When you write your story, the novel/screenplay is read by many ‘readers’, and when it is magnified ten times on film, the visual manifestation must take its audience on a cunningly crafted journey as envisioned by the writer.
It is vital for the writer to not only know who the audience for the story is, but purposely play a cat and mouse game that will captivate, and lure the audience on a journey that is never predictable or unimaginative.
Whatever you write should always prompt an interaction between writer and reader / audience, keeping the story alive, brimming with conflicted physical and emotional action.
When something happens in a story, it can be dull and meaningless if ‘nothing’ happens, and the story event (scene) does not have a meaningful and rewarding payoff.
That is ultimately what storytelling is all about: set up and payoff.
If we find a dead body in the woods, the first question that arises is: Who it is?
Now the writer has several choices:
- To reveal the identity of the body which then leads to murder investigation until the killer is found and we discover who the person is and why he /she was murdered.
- To not reveal the identity of the body but introduce several characters who might be the person who was killed.
- To reveal the killer and show what happened, ultimately revealing the identity of the victim.
Whatever you write, the writer must be clear of the intent of the story event and its meaningful payoff.
Keep in mind that each story event is structurally the equivalent of a complete story, complete with its beginning middle and end that was set in action more than 4000 years ago by Aristotle.
The function of your story outline is to identify the story events (scenes) of the most important events in your Protagonist’s life. The function/ goal of the card outline is to build and dramatise each event to its maximum potential, and to explore the exterior and internal lives of your story.
