Structure is something that every agent, editor, publisher, Hollywood executive, public speaker, marketer and story teller talks about, to the point that it can seem complicated, intricate, mysterious and hard to master. So I want to give you a starting point for properly structuring your novel, screenplay or presentation without overwhelming you with rules and details and jargon.
Here are what I consider ten key elements of structure – ten ways of looking at structure that will immediately improve the emotional impact – and commercial potential – of your story.
1. THE SINGLE RULE OF STRUCTURE
Long time television writer Doug Heyes says that there is only one rule for achieving proper plot structure: What’s happening now must be inherently more interesting than what just happened. The goal of structure – the goal of your entire story, in fact – is to elicit emotion in the reader or audience. If your story is increasingly compelling as you move forward, that’s all you need to worry about.
2. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE GOAL
The events and turning points in your story must all grow out of your hero’s desire. Without an outer motivation for your protagonist – a clear, visible objective your hero is desperate to achieve – your story can’t move forward. Repeatedly ask yourself, “What does my hero (or heroine) want to achieve by the end of the story? Can readers clearly envision what achieving that goal will look like? And will they be rooting for my hero to reach that finish line?” Apply the same questions to whatever scene: “What does my hero want in this sequence? And how is this immediate goal linked to her ultimate outer motivation?” If your answer is “I don’t know,” or, “They don’t,” your story is dead in the water (a sailing term that means “adrift, not going anywhere”).
3. MORE, BIGGER, BADDER
Structure is built on desire, but the emotion you must elicit grows out of conflict. The more obstacles a character must overcome, and the more impossible it seems that he will succeed, the more captivated your audience will be. The conflict must build: each successive problem, opponent, hurdle, weakness, fear and setback must be greater than those that preceded it. Repeatedly ask yourself, “How can I make it even harder for this character to get what he wants?”
4. SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW
In each successive scene, something must happen that has never happened before: a new situation for the hero; a new secret to reveal; a new ally to join; and new enemy to confront; a new lover to pursue; a new (even bigger) problem to solve; a new tool for solving it. If scenes are interchangeable, or if nothing of significance changes from one scene to the next, you’re treading water.
5. BEFORE AND AFTER
In creating the overall structure for your story, look at it as symmetrical, and divided into three sections (these are NOT the three acts – we’re looking at structure a bit differently here). Section 1 shows us your hero at the beginning of the story, living his everyday life. He’s stuck in some way – settling for something, resigned to a life that isn’t that fulfilling, or oblivious to the fact that deep down he longs for more.
At the other end of this symmetrical structure is another portrait of that same hero, this time transformed. Living a different life, more mature and self-aware than he was at the beginning. This final sequence must give us a clear picture of your hero, after having reaped the rewards (positive or negative) for finding (or not) the physical and/or emotional courage that was necessary to achieve his goal and complete his journey.
In between these before and after snapshots is the journey itself – the hero’s pursuit of that all-important goal. This is where the compelling desire and the overwhelming conflict come face to face. But without those beginning and ending sequences, the structure is incomplete, and the story won’t work.
6. THE OPPORTUNITY
At the end of that opening snapshot your hero must be presented with some opportunity. Something must happen to your hero that will engender her initial desire, and move her into some new situation. This is where the forward movement of your story begins, and it is out of this new situation (often geographic, always unfamiliar) that your hero’s outer motivation will ultimately emerge.
7. FOCUS & DETERMINATION
Whatever outer motivation drives your hero, she shouldn’t begin pursuing that goal immediately. She must get acclimated to her new situation, must figure out what’s going on or where she fits in, until what has been a fairly broad or undefined desire comes into focus. Only then can she begin taking action toward the specific outer motivation that defines your story.
8. LINES & ARCS
Structure applies to both the outer journey of achievement, and the inner journey of transformation. In other words, as the hero moves on the visible path toward that finish line, facing ever increasing obstacles, he must also gradually find greater and greater courage to overcome whatever fears have been holding him back and keeping him from finding real fulfillment or self worth. Repeatedly ask yourself “How is my hero changing in this scene? How are his emotional fears revealed and tested?” And, ultimately, “What does my protagonist have the courage to do at the end of the story that he didn’t have the courage to do at the beginning?” Whatever the answer, this is your hero’s character arc.
9. SECRETS & LIES
Superior position is the term for telling your reader or audience something that some of the characters in the story don’t know. This gives you one of your most powerful structural tools: anticipation. When we know who and where the killer is before the hero does, or when we know the hero is keeping a big secret, we will keep turning the page to see what happens when that conflict appears, or that secret is revealed.
