School of Rock 401 Senior year, Storyteller's log

You've made it to School of Rock Senior Year!

As you remember from last time, Dewey has nothing left to live for. His passion is dead.

What is this place the land of the dead?

It's chaos, the void.

But it's also the birthplace of infinite possibilities. Here are a few of them.

I think that's enough to give you the idea...

Were you able to figure out what must happen next? We know the kids have to go to the concert. Why because the movie would be incomplete without it.  Dewey heard Patty's lesson but only paid attention to half of it. He became responsible but didn't give up his dream. He found a common passion with the kids through music. He taught them lessons they'll never forget. The spirit of rock and roll is "stick it to da man". The "man" symbolizes the inhuman aspect of civilization the kills passion and dreams. The kids got Dewey's passion. They already had the responsibility part down pat. Even through Dewey was a fake teacher, his passion was real. The kids believe in it and themselves.

The kids persuade Dewey to come out of his depression and go the concert with them. He agrees. As a result Ned stands up to Patty and leaves her to see the concert. Ned's lost passion has come back. And Patty didn't learn the lesson.

This is really cool because Patty delivered the lesson of be responsible. Once Dewey connected with the kids musically he became a great teacher. Dewey learned the lesson. As a consequence of his action the kids brought the lesson back to Dewey. Lessons always return.

What's happened is that Dewey has reorganized his experience. Responsibility and Passion can go together. This is something Dewey and Patty couldn't see before. Often the audience won't be able to see what the reorganization at the end of the movie is going to be. Dewey is reborn and comes alive at the rock concert.

Here's where we are on the structure map now: Doing the right thing.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Dewey succeeded in a way greater than Patty's vision, and becomes more fulfilled because his new goal includes others.

We now have the competition. Ironically, Dewey competes against his old band. We have one more key point before we can wrap it all up. The kids band faces stiff competition. They need a dynamite ending song. Dewey now proves his has learned the lesson of acting responsibly. Dewey tells the band they are going to play Zack's song instead of his own epic, The Legend of the Rent. This was an unthinkable action for Dewey at the beginning of the movie. He has sacrificed his own moment in the spotlight for the good of the whole band. This is proof that Dewey has learned the lesson.

Now that Dewey has done the right thing hope soars off the charts. Even the audience gets more than they hoped for.

In summary, the four major parts are:
1. ACT I. Dewey has a problem. He needs to be responsible.
2. ACT 2A.Dewey attempts to solve his problem the wrong way by stealing a job and pretending to be a teacher.
3. ACT 2B. Just when he thinks he's on top of the world he has to face the consequences of his own actions and loses everything including his own passion.
4. ACT 3. Dewey has touched others and his lessons and actions come back to him in a positive way. He's reborn and proves it by a self sacrificing choice.

Simple.

The chaotic symbolic death is real and really terrifying. But the reorganization and rebirth are just as real. You come out the other side changed, able to handle more with a more complete and complex view of the world. Maybe more about this later...

Make sure to come back for the School of Rock for your diploma and Graduation party surprise!

School of Rock 301, storyteller's log 2-20-2013

Welcome back to School of Rock- Junior Year.

Dewey is on top of the world days away from rock stardom. What could go wrong?

In most writing approaches anything could go wrong. This is often where I used to get lost. But because we've been following the character trying to reach their goal, having ignored the lesson and going about it wrong- this narrows down our choices. This approach gives our story a solid design. Design? What does design have to do with storytelling?

Let's look at how this approach has led us to such a solid design. There are several design principles that we're following.

1. DOMINANCE. We have one main idea which the story focuses on. It's not all over the place with irrelevant plot stuff. Dewey wants to be a rock god and will do anything to make it happen.

2. UNITY. The story has unity because everything is related to Dewey's actions. The other characters are variations or opposites of the Dewey character. Ned is what Dewey could become if he gives up his dream. Patty is a variation of Dewey in that she wants Ned to solve her problems for her. She preaches responsibility but doesn't act on it. The teachers have also lost some of their dreams. Principle Mullins is by the book responsible, until Dewey cracks her armor with Stevie Nicks song, the Edge of Seventeen. This reconnects her with her passion.
And we see the kids who are already on the road to responsibility without passion. That is until Dewey enters their lives.

3. BALANCE. We get to see Dewey doing it wrong and later we'll get to see him doing it right. We get to see the effect on the others who have lost their passion.

