3 Mistakes Writers Make In Act 1 That Ruin A Story - Steve Kaplan
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- Опубліковано 26 бер 2023
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Steve Kaplan is the author of The Hidden Tools of Comedy and The Comic Hero's Journey, best-sellers in their field. He's working on a third book about writing comedy for television.
In addition to having taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale and other universities, Steve created the HBO Workspace, the HBO New Writers Program and was co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan Punch Line Theatre. In addition to development projects for HBO, he has taught workshops online and around the globe and at companies such as DreamWorks, Disney Animation, Aardman Animation, and NBC's Writers on the Verge. Steve has worked as a script consultant and script editor for productions companies, studios, directors and individual writers.
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![The Hidden Tools Of Writing Comedy - Steve Kaplan [FULL INTERVIEW]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/-Q9vDjKJbuw/mqdefault.jpg)
![The Hidden Tools Of Writing Comedy - Steve Kaplan [FULL INTERVIEW]](/img/tr.png)
I don't make mistakes in act 1 that ruin my story. I ruin my story consistently across each and every act, thank you very much. And when I revise, I ruin it further.
Keep it simple.
Haha, nice
Hahahahahahaha
Audiences won't mind, they'll love what you write
😂😂😂
Lots of value in this clip. Great to listen to someone who doesn't endlessly ramble about themselves.
This is absolute gold.
The antagonist in groundhogs day is the unseen supernatural force that makes him relive the same day until he changes.
I think the antagonist is Phil himself, or rather, Bad Phil. The Phil whose narcissistic ego was slowly eroding his life. Supposedly, due to the complexity of the script, before shooting a scene, Murray would ask, "Is this supposed to be Good Phil or Bad Phil?" And he'd play it accordingly. If I had to name an antagonist, yeah, it's Bad Phil, because it's him that must be conquered to get the happy ending.
@@Yo_DynamoJoe so kinda like in Scrooged?
@DynamoJoe Agreed. The repeating day is the phenomenon/tool used to confront and defeat Bad Phil.
@@Yo_DynamoJoe Conflict is both internal and external. I believe the external conflict is the Supernatural force.
@@JrtheKing91 That's true. But does Phil ever defeat or overcome the repeating day? Does he even cross swords with it in any way? The only actions he takes that move the story forward are the ones that oppose "Bad Phil". The event is only ever really a metaphor. If Phil doesn't change his ways, then every day for the rest of his life will be JUST LIKE THIS. So, the event is not a force that opposes him. If anything, it is a force that helps him. But it's not really something for him to overcome, so it is not an antagonist.
I disagree that the main character shouldn’t initially have a girlfriend/boyfriend. He’s negating that true love genuinely does exist re/ couples who’ve been married for 50-70 years. The world needs to see that.
Some profound points here that really help one understand how to handle the first act of a good story. You cant give too much that you rob your story of growth but you cant give so little that you cant suspend the audience's disbelief when you later introduce something that doesnt fit. Finding the balance is avoiding upsetting the audience while not being too predictable as well as not robbing your main characters of satisfying growth.
Well said.
The way you ended this interview bravo. Great line and a great film moment. Amazing stuff here thank you!
Nice to learn that Act 1 needs to have initial goal for hero and the discovery goal after transformation at Act 3 will reverse initial goal
Rightly said that initial goal can be revealed with all discoveries in Act 1
Appreciate this one today! I watch your videos every day and never comment, so thank you very much for the channel.
wait so what were the 3 mistakes not to make in act 1? can someone please summarize?
Reverse engineering these from the advice given, I think the first one was giving the protagonist a girl or boyfriend to begin with, because then you don’t have that nice moment to make for them later. And I think the next was not introducing into the first 10 pages of the script what you need to establish the unique aspects of the “normal world”. But I didn’t pick up the third, I need to listen again.
So I’ve now listened again. I think the third main point was the protagonist needs an initial goal which is usually shallow.. the character is forced to change/transform and then the discovered goal is more meaningful. There is another analysis of the film “ground hog day” on this same channel by Jill chamberlain, nutshell technique, essentially as an Aristotelian comedy, in which the character both has a flaw and also wants something, and they get what they want but there is a catch and then after events come to a head, they either fix their flaw (comedy) or not (tragedy). It is interesting to see this same plot arc characterised in this different way.