10. TURN FANTASY INTO REALITY
Your job as a writer is not simply to take the reader to incredible places and show them exciting or astonishing characters and events – it’s to make the reader believe they are real. Your reader wants to suspend disbelief, but you’ve got to enable them to do that, by having your characters behave in consistent, credible ways. Your audience is eager to embrace fantastic, faraway worlds, bigger than life characters and startling events, but only if your characters react to them the way people in the real world would. You can even give your hero extraordinary powers, but we have to learn how she acquired them, and these powers must be limited in some way, in order to make her vulnerable.
This list certainly doesn’t cover every element or principle of plot structure that I lecture about or use with my consulting clients. Nor does it reveal all of the tools and turning points at your disposal. But every story I have ever encountered that followed these ten principles was properly – and effectively – structured.
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(Redirected from Freud (film))
Freud: The Secret Passion, also known as Freud, is a 1962 American biographical filmdrama based on the life of the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, directed by John Huston and starring Montgomery Clift as Freud. The original script was written by Jean-Paul Sartre, but Sartre withdrew his involvement in the film after disagreements with Huston, and his name was removed from the credits.[2] The film was entered into the 13th Berlin International Film Festival.[3]
Plot[edit]
This pseudo-biographical movie depicts Sigmund Freud's life from 1885 to 1890. At this time, most of his colleagues refused to treat hysteric patients, believing their symptoms to be ploys for attention. Freud, however, learns to use hypnosis to uncover the reasons for the patients' neuroses through his mentor and friend Josef Breuer. His main patient in the film is a young woman who refused to drink water and is plagued by a recurrent nightmare.
The story compresses the years it took Freud (Montgomery Clift) to develop his psychoanalytic theories into what seems like a few months. Nearly every neurotic symptom imaginable manifests itself in one patient, Cecily Koertner (Susannah York). She is sexually repressed, hysterical, and fixated on her father. Freud works extensively with her, developing one hypothesis after another. Also shown is Freud's home life with his wife Martha (Susan Kohner), with whom he alternately discusses his theories, and patronizes when she reads one of his papers.
Cast[edit]
Production history[edit]
Montgomery Clift and Susannah York in Freud
In 1958, John Huston decided to make a film about the life of the young Sigmund Freud, and asked Jean-Paul Sartre to write a summary of a projected scenario. Sartre submitted a synopsis of 95 pages, which was accepted, but later completed a finished script that, if filmed, would have amounted to a running time of five hours, which Huston considered far too long. Huston suggested cuts, but Sartre submitted an even longer script of eight hours, justifying the even longer version by saying, 'On peut faire un film de quatre heures s'il s'agit de Ben Hur, mais le public de Texas ne supporterait pas quatre heures de complexes' ('We can make a film of four hours in the case of Ben Hur, but the Texas public couldn't stand four hours of complexes.').[4] Huston and Sartre quarrelled, and Sartre withdrew his name from the film's credits.[2] Nevertheless, many key elements from Sartre's script survive in the finished film, for instance the creation of a composite patient, Cecily, who combines features of Freud's patients Anna O., Elisabeth von R., Dora, et al.[5]
Background[edit]
The film heavily compresses events, cases and acquaintances early in Freud's career, spanning from his work at the Vienna General Hospital under Theodor Meynert during the mid-1880s, through his research into hysteria and his seduction theory along with Breuer, up until his development of infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex around the turn of the century that became the basis for his fundamental Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, first published in 1905.
The character of Cecily Körtner is based upon a number of early patients of Freud's, most heavily drawing on the Anna O. case but also Dora and others. Similarly, the character of Josef Breuer and his role as mentor and friend in Freud's life as portrayed by Larry Parks is in fact a combination of the real Breuer with Wilhelm Fliess.
Reception[edit]Critical reception[edit]
... it's a fascinating attempt to mix a traditional biopic with more experimental elements, such as rather surreal dreams sequences.
As director John Huston's voiceover suggests, it's a film that's less interested in Freud himself than the possibilities of unlocking the human mind and how that can be shown on screen – how can you portray the ideas of psychology on screen? As a result it plays fast and loose with history in favour of trying to uncover what Freud's ideas mean. It is an interesting and entertaining movie, with a great central performance from Montgomery Clift.
