September 2015 – Marshall Vandruff

Learning to Tell Stories, Part 3: Recipes

Nov 8, 2021Sep 29, 2015 by Marshall Vandruff

Templates & Formulas

Story templates are not new to the 21st century. In the 1930’s, The Plot Genie helped writers assemble a plot with a spinning wheel and lists of situations.[1. It is back in print, and if you use it and like it, please let me know.] I tried it decades ago, but couldn’t bring myself to care about my story because it wasn’t mine. It felt like putting a frozen dinner in the microwave and claiming I cooked it.

There are many templates, matrixes, grids, and formulas. The classic three-part “Setup, Conflict & Resolution” is so universal and general that it’s hardly a template, but “22 building blocks” is definitely a template.

Some people love templates. They feel comforted having the sections laid out in advance. Some people hate templates. They feel bound by formula as if in a straitjacket. But straitjackets are

Learning to Tell Stories, Part 2: Books

May 17, 2020Sep 25, 2015 by Marshall Vandruff

A Glut of Knowledge

When screenwriting books became popular in the 1980’s, I was ready for them. Here is a recollection.

I started with Syd Field’s Screenplay, which I read cover to cover twice. He taught that a story has a predictable structure based on three acts. In that first edition, he even made a big deal about act reversals happening on particular page numbers. The page-number thing put me off a little.

Learning to Tell Stories, Part 1: Scrounging

May 17, 2020Sep 22, 2015 by Marshall Vandruff

Seeking Story Knowledge You want to learn how to tell a story. So did I. Let me tell you the story of how I didn’t learn. Like you, I was …