Writing a coherent story

[amld]

Dear god I want to f**king kill myself already.
I am on my final year of film school, Trying to create my masterpiece but I keep being told "your images are strong, but you need to write a coherent story". I don't give up. I wrote story after story after story. They all involved a guy that sees a warped version of reality, they all had 3 story arcs, Things make perfect sense in my mind but when I see it to my teachers they are scratching their heads.

I've been told today that maybe I should choose some tale, joke or song that I like and give it my own spin. I might do that but I can't shake this feeling of wanting to tell my own story. For the last month and a half I've been writing and drawing storyboard everyday, all day long. Something should have paid off didn't it?

And whats making me the most crazy is that they expected me to succeed, they believed in me and I feel like i've failed them and myself, while doing my very best.

Can anyone help me make a coherent story in this last attempt before I'll be made to make something that I didn't come up with?

Thank you.

 

[amld]

Yeah, I'm sorry, but I kinda got lost reading those. For any of them, can you give us a solid logline? Like Paul mentioned, they need an arc. We need a central conflict that must be resolved by the end of the film. For such a short film, that conflict needs to be established immediately.

The length of the film has no bearing on whether or not you can establish a strong arc. It doesn't get any easier as the film gets longer. Give us a focus. What is the one obstacle that our hero needs to overcome, in order to save the day?

Telling a coherent story doesn't mean it has to be traditional or boring. "Memento" is perfectly coherent. Establish a central conflict, and have our hero lead us to a satisfying resolution.

ofcourse, here we go the loglines :
"a guy looks in the mirror and sees himself as having one huge eye . He sees a dating ad of a girl with the same issue. he goes out to search for her and discovers that she too has regular eyes. he understand everyone has one eye when they look in the mirror, and everyone has their own issues "
"nathan is in love with a girl, but on his way to a date with her, crippling hallucination flood his reality up to the point where he decided to rip his eye out to overcome his fears and get the girl"
"a man dreams of the "one that got away" everynight, refusing to aknowledge that she is his wife for the past 20 years"
" In a world where everyone is faceless, one man has a face and finds himself unable to communicated with the rest of the world. he finds out that everyone is exactly like him but for the fact that he wears his cloths the wrong way"

 

[amld]

Re. Wondering how.
- at school or on the job you're working for someone else. Give 'em what THEY want.
- on your own time, please, by all means, let your freak flag fly. Go crazy.
The two RARELY ever mix.
Let's get amld outta school, get a job, pay off some debt, marry a house, buy a wife, have some dogs and a kid - then let him go all HOUSE OF THE DEAD on us.

"Yes", it is sad and it's what audiences keep coming back for more of.
McDonald's has been slapping sad little beef patties between big puffy buns with some onions, pickle, and ketchup for a few decades now. Sadly, people can't get enough of the cheap sh!t.
Same principle.

The creativity comes in finding out a solution to the given criteria constraints.
Just like working with electricity or building a house. Deal with 'em.

WTH do TOP GUN, KUNG FU PANDA, and BLACK SWAN have in common?
Not a GD thing other than they all three follow the three act structure.
Howzat for creativity?

I love Tarrantino's non-standard dialog.
I loathe his retarded homages, but the dialogs are great.
He doesn't really have structure.
He has a cult following.
You can't really expect students (or their parents) to pay money to have professors/instructors at film school teach "no structure" and "cult development".
Somehow... I just don't see that happening.





Okay,

#1 isn't even a story. That is pretty incoherent and serves no entertainment purpose.
There was no point to the story.
"The moral of the story is... ?"
There isn't one, really.
Just a guy nutting out and pulling out his eyes.

#2 could be pounded out into something, but for a three minute short that's quite a bit much to stick in there.

#3 Alright, that's just waaaaaay too much shhhhhstuff to put into a short. And again, there's no real story, just a random lot of stuff happening.


Just move on from crazy-man stories.
No one likes 'em.
They're worse than effin zombie films.

How the h3ll are you going to film all of this worm activity on a film student budget?


I'm not saying write a romcom.
I'm just saying that if you're going on a date with Miss Priss White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Farmer's Daughter of the American Revolution you might wanna keep your nipple studs and Prince Albert piercings to yourself for the first coupla dates.
Don't even bother showing off your furries closet off of your BDSM chamber.