— Tim Isaac (Big Gay Picture Show), Freud (DVD)[6]
... a curiously involving biopic about that which interests us all – ourselves and what ails us. ... Freud is a strong and sombre drama about life's psychological traumas and the first man who attempted to quantify and cure them. It's a well-acted and very solid movie but stay well clear if you fancy a bit of diverting amusement. Both Freud and A Dangerous Method deal with the fact that movies about people talking are not exactly visually exciting but Huston (and Cronenberg) pull off the drama within the subject in their own very different and intriguing ways.
— Cineoutsider, Alien landscapes – A UK region 2 DVD review of FREUD[7]
A sincere and competent biopic on the early years of Dr. Sigmund Freud (Montgomery Clift) ... Clift makes for a brooding and introspective Freud, obsessed with proving his controversial theories correct. Huston films it as film noir, with Freud the detective. What makes Huston's black-and-white film remarkable is the dream sequences, which are photographed mostly in negative or overexposure. This mise en scéne gave it a tantalizing German expressionist look and made the patient's repressions come to life on the screen, telling more about the subject matter than the narrative's wearisome simplistic didactic tone.
— Dennis Schwartz's Movie Reviews, FREUD (aka: Freud: The Secret Passion)[8]
Montgomery Clift delivers a superb, yet troubled and complex interpretation that benefits from remarkable direction. Probably too risky for its day, the film was a surprise sleeper hit: theatres in the mid-west had to ditch scheduled features when audience demand quadrupled.. such was the morbidity of the times. An overlooked gem even to this day, this is an unfortunate loss since Freud: The Secret Passion is a remarkable film.
— Le Monde, Freud, passions secrètes (1962) de John Huston[9]
Huston's problem was to render an intellectual quest, one that wants to be told in words, in images suited to film. He chose a metaphorical structure that runs all through our literature, from the Odyssey to Star Trek: THE MIND IS A BODY MOVING THROUGH SPACE.... The substitution of face for body, body for mind, movement through space for movement in thought — there is a pattern of substitutions running throughout Freud. ... My point about Freud, the movie, then, is finally that it is a tremendous success — if you look straight at it. I think that it is not only an extraordinarily good film as a visual experience, as acting, as structure, but it also embodies a highly personal vision of psychoanalysis and its founder. My vision of Huston's vision in Freud is that psychoanalysis reveals human life as an endless series of displacements from what we really and originally desire and seek. It is a vision that profoundly expresses Huston's own 'as if' view of life. Huston is indeed an auteur, a genius, at least by his own definition. He enables you and me to see Freud and psychoanalysis in a strikingly new, but highly intelligent way.'
— Norman N. Holland (A Sharper Focus), John Huston, Freud, 1962
Accolades[edit]Short Film Structure Secrets Pdf Free
Freud was nominated for two Academy Awards at the 35th Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay (lost to Divorce Italian Style), and Best Original Score (lost to Lawrence of Arabia). Among other awards, the film was also nominated for 4 Golden Globe Awards: Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Motion Picture Actress - Drama (Susannah York), Best Motion Picture Director (John Huston), and Best Supporting Actress (Susan Kohner).
Reception in France[edit]
Élisabeth Roudinesco comments that Freud: The Secret Passion, 'did not have any success. And yet the black and white photography of Douglas Slocombe recaptures superbly the baroque universe of fin de siècle Vienna. As for Montgomery Clift, he portrays an anguished, somber and fragile Freud, closer to the James Dean of Rebel without a Cause than to the mummified figure imposed by the official historians of psychoanalysis: a character, in any event, more Sartrean than Jonesian. The work was distributed to the movie houses of Paris at the beginning of June 1964, two weeks before Lacan's foundation of the Ėcole freudienne de Paris. It went completely unnoticed by the psychoanalysts of Paris, who failed to find in it the hero of their imagination.'[2] Sartre did not see the film.[10]
Soundtrack[edit]
The mostly dissonant, atonal score to Freud was one of the earliest works by composer Jerry Goldsmith. It garnered Goldsmith his first Oscar nomination, which he lost to the score Lawrence Of Arabia that was done by fellow rookie composer Maurice Jarre, who, like Goldsmith, would go on to become one of the film industry's most successful and respected composers. The 'Main Title' from Freud, as well as the tracks Charcot's Show and Desperate Case[11] were later purchased and reused without consent of Goldsmith by director Ridley Scott for the acid blood scene and others in the film Alien (1979), also scored by Goldsmith.[12]
Home media[edit]
Having previously been unavailable in a home media format, Freud: The Secret Passion was eventually released in the UK by Transition Digital Media in a 1.78:1 letter-boxed, non-anamorphic 4:3 format, on a Region 2 DVD edition on April 23, 2012.
