Screenwriting Fundamentals (by Blake Snyder, peppered with nonsensical notes by me) p1

I DON’T UNDERSTAND BEATS

Long ago I started reading Mr. Robert McKee about beats and … Unlike you for sure, I don’t get them. Beats don’t have a decent name in Spanish and such a thing as naming is fundamental in the process of learning. And no, sometimes English ain’t the best language for a word to just be adopted. Perhaps it is the fact that no one really understands them and just speaks like experts do. The thing is I DON’T GET WHAT BEATS ARE, because I don’t feel able to explain them to my grandmother[1].

ONLY FOR SCREENWRITING?

As the title portrays, the advice is for screenwriting and it was introduced to me by the one and only monetary contributor to this thing of a blog —Daniel Vanches is his name (in the case you are too shy to ask but still feel curious and even if you are not, advertising needs a space so this is as good as anywhere). Nonetheless, some of the stuff might apply to comics, novels and plays. If understanding the strengths of other media helps you to better your own game.

This is kind of a video summary of the BS2 format page or frequency page, created by some guy I still don’t have idea whom he is, but whose name is Blake Snyder and if you might and prefer untainted and unmerriamed stuff; you can watch the video here.

To begin with I’ll announce the episodes or events in the video:

MOST IMPORTANT MOMENTS OF PLOT

Opening image
Ambience
Stating the ruling idea or topic
Catalyst or inciting event
Conflict
We go to number two
B plot
Fun and games
Average
Bad guys on sight
Everything is lost
The darkest night if the soul
We are in three
Ending
Closing scene

OPENING AND AMBIANCE

Right. What’s the most interesting and worth thing here? The opening image that will set the tone. We need the hue to know: what’s the comic, movie, series or novel like? Is it fun and light or dark enough to cut our veins with animal biscuits? Do we need gray tones or red notes to indicate the depravity of our world together with cigarette butts? It is not a bad idea to learn a bit of graphic design eh novel writers[2]. Psychology maybe. After all, there’s the way brain works and the way people believe brain works. And if you don’t believe me, just watch how the villains of kduramas repent and become «good people» all of a sudden. We westerners have a much more somber idea of evil.

This is convenient to avoid or to use clichés to OUR ADVANTAGE. The opening image tells the reader what to expect and how to react to what comes next. If you add something like «Dramatis oves» at the  beginning of your novel and add characters the same way Agatha Christie used to, for the reader to have a who is who guide, they will immediately know that what follows is a not really serious crime novel dealing with sheep.

DURATION AND OPENING IMAGES

This opening image is the reader’s cue to stay or leave. Both are worthy. I don’t read or watch Christmas stuff. Neither horror. Thus, this is the way to tell: WARNING, what comes next is under your responsibility and risk. Which is why I always tell you this blog is nonsense.

Comic, short novels and movies need this as soon as possible. A novel, unlike what Mr. Wodehouse states in A damsel in distress, can take a little longer but it still uses the opening image because it is not the same thing setting the ambiance as setting tone. Sometimes a Terry Pratchett Disc world novel will take a while taking off and; novels take a lot longer to digest than the longest 3 hour movie, a comic chapter that can be read in about 5 minutes or a tale that can be devoured in 10.

Just a whole chapter of My family and other animals can take about an hour or more to be read aloud. Which might be a lot less in silence but still, enjoying it and reading at a normal pace and not showing off a quick reading technique, absorption of the contents will take the time a movie has to be about to be half away of the end.

A novel can take in between— not counting at all absurd oddities such as real life events like working, eating, cooking, doing the laundry…—three days to two weeks, maybe two months … A hundred years? I do not know if you have but A hundred years of solitude made me feel like the hundred years were actually happening in between all those almost copy pasted Aurelians. War and peace ain’t that thin (plus if you stop to read the parts in French you might take longer). The Bible… That book requires guts[3].

Yet, a series can easily dethrone any novel in extension without failing the opening image. And that doesn’t mean novels don’t set tone from the beginning. The fall of the Usher immediately enters the use of somber and depressing images to set the tone. Horror.

¿Feeling like more?

TO BE CONTINUED

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[1] Thinking Einstein really said this thing about understanding something and being able to explain it to your grandma

[2] No, not to mess with the cover of your book but it would be useful setting the tone of your novel

[3] That book requires more warning contents than many mangas or manhwas nowadays: rape, murder, assault, vengeful godos, gore…

geful godos, gore…