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1 " Desire never stops. Equilibrium is temporary. The self-revelation is never simple, and it cannot guarantee the hero a satisfying life from that day forward. since a great story is always a living thing, its ending is no more final and certain than any other part of the story. "
― , The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller
2 " Stories don't show the audience the 'real world'; they show the story world. The story world isn't a copy of life as it is. It's life as human beings imagine it could be. It is human life condensed and heightened so that the audience can gain a better understanding of how life itself works. "
3 " Audiences love both the feeling part (reliving the life) and the thinking part (figuring out the puzzle) of a story. Every good story has both. "
4 " Good storytelling lets the audience relive events in the present so they can understand the forces, choices, and emotions that led the character to do what he did. "
5 " Any character who goes after a desire and is impeded is forced to struggle (otherwise the story is over.) And that struggle makes him change. So the ultimate goal of the dramatic code, and of the storyteller, is to present a change in a character or to illustrate why that change did not occur. "
6 " The story world isn't a copy of life as it is. It's life as human beings imagine it could be. It is human life condensed and heightened so that the audience can gain a better understanding of how life itself works. "
7 " No individual element in your story, including the hero, will work unless you first create it and define it in relation to all the other elements. "
8 " To empathize with someone means to care about and understand him. That’s why the trick to keeping the audience’s interest in a character, even when the character is not likable or is taking immoral actions, is to show the audience the hero’s motive. "
9 " Step 1: Write Something That May Change Your Life "
10 " The multistrand plot is clearly a much more simultaneous form of storytelling, emphasizing the group, or the minisociety, and how the characters compare. "
11 " time. Take a lot of it at the beginning of the writing process. I’m not talking about hours or even days. I’m talking about weeks. Don’t make the amateurish mistake of getting a hot premise and immediately running off to write scenes. You’ll get twenty to thirty pages into the story and run into a dead end you can’t escape. "
12 " A story tracks what a person wants, what he’ll do to get it, and what costs he’ll have to pay along the way. "
13 " Subplot is not one of the twenty-two steps because it’s not usually present and because it is really a plot of its own with its own structure. But it’s a great technique. It improves the character, theme, and texture of your story. On the other hand, it slows the desire line—the narrative drive. So you have to decide what is most important to you. "
14 " In the vast majority of stories, a character with weaknesses struggles to achieve something and ends up changed (positively or negatively) as a result. "
15 " Since a story is always a whole, and the organic end is found in the beginning, a great story always ends by signaling to the audience to go back to the beginning and experience it again. The story is an endless cycle––a Mobius strip––that is always different because the audience is always rethinking it in light of what just happened. "
16 " The moral argument is most powerful when it is most dramatic. That means, among other things, holding off the hero’s moral self-revelation and decision until as close to the end of the story as possible. Keep the question “Will the hero do the right thing, and will he do it in time?” in the back of the audience’s mind for as much of the story as you can. "
17 " A character with certain weaknesses, when being put through the wringer of a particular struggle, is forged and tempered into a changed being. "
18 " KEY POINT: The basic action should be the one action best able to force the character to deal with his weaknesses and change. "
19 " THE GODFATHER • Premise The youngest son of a Mafia family takes revenge on the men who shot his father and becomes the new Godfather. W—weaknesses at the beginning: unconcerned, afraid, mainstream, legitimate, separated from the family A—basic action: takes revenge C—changed person: tyrannical, absolute ruler of the family The Godfather is a perfect example of why you want to go to the opposites of the basic action to determine the weaknesses and change of your hero. If Michael begins the story as a vengeful man, taking revenge on the men who shot his father will only make him seem more of the same. There’s no character change. But what if he starts off the opposite of vengeful? "
20 " The central theme of a story is often crystallized by a moral choice the hero must make, typically near the end of the story. Theme is your view of the proper way to act in the world. It is your moral vision, and it is one of the main reasons you are writing your story. Theme is best expressed through the structure of the story, through what I call the moral argument. "