The Nutshell Technique - the screenwriter's friend

So a couple weeks ago my writing group, League of Women Writers, had a guest speaker. Her name is Jill Chamberlain and she wrote a book called The Nutshell Technique. I didn't know what to expect, except one of the writers had heard her speak and raved about her, so that's why she came to speak to our group. I'm not usually one to buy a book with a guest speaker, but after her explaining her method, I was hooked and bought her book that night. She's also teaching a weekend seminar Sept 14 and 15 in Los Angeles, so if you like some of the tips I give here, I suggest you sign up. You won't be sorry! I'll include her website below to find out more.

So Jill started her presentation and told us that some of the things she learned from working with screenwriters were that 99% of most screenwriters were actually NOT telling stories. Oops! Not a good statistic. Most people were having one event, then another event, then another, etc. But what they were failing to do was have those events lead to the next, lead to the next, etc. It turned out there wasn't a connection between beats. She went on to explain that what's key about her technique is the connection between parts. It's not a formula, so stories don't become predictable using her technique. You can use it with other techniques, in fact.

She goes onto explain the basic principles behind dramatic storytelling are: drama, obstacles, choices.

That all stories have a beginning, middle, and end.

They all have a hero's journey, even if it's not the Hero's Journey we've read about in books, such as Luke Skywalker's journey. She just meant it's the one protagonist of the movie. Even if a story doesn't have one protagonist, the writer may know which one is the main protagonist, even in a buddy comedy.

And like many teachers, she explains the protagonist needs a good want.

She also goes into detail about which stories are comedic and which are tragedies, using Aristotle's definition. This means a comedy can be a tragedy and a drama could be a comedy, as far as storytelling goes. That in comedies the protagonist overcomes its flaws and has a happy ending. Tragedies don't overcome their flaw and have a sad ending. I'm not going to go too into detail to explain her technique, because really I can't do it justice in a blog post.

Her book is filled with diagrams that show movies she's used to diagram so you can start to learn what makes those movies strong and how to use them for your own stories. I think it would be nearly impossible to go into detail about the movies she diagrammed. So the best thing is to suggest either buying her book or going to her weekend seminar, or both. I'll include her website so you can find out about her book or her classes. https://www.jillchamberlain.com/ She also does consultations for 1 1/2 hrs or full script consultations. Her prices were really reasonable too.

I've already used it as I started to do my rewrite for my comedy script for the producers I'm working with now. And it really made it so simple! I'm finishing up another comedy and I've been stuck on, and I can tell it will help me with that too. Plus, some of her clients are really successful screenwriters. Because any story, no matter how professional a writer you are, can be tricky if done right. And that's what's great about her technique, is it really seems to be this secret weapon to writing any story correctly, and well.

It's a pretty important day

It's International Women's Day. And that's pretty cool. So what better time to take a moment out to be thankful for all the strong women in my life. 

I'm thankful to have an amazing all-female writing group that not only inspires me to write better but to keep wanting to see more women's stories told. 

I'm thankful to all the strong women in my life that inspire me to go after I want, because if it's my dream to be a writer, then why shouldn't I be? 

I'm thankful to the women in the film industry that are paving the way for other writers like me, today, to tell my stories and know that I too can do it if I want. 

I'm thankful to people like my mom, who even though she was afraid to go after her own dreams, she's always proud of me when I go after mine. 

I'm thankful to all my strong friends who even if they aren't writers or have no interest in the industry, they are going after their own dreams, no matter what they are. 

I'm even thankful for all the strong men in my life who aren't afraid to let strong women go after their dreams and don't feel threatened when they do. We need strong men too, that's for sure. 

So no matter what International Women's Day means to you, I hope you've found a way to honor yourself or the women in your life too. And if not today, it's never too late. 

RIP writer that could have been

So as writers go, we tend to have writing groups. And these days, some of those groups are online. Which means we end up being online friends with people we never meet in person. Luckily I've "met" some really great writers that way. And one of these, Sandy Corkins-Schmidt, just passed away this week. I never got to meet her. I barely knew her. But I do remember her smiling face, seeing kind words posted from her. I know she placed in several screenwriting contests this year. And of course when everyone online heard of her passing, there were only kind things to be said about her. But what does this have to do with you? Well, she was young. I would assume in her 40's. Which to me, is too young to pass away. So the reason I'm writing about her, to you, is that I hope this reminds all writers, that you need to stop waiting to get those screenplays and TV scripts written. Because we just don't know when it's our time. Life is short people. And if you aren't doing what you love,  you aren't following your passion to be a writer, then why aren't you? For me, my dad passed away when I was 23 and he was only 51. It was the most tragic thing that had happened to me. But it taught me never ever to take life for granite and to live every moment to its fullest. It's given me the passion to always keep writing and never waste my time doing anything unimportant when I could be writing instead.

So please writers, stop procrastinating. Stop watching too much TV when you could be writing your own TV scripts. Stop hanging out with friends ALL the time, when you could hole up and finish your outline or your rewrite. You're a writer. You're meant to write. You have the passion to be a successful writer. And if you waste too much time, you'll never see your dream realized. To me, writers were put on this earth to tell their stories. So tell your story. Before it's too late.

