It’s always a battle

I don’t think there’s a writer out there that doesn’t find it a struggle most of the time. At least that’s what I like to think. I ran across a recent article in Wired about Dan Harmon and his show Community (although to be fair, “recent” is a pretty loose term with me since I am behind in most reading by about six months). The article describes the history of Dan Harmon’s career and how he’s developed a way of structuring stories. He calls them “embryos”, a circle divided into eight parts:

1. A character is in a zone of comfort
2. But they want something
3. They enter an unfamiliar situation
4. Adapt to it
5. Get what they wanted
6. Pay a heavy price for it
7. Then return to their familiar situation
8. Having changed

It boils down to having a complete story, whether it encompasses the entire film or TV show, or just a segment or gag. I’ve tried lots of ways to structure screenplays, including the ubiquitous Syd Field (which was pretty much the only choice when I wrote my first screenplay) and the always entertaining Blake Snyder (author of “Save the Cat”). Harmon’s idea is similar to the sequence approach.  With films it roughly equates to 15 minute chunks. With sitcoms, in Harmon’s case, it’s three minute chunks. Then within those sequences are smaller sequences, and the same idea applies. But the underlying concept is the same.

The most important thing to take away from this is you need a complete story. That brings back the importance of outlining and knowing the general road map of the story.

I am reassured by this, and am going to try and adapt it to my current screenplay, which is still stuck in outline mode and is going nowhere fast.