4. CONTRAST. Right from the start we like Dewey more than his band members and Ned and Patty. There's a purity to him and we like his passion. The other characters by contrast are not as likable. We see how the effects of responsibility and passion, or lack of, have shaped all the characters. We've taken the audience up so... We'll be exploring this in later in this post. Don't want to give away the ending.

5. RYTHMN. We've been taking the audience up and down towards hope and fear in an irregular pattern.

Every writer needs to know about design. In fact, every human being needs to know about design. Whether you're writing a story, planning a garden, arranging your living room, writing a blog, composing a symphony, coding software, or painting a masterpiece.

To learn some basics you can check out my, Design for Presentation: The great eye learns to see on slideshare.net

Design for Presentation: The great eye learns to see

I posted it Sunday and 3 days later is has over 77,000 views! Someone is interested in design.

So what happens to Dewey. "Little does he know..." that while Dewey is trying to convince the student's parents that he's a good teacher, Ned gets the mail. This time the message arrives to the wrong right person. Ned gets a check for teaching at Horace Green. But Ned didn't teach at Horace Green!

Ned, Patty and the police confront Dewey and expose his wrong ways. The character's behavior of doing it wrong is brought to light. How else can they learn. They have to see the effect of their actions on others. Their reaction now is to tread water and try and undo the damage.

The movie contains a funny speech here by Dewey as the parents misinterpret his use of the word "touch". He keeps digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself.  As a result Dewey exposed as a fraud and is fired from teaching at Horace Green.

Dewey now faces the consequences. He's lost his job, his new band, his new friends (the kids) and his opportunity for rock stardom. On top of that he considers himself a failure and falls into depression, in other words, he's symbolically dead.

The design principle of CONTRAST comes into play here. Let's look at the mapping of this.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

First we brought Dewey UP. Then because of the contrast we really feel his fall downward. If we didn't bring him up first, it wouldn't have felt as devastating for Dewey and our emotions when we take him DOWN. 

From Dewey's perspective, his life is over.

More extra credit if you can figure out what must happen now. No necessarily how it happens but what must happen. How can be accomplished in different ways.

How long does the character stay dead? Storyteller's Log 1-20-2013

We've shown the audience what happens when the character fails. This was the negative stake we setup early in our story. We've also shown the audience what can happen if the character does it wrong and yet reaches what they think is their goal. They only appeared to reach the positive stake. What's next? What do we still need to show the audience? What have we promised them in return for them following the interwoven threads of our story?

The character has died, symbolically, whatever that means. How did you feel reading the previous blog post? Remember those feelings. I'm sure you've felt like this at some time in your life. What happened to turn it around? Remember those feelings and use them when you write this part of your movie. It will help make it more real and give it depth.

Think about what it means to turn this death around. In the next blog we'll see how structurally that happens. Think about what we've woven together already. I could just spell it out, but you'll learn more if you think about it and come up with your own answers. The other thing is that if I just spell it out, is that good storytelling?

It's always darkest before...

The unlucky 7th step of story mapping, Storyteller's Log 1-17-2013

Today, we're approaching the 7th step of our mapping of the character's ups and downs to see our story structure. 

Friendly warning: It's not too late to turn back and stop reading this blog now. 

It is too late for our character. For them, all hope is gone. They've reach the point of no turning back.

In the last blog post, I came across a conundrum. If the things start unraveling in our story, how does that fit with the fact that we're learning about how to weave a story. Which is it? Are we weaving and is unraveling part of that process? 

Yesterday, I was actually puzzled by this and didn't have an answer. That made me tense. I'm supposed to know this stuff. That's why writing this blog has been really helpful to me to evolve this approach to story structure. There is a method to my madness. Usually there always is a method to madness, but it's not always apparent. Extra credit if you can solve this question.

For an excellent book about method underlying "madness" read George Atwood's, The Abyss of Madness. The Abyss of Madness

Our character has alienated his friends, his enemies have gotten the upper hands and they're sinking fast. Have you ever heard the expression, "Everything is going dark?" That's what's happening to our character, they're dying. 

This is known in a lot of screenwriting books as a symbolic death. However, again they don't tell you too much about it. What exactly is a symbolic death? What is it a symbol of?

It can actually take two forms and many films will have both. Often the sidekick can  die, or the main character can feel like their life is over and has no longer has any meaning. They can even feel suicidal like Bill Murry in Groundhog Day.

As a storyteller, I want to know how to make this moment as powerful as possible. I want to know how it feels and how we represent it to make it REAL for our audience.

So, I'm going to leave you with a second pop quiz. If the character dies, is that the end of this blog?

Sadly then, they'll be no extra credit...