How To Write A Great Story (Decades Of Wisdom Distilled Down To 17 Minutes)

how am I going to turn whatever feeling or idea I have into a story how are they doing that what is the magic sauce if I got in a car the most beautiful car in the world turn on the key it doesn't work I don't want the car it's got to go what makes the car go that's a big question that's a great question because that's at the core of everything you have now this energy that's like just glowing inside of you to create I just could not let it go it was a story I

had to tell start by understanding what elements it takes to have a story but every story is really about a problem every story is about a character trying to accomplish something and having an obstacle and what they do what action they take in the face of the obstacles is your story if you don't have those basic elements and that's not the whole story obviously but if you don't have those basic elements then then really what is the story you don't have a character to sort of be our vehicle through a series of events and you

don't have anything propelling them forward or driving them forward if they're not trying to achieve something every story creates a dramatic question and the dramatic question is will the person get what they want or not and that's what holds us to the story I'm here because something is changing for them and I now need to watch them to struggle through it grow through it whatever is going to happen on that Journey that's why I'm here in other words your protagonist goes through a series of experiences that lead to a transformation transformation in a story is

a key element and whether it comes through your main character or your main character changing um everyone else it doesn't matter it's just that transformation is actually the purpose of the story it's actually the purpose of the story because the reason we tell stories is to actually understand ourselves better and that Insight is a transformation for us I believe any story is really about how a character trying to accomplish something runs into other people who either help or harm their intention it's because characters have been in trouble characters have had a conflict characters had to

discover things about themselves that they didn't want to look at something happened they you know it that's what makes drama they're kind of struggling suffering being punished by the situation they're in the upside down World they find themselves in the problem or goal that they're trying to resolve which they're an underdog and they're overmatched and the world is not giving them what they want what are they doing to try to get it how does that make them face something in themselves and how do they grow and do they finally get this thing or do they

get it in a way that they didn't expect if we know what that character is trying to achieve that gives us like a yardstick to measure is he succeeding or is he failing is he making progress or is he had having setbacks right and that's the that's that like push-pull of like hope and fear that we have when we're watching the movie is we're hoping that he makes progress and gets to his destination but we're fearing the worst we're fearing all these obstacles are going to derail him or you know um end up you know

damaging him in some way we don't want our heroes to resolve things easily you know we want them to struggle we want them to fight you know we want we want us we want them to show the strength that we wish we had or that we believe that we have if somebody has a goal and they go after it and they get it we're like okay the story's over their flaws can be just as important to that process as their strengths in fact probably more so because if they're put into something that's playing perfectly to

their strengths then it's probably too easy for them it's their flaws that make it interesting it's so good to have a character that has a flaw because then they make mistakes which creates more conflict and then they do things out of fear which allows us to understand them more deeply if your character doesn't have a flaw that they need to overcome it's going to be difficult I think as a Storyteller to figure out the journey that they need to go on to overcome that flaw whatever your idea is is probably the thing that's going to

come to you first the most important part of the process most writers bypass too quickly which is selecting the idea and understanding what makes a viable idea every day you should be thinking about story ideas because there's some ideas you you know just come up with a mat throw it away you know it's pretty good but it's not great but the ones that keep reoccurring you know are the ones that you know I I feel like okay I gotta work on this there's something here they're out there all over the place they're in newspaper articles

they're in conversations you hear with people at the coffee shop they're on the radio if I come up with one idea that's one idea and it could be a terrible idea if I come up with a hundred ideas or 60 ideas or whatever I can comb through and find the very best idea and eventually when you reach that past the 10 or 12 15 all the way up to 20 you'll start getting some really original ways because you forced yourself and so that's that's what the writer needs to do you got to force yourself to

go deeper in order to create some original writing I think you know that it's working when you're like you know oh I really want to keep you know I want to keep going I want to know I personally want to know what happens next so I'm going to pick it apart first I want to find all the flaws with whatever ideas the idea is and try to get past those flaws and and remove them so that the idea is great this is why you have a good idea yeah not when people go that's great when

