If You Can't Answer These 6 Questions You Don't Have A Story - Glenn Gers

Film Courage: How do you define story? How do you teach it to clients and students? Glenn Gers, Screenwriter: I think the basic idea of a story is that you’re going to be following a character or characters.

It’s entirely possible to tell the story of multiple characters. You don’t only have to tell one person’s story. It’s nice, you can do it, but it is also possible to tell a story with 11 main characters.

It takes a lot of work. You have to follow each main character and follow their story all the way through the narrative but in fact I believe any story is really about how a character trying to accomplish something runs into other people who will help or harm their intention. It’s sort of like Isaac Newton’s theory of billiard balls that once they get set in motion they will role in that same direction because they are being pushed by a physical force like a character is also doing that.

They are trying to get somewhere and they are rolling in a certain direction until either they hit something or something comes in and knocks into them then that changes their direction but they are still trying to get to that one place. The physics kind of falls apart there because billiard balls are not trying to get anywhere but the idea that things are moving until they run into something else which is also moving is sort of how characters work. Every character thinks they’re the main character.

If you have your hero walk into a hotel and try to get a hotel room that hotel clerk they think they’re the center of the movie because they are the center of their story and this person coming up to them is with getting in their way or trying to charm them or whatever it is that they’re doing, they are trying to do something and that interchange is the basic building blocks of story. That’s what you cal dramatic action trying to accomplish something which mostly involves interacting with other people. Sometimes the action can be I have to take this suitcase and put in on a train, whatever.

But if will still be I have a thing I am trying to accomplish and that’s what story is. I have a thing I am trying to accomplish. I am a character and I need to get this thing and it will be a more interesting story if there is something in the way.

If I am a character and I am trying to put a suitcase on a train and I go and put it on the train and nothing happens it’s a very short, boring story. If they are carrying the suitcase and another person comes and they steal the suitcase, it’s more of an interesting story and it’s a more interesting story if that person’s got something important in the suitcase. If it’s just a suitcase and they say Oh?

Something stole it, I’ll go get another one - not that strong  a story. Every story is about a character trying to accomplish something and having an obstacle and what they do and the action they take in the face of obstacles is your story. The obstacles don’t have to be external.

The obstacles can be I am really afraid of the train station. I need to get this suitcase to my uncle and he’s going to be at the other end of the train so I’ve got to get the suitcase onto the train but I’m terrified of loud noises, that’s a story. The only obstacle is in there but it’s real.

So every character is facing obstacles, the obstacles don’t have to be physical, they don’t have to be another character. They just have to be something that is getting in the way of trying to accomplish something important to them. Film Courage: Can you explain how questions and choices inform the writing process?

Glenn: Writing is a process of questions. There are a couple of things that I wish I could get tattooed inside peoples’ eyelids if they knew - think in scenes and writing is a process of questions. It’s not a thing you need to fill out, it’s not a form you have to fit into.

Writing is a question of having something…it could just be 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 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 who doesn’t get it. Every thing 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 is it about? What do they want?

Why can’t they get it? What do they do about that? And how does it end?

I guess I skipped one…oh…why doesn’t that work, right. Who is 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? I did a whole video on this called the 6 Essential Questions [on Glenn’s Youtube channel Writing For Screens]. I explained it better there but those 6 questions practically will help you write anything.

They will help you write a movie, they will help you write a video game, they will help you write a series because that’s the essential thing you get of how am I going to turn in whatever feeling or idea I have into a story? Is a person who is trying to do something to get something and there is something in the way and then 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 tried before it would have ended before. So who is it about?

What do they want? What do they do? Why doesn’t that work?

What do they finally do? What is the end? That is storytelling and it can work for three acts or twenty-seven acts or one act.

It always works. It’s my go to set of questions. And then keep asking questions.

Who is it about? It’s about a plumber? Where is he from?

Just ask - who, what, why, where? Keep asking why. Why is he afraid of heights?

Why does he love this particular person? Every time that you ask a question you get a specific answer and you are moving closer to writing a scene. Film Courage: What is the easiest way for someone to figure out an enjoyable writing process for themselves?

Glenn: The first important thing about this process is recognizing that it’s yours. There is not a right or wrong way. Some people write at night, some people write in the day, some people write in short bursts, some people write in long extended bursts.

There is no particular better or worse process. An important thing about a process is that it’s 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, seeing which ones work and which ones don’t work and being really honest. I personally (I keep doing that, sorry) I turn out to write well in very short bursts.

I thought I should do more because when writing in short bursts it’s like Holy Crap! If I can keep doing this for eight hours I’d be a miracle! But I can’t and I would sit there and grind after the burst was running down…grind and not only would that be unproductive and disheartening but I would then start to undo my good work because when you start to grind in a bad way, you start to doubt, you start to feel bad and say Well I must be feeling bad because this work is bad which is not necessarily the case.

