Starting with a story is going to disappoint a lot of you here to just make pretty pictures, but “Story is King” has got to be one of the most overstated and under-applied principles of media making. This Pixar-coined phrase has graduated to beyond-cliché status because of its importance as a first step in the creation process. As able wise man Abe Weissman says “If you’re going to have a voice, you’d better be careful what that voice says.”

The concept of story applies to both photo and video-making. Crafting an image worth “a thousand words” could take a thousand hours of forethought to create a single frame. Because technology makes image making so accessible, modern images are often made thoughtlessly, even harmfully. I harp on the importance of intentional imagery in its own section here. In this world quality trumps quantity. You need to figure out what you want to make; don’t rely solely on chance to give you something good by simply pointing a camera and capturing what someone else has made. It could be a single frame photograph or a million frame epic film motion picture trilogy. Either way, figure out if what you want to make is worth making before you begin. In media production, the how is fairly easily explained and will comprise 95% of this course. For a moment, have some patience as we discuss the what. I promise to eventually minimize the philosophical and focus on the actionable, but be patient.

There are some forms of photography that are concerned with capturing reality objectively. They seek to record reality without bias. This is both rather impossible, and exactly the opposite of what I’ll propose here. This sort of training is designed to give you all the tools you need as a visual storyteller to tell your story, to take advantage of a hundred small decisions to make something memorable.

We could argue that the following two images show roughly “the same thing”. Both feature two people. One is “praying”, the other not. It’s feasible that a stock image site could deliver both as search results to the same criteria. But I didn’t capture these two images to simply make you aware that two more individuals, and oil lamp and an exercise ball exist. What you’ll remember about these images is not so much what’s objectively in them but what it means to you. The emotional connection you make with an image is the story we are talking about here. This means that these frames mean something quite different to me than they do to you. The baggage of life experience we bring to whatever media we ingest is a vital half of the experience. We’ll revisit this at the end of the lesson.

So every frame tells a story, and the business of photographing isn’t all that different from that of cinematography. That said, the latter gives us the opportunity to develop these emotional concepts and relationships over time. So let’s talk about structuring story.

Stories help us make sense of the world and seem to have done so as long as man has been self aware. One oft-cited historical source is Aristotle, who in 350 BC defines a “well-constructed plot” with great application to modern story telling. Some of his observations may seem self evident in retrospect, but several fundamentals he mentions are often neglected. We’ll use several of his ideas to frame our discussion. Remember at all times that you are writing your story for an audience, and the “pity, fear and catharsis” you kindle within them are what make your story memorable. Tension drives stories. Uncertain anticipation in the audience can be the tension; it doesn’t have to be a character conflict. Conflict ultimately leading to crisis, makes for watchable material. Journeying with a character for our own cathartic experience is our right as an audience. Aristotle determines the need for believable consistent characters with enough good in them to be relatable. Acting and doing need to feel properly motivated by dimensionally fleshed-out characters. He advocates they experience a “change from ignorance to knowledge“. Too often stories show no development in the course of a character’s journey. A “destructive or painful” tragic incident. He advocates a beginning, middle and end. A caution to avoid overdeveloped spectacle. Aristotle’s poetics are more plot than character driven, which may not be so modern an approach, but of plot he says “A well-constructed plot should…be single in its issue“. As simple as that sounds, too many students can’t even figure out what their story is “about”. And once they do, they have a hard time sticking to it. The process of story, from planning through post, is one of whittling down the unnecessary and discovering what your true message is all about. It’s not unlike the quote attributed to Michelangelo:

Perhaps a bit dramatic, but you get the gist.

Story Vocab

• Plot: What’s happening. The linked cause and effects incidents that combine to give us a story.
• Theme: General underlying subject. What the film is “about”. A story’s theme will often be implicit (not directly stated) in a good story.
• Arc: Generally visible in how your characters are transformed
• Protagonist: Main character in the story. Protagonist contains “agon”. Anyone recognize this root? “Agony”. Tension. The Greek “Agon” means struggle or conflict. Volitional characters have to be struggling against something. And we want to watch them struggle for whatever sad reason.
• Antagonist: Character or force in opposition to Protagonist’s goals. The antagonist often drives the story as much as (or more so than) the protagonist. Consider the antagonist’s point of view.
• Point-of-view: Whose perspective do we have? What information is available to a character and audience and how would they behave? Constantly consider and reconsider point of view.  What does the audience know that the character doesn’t know (dramatic irony)?
• Exposition: Introductory elements
• Inciting Incident: The something that happens and kicks off the story
• Train: The narrative spine. The single question or motive that moves the story forward
• Shot: What it sounds like: a single shot. A single “in” to “out” point in the edit
• Scene: A series of shots within the same location. A scene generally contains it’s own crisis and resolution similar to the overall story structure, just miniaturized.
• Sequence: A series of scenes, with a beginning middle and end, that convey one story
• Act: A series of sequences that drive to a major turning point and, in turn, spawn the next act

Story Structure

The above is a wonderfully simplistic explanation of why structure matters. It will seem self-evident, but after watching lots of students films you’d be shocked at how overlooked some of the basics are. The three act structure is likely the most commonly referenced narrative structure. It separates your story into a beginning, middle and end. Each act culminates in some sort of turning point which then launches the story in a new direction at the opening of the next act.