You wanna do mental health?
Black Swan. "I can do it." "No, you can't!" "Can!" "Can't!" "Can!" "Can't" Kills herself doing it.
Amadeus. "I killed Amadeus!" Um... no, you didn't.
The Virgin Suicides. "Daddy made us do it."
Fight Club. "My life sux. But this guy here sure is interesting!"
Conspiracy Theory. "All these people are out to get someone!" "No, they ain't. Oh. Waittaminit... they are, actually."
Donnie Darko. "I spy with my little eye... "
Lars and the Real Girl. "I need a friend. Got one." 'Yeah, but... Whatever. Great. Cool. Let's go shopping."

Just rip off any of these and go from there.

The moral was supposed to be "don't go into these thought too much as the more you think about it the more you'll get sinked into it".

I've really got no idea where I went wrong, I seriously don't.

 

[knightly]

Number a blank page 1-5 and for each, write a single sentence of what you're trying to say, your message. Now go through each of the scripts and make sure every single image and moment speaks to that single sentence... if it were a paper, this would be your thesis.

One Single Sentence. Focus your writing to the point. I don't care what you show me so long as I care why. I was the DP on a student experiemental piece that was just as visual and (sorry - I really mean this in a constructive way) pointless (I need to know the point behind the pictures). When the writer/director worked over the script, I (as a producer) helped him see that he was selling it as an art piece rather than an important examination on the role both men and women play in their own enculturation... I told him it reminded me of the meat market bar scene down town.

Once that single piece of information was realized, this piece went from neat visuals to an important document. It's bizarre to watch, but understandable. The main characters go from a point in their lives to a different point in their lives... not just situations, but beliefs.

Why should I care? That is the question that your audience asks. Answer it in the script, don't just show them a neat series of moments, tell them a story.

 

[Cracker Funk]

ofcourse, here we go the loglines :
"a guy looks in the mirror and sees himself as having one huge eye . He sees a dating ad of a girl with the same issue. he goes out to search for her and discovers that she too has regular eyes. he understand everyone has one eye when they look in the mirror, and everyone has their own issues "
"nathan is in love with a girl, but on his way to a date with her, crippling hallucination flood his reality up to the point where he decided to rip his eye out to overcome his fears and get the girl"
"a man dreams of the "one that got away" everynight, refusing to aknowledge that she is his wife for the past 20 years"
" In a world where everyone is faceless, one man has a face and finds himself unable to communicated with the rest of the world. he finds out that everyone is exactly like him but for the fact that he wears his cloths the wrong way"

I hope I'm not being too brutally honest, but as loglines, those aren't so great. Who needs to overcome what conflict -- that's what a logline should be.

What is your central conflict? What does your hero need to overcome? These are the reasons people watch movies.

 

[amld]

Number a blank page 1-5 and for each, write a single sentence of what you're trying to say, your message. Now go through each of the scripts and make sure every single image and moment speaks to that single sentence... if it were a paper, this would be your thesis.

One Single Sentence. Focus your writing to the point. I don't care what you show me so long as I care why. I was the DP on a student experiemental piece that was just as visual and (sorry - I really mean this in a constructive way) pointless (I need to know the point behind the pictures). When the writer/director worked over the script, I (as a producer) helped him see that he was selling it as an art piece rather than an important examination on the role both men and women play in their own enculturation... I told him it reminded me of the meat market bar scene down town.

Once that single piece of information was realized, this piece went from neat visuals to an important document. It's bizarre to watch, but understandable. The main characters go from a point in their lives to a different point in their lives... not just situations, but beliefs.

Why should I care? That is the question that your audience asks. Answer it in the script, don't just show them a neat series of moments, tell them a story.

That is what I was trying to do all along. I'm messing something up here and my teachers couldn't explain it to me in a way that my sometime slow brain could comprehence. I'm just thinking different and I realize that I can keep doing that and make the film but no one will ever want to see it. and that is not what I want. I came here for the reason that I want to understand what i'm doing wrong as I can't point it out myself, and get a few pointers to getting back into the main road.

 

[amld]

I hope I'm not being too brutally honest, but as loglines, those aren't so great. Who needs to overcome what conflict -- that's what a logline should be.

What is your central conflict? What does your hero need to overcome? These are the reasons people watch movies.

All of you aren't being brutally anything, you are trying to help me and I'm viewing this as just that. This shouldn't hurt me and its important to get punching feedback, and if there's a chance it'd help me then it is worth all the criticism etc.

my central conflict is a hero that cannot connect with the world around him as he is crippling himself. he messes up everything in his life including the chance to get the girl he wants. he needs to beat his own fears/insecurities in the shape of these vision to be able to finally live the life he wants.