I'll add points to the comments I've seen here.
Edit: to answer your question first, the three mistakes I takeaway from this are:
- Do not reveal too much of your setup involving subplots(e.g. boyfriend, girlfriend, life problems) or B-stories until after the inciting “big” event of the plot.
- 4:58 Establish your theme/Truth/central idea/conveyed message(these writer speak all mean the same thing) before the inciting incident changes the character's life.
- Hint at your character's transformation/arc/journey before it begins to take off(this would involve implying/foreshadowing/subtextualizing what's to come based on what the story has to work with the setup).
Ok, so the character's Flaw has three types and what they are _depends_ on the character arc. There's positive, negative, and flat arcs I won't digress into here, but for Flaws, every character begins with an external Flaw that presents itself as the external extension of what they Want with their normal world. They believe this to make them achieve internal happiness, their story, their *internal conflict* which presents itself as their mistake of what they Want in Act 1 vs what they Need by Act 3's climax(Act 2 is a pull and tug between both toward the character Truth vs their Lie in the beginning-again, depending entirely on the character's arc shaping the plot points to come in their transformation or otherwise). As mentioned in this video, there's a setup section of the story that must introduce that and other internal conflict ingredients prior to the inciting incident to induce intrigue in the character's life of Act 1. You have to remember that the story is about them(they are the protagonist[s]).
Now, the Flaws I'll quickly go over are: Innocent Flaws, Selfish Flaws, and the Fatal Flaw(this last one only occurs in a specific negative character arc, called the “Fall” arc by K.M. Weiland). In that one, they fail to succumb to change and double down on their initial Flaws with something much worse of their former self. These Flaws dictate what we see of the character in their story's world, and there are other principles of the Lie and Truth of the story world, depending on the journey the character will go on(characters either start with a Truth or Lie, and the story world is geared to counteract that so they change). I call these the “Broader Truth”/central theme or “Broader Lie”/central theme. Innocent Flaws present factors of what the character Wants and how Selfish Flaws tell us how far they're willing to go to get that Want. What they will achieve is shaped by a simple web you can follow here(my go-to to remember this stuff).
Ignoring the Opening Image for a minute(because that starts this continuous web throughout the plot) with additional conflict ingredients, internal(story) and external(plot) conflict are shaped by:
Flaw(External) and Want(Internal) vs Fear > Misbelief(modified character Lie of the current plot point).
Fear is a central motivator that deters what they Want in reach and in turn, changes the Lie closer to the Truth. This is for a Positive Change Arc in this instance as described, but this part of any story is essential to character development. Otherwise, there is no story to tell.
Think of it like this: It's like writing the psychology of a character. You are playing with someone's life, and it's your job as the writer to bring them to life. Creating the decision-making process in this semi-circular way of our own thinking is how we ourselves make unconscious decisions, and in turn, try to control our lives through this justification process. Now that's a lot to swallow, but that's just a small part of the larger story you're writing. Bear that in mind as a food for thought; it isn't as simple as it looks to write a story. You're writing yourself. Your own blueprint of decision-making. Your imprinted psychology. And that requires a deep discovery of yourself, and more importantly, a great deal of patience and determination to think thoroughly about yourself before you write the next page or two of your own character.
I am a panster to my own detriment. I can sneeze a short story, but I have tried for years to write longer fiction. I'm going to see what I can do with this, but "Your ACT III problems are ACT I problems, in fact your ACT II problems are ACT I problems" just might what I have been struggling against. As a pantser, it can be awfully hard to foreshadow.
We Learn from our mistakes 👍
Realization!
I ❤all of it.
Thanks yall!
Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for posting this one. There are so many nuggets to mine that it's worth revisiting regularly.
Glad it was helpful Greg!
Brilliant!
Wow, perfect lesson
What do you think about this video? Please leave a comment below.
Lots of wisdom. More with this guy, Naomi, Pete, Jill, Shannen etc, and less of the guys complaining about inclusivity and diversity.
