#screenwriting

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks

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I’m reading Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, which makes screenwriting structure available to novelists. It seems most novel writing books don’t teach structure. They teach craft techniques like Voice, Point of View, Show Don’t Tell, Active Verbs, but rarely how to structure a story. Story Engineering is superb for novelists and screenwriters. Have you read this yet?

Larry says: “The reality of good storytelling at this advanced level will turn you into a beat-by-beat story planner sooner or later. The more you recognize the validity of this model, the more drawn you’ll be to putting some planning time into your stories before you write them.”

Do you plan your story or ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ ?

Films, Structure

3 Act structure.

3 Comments

Having explored most of the major screenwriting books like Story by Robert McKee, Anatomy of Story by John Truby, Screenwriting for Hollywood (audio book) by Michael Hague, The Writer’s Journey by Chris Vogler, Save the Cat by Blake Snyder   and The Sequence Approach by Paul Joseph Gulino (among others) I’m still convinced 3 Act structure is the way that feels right, the most organic. What about you? Are you using 3 Act, or finding Truby’s 22 Steps better, or the 8 Sequence approach?

I see the ‘Turning Points’ in 3 Act structure as stepping stones between which we the writer have absolute freedom to create character, scribble scenes, dabble with dialogue, search for subtext etc. while needing to step on these crucial stones  so that our heroes can reach their goals. What do you think? Which structure are you using? Or if you’re a novelist do you follow structure at all? Should novels obey the rules of screenplays or should there be more freedom for fiction?