they think about it for about three seconds and they go oh that's good that's when you know it's actually connecting with people so you know if you have an idea and you say that to 10 people and they kind of all go oh they ask you about it again later you know it's a good idea the first process is getting the log line down what's a log line for your story and that's just a really one sentence way to be able to encapsulate your plot and in a way that's interesting it makes people want to

read your script boiling it down to a sentence that you can pitch to somebody like what's it about and you know people get it right away um if I can I come up with a log line and I kind of use that as my North Star that way I remember okay it's always about this moment that may change over time okay so how do we craft it every writer has to find their own process the first important thing about your process is recognizing that it's yours that there is not a right or wrong way um

some people write at night some people write in the day some people write in short bursts some people write in long extended verse it's there's no particular Better or Worse process the important thing about a process is something that you can do relatively easily for whatever reason it works for you and that means you have to spend time paying attention to yourself trying different things and seeing which ones work and which ones don't work you have to figure out what works well for you it's always better to try and do some work and see how

it goes you'll never get to the place where you absolutely know that you can write and then you start writing it's always a question of let me try this see what comes out do not care about doing anything wrong just spill your guts there's an idea for something that I want to write great what do I want to say what's the theme so I go there first what do you want to write about like what's your idea and they probably have the idea I usually have an idea or a concept or a story I kind

of want to tell and and in writing it I find the characters I find the story give me three words about the story it could be just three three words Revenge um another word so we'll we'll start with those words then give me a character what's the character's job what does that person do and what does that character want to do I always like to break down what they want into two parts like they have an emotional need like to find love or connection or for revenge or power or whatever and then there's a specific

immediate goal that they pursue in the story that satisfies that emotional need it usually just starts with one scene where I'll see that so Crystal Clear it's one of my favorite moments of the creation process when I'm starting to write it's not coming from a from a starting place it's coming from a scene I already had so I write that scene out the most Vivid thing about what I think about this idea I write that scene out without any it doesn't have to fit anywhere I don't know where this is but I just see these

characters doing this at some point I don't want to know the whole story beat by beat by beat because I figured some things out along the way that I would have never thought of now there's other times I've kind of thought the whole thing out almost you know in in more you know bigger beats and bigger sections but that's usually what it is I know the First Act How It Ends what happens in the middle and then what happens to the end for some people they only need to know a g m and Z right

I need to know a through z so my outlines are long and people usually know what the end is people usually kind of know what the setup is and they kind of know what the resolution is where's it ending where are we going I know whether it is going to be happy or sad and sometimes it has a happy ending where the character triumphs learns to deal with it and sometimes it has a tragic ending where the character is unable to deal with it eventually something will end it either the end will be I don't

get it or I do get it and whatever they do that they had never tried before is How It Ends because if they had tried it before it would end before I think the way you start is so much more important because your end organically comes from your beginning what I want to have them in and then I start them with the exact opposite in the very beginning so I have two pieces that I need I know I need an exciting incident what sets them off on their Journey there has to be an exciting incident

something has to come in and make change cause problems cause a goal that needs to be achieved at the beginning of the story your character may want something that they don't have right and they're just kind of living their life but we get the sense that they want something that they don't have and then there is this inciting incident or Call to Adventure where maybe they have the chance to get what they want but it's like super scary then I need a midpoint so kind of twist that happens in the middle and then I need

an all this lost moment so I have those five points and then from there I go ahead and I I start making beats so I knowing that I need to get to these Five Points then I begin to create a beat sheet and the beat sheet is literally just okay then this happens and then this happens and then this happens and then meet this person then this happens writing is a process of questions that like if I could there's a couple of things that I wish I could like get tattooed on the inside of people's

