villain out of rage, instead of the usual self protection. This completes John Doe's seven deadly sin masterpiece and the bad guy wins :(
-Memento and Irreversible - events shown in reverse.
-Nolan playing with time - scenes from Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk etc.

Good Will Hunting Analysis

Test

Good Will Hunting Analysis:
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Concept -
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Protagonist's Character Arc and Flaw
Becca Puglisi & Angela Ackerman -

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma

requires deep research and

Emotional Wound

Need underdog scene as well.

Wound: Being abandoned by his birth parents and forced to live in a series of abusive foster homes
Fear: Being rejected and abandoned again
Emotional Shielding: Will is a classic under-achiever, purposely ignoring his potential and sticking with the only people in his life he knows he can trust. He has anger issues, is cocky, and lashes out when threatened. Though he seeks out romantic relationships, he sabotages them before they get too serious.

Unmet Need: In part, Will is missing Love and Belonging; he has friends, but his pursuit of Skylar shows that friendship isn't enough to satisfy him. However, his biggest unmet need - the one at the root of his inability to obtain the belonging he desires - is that of Esteem and Recognition. Like many abuse survivors. he blames himself in part for the violence he suffered growing up. He also likely fears that because his parents rejected him, there's something in him that will make others reject him too. Once he faces the possibility that he wasn't responsible for the traumatic events from his past, he's able to accept himself for who he is: someone with value and potential who is worthy of being loved.
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Villain's Back Story and Master Plan

bread crumb with subplots and villains and

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3 Act Structure - a loose outline of major plot points.
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/good-will-hunting-script-pdf/
https://www.whatascript.com/good-will-hunting.html

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Subplot Character and Structure Design

https://medium.com/@the_wise_sloth/plot-break-down-of-good-will-hunting-b7cc8d8e9260

• Will and Sean
• Will and Skylar (The Romantic Line)
• Will and Lambeau
• Will and Chuckie
• Sean and Lambeau

The interesting thing with Will and Sean's subplot, the most important one mind you, does not appear at all until act 2.

subplot theme should support main theme.

Types of helpers and minions

the problem with sequence types of is that relies too much on plot, just like relying on

Using the Subplot train

The act 2 problem

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Story Design

+ and - for each major act, major sequences and scenes
character goal obstacle for each scene.

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Writing

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Dialogue

- Overall
https://scriptbeat.home.blog/2019/06/08/good-will-hunting-beat-sheet/

Research
Genre
==

• We see Will hanging out in his apartment and reading in the movie's opening credits. A short while later, we see him mopping the hallways at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Will heads to a bar with his buddy Chuckie, but he ducks out early to go home and work on a math problem that some prof at MIT left on a hallway chalkboard. He never tells anyone at the school that he solved the problem, though.
• Will and some buddies hang out one night at a Harvard bar. While there, Will embarrasses a pompous Harvard guy and gets the phone number of a pretty Harvard girl named Skylar. They agree to hang out sometime.
• Later on, Will solves an even more difficult problem on the MIT chalkboard. But he gets caught by Professor Lambeau and runs off before Lambeau can question him. Whether he knows it or not, he just solved a problem that only a handful of people in the world can solve.
• While hanging with his buddies one day, Will gets into a fight and ends up hitting a cop when the police arrive to break it up. This gets him sent to jail for assaulting a police officer.
• By this time, though, Professor Lambeau has tracked him down. He makes a deal with Will's judge to let Will out of prison on two conditions. The first is that Will has to work with Lambeau on math problems and the second is that Will has to go to therapy.
• 
  