Why do we sabotage ourselves?

So today I banged my funny bone on my kitchen cupboard and it hurt like hell. So what do I say as it happens? "F*@k me!" Really? Why? Why on earth would I be offensive to myself after I hurt myself? I mean, I should be saying instead, "Hey there sweet, wonderful person, you're going to be okay." But nope. I cursed at myself instead, treated myself horribly. Because we aren't prone to being loving to ourselves, are we? We just pile on the pain. Pile on more insults. Like we believe we're deserving of more of them, instead of loving behavior. And as writers, if things aren't going our way, we just assume it's going to keep going like that too. Piling on more misery. For instance if we haven't been writing, then does that motivate us to write? Not usually. We usually just keep putting it off. Another TV show to watch that we heard was good, instead of writing. Another book to finish reading, instead of writing. Friends who want to meet for drinks, we can't possibly blow them off. And the longer we postpone our writing time, the more we figure, well, I haven't been writing, what's another day? It's a lot! It's our lives! It's our dreams! Why on earth do we think postponing going after our dreams is even an option? I mean when we put it that way, it seems like NOT writing is the complete foolish thing to do. But somewhere in our lives, we've been told following our dreams is a waste of time. And no matter how much we try to drown out that voice that said that, it's still there isn't it? Somewhere in the back of our minds. Slowly creeping into our subconscious like a black ooze from a horror movie that eventually engulfs the lead characters until no one's left to survive. Unless...! There's one strong hero! And he fights the evil ooze. Until Part Two of course. But, my whole point, is that we can be the hero of our lives and our dreams. We can be the one that fights off procrastinating when it's time to write, when it's been a while for us to put our dreams first. Because that's what we were put on this earth to do. Tell our stories. And we don't owe an apology to anyone who doesn't get that. Because the ones who truly love us, do get it. And the ones that don't, well, they probably would curse at us when we hit our funny bones any way. So be good to yourself. Be loving to yourself. And put your writing first. Because it's the least you deserve.

Being God in our screenwriting universe

So it came up in our writing group last night about the fact that we put our characters into jeopardy, whether serious or comedic, and we're the ones that shake up their world. So that pretty much makes us the "God" of their universe. The talk in our group focused upon, "Why now?" What about our stories is making this moment so important for our characters. It can't just be any moment of their life, otherwise the story would just ramble. But the moment we write about has a purpose to it. There will be on the end, some sort of character growth. So what exactly is the purpose of this story for our characters? Why do we stick them in this jeopardy here and now? And how will they grow and what will they learn? If we don't have answers to any of these questions, then we do not have a story, just yet. But the journey for our characters is going to take them from who they've been maybe their whole life, to a new and better person once the journey is over. When we think of it this way, it kind of makes it pretty easy to figure out what the story is, don't you think? Because the first act is the way they've always been. It sets up how they live, who they live with, it lets us see them before that "thing" happens that shakes up their world. Then comes act two and they are now on the journey of their world being messed with. This is where we see, how they will react to it, most likely not so well at first. Then we'll see what they do when they accept it, but still of course, not doing so well with it. And by Act 3 we will see them finally learn what they were supposed to learn all along, coming out of it, better than ever before. It was really helpful talking about this in my group, and I'm sure you can all relate to those moments in your life when something really bad or tragic happened. And at the time, there was nothing good about it. But now, of course years later, you can see how you grew from that emotional moment and journey. So if you can look at your own stories this way and your character being on this same kind of journey, I'm sure you'll see exactly what you need to do to your stories to make them better and have your character grow to become a better and more evolved person in the end.

where do you get your characters?

Do you get yours straight from your own imagination? Or do you take them from people you know? Do you blend people? Taking the best of all your friends and family? The problem with using people we know though, is they could recognize themselves and not be so happy about it. Do you worry about that? Or is that just what writers do? I forget which Woody Allen movie it was, but in it, all the characters were so mad that he had written about them and put them in his stories. But as writers is it our job to worry about how people will feel? Or does the art always come first. I know in one of my first scripts, I had a character that seemed similar to my mom. When my mom read it, mind you I was an adult, she said she was grounding me. LOL Now, obviously she couldn't, but she did see that she was in my story. I did the best I could to blend who this person was to not make it so obvious. But apparently it didn't work! And sometimes we find these gems of characters in the people we love most, so what's a writer to do? In fact, one of the sitcoms I pitched to ABC was ALL my mom. I didn't hold back on this at all. I mean, there's so much food for fodder in her that I really wanted someone to put this woman in my story. But I also think finding characters in our minds based around what the story needs is just as good too. Sometimes we might not know of the crazy, eccentric characters we actually put in our stories. And thank god right? But that's why it's great to get out and be in the world, find new places, people watch to your heart's content! We never know where our characters will come from. But the more we can be inspired and colorful, the better our stories can be because of it.