 

[rayw]

The moral was supposed to be "don't go into these thought too much as the more you think about it the more you'll get sinked into it".

I've really got no idea where I went wrong, I seriously don't.

"Don't go into these thoughts too much, or else... " is fine and dandy.
Have your male & your female at a picnic discussing life events that lead to suggestive remarks that lead to minor confessions that lead to dramatic confessions that lead to experimentation gone wrong when two nutty people meet each other.

That could be done cheap and simple, but most importantly - coherently.


Where you're going wrong is it's all a series of freaky images and no dialog, no exchange, no communion.
You're trying to cover up rotten meat in the sandwich with spicy sauces and onions.
This is a common grievance expressed around here, and rightly so, that some films, like SUCKER PUNCH, just try to get by on sensational images but have cr@p stories.

No to mention the stuff you're wanting to do is pretty difficult to shoot and edit together.
Yeah, it all looks fine in your head, but it's going to look like blecht on screen.

Go ahead and shoot some trite schlock for your class but finagle your own project on the side.
To h3ll with school sanctioned art for art's sake. Gopherit! Shoot CHOCOLATE FINGERED WORM BOY over the holidays.
Throw it up here.
Let's give it a day in court.




For your short project resolution I very much like Knightly's suggestion of three to five pages with a sentence at the top of each then fill the page to get that sentence goal fulfilled.
To use my couples at picnic example:
Pg1 - Sam and Zoe laugh at their first date over a man and his dog.
Pg2 - Sam thinks some people use pets as substitute children, Zoe thinks they just like to dominate something.
Pg3 - Sam suggests that his father was dominating, Zoe asks him if he felt like a dog?
Pg4 - Sam confesses he's turned to BDSM for understanding, Zoe expresses interest in helping him.
Pg5 - Someone isn't going to be happy at all when they finally understand Sam's father.

Something like that.

H3ll, you could make that a story about food and cover much more conservative ground.
"Sam wants to understand how his mother ate herself to death through obesity... "

 

[amld]

"Don't go into these thoughts too much, or else... " is fine and dandy.
Have your male & your female at a picnic discussing life events that lead to suggestive remarks that lead to minor confessions that lead to dramatic confessions that lead to experimentation gone wrong when two nutty people meet each other.

That could be done cheap and simple, but most importantly - coherently.


Where you're going wrong is it's all a series of freaky images and no dialog, no exchange, no communion.
You're trying to cover up rotten meat in the sandwich with spicy sauces and onions.
This is a common grievance expressed around here, and rightly so, that some films, like SUCKER PUNCH, just try to get by on sensational images but have cr@p stories.

No to mention the stuff you're wanting to do is pretty difficult to shoot and edit together.
Yeah, it all looks fine in your head, but it's going to look like blecht on screen.

Go ahead and shoot some trite schlock for your class but finagle your own project on the side.
To h3ll with school sanctioned art for art's sake. Gopherit! Shoot CHOCOLATE FINGERED WORM BOY over the holidays.
Throw it up here.
Let's give it a day in court.

The first thing I want it to tell a good story. I feel like these stories are more than images that seem cool to me, I feel like I'm trying to say something but I can't find a way to tell it in a coherent way. that is where I need you guy's help.
I'm not looking to do this only for experimentation sake, I want it to be a movie people will enjoy watching and not suffer through it. we all know that cool looking imagery RARELY if ever makes for a good movie without a good story to back it up.
As for the shots being difficult : the whole movie is done in 3d animation. And I'm determined to put all and every last drop of energy I have to make it work. plus some things are easier if you plan shots a certein way.

And I don't have time to do ANYTHING else but this, and this movie is my TOP TOP main and only priority right now. And in a few days time if I don't come up with a winning and FINAL story, I'm very screwed. and it'll be a damn shame because i've really put alot of time, energy, talent and heart into this. I'm afraid of what that will do to me. it'll break my heart not to make a movie this year.

Ray- As for your edit, I did that. Can you use some of my better stories posted as examples?

 

[dlevanchuk]

look at inspirational quotes, and go from there

 

[rayw]

Fair enough.

Cheat.


Use my Sam & Zoe story.
Machinama away!!!!


And it's a short.
Not a film.
Treat it as such.



Your teachers suck, BTW, if they haven't TAUGHT their student how to craft a basic story.
How much they gettin' paid?
How much are we at IT gettin' paid?
Yeah.

