Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

A STORY must obey its own internal laws of probability. The event choices of the writer, therefore, are limited to the possibilities and probabilities within the world he creates.

change. In fact, of all genres Fantasy is the most rigid and structurally conventional.

STRUCTURE is a selection of events from the characters’ life stories that is composed into a strategic sequence to arouse specific emotions and to express a specific view of life.

A SEQUENCE is a series of scenes—generally two to five—that culminates with greater impact than any previous scene.

A BEAT is an exchange of behavior in action/reaction. Beat by Beat these changing behaviors shape the turning of a scene.

A Story Event creates meaningful change in the life situation of a character that is expressed and experienced in terms of a value and ACHIEVED THROUGH CONFLICT.

If the value-charged condition of the character’s life stays unchanged from one end of a scene to the other, nothing meaningful happens. The scene has activity—talking about this, doing that—but nothing changes in value. It is a nonevent. Why then is the scene in the story? The answer is almost certain to be “exposition.”

What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.

The material of literary talent is words; the material of story talent is life itself.