• Will mentally destroys his first couple of therapists. But he meets his match when he runs into Sean Maguire, an old friend of Professor Lambeau's.
• Will gets under Maguire's skin by talking about his dead wife, but Maguire pushes on and continues to meet Will. Over time, they develop some trust with each other.
• The harder Maguire pushes Will to grow up, the harder Will pushes back. Eventually, Will totally snaps and walks away from Maguire's therapy.
• Then he also pushes Skylar away when she says she loves him and wants him to move to California with her. Will has spent his life pushing people away before they can hurt him, and it looks like he's going to do it all over again.
• Meanwhile, Will blows off all the meetings that Professor Lambeau has set for him with businesses and organizations that want to hire Will.
• In an epic scene, Will tells Lambeau to get lost and that all of his dumb math problems are really easy. Lambeau closes the scene by saying he wishes he'd never met Will.
• Back in therapy, Sean Maguire tells Will about how he (Maguire) would never trade away one second of the time he spent with his wife before she died.
• He also reminds Will that he'll never be able to move forward with his life by avoiding things that might hurt him.
• In the end, Will breaks down and cries when Sean tells him that he's not responsible for the abuse he faced as a child.
• After his breakthrough with Maguire, Will agrees to take one of the jobs that Professor Lambeau set up for him.
• At the last second, though, he hops in his new car and takes off for California to be with Skylar. And that's where his story ends.

The 3 act structure  and sequence structure is WRONG!

A story should be designed around the structure of the main plot and subplots.

There is no way sequence model would even think about character arcs, the subplot arcs complementing the main theme, the role of allies and antagonists and minions.

the arcing of each main plot and subplot needs to be carefully fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle, while ensuring some subplot arcs climax around the Act 2B and 3A mark.

The SEQUENCE structure will always produce useless surface level scenes with consideration of growth.

There is no way Matt Damon and Ben Affleck could have written Good Will Hunting without the help of a mentor like William Goldman. There is just too much perfection, the subplots are perfectly crafted, every scene gives us fresh exposition. Way too much wisdom and structurally sound structure to be composed by early twenty somethings.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4720603/Good-Will-Hunting-the-truth.html

Genre Convention

Problem the missing link to finish the Unifield Story Theorem.

https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/obligatory-scenes-and-conventions
http://www.screenplayology.com/content-sections/paths-problems-in-screenplay-studies/2-4/
https://www.shorescripts.com/is-genre-a-tool-or-a-trap-for-the-screenwriter/
https://tvtropes.org/
https://creativescreenwriting.com/conventions-cliches-and-lazy-screenwriting/
http://www.aspera.org.au/wp-content/uploads/06-Weaving-2016.pdf

Back to work!

Editing my One Red Paperclip script. With my renewed understanding, the way forward is much clearer. There is really only one main subplot in the script with Dom and Kyle.

Completion date of first draft? Tentatively marked for Feb 1st. Or March 1st the latest. Destined for workshopping and reviews over at Talentville.

Current projects:

One Red Paperclip.
The Last Ninjas and the Mutants of Chernobyl.
Martingale - new project deadline: June 14th, 11.59 Pacific Time.

Charades

All good storytelling is just a big game of charades.

Morning Glory - Feature Film

Morning Glory.

First scene immediately exposes Becky's obvious Character Flaw: Workaholic.

Must create empathy for character in beginning, fired from job, underdog, hard worker.
Becky


After Act 2 downfall - Protagonist is usually pulled out of funk with the help of an ally e.g Amelie, and the old man tape.

Good Will Hunting - Chuckie gives Will a reality check.

Harrison Ford tells her to stay with Daybreak in a rare show of affection by doing the egg show.


------
Character and subplot sometimes share the same character flaw, (usually in an older ally) to show that the protagonist must change in order to avoid making the same mistakes.

Harrison Ford and Becky are both workaholics. They put their work before family and love. Ford regrets doing that as it resulted it his bad relationship with kids and grand kids due to his absent parenting.

Amelie - Glass man with brittle bone tells Amelie to go out and risk getting hurt or she will end up old and alone like him.

Good Will Hunting - Will will end up like Chuckie working in menial jobs like construction if he doesn't fully utilize his genius for a better life.

------
All subplots must be closed - or brought to a closure.

Subtext

The best way to create subtext is to have a character with a previous assigned role that changes some time in the story. etc. Darth Vader - Villain changes to ally.