See also[edit]References[edit]
Further reading[edit]
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Freud:_The_Secret_Passion&oldid=893091891'
Editor’s Note: This article is presented in partnership with the Wyoming Film Office and the Wyoming Short Film Contest, which is currently accepting submissions for 2016 and offering a $25,000 Grand Prize for the winner’s next shot-in-Wyoming project. Click here to learn more.
There’s an irony to short filmmaking. Most aspiring filmmakers come to screenwriting having grown up inspired by feature films, therefore, when it comes time make their first films, short filmmakers are often forced to work in a storytelling mode and structure that’s quite different from the films they studied. This leads to the question every film student at one point or another ends up asking themselves: What exactly makes for a good short script? Indiewire asked that question of the shorts screenwriters whose films are playing at SXSW 2016, and we got some inspiring answers that are as varied as the films playing at the fest.
Remy Dunagan, “Lucid”: The key to a good short film script is only writing what explicitly needs to be known. Everything else, tell it visually. Leave the audience guessing and talking, it’s always good to leave a couple unanswered questions by the end of your film, just remember to cover the important stuff.
Geoffrey S. Glenn & Dominique Coleman, “Memories Upon Memories”: Two heads. I (Geoffrey) don’t usually write my own scripts because I feel that having someone else on board to help translate the story you had written adds more to the film. In writing the story, you’re able to get across your ideas, your vision, but you can get so caught up in the thoughts and philosophies that you don’t realize some of it may not make complete sense, or that it may not be succinct enough for a short film. That’s where my screenwriter (Dominique) came in. She sifted through and completed the thought process, and took out what was unnecessary. She stayed true to the story I wrote, but still added her own mind to it, which I believe made the film stronger.
Brian Lonano, Victoria Cook and Kevin Lonano, “Gwilliam”: My ideas are very succinct and I never want to burden them with too much dialogue. I’m also very conscious of the audience’s attention so I never want to drag my story on for too long. For me, the key is show more, say less and get out before you overstay your welcome.
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Jim Cummings, “Thunder Road”: Insist that the DNA of the film contain the goal of compelling an audience to say at least one of these three sentences: “I’ve never seen that before,” or “I’ve never thought about it like that before,” or “How did they do that?” It’s as easy as that.
Lizzy Sanford, Anna Cordell, “Hip Hip Hooray”: First, stop seeking a formula and get in touch with what makes you excited to write anything at all. When you’ve written something that feels solid, read it out loud with someone else to find the weak points. I find the most powerful stories communicate a sense of mutual recognition; they expose something that resonates with a wide audience. There can be universality in even the most peculiar circumstances. A story that achieves this can exist in a completely imagined and even absurd world – but at its core it examines something quite simple.
Shant Hamassian, “Night of the Slasher”: Don’t make it a full story. Make it a taste of a story leaving the audience wanting more. Make it feel like we are thrown in the middle of a much larger story and investors will want to meet with you and possibly [give] funds to see the rest of the story on screen. My film is based off a feature idea. Here’s the structure of a feature film script: Beginning, middle, end. Here’s the short film structure: Beginning, middle, end? Remember, your short is a sample, a taste of things to come. Don’t cram a full feature story in a 15 minutes. Also, keep it between 10-15 minutes. Festivals like that.
James Cunningham, “Accidents, Blunders and Calamities”: A unique problem efficiently explored.
Jonah Goldberg, “Icarian”: Keep things specific. Writing a short isn’t the same as writing a feature where you can leave some holes and openings for room for interpretation and spontaneity. You have a limited amount of time so you have to be specific of the actions and happenings of the story.
Kevin Boitelle, “Crooked 180”: For me, the most important thing is to avoid the feeling of the movie being a 10 minute joke. A lot of short films feel like a simple set-up joke with a twist or punchline at the end. Most of the time, watching these films feels like wasting 10 minutes of my life.
Jay Rondot, “Barry”: I remember hearing a quote from Paul Stanley of the rock band, KISS, that went something like, “We were going to concerts and not seeing the kind of live show that we wanted to see, so we made up the band that could put on the show we wanted to see.” That’s always stuck with me. In terms of a short film script, write the short that you would want to see.
Janicza Bravo, “Woman in Deep”: Having a sense of what your characters want and where they would like to be.