They suck monkey balls.

Ray- As for your edit, I did that. Can you use some of my better stories posted as examples?

I did.
The Sam & Zoe story is a direct product of your "don't go into these thought too much as the more you think about it the more you'll get sinked into it". coupled with your suggestion of a boy and a girl with he facing his fears.

 

[amld]

Fair enough.

Cheat.


Use my Sam & Zoe story.
Machinama away!!!!


And it's a short.
Not a film.
Treat it as such.



Your teachers suck, BTW, if they haven't TAUGHT their student how to craft a basic story.
How much they gettin' paid?
How much are we at IT gettin' paid?
Yeah.

They suck monkey balls.

What did you mean in "fair enough. cheat" didn't follow that. and I didn't understand the using inspirational quotes suggesting either. if it's anything in this threat I read every last word.

It's not my teachers' fault, it's mine. I make good art and have good idea, so I bet they let things slide. But now it's do or die, And my brain has the tendency to understand thing late. When it does I cover alot of ground quickly and get good at it fast, but until it does achieve this click I go through alot of agony.

 

[rayw]

2. A carpenter tries to obsessively build a pinnochio-like real life doll but demons come and try to stop him from his work. They are in reality doctors who try to pull a mental patient from insanity after his son had died.

Here goes...

Pg1 - Dan cuts a chunk of wood from a fallen tree in the forest.
Pg2 - In his garage workshop he walks past a tricycle then cuts and crafts a form into the log, Jill asks him what he's doing.
Pg3 - He says "I'm finding the beauty inside" as the form of a boy's face emerges in the log.
Pg4 - Jill walks out to the mailbox, opens a large envelope, begins crying. Dan keeps working away and cries himself.
Pg5 - Jill scurries into the house, drops insurance company forms and photos of hood and windshield damage to a car. Dan grinds the face away in the wood before crumbling to the floor beside the little tricycle.

 

[knightly]

Here's an example of my suggestion:

2. A carpenter tries to obsessively build a pinnochio-like real life doll but demons come and try to stop him from his work. They are in reality doctors who try to pull a mental patient from insanity after his son had died.

example sentence: A grieving father fights with himself to deal with the loss of his son.

This has the 2 main things for the story... the main character and the obstacle.

Now every moment of the script speaks to that:

1) We either work inward from out starting with the doctors and going "down the rabbit hole", either coming back out at the end or not... or

2) We work outward from in starting with the psychotic visions and slowing morphing them into the reality of the situation.

Use the visuals to support/tell that story.

Keep the focus simple and you'll be able to tell a cohesive story that both your teachers will like and you will be happy with as well. It's not a fight of their idea of story VS. your vision... it's about collaboration and they generally WANT you to succeed. They are teaching a specific set of techniques that you've paid them to teach you (this statement is more for the sake of other folks reading this who are of the us vs. them ilk)... the technique is specifically tell try to tell a specific / tight / cohisive story.

boil it down to its components first... then work the story along the trajectory either you want it to go, or it suggests to you... outline, then action/visual, then dialog to support where needed.

 

[rayw]

4. a boy meets the most amazing girl. but he wakes up to find it's a dream he had while staring at his drawing. the next night he dreams of her again while staring at the drawing. they are inlove. the guy wakes up he is now a married 40 year old man. theres a much painted drawing of her in his bedroom wall. he hates his life and isn't connected to his wife. every day he draws a new drawing of the woman and falls asleep to dream of her again. he keeps trying to make his wife look like that woman. one day his wife figures this out and rips up his drawings. she is crying but he ignores her and goes to his work room to draw the woman again. he cannot recall how she looks without a reference and tries to remember scene from his dreams. his wife is crying in the bedroom still. he remembers being a kid and a girl (his future wife) loves the drawing, he remembers his one failed attempt at an art exhibit, he was crying and his then girlfriend current wife comforted him. she is still crying and he is getting closer to drawing the woman. he remembers his wife putting the drawing in their bedroom being proud of it. his wife's crying had ceases. he remembers that the woman in the dream is actually his wife. he stops drawing and goes to the bed room and hugs her as she sleeps.

G.
D.
Whattamess.

That's a sh!tload of visuals and almost no blabbin'.
You need more dialog in your stories.
And it's just effin miserable, too.

Quit being such a p!ss-pot.

