Notes: Lecture Six [241106]

Writing for an audience

• Screenwriter = storyteller
  • The cinematic experience is not just made up of words you might put on paper, but the audiences’ emotional reaction to that information.

Director to the people (X)

            Writer to the people (X)

                        Camera to the people (X)

It is ultimately people to people. (to connect to other people – our grand scheme)

What is the writer’s purpose?

To connect:

• Themselves
• Their unique vision
• The material
• The drama
• Others

Audiences want to be transported by a screenplay. 

Where do you look for a story?

Inside yourself. (from personal experiences or memory)

Everything to learn about other people is already in you.

Now you need to figure out how to connect to it. (To yourself or this vision you have)

Storytelling tool 3: Experience

In experience – you learn something

Are memories true? Not necessarily. Differing perceptions. (to use for reflections)

Memories may change – you choose which to keep hence its filtered whereas experiences actually happen. You cannot filter out what you’ve experienced

• All people have fragments of stories
• These potential ideas prompt your desire to know more
• Respond emotionally and intellectually to what you heard (experience may not necessarily make a good story but one can add a little more to it)
• Good stories are born in the heart, not the head (when you let it flow, it often it turns out good and its also easier to write)
• Remember the role of an audience (you’re writing to be read)
• After all, you ARE the audience (putting yourselves in the shoes of the audience)

True / False Stories

Two events from your life: (first person)

• One happened
• One didn’t
• Don’t tell us which is which but make sure the audience is able to believe both of them

Review

7 questions – short answer quiz

3 Storytelling tools:

• Observation
• Memory
• Experience

o       Aristotle’s storytelling theories

o       3 act structure

o       Developing 3 dimensional characters (just have a basic understanding of how everything is different from one another)

o       Writing for an audience