Becky James, “Vocabulary 1”: I make animation about bugs, snakes, and bats and my scripts are mostly silent. I still struggle with the scripts though, and it’s challenging to create clarity and depth without language. I have found that the most interesting movies result when I paint myself into a corner, when I have a set of characters and situations that I genuinely don’t know how to resolve. I end up adding and subtracting elements and weaving them together so that the ending feels both inevitable and surprising, even to me.
A.J. Briones, “The Smiling Man”: The short films that have always stuck with me long after I’ve seen them are ones that challenge me emotionally; they don’t spell things out neatly and while perfectly enjoyable on the surface level, I love films where I can work to find some deeper meaning, metaphor, or closure. I write with that in mind. I want to give the reader something they can’t get out of their heads for awhile. I know screenwriting books and blogs about shorts are all about the “twists” but I try not to think about them as much as I think about injecting setups and payoffs that support the main through-line.
Gilberto Giles-Sosa, “DoubleDVE – ‘Endeavor'”: The key to writing a good short film script is authenticity, this is because the story must come from within. Lots of times, amateur writers overlook the fact that your story must be real to you, so that the audience can feel something.
Gabriel Miller, “A Reasonable Request”: For me the key to writing a good short film script is restraint. Telling the story of a moment, rather than attempting to cram a feature into 15 minutes. If you can find a compelling moment or scenario in a character’s life and tell it authentically then you should be onto a winner. And the more interesting or surprising that moment is the better.
Isabelle Hodge, “Mischief and Mayhem”: You never have enough time to tell your entire story, and in short films your time restrictions are especially relevant. Finding which aspects of your film will be most engaging and impactful to your audience is the best way to hone in on what is important in the short time you have.
Javian Ashton Le, “Dastaar”: Establish rules for your storytelling approach. There is no right or wrong way to go about this, but whatever you choose to do, stick with it and don’t look back. This could be as simple as restricting dialogue to the bare minimum, only giving the viewer access to what the central character subjectively experiences, or designing scenes with a particular visual language in mind. An engaging film is built on specificity and what you decide to withhold is just as important as the information you choose to reveal.
Frankie Shaw, “Too Legit”:
Short Film Screenplay StructureEnter late, leave early. Make sure the women you write are real people.
Max Weiland, “An Arm’s Length”: For me the key was to create intrigue from the opening shot. In today’s world we are bombarded with so much content that if you don’t grab the viewer’s attention in the first 15 seconds you are probably going to lose them.
Kayla Lorette, Zack Russell, “She Stoops To Conquer”: Even though it’s a short, the world of the film can be as full and complex as any feature. My favorite short films feel like glimpses into something much bigger and more complicated. Start big and then distill- once you’ve got something worth distilling.
Benjamin Kegan, “The First Men”: Don’t just read the script aloud again and again, role play with a partner. My cinematographer and I would pick roles and read them out loud. I’d read my role as written, but whenever something felt false or too convenient he would go off the script and respond how he would respond in real life, and I’d have to adjust. Then we’d switch parts. Sometimes it made me want to smack him, but then it forced me to go back and look at the script and ask questions like, are the character’s actions really driving the scene and responses here, or is the writing? It’s not always about what you as a writer want the characters to do or where you want them to go.
Yen Tan, “1985”: Make it about a moment. Something small. Something specific that a character does. It doesn’t need to be a three-act structure. Not going over 10 pages (approximately 10 minutes) is highly recommended.
Alexia Salingaros, “Lady of Paint Creek”: The characters need to invite you into the space in which they are living. Details about their body language, mannerisms, and speech must create a living person through which the audience comes to care and immerse themselves in the story.
Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, “Greener Grass”: Start with an idea you have a strong reaction to. It’s easy for us, as writing partners, because we know we’re on to something when all of a sudden we start talking over each other or can’t stop laughing, creep each other out, etc. But even as an individual, if an idea instantly causes a spark with you, makes you actually feel something – whether you are laughing or pissed off or whatever – it’s worth pursuing. It’s just like with sketchy dudes, trust your gut.
Ben Petrie, “Her Friend Adam”: If there’s one, I think that it’s got to be speaking your own voice. Just speaking your own voice, with no regard for what you surmise might be a popular or trendy thing to do. Forget about anybody else and just entertain yourself. Maybe that sounds like artistic masturbation, but plenty of people masturbate on a daily basis, so that can’t be such a bad thing.
Really though, even in this situation, I’ve written that answer, and right away in creep the thoughts of, “Oh, God, what will some people think of that answer? They might think that’s a bit inappropriate…” But if that’s the way I approached writing all the time, I’d lose my mind. You’ve really got no instincts to trust but your own, so you best listen to them with both ears.
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