Shakespearean plays begin with the chorus telling us what we are about to see. They don’t tell us the whole plot but rather provide a context for the events that are about to follow. That …
Story Structure
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How Do You Identify the Dilemma in Your Story?
At the heart of every story lies a dilemma from which all tensions and conflicts arise. How do you identify the dilemma in your story? There are two ingredients: A powerful desire A false belief Desire If we believe that love will make us complete, we might set out on a search for it. Then …
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Finding Home
“Home is where one starts from.” – T. S. Eliot There’s nothing more primal than our quest for home. The dilemma is that our childhood homes may have been confusing, chaotic, or even violent. Whatever your experience, in our adult lives we often unconsciously attempt to recreate it in order to resolve it. In her …
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Story is an Argument
(Image from “Big” 1988) Story is an argument. The theme (or dramatic question) is the thesis statement, and the story is the argument played out. Any argument requires opposing forces. These forces manifest as our antagonists. Antagonists are any characters that stand in the way of your protagonist getting what they want. Antagonists are not …
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This workshop is for novelists, screenwriters, show runners, memoirists, producers, directors, song writers, poets, editors, and anyone else with a desire to deepen their understanding of how to build a story.
Recent Posts
Story: A Journey of Self-Discovery
Story is always a journey of self-discovery “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates Embarking on a creative endeavor, especially memoir writing, often brings forth a whirlwind of fears. Among these, the fear of exposure can loom large. When recounting personal experiences, the instinct to withhold information or downplay the drama — either …
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Exploring the Dilemma
At the heart of every story lies a dilemma. It is not a question of whether or not your protagonist has a dilemma, but rather, how effectively you’ve explored it. By exploring your protagonist’s dilemma, you are led to the most dynamic version of your story. Your protagonist’s dilemma is the source of your story, …
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Transformation
A fundamental understanding of transformation is crucial to having anything more than an intellectual relationship to structure. You’ve probably read books on three-act-structure. But it is important to recognize that no one has yet been able to isolate the transcendent beauty that draws us into a great story. It is one thing to analyze the …
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The Imperative for Dramatic Conflict
A director told me once that if you put two actors together in a scene without directing them or staging the scene, the conflict would begin to diminish. If the actors were on opposite sides of the stage, they would gradually drift toward each other. Their voices would begin to match each other in tone …
Read More Finding Home
“Home is where one starts from.” – T. S. Eliot There’s nothing more primal than our quest for home. The dilemma is that our childhood homes may have been confusing, chaotic, or even violent. Whatever your experience, in our adult lives we often unconsciously attempt to recreate it in order to resolve it. In her …
Read More Story is an Argument
(Image from “Big” 1988) Story is an argument. The theme (or dramatic question) is the thesis statement, and the story is the argument played out. Any argument requires opposing forces. These forces manifest as our antagonists. Antagonists are any characters that stand in the way of your protagonist getting what they want. Antagonists are not …
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What Does it Mean?
Everyone has a story. It takes courage to tell it, be it memoir or fiction, because there comes a point where we must separate the facts from the truth. The challenge for the storyteller lies in distilling events to their essential meaning. When we scratch the surface of our story and begin to ask “why” …
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Exploring Your Protagonist’s Dilemma
(Image from The Hunger Games, 2012) “The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.” – George Bernard Shaw Every story is essentially an argument that relates directly to the protagonist’s dilemma. Remember that a dilemma is a combination of a …
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Plot versus Theme
Any writer can experience that moment where you suddenly realize that your “idea” of the story isn’t going to get you to the end. Maybe you had a plan, but now the characters have changed in one way or another, and the end doesn’t make sense any more. You feel devastated! But, this can actually …
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The Nature of the “Want”
“To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.” – Isaac Newton While exploring the nature of the “want” in your story, it’s important to understand that you are an artist and you cannot make a mistake in this creative process. Everything you write either belongs, or is leading you to what ultimately belongs …
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