Story Generating Tool

Concept:
Unique = New, Fresh, Compelling
Familiar = Human Emotions

ACT I
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3

ACT II
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6

Mid-point
Section 7
Section 8
Section 9

ACT III
Section 10
Section 11
Section 12

The above tool is mainly for me, but I'll explain what it is in case you want to try it...

I've been looking for a "Create Story" button since I decided to pursue writing in 1992.

The reason I studied structure, in the beginning, was to find that Create Story button. I mean, I had grown up watching "formulaic" movies. I wanted to know the formula!

It took me about 2 years to realize there is NO formula. (That's not strictly true: I read one book about writing and submitting screenplays to contests. It really wasn't very useful at all. But it did contain what the author said was THE formula, beat by beat. However, some of the beats were completely foriegn to me, I had NEVER seen them played out in ANY movie I had ever watched. Some of the other beats were just structure beats. I mean, you COULD write a screenplay following that formula, but I don't think it would be very good. So I guess it was A formula, just not THE formula.)

Most of what critics -- both professional and armchair -- refer to as a "clear" example of how the writer was "simply following the formula" is merely poorly-executed STRUCTURE, or sometimes just cliche.

I've also read many essays and a few books about generating story Concepts. A lot of useful stuff, but it wasn't until I read Karl Iglesias's book that I found a tool that REALLY helped me generate story from thin air!

The tool is simple:

First, you create a story that is unique, as defined by Iglesias. Just a sentence which decribes something new, fresh or compelling happening to someone, or being done by someone.

Then, you refine that sentence to include the "familiar": you emphasize the human emotion experienced by that someone.

And for me, this tool never fails to give me gold!

See, what I didn't realize when I was looking for the Create Story button is the true nature of creation. We don't really want someone else to do the work for us -- because the work is really play! We just want someone to point us to where the playground is.

It's like that improv game where the audience calls out a location and an occupation, or something of that sort. The improvisation artists take a couple of arbitrary restrictions, add them to the richness of their own subconscious and their own personality and their own warped sense of humor, and the result is creation.

Okay, but here's where Iglesias's tool becomes Ray Jay's tool:

Night before last I tried an experiment.

Okay, I tend to think of plotting in 10-page sections. It's a bit arbitrary, and it's only a rule-of-thumb guideline, but it seems harder to loose one's audience in 10 pages than in, say 20 or 30. (I can loose a reader REAL good in 30 pages! Done it before!) And my whole fascination/obsession with plotting a story before I write it is knowing where I'm going -- like loking at a map before I hit the road.

You see where I'm going with this?

So I used the Unique/Familiar tool to generate a Concept from scratch, then the first 3 10-page sections (Act I) of a movie. AND IT WORKED!!! I could have gone farther, but it was REALLY late and I had to go to work yesterday.

Now, the tool didn't GIVE me the ideas. Those already exist within me, placed there by stuff I've done, stuff I've noticed, stuff I wish would happen, and every single story I have ever seen, heard or read.

But what the tool did was give me JUST ENOUGH -- and not too much -- arbitrary restriction so that the snippets of story I created were (1) compelling and (2) emotional.

When Joss Whedon is breaking a story with his writers, they're primarily concerned with Moves and Moments. (If I understood him correctly at the CS Expo in November, that is.)

A Move is the "cool shit", it's the stuff blowing up and the wierd stuff that the audience would never expect to see and so forth. It's the stuff that makes you giggle with child-like glee when you're coming up with it.

A Moment is an extremely emotional moment for your character. It's part of their emotional Arch for that story. It's a beat where the story pauses for dramatic effect, so that the character and audience can really EXPERIENCE what this character is going through.

Karl Iglesias's tool is designed to make sure that a story idea has both the Move -- which is, honestly, what is going to put the butts in the seats Opening Weekend -- AND the Moment -- which is what the audience will leave the theater with after the movie.

So, I reasoned, if I applied the tool to every step of the story the result should be a satisfying story! Right?

I believe it is.

Now, I'm in the middle of a project right now that is an adaptation, so I don't really get to play with this new toy. (Which kind of sucks.) But I wanted to include on this site. First of all, so I can access it whenever I want (like, say, at work, or on a trip -- anywhere I have Net access), and second of all, in case it helps YOU out.

Also, the Unique/Familiar tool can be applied at ANY stage of story development. You can use it to generate acts, or sequences, or even scenes. I'm going with the 10-page thing because I want to enjoy the page-to-page creating, but with the security that I'm heading in the right direction. (You never follow those MapQuest directions EXACTLY, do you? It's sometimes exciting to find your own way.)

So I suggest you figure out how much you want to map out ahead of time (acts, 20-page sections, 10-page sections, whatever) and make a list of those sections. And under each section heading write:

Unique = New, Fresh, Compelling
Familiar = Human Emotions

Then write a sentence to describe that section of your story that qualifies, in your mind, as "unique". Then, rewrite that sentence so that it incorporate or emphasized the human emotion.

Here's the beauty part: If the section isn't good enough, you're just rewriting 2 sentences!!! You can explore dozens of versions of your story before you sit down to write it!!!

I hope my new toy is helpful to someone trying to develop their story!

But even if it's not, I GET TO PLAY WITH IT!