The Formula For Writing A Great Story - John Gray
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Brooklyn born John Gray is an award winning writer-director-producer of films and television, and the creator of the long running TV series, Ghost Whisperer. He has written and directed many feature films and movies for television, including White Irish Drinkers, starring Stephen Lang and Karen Allen; Martin And Lewis, starring Sean Hayes and Jeremy Northam; the Emmy® nominated A Place For Annie, with Sissy Spacek; the Emmy® nominated mini-series Haven with Natasha Richardson and Anne Bancroft; Helter Skelter, and many others. Gray has directed numerous episodes of broadcast and cable series, including multiple episodes of the NBC series GRIMM and was also the producing director of the CBS series RECKLESS. Gray’s acclaimed short films have played and are currently playing in film festivals all over the world including FRENCH KISS, which has also notched 6.3 million views to date on CZcams. He is married to writer-filmmaker Melissa Jo Peltier, and they make their home in New York and Cape Cod, MA. John's new novel The Desecrated follows Jennifer, a college dropout hoping to regroup, who joins the night shift at the NYC Morgue.
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"Illustrate characters through their behavior." That's the most important lesson in characterization.
Yes! Best description of “how a character drives story forward”. “By them not getting what they want”.
When someone asks me, "What do I write about?" I tell them the classic line, "Write what you know, write from your experience." And if they still tell me they don't know what to write, then I tell them they should see a therapist and learn how not to be afraid to express themselves, because that fear is what's really holding them back. Everyone has experiences, so everyone can have ideas of what to write about. A writer simply has just enough courage to put those ideas on paper for all to see.
Beautifully said 👌🏼
I stopped writing for 20 years because of that advice. I didn't know anything, and had no experience, so I went out and lived instead. A therapist would only have revealed what I already knew, which is that young people's feelings and thoughts are of little value.
10/10 life advice, would recommend.
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” - Ernest Hemingway
Thank you that's exactly how I started. I've had a story I've wanted to tell since I was a child and I'm now just getting it all down in paper
Thats incredibly insensitive. As if the worst periods of our lives, drug use, suicide, just need a therapist to show us how to spin it into a story of growth for others.
Lee Flores, in my opinion, has the best formula for writing great stories:
"An Appealing Character Struggles Against Great Odds to Attain a Worthwhile Goal."
I published a few months back, and will always recommend to others - and remind myself, how Film Courage - with it's great contributors and thoughtful, helpful questions, were so instrumental in me finishing my book. Amazing that such a quality platform exists. Thank you guys.
One of the best channels on CZcams. .
Congrats on finishing your book and getting it published James! Love to hear it!
I'm glad you have multiple screenwriters answering the exact same question because even though that leads to repetitive answers throughout the series (which helps emphasize those points anyway), but those little, and occasionally big, tidbits of new info or new perspectives are so helpful in more fully answering that one question.
Thank you! Here are more answers to a similar question. buff.ly/3fX0tjE We always enjoy hearing varied thoughts on the same topic. Appreciate the comment and thank you for watching.
I agree and say: Amen.
For characters, my overall biggest formula is usually creating an ensemble. You know I love groups. Almost every show I ever come up with (or created) consists a group of some way. Whether it'd be a team, friends, family, whatever. I think groups serve as a way to build relationships and chemistry. Sometimes, family is one of my biggest themes. You know what they say: "Teamwork Makes the Dream Work."
Formula:
Act 1: The strength
Act 2: The weakness
Act 3: The combination
Had to go back and rewatch this gem for notes. Because he gave some supremely good template-like ways to show through outside actions who you’re main character is on the inside
Hi Ms Film Courage. We appreciate your helpful content 😊
Thanks for the advice! Writing is hard, seems like it's the same story all over again, it's hard to come up with something new.
I truly believe that the best screenwriters are some of the smartest people in our country. Simply brilliant!!!!!!
Finally, someone said it. It's not the structure, it's what are you structuring. If you don't have a story to write, or worse, your story is not interesting, then good structure and good screenwriting technics are more or less useless.
Excellent restatement!! Input equals output another wise interviewee said on this channel. If one isn’t reading from many different genres to at the least (and most important) understand human nature and to gain ideas, then ideas won’t simply present themselves. I teach you can only create a wonderful dish if there’s food in your cupboards…and you are the only person who can place the food there. No food…no meal.