Act1

Exposition. Establish world (status quo). Inciting incident kicks off the journey. Establishment of “dramatic question”–the big question of the whole show (e.g. “will he get the girl?”)

Act 2

Protagonist embarks on perceived solution to the problem created by the inciting incident. New worlds explored, sidekicks introduced, new powers tested and wrangled, dramatic tension rises by the end of the act (“rising action”). The end of Act 2 usually sees the character at an all-time low.

Act 3

Climax and resolution. The final crisis of your story will help inform the entirety of the rest of the story. The character goes back home a new person or settles into the new status quo.

I discuss the 3 act structure mainly because it’s simple–there’s not a lot to remember and it’s therefore likely to be applied. It’s also consistently “fractal” in that it’s represented on the micro/scene level and the macro/overall story level. If you’re writing for TV however, you’ll more often see 4–5 act structures. And other forms of writing will employ differing structures still. The same concepts apply to the written word, examples here and here. The broader point is that these are helpful ways to represent change in characters and situations over time.

Using this understanding of story structure and terminology, take a look at a story you may be familiar with. Can you find any exposition? An inciting incident? A beginning, middle and end? What is this story saying thematically, both explicitly and implicitly?

Let your audience enjoy the process of film watching as they Sherlock the story’s pieces together. Remember, your viewer is part of the story. Sure, you could just paste a list of text at the opening of a film to get the exposition out of the way, but c’mon, nobody is that lazy.

Show, don’t just tell. Dialog isn’t as useful as we think it is in real life. So often we use words to hide what we really think and feel. We stop listening half-way through a sentence because we assume (usually accurately) we’ve already got the gist. We believe what we see over what we hear so dialog is so often not the best solution. Counterintuitive as it sometimes seems, remember to use a visual medium to tell a story.

“Drama”, another word of Greek etymology, means little more than “to do”. The fundamental element of drama is that some thing is taking action in some way. Though two people talking together can make up the majority of a film’s screen time, remember to have some sort of “doing”. It’s much easier for an actor to “act” while doing something else simultaneously.

I’ve found, almost universally, that the modern audience is smarter than I am. Just as they don’t want to be beat over the head with relentless expositional back story. In so many ways it completely undermines the tension you’re striving to create. A useful question is this: “Is the audience both uncertain and expectant after every scene of my story?”

Good opening exposition often creates questions as much as it provides back story. Create curiosity. Now you have a captive audience. Feed it. The audience’s journey of discovery is the substance of entertainment. How boring would it be if all the expositional elements were just written out on the screen before the movie began?

The Bible is the only story or scene allowed to start “in the beginning”. It’s just not an interesting, or often plausible place to start. Show us a story part way through with enough detail to convince us that we stepped into an already-existing world.

Don’t worry about semantics and format in early stages of your story process. Put nothing into screenplay, much less production script format until the story is sound. We’ll discuss some techniques in discussing treatments and proposals that can make excellent story tools. For example, placing all the events of your story on index cards and physically laying them out in order can really help remedy structural issues.

Find and tell your own stories often. Pay attention to what works. What keeps an audience interested? Though some of these principles seem more oriented toward feature film writing where story is constructed, consider that even non-fictional documentaries, at least the enjoyable ones, tell a good story. The process of editing, selecting and arranging tidbits of information, is one of building a story. Stories surround you and the principles are the same despite scale or location.

Creative Story Generation Game

Fun storytelling games, while incredibly simple, can help you exercise your storytelling skills. We’ll later discuss how “being creative” isn’t as elusive as it’s often made out to be. This game is an example of the old adage, “Creativity Craves Constraint”.

If I say “make up a story”, you may find it rather difficult to do on the spot. Let’s try another approach.

Pick a person and a profession. Give me a random place. Now pick something else rather random like a most embarrassing moment, a disease, or maybe a unique linguistic ability. It doesn’t much matter what you pick. Being asked to create a story cold is tough stuff. Being asked to develop a story about Helen of Troy doing door-to-door summer sales in Texas while afflicted with terets is fun. about Giving yourself some place to start will make it surprisingly easy to come up with an entertaining story. Combine all your “limitations” together and you’ve got fodder for something interesting.

After all that, explanation, let me give you my advice. Write what you know and don’t worry too much about all of this. So much of this was determined after analyzing many successful stories and films. It isn’t necessary to rigidly adhere to it to create a good story. Remember how much we relate to conflict and struggle. Don’t forget that the process of engaging as a viewer in story is enjoyable. It activates the same dopamine-releasing Phenylethylamine as sky diving, romance, and chocolate. It can be used to manipulate, engage, and inspire an audience. Do you enjoy the process of writing and later reading what you’ve written? One of my favorite examples of storytelling (through music in this case) is that of Oak Felder who says that a song is not a song until it connects with someone else. The media you create will become an emotional conduit to another human being so take advantage of the privilege to create.