Sometimes there are narratives that are spot on, and solve that problem you’ve been struggling with. This is one of them.
I'm not sure what the three points were, but the talk was great. If I were to help someone write and revise a comedy, I'd show them this.
It's not rocket science. First act you just have to get your reader interested, and you do that with something right away. If it's a horror, give them something scary. Comedy, funny. The normal world is simply their state of being and their environment before they face the big challenge of the story.
The wife in sweat pants is in the movie Extract.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Worthless guys, that’s ridiculous. She’s sleeping with guys who are out of her league.
Successful men who have a lot of choices.
That’s the reality.
*ONE WORD:* "Spaceballs".
*THREE WORDS:* "The Ice Pirates".
*ONE MORE WORD:* "Fletch".
*ANOTHER THREESOME:* "The Hudsucker Proxy".
*HELL, LET'S THROW IN:* "The Goonies".
There are so. many. comedies. that don't follow his format; _adventure_ comedies especially don't do this. Especially when characters aren't so much hapless as they are...lovably obnoxious. Again, like Fletch. He's amazing at his job, has a sharp sense of humor, and he's not in a rut.
Lone Star is a prince who can use The Schwartz.
Norville Barnes is a visionary inventor.
Mikey will _not_ give up until he finds One-Eyed Willy's treasure and saves the Goondocks.
And Jason is a roguish, suave, butt-kicking pirate. A bit rough around the edges, but that's part of his Han Solo-esque charm.
I don't know _where_ he got this idea that there is only one way to write a comedic character...
Don't give them a girlfriend in the beginning? Dude.
One of my favorite comedies ever is "Undercover Blues", a husband and wife team of CIA agents on vacation with their newborn in New Orleans.
What about movies where one person is a soldier and the other their love-interest, thus creating drama over whether or not they'll come back alive and whole from the war? (I'm looking at _you,_ "A League of Their Own".)
There will always be a set of "guidelines" in certain genres and archtypes, but if a script or story is well written and constructed enough, then yes, you can get away with not following said guidelines.
That being said, Im not advocating for or against his guidelines, just recognizing that they aren't bad guidelines to follow, and they would probably make writing such stories a lot easier for some writers.
@@ItsJustFox I'm not advocating _against_ what he said.
I'm saying he was unforgivably incomplete.
He's talking about love as a device to progress the hero character. Love transforms the misfit into Superman. Clark Kent is the mild mannered (nerd) newspaper underling whose love is Lois Lane. He can't reveal his secret identity, because nobody (except the audience and Superman's immediate foster family) knows who he really is. Superman is an alien. Superman is an outcast, and oddball on this planet who can't express that love that he wants to experience or share because he is from a different world. Almost anyone can identify with this sort of character because of sharing that mutual feeling of being that person who doesn't fit in. The love device then works in the hurdles that Superman has to work though to gain the affection and attention of Lois Lane. He has to work through issues of trust, but then he has created a dilemma of leading a double life, and lying to Lois which, is counter intuitive to trust/love, or what Superman stands for. (Truth, Justice, and the American way).
Another hero kind of character that uses this comic book hero recipe would be Tyler Durden (Office/insurance adjuster nerd with MPD) in Fight Club, or Rick Blaine, (A hopeless single gun runner and business owner) who is stuck in Casablanca.
Some of the most beloved characters in TV shows. and movies are that of which you can find something of yourself in. Love is the device that most people identify with because it is acceptance. There are other virtues you can use as the device to move your character, but you have to know what your audience is going to believe or share feelings with. Otherwise your hero fails because nobody will care about that character.
@@elmerkilred159 *_He's talking about love as a device to progress the hero character._*
I understand what he's talking about. **rolls eyes**
I'm saying he was _very_ incomplete.
You DO realize you're bitching about a 15-minute snippet from a 2-hour conversation... right?
If you and I had a 2-hour conversation about ANYTHING that one of us knows pretty well, not even professionally well, but pretty well... AND some asshole bitched at you about the 15 minutes of that conversation that HE heard being "hopelessly and unforgiveably incomplete", how would you see it???
I'd see it as an asshole who just want's to hear his head (or keyboard in this case) rattle. ;o)