Imagine you and your... significant other BS'n at McDonald's/BK/Wendy's/Whatever.
Pg1 - A young Abe & Bea sittin' at the diner, Abe's just staring at Bea. Bea says...
Pg2 - "Whut?" Abe asks if he can draw her picture on a napkin. Bea says...
Pg3 - "Please do." Abe begins drawing. He says "I love you" and hands it to her. The illustration goes into a picture frame on the wall where an old woman walks by.
Pg4 - She walks into a sun room where an an aged Able sits in a chair hunched over a table.
Pg5 - An aged Bea peers over his shoulder, turns and walks away crying. Abe has drawn the same illustration over and over again as he mumbles "I love you. I love you. I love you... "

There.
That's not too romantic but considerably more simple.

 

[rayw]

What did you mean in "fair enough. cheat" didn't follow that. and I didn't understand the using inspirational quotes suggesting either.

Fair enough & Cheat are direct responses to:

And I don't have time to do ANYTHING else but this, and this movie is my TOP TOP main and only priority right now. And in a few days time if I don't come up with a winning and FINAL story, I'm very screwed. and it'll be a damn shame because i've really put alot of time, energy, talent and heart into this. I'm afraid of what that will do to me. it'll break my heart not to make a movie this year.

And now I'm lost about some "inspirational quotes" I left. Ha!



"Fair enough" as in "I understand what you are saying".
"Cheat" as in "If you don't tell your instructors neither will I."

 

[Murdock]

Give em what they want and get the grade.

Save your best/original stuff for yourself.

 

[Jack Lynt]

Seems like answers have been provided and maybe you haven't quite absorbed them yet.

Also, I'm guessing that your teachers' job is to shape you into a marketable and hirable employee in Hollywood, in the Biz, who comes up with producible content --not to be an avant garde or freaky independent filmmaker. Not that the latter is bad. Just, I'm trying to place myself in your teachers' shoes and to imagine where they're coming from. Again, not that those disturbing strings of imagery and actions aren't legitimate, exactly, just...I'm your teacher and I'm wondering whether your lead punching a baby or being urinated on by the neighborhood is producible much less sellable content or, probably more importantly, are those things healthy for your show reel? I'm guessing, if I'm your teacher, maybe I have a responsibility to steer you clear of becoming that guy who made us watch the guy in his film punch a baby.

I think the Pinocchio and the drawing-to-the-painting-and-the-aging-couple stories have good potential. Sorry, I haven't read those last two or few.

Since this is such a short-short, I don't know that you should worry too much about complicated diagrams for feature length scripts.

For the lack of cohesiveness issue, seems to me there's some very nice advice already up there. I recommend mulling it over and applying what works.

 

[amld]

A few answers :
I don't see it as me vs. them. I see it as me=have my own style, them=teaching me how to make it into something the viewers could understand. I want to learn, I was to understand.
Also I don't see this as cheating AT ALL, As EVERYONE gives their stories for others to read, and if its a fellow writer he will give you notes. It's part of the learning process I think, Not at all cheating.

As for no dialogue - This is an animation short. There should be a very good reason to adding dialogue and not just put some lines in there.
As for my showreel - I thought about that too. my teachers however were excited about these twisted ideas and WANTED me to go for them.

Thanks for the replies. I still havn't found something that helped me understand what is incoherent about my stories and what needs to be removed/added to make them so.

 

[amld]

Hey guys, Tell me if this is good base for a story to include all the crazy shit that I want:
A janitor needs to mop each floor in a building. he gets in and pressed all floors (1 to 10) the first few floors he mops he sees children or parties, some floor have darker enviorments. one floor has a woman that rides with him for a few floors. He wants to get to floor 10 but after floor 7 the elevator drops into b1 and the woman leaves. the elevator has broken and he is depressed and got nothing to clean. The elevator then comes back to life and rides up to 5 and the woman enters again. he is stuck in a loop and decides to walk the stairs for floor 10. He cleans the hallway and enters his room there to sleep.

As in "life is an elevator"

 

[rayw]

Where you get hung-up on are trying to film/animate too many "he wants" across these stories.
Motivations have to be explicit through speaking or obvious to see as in almost bordering on cliché.
Again, this is just a series of random events.

He goes here.
He goes there.
He goes to another place.
Nothing has anything to do with anything.
He goes back.
He goes forward.
He walks on the ceiling.
He eats pie.
He recites pi.
He plays a drum.
He pulls out a plum.
Nothing has anything to do with anything else.
These stories need additional consequences and thoughtful meaning.

"Life in an elevator" is fine.
What's the irony or humor or drama in life in an elevator?