Update & Story Shop Talk

A sharable version of two pitch decks are nearly done. You'll see them as blog posts before autumn...

• Charade of the Paper Wasp

• Charity Case

The screenplay of Charade of the Paper Wasp is a third done first draft. A second draft will be done in parallel to the storyboarding process next year.

The screenplay for Charity Case is a mere 5 pages now, but has more outlined material, character art, denser story bible fare, etc.

FYI: Charade of the Paper Wasp will be done years before Charity Case.

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Meanwhile, I want to share my Storytelling Cheat Sheet.

^ An image showing an adjusted version of Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet, and a map for Scene-Sequel chaining and Motivation-Reaction Units (MRUs) derived from Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain

Months of daydreaming often proceed me outlining my beats--from Opening Image to Closing Image. I struggle so much with "Fun and Games" I decided to split it in half, renaming the first half "Trial and Error" as a 'new' beat.

When I outline scene cards, I track things recommended by Save The Cat.

^ An image showing a scene card pair. Each card has these features: 2 dropdown menus ["Scene | Sequel", "EXT. | INT."], 3 checkboxes ["I don't know how to make this scene any stronger", "This scene holistically works with ALL the others", "The storyboard & dialog for this scene is completed"], and 5 empty text fields with subheadings ["Place - Time", "Describe the dramatic action that happens in the scene, simply", "Describe character desire VS conflicting obstacle, clarifying motive", "Describe the emotional shift of the scene, or the soundtrack's expression", "Remember:"]

Researching the terms from my cheat sheet will decipher future posts I make about story problems--real examples still fresh in my memory when I 'solved' them.

Charade of the Paper Wasp has a plot with a lot of moving parts that mean constantly checking things over and over for logical consistency.

And Charity Case has such precarious subject matter, anything but perfect clarity of a character's motive at any given time could ignite disaster level nuclear cringe.

Point is, I'm learning a lot about storytelling just trying to resolve these stories. Even when I'm not seeking feedback, sharing my... journey... could be useful to anyone aspiring to tell unique stories with niche precedent.