Subplot Graph - The Hunger Games

I found an interesting subplot visualization graph here. Although the black and white dots explanation is very confusing...

Each road or subway line represents a different story-thread or plot line.  The dots (exits on the highways or subway stops) represent different scenes or moments in the story.  Black dots represent local exits or subway stops (moments that apply only to that one storyline) while the white dots indicate moments where two or more plot lines intersect.

By mapping your story out in this way, you can tease apart the different plot threads in your story and make sure that each story arc makes sense in terms of build-up and tension.  Also, it can be difficult to juggle multiple story threads at the same time so when you use this subway map technique, you can isolate the main plot or one of the subplots and look at it separate from the others.

Original source: https://diymfa.com/writing/mapping-out-your-story

The Hunger Games

Inciting Event: Katniss Everdeen volunteers for the games when her little sister is chosen as tribute. Peeta gets chosen as the male tribute.

First Plot Point: The lie of faking a romantic connection between Katniss and Peeta is started and developed. Katniss scores 11 in her private lesson with the game makers painting a bullseye on her for once the game starts. She has no chance of going in under the radar now. They enter the game. She delves deep into the woods, hoping to bide her time as much as possible. She’s unsure exactly what she’s going to do.

First Pinch Point: Tributes die and eventually she is forced to move from her safe environment when a wall of fire accompanied with fireballs send her in a certain direction. The careers (with Peeta) find her and chase her up a tree. She saws a home of tracker jackers down upon the careers sending them running. Peeta comes back and screams for her to run away. She does so.

Midpoint: She allies with Rue. They unite to find a way to even the odds between them and the rest of the tributes. They decide to destroy the stockpile of supplies near the cornucopia that the careers were using to survive. Katniss succeeds and returns to the woods to meet up with Rue.

Second Pinch Point: Rue is killed in front of her. She reacts by killing the boy that killed Rue.

Third Plot Point: Seneca Crane announces a rule change. He states that two people from the same district can now team up and win the games together. Katniss seeks out Peeta, finds him seriously injured needs to nurses him back to health. She must risk her life to get some medicine to do so and succeeds. She embraces the romantic story they’ve been feeding Panem.  Once they are healthy enough the game makers dry up all the water surrounding them forcing them to go to the lake at the center of the arena which is where they know they will finally have to face Cato. Cato is now the last tribute they must fight.

Climax:  Cato, Katniss and Peeta find themselves being chased by vicious wolf like creatures. They run to the cornucopia and climb it to find safety from the beasts. Cato uses Peeta as a negotiating tactic to control the situation but Katniss shoots him in the hand causing him to fall down and get mauled. He survives through the night. She ends up putting Cato out of his misery when he continues to linger on with the animals gnawing at him. It is a mercy kill.

Climactic Moment: Seneca Crane decides to change the rule back to force them to fight each other but they decide to eat the poison berries Peeta found the day before and die together. Seneca stops them and declares they both are the winners of the 74th Hunger Games.

Resolution:  Katniss and Peeta are restored to health. Katniss continues to battle with her feelings over Peeta vs Gale. She decides to embrace the illusion of love that she’s developed when she learns from Haymitch that the capitol is angry with what they did with the berries. He tells her that her only choice is to explain that she couldn’t bare the idea of killing Peeta. She does so and they return to District 12 knowing that she has to play into the lie if she doesn’t want the Capitol coming after them.

(Submitted by Kurt Petrey.)

Ninja Scroll - Villain Analysis

Just applied the Villain graph to the Japanese anime, Ninja Scroll, and was pleasantly surprised to find it does indeed work. The fact that it can work on a movie that is not from the west means it is universal in its application.



The main villain is Gemma.



Jubei, Dakuan and Kagero's investigation into a epidemic in Shimodo village uncovers Gemma's master plan through a series of clues that also reveals his past and connection with the main protagonist, Jubei.

(NOTE: Some Dramatic movies tend to not have a visible villain. Instead these are replaced with the character's flaw acting as the villain e.g. Good Will Hunting, Amelie etc.)