Ty Templeton's "How to plot a story in under and hour"
My notes:
- Every story ever told has an order:
1) What is normal
2) What has changed the normal
3) What result from that change
Plot
- A character discovers that they want something and put effort into bringing it about.
A character has to matter to an audience
- Create the concept of a story around the basic description of the character, an ironic twist helps
for example, an alcoholic firefighter or a cowardly firefighter, which instantly suggests a story
- Your character is the _blank_ _blank_ in _blank_. For example, Batman is the greatest detective in the world or Robin Hood is the greatest archer in England.
- "Be a sadist to your characters, we learn nothing about your characters if they're happy" - Vonnegut
- Your character earns their goal by deserving what they get by accumulating karma throughout the story
- Halfway through the story, the thing they desire becomes less important than something else
- Unexpected reward or loss, that thing they don't see coming
- for example, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy sets out looking for the Ark, but find the love
of Marion, the movie ends with the ark being stored away while Indy has Marion
- What is your character not expecting? loss or gain?
- A character's success or failure has to be because of what he/she is
- A character must succeed with a cost, a price; they may get what they set out to get in the
begining, but they lose that new something, so there's a struggle, a choice
- Set pieces that stick to a reader's imagination, these set pieces matters where they are, the environment has to play an
integral part to the story and character
- The environment also tells a story, it becomes the character, it tells you
who the character is
- What's the story's theme? What's the lesson learned? Go back and inject that theme into the story.
Check out http://comicbookbootcamp.com for more information on Ty Templeton and his upcoming comic book bootcamp classes.
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