My inspiration for writing comes from looking at movies, and sometimes my life experiences.
I honestly just start with my favorite part and work from there.
I flesh out my characters a little bit and then just start writing. Eventually the bring themselves to life with their own distinct personalities and tell YOU their story. Then I go back and edit what I got wrong.
Really good stuff! I enjoyed this!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I'm putting together some ideas for sequences for a short film, this comes from a few sides so very good expo on the writing a story
It's difficult to judge myself, but wow, he gives me hope that the manga I'm working on may be actually good.
Great interview. Great points. One of the best in weeks.
Thanks Albert, glad you enjoyed this one! We appreciate you visiting with us so often.
@@filmcourage Yeah, I'm learning so much about the business and art of writing from Film Courage. Thank you so much for doing this.
That was a nice watch. It's cool to see other writers having high respect and appreciation for their characters. Others just give them for granted and waste them like rag-dolls made of cheap drapes and seams. Without care for the characters, the story around them would be of the same cheap quality treatment given to them.
I like what he says about specificity. It is what actors learn with Stella Adler, as well. Every writer should take an acting class to learn new tools and see it from their point of view.
Yes…and every actor should take at least one writing class to understand the beginning, evolution (or de-evolution) of the story, other characters, and their character…so that a the director doesn’t have have to explain what can be comprehended by simply reading the script.
Great stuff, Karen.
Plot should be the physical manifestation of character.
I guess what I learned about writing a balanced personality is that people don’t inherently dislike perfect, flawless characters, but they do dislike that the perfect character didn’t have any sort of progression arc to get there. Sometimes it’s easier to start with your most ideal version of a character and after you flesh them out a bit more, try to find a potential flaw (emotional, mental, physical) based on the story’s theme and start a character arc from there.
I write about things that mean lot me family and my experience what I see
Write the type of films you want to see and/or what you know.
Thanks for this. As an actress I've been studying and creating every single part of the character, down to the moment they were born....and yet, now that I'm writing a treatment for my first tv show it's so hard to not do that, and just focus on the structure. My
mind immediately goes to the intuitive. @Filmcourage Can you talk someday about how to think more conceptually, please?
Also, if writers out there are looking for a great book, (where the tragic flaw of characters is clearly explained) I recommend "Truth" by Susan Batson, one of the best acting teachers in the US. 😊
Maybe try this interview - czcams.com/video/hZgWw5juPJ8/video.html
@@filmcourage Thank you, Karen, I'll watch it. Happy new year and thanks for your amazing content!!!
'The character's flaw' is so common in story nowadays, it is probably the most unrecognized cliché. Is it necessary for the protagonist to have a flaw? I think not. Do Hansel and Gretel have any flaws? No, they have troubles. They want to go home. The story is built around how they get lost in the woods and how they overcome their troubles and manage to get home. No flaws are necessary if you want to write a story and want to avoid all the clichés.
The character flaw of Hansel & Gretel is the fact that they’re children. They’re immature. In Act I, they do not fight the wicked step-mother, but rather allow themselves to be abandoned in the woods. Then Act II begins, and they again display their immaturity by being lured by a monster’s trap - sweets. They then begin to grow up, and use their natural strength - cleverness (which up until now has been ineffective) - to outsmart the witch and kill her.
This triumph is rewarded with the ability to return home (Act III), with the witch’s treasure in hand (thus solving the poverty problem), to find that the evil step-mother is gone too. I imagine there is a version of the story with an Act III where the children must fight the step-mother after they return home, to demonstrate how they’ve gained the capacities of adulthood (courage, confidence, resolve) during their time in Act II fighting the witch.
Is there a writing formula that works best for you?
I’ve worked under an excellent script editor and they’ve worked at the highest indie level. You have to be conscious of structure, filling every scene with character, plot, devices, themes etc. if anyone is interested get in contact with me. Our aim is to get the indie projects and new voices seen and made.
I usually go genre, setting, main character, theme, plot, followed by whatever is needed to fill in the gaps as I go. I'll also switch up the story structure I use depending on the story I want to tell.
Most stories can fit into the Three Act Story Structure, but I like to use real world metrics where possible. So when I started developing a story where the protagonist was implementing genocide step by step deliberately, I found the 10 Stages of Genocide publication on Genocide Watch formed a perfect template to tell the story, because Genocide Watch provides solutions at each stage that could prevent genocide from occurring. Therefore the stages of genocide would be the template for the protagonist and the stages to prevent genocide are the template for the actions of the antagonist. I'm doing similarconditions thing using the stages and of Revolution as found from studying the French Revolution. I believe using such real world aspects helps the story feel more real as well.