It could be that your process is bad. And so what I would do is I would write something that was really good and then I would grind until I was unhappy and then I would say Oh that’s sucks and then I would write something over it and destroy my good work and it took me a long time to pay attention to the fact that I do really well in short bursts and if I stop when I feel myself starting to lose it and take a break, take a walk, do exercises (whatever) I can then come back and do another short burst. Getting myself to sit down again is rough but that is the thing I had to teach myself in paying attention to what worked.

I’ve gotten much more productive since I’ve learned my process. It’s not for everyone. Everyone will have a process that is dependent on their own inner mechanisms and on their own reality.

Some people only have free time on weekends. Some people only get a little free time in the evening and so they have to find a way to work at the time that they are allowed by their life. You have to pay attention to reality and pay attention to your own inner working and the best to find out is to do it and see how it goes.

It’s always better to try and do some work and see how it goes. You will never get to the place where you absolutely know that you can write and then you start writing. There is always the question of let me try this and see what comes out.

That’s the best test of a process. Film Courage: And working these temp jobs for many other reasons aside from income and the study of people helped you realize that was your preferred style? Glenn: Forced me because I was stubborn and I would just keep doing the wrong thing over and over again until circumstances forced me to work in short bursts and then I was like Wow, that actually is better!

Trying to be open to your process, trying to pay attention to what actually makes the work good and feels good. Feeling good is underrated. You have to learn to write when you don’t feel good.

For me having a process where I can say I have five basic documents that I open like an outline, a place where I write notes, and the text itself and a kind of overview (I’m going to be doing a video on this soon - Writing For Screens Youtube channel), that’s my personal set up. Everyone has their own but what you need to do is so when you open that notebook you are not thinking about anything but the contents of the work. You know Ah, this is the outline.

The outline is going to be broken into scenes and the scene lines are going to look like this and I don’t have to think about that, I have to think about what is in the scene. That is the best way to find a process is to get something that works for you. Some people will do it on their phone.

I would advise doing it in some way that is written down in some form, digitally, on paper, on notecards. It doesn’t matter, what matters is you get it out of your head and into the world in some way that you can set it aside and come back to it, set it aside and come back to it because with almost anything you are going to have to, you can’t do it all at once. Film Courage: When did you have that aha moment that I don’t have writer’s block and my anxiety was that wasn’t my style to sit at my desk in my parents’ basement or wherever and with the perfect music and the iced tea, that actually wasn’t working for me.

Glenn: It was unfortunately not an aha moment, it was an aha couple of years. And I think that is sort of a misleading thing that our culture has developed from movies that there is a decisive moment and after it you are always changed. In story that is a very important.

You need decisive moments when people are changed but it truth it’s more like a series and I have a couple seasons where I get a little bit of it and then I fall back into my own ways and then I have some rewards and then I do something new. It’s a process in which you try to do two steps forward, one step back not the other way around because you’re trying to head forward. You do a little forward, you fall back, a little forward, you fall back, and then the main way it always is the doing of it.

Just throw something on the paper even if it’s just (and I done this) I have a scene where I say this is the scene where he comes home and is miserable and I just took it out of the outline and wrote it into the script because next time I look at it I am now familiar with this process. I now say I created a scene, the scene is a description, this is where he comes home and is miserable. Okay, how do we see that he is miserable?

Good question. He seems miserable because he takes his dinner out of the refrigerator and throws it on the wall. Each thing that you get when you ask a question to me it’s always a process of questions and a process of writing down the answer.

Now I have a scene where he comes in, opens his fridge, throws the dinner against the wall. Okay, we know he’s miserable. Now I can add a couple of lines and move onto the next scene.

Everything you can do to put a little something down to create a bit of something for your creativity to hang onto that is (for me) the essence of the writing process. Film Courage: So if this were a movie, it would show Glenn as a temp and then “Alright, Charlie…have a good weekend! ” And then the music plays and you have a half hour and this is it, here I am writing it.

Glenn: I actually think what we would do is we would show…we would cut to the imaginary scene where we’d play it out and so we’d get to catch the thrill of the creation by seeing the creative magic of this character…sorry I’m writing now. Film Courage: Now I love it. So Glenn as the writer.

Glenn: I’m sitting there writing the movie and we cut to or dissolve to…by the way…that’s another thing. Most of the time a) don’t write ‘CUT TO. ’ William Goldman started it, it’s a delightful thing in his scripts, obviously they are going to cut to.

How else are they going to get there. You are wasting page space, don’t say CUT TO. And most of the time don’t say DISSOLVE TO or FADE OUT because that’s their decision unless it’s really important that you dissolve, just write the next scene and they will figure out how to get there.

Anyway, get to Glenn writing and then show that scene where the character is running to the phone booth in the rain and it’s a great scene and people will get so excited as my creativity as a character that they will want to know what happens next. Question For The Viewers: What are your best writing questions?