eyelids that they knew thinking scenes and writing is a process of questions it's not a thing you have to fill out it's not a form that you have to fit into writing is a question is always a process of having something it could be just I want to write a western or I want to talk about how Love Hurts or I want to talk about how love saved my life whatever it is that you start with then you start to ask questions how am I going to tell this story am I going to tell it

through a character who gets it or a story that doesn't get it everything is going to be a choice every question that you ask if you write down that question how am I going to tell this story who is the main character everything is a question and those questions are who's it about what do they want why can't they get it what do they do about that why doesn't that work how does it end those six questions basically will help you write anything you should have already asked the questions who is my hero what is

the hero's wound what are they afraid of what is their visible goal all these questions that you set up in the story is really what holds us to the story and so you know in setting up your character you don't want to just tell us a bunch of stuff about the character you know maybe we see them do something and we go that's weird why are they doing that and we keep wondering that until later we get the answer to that question as as we start to fully understand kind of who this person is and

why they are the way they are before you even start writing the words of the scene you want to step back and as usual my suggest my advice is ask questions so how do you make a good scene work every time you ask a question and you get a specific answer you're moving closer to writing a scene the number one thing I think when it comes to scene work is Clarity of goals and Stakes Clarity Stakes are really important for characters because they create suspense and tension around the goal right so if they don't achieve

what they want to achieve something terrible will happen they will lose something it's interesting how often writers tend to write scenes of characters kind of getting along and kind of having victories and I S and I usually say that you know in a story The victories generally only come at the very end if they come anywhere other than the very end they're usually very short-lived and often overshadowed by the bigger problem that still demands resolution because what keeps the drama or the comedy moving is that sense of there's a problem I'm trying to solve this

problem there's this goal I'm trying to reach this goal each scene has to move the story forward and conflict will kind of ebb and flow but there always has to be tension in the story the next question you want to ask is what does my character want in this scene and does that desire is that desire going to her do they think it's going to move them closer to their goal or at least overcome an obstacle to achieving their goal if the answer to that question is no then the scene should be jettisoned it's not

serving the story because every scene has to move the character closer to their visible goal or force them to face an obstacle or anticipate an obstacle that they didn't know they were going to previously then I'll go back after a day and I'll start looking at it and I'll go back into each of these scenes and I make sure like is there are there nuances in there am I did I write too much is there's too many words you know once you you've looked at that scene and you kind of areas the rest of the

story starting to fall into place do I see what's going to be happening now in this story if the answer is yes keep going to make sure that it makes sense that based upon these beats or these scenes this character is changing and they're making decisions and there's conflict and who's com you know who's creating the conflict and I start I I start coming up with characters that can help to drive this protagonist one way or the other and because every scene is supposed to be cause and effect what happens in this scene is because

of what happened in that scene then looking at that beat sheet lets you know these are the scenes that I need to get to the next beat and these are the scenes that I need to get to the next beat because you know that the point is I need to get from A to B to C to D to e you know whatever it has to promise lots of conflict the emotion of a movie and the emotion of any scene is primarily going to grow out of the conflict if it's not the conflict being faced

right then it's the conflict that they are anticipating or occasionally that the audience is anticipating there have to be those human feelings and desires and fears that we can relate to if it's not coming out of here it's not worth it it's just imagination it's good up to a point but it has to have an emotional truth in its simplest form a story is The Human Experience there's something in there that's scaring you and that's good you need to go there they don't care your smartness that's not important they want the guts because that's what

they want that's what they pay for for the writers to go through the process of exploring Excavating pulling apart looking at all the elements of a story that they know better than anybody else everything that you can do to put a little something down to to create a bit of something for your creativity to hang on to you know I want people to just jump into it and write a story in 30 minutes and then kind of walk away and go I can do it and this is like yeah you can keep your voice that's

the most important thing I was a it's like don't lose your voice don't lose your instincts your childlike instincts for telling stories as Garrett just said be brave be bold and mighty forces will come to your Aid you got story to tell so