I killed off an evil character in my story and i had readers upset at me. My goal was to see if i could get readers to love the bad guy, seems i hit the nail on the head. Iv been told i need to write part III and bring back the character somehow. Have you ever used this type of strategy?
be careful when using revival trope
imo leave the character dead
@@adroitws1367 spot on
If the evil character accomplished their part in the story, let the character go and stay dead. Move on to other characters who have functions in the next story you want to tell if this is a series.The worst thing you could do is bring back someone that has no further purpose in the story. They are just clutter. Look at Joe Pesci's character in Lethal Weapon. In the second movie he's integral to the story. He was brought back for 3 and 4 because of popularity and he's shoehorned into tales he has nothing to do with.
"Everyone thinks they're doing the right thing"
*Psychopaths have entered the chat*
👀👀👀 🤔🤔🤔📝📝📝
The Formula For Writing A Great Story is...don't use a formula!
How many times can you use the same recipe in every story before it becomes cookie cutter boring?
Almost all human stories fit six different structures, “recipe” isn’t the issue. You can be almost infinitely creative within traditional structure
Audiences don't want a great story. They want eye candy. That's why those movies make so much $
You couldn’t be more wrong. There’s a segment of the population that wants eye-candy (younger males, specifically). But even among that group, if a movie is all eye-candy and no story? They tear it to shreds. They get angry. They were promised a good story WITH eye-candy, and all they got was the candy.
Even the dumbest of all screwball comedies can be successful if they have a rock-solid story underneath the jokes.
My son pointed this out when he was maybe 11-12 years old, after we watched Airplane! together - “Imagine making a movie about a war hero with PTSD who feels guilty about getting his entire squadron killed, which ruined his life with alcoholism and his girlfriend leaving him, and he has to overcome all of that to save a plane full of innocent people …. and every line is a stupid joke.”
@@hermes_logios my comment was a stab at the latest batch of Marvel/Disney films
@@Psyclonus7 I know. Half of them are unwatchable crap. But the reason why even the garbage ones make money is that they’re coasting on the success of earlier ones with engaging, satisfying, enjoyable stories.
Here’s another example - the Star Wars franchise was played out decades ago. It was really only 2 good movies (1977 and 1980), and they’ve been coasting ever since on the audience’s belief and hope that they’ll feel that way again, someday. The first Star Wars movie didn’t only make $700 million. It made $70 billion.
That’s obviously an outlier. And I hate the endless sequels and reboots and derivative properties as much as anyone. I believe that all the best writing (and acting) talent went over to streaming services and indie projects nearly 10 years ago.
Audiences need good writing & acting. The visual artists who help create modern movies are incredibly talented, and necessary (just like lighting, audio, wardrobe, etc.), but without a powerful story, all the production values in the world won’t be enough.
One of my favorite sayings is that 80% of making a good movie is casting. Which is true. A great actor is essential. What they don’t say is that you need to get to 98% to make a movie that’s even watchable, much less a good one.
Hate to be this guy but he's wrong, most of your viewer base has probably seen all these films and shows you and your guests mention. We're film students...we study film. New film, old film...all of it. So I would beg to differ, it isn't that we don't know you or your stuff, but that you don't understand us or ours. Just because we're young doesn't mean we're dumb.
Tacos are pretty tasty. first good comment
And tacos are like scripts, many follow a similar structure but that doesn’t prevent them from being unique and delicious
4:14 lies.
This idea that villains don't see themselves as villains is nothing more and nothing less than relativism operating in the midst of writers and screenwriters. Lack of imagination and political agenda. This has been around for several decades but only now has it become more open.
Movies like Maleficent, the Devil Wears Prada, Cruella, Joker, Falling Down, etc. they are all films that try to evoke in ourselves empathy for the antagonist. However, we forget the problems that this entails. Art imitates life, life imitates art.
If we begin to explain Hitler's side, we will inevitably empathize with him. Is this what we want?
fear of writing a terrible story is writer's block.
But no one wrote a good story in first draft itself.
every writer rewrites and edits their work.
you can't edit a blank page