Story Crisis, Story Climax 1: How to Use Film Structure to Plan Your Novel (Crisis Climax)

Story Crisis, Story Climax 1: How to Use Film Structure to Plan Your Novel

This is a thorough, detailed, and informative exploration of story. It's also just plain fun!

Re-live one popular movie story after another!
You'll see how a screenwriter or novelist knits together an inciting incident, turning points, and the closing crisis decision and climax. Each time this dance of story elements is revealed it becomes clearer how raw events get arranged into a story.

Why spend years learning by trial and error?
Accelerate your learning curve by watching these key elements at work in a range of stories. As a back-end story developer you'll see the elements in relationship to each other, the story itself, and others of its genre. Crack the storytelling code.

You'll discover:

* How to harness events to an Inciting Incident early on that crystallizes the one new problem confronting the hero.

* How to guide your characters into theme-tied decisions that cluster into a turning point.

* How to enhance the Midpoint's coverage of theme, by providing a vivid contrast in attitudes and tone before and after that point.

* How to layer in what's expected and escalate beyond that in the Crisis Decision, embedding resistance in your hero's response.

* How to unfold the events of the Climax so they reveal much about the characters, encapsulating and surpassing what the verbal conflicts already highlighted up to that point.

* How to invest in your story's Climax a test as much for everyone around the hero as for the hero herself.

Writing this deepened my own understanding of story process, and led to completing my first novel not long after.

Novelists and enthusiasts of story in all its forms stand to benefit from this fun how-to look at the storytelling craft.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2nd Edition Foreword
Introduction
Plot Pressure Points

ACTION/ADVENTURE GENRE
National Treasure (2004)
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Flightplan (2005)
Sahara (2005)
Red Eye (2005)
16 Blocks (2006)
Blood Diamond (2006)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Action Genre: Postscript

DRAMA GENRE
In Good Company (2004)
Man On Fire (2004)
Shall We Dance (2004)
Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)
Derailed (2005)
Eastern Promises (2007)
Vantage Point (2008)
Drama : Postscript

HORROR GENRE
28 Days Later (2003)
28 Weeks Later (2007)
Constantine (2005)
The Ring Two (2005)
White Noise (2005)
I Am Legend (2007)
Horror: Postscript

COMEDY GENRE
Secondhand Lions (2003)
Meet the Fockers (2004)
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005)
Dan in Real Life (2007)The Game Plan (2007)
Surf's Up (2007)
Underdog (2008)
Comedy: Postscript

HISTORICAL GENRE
Apocalypto (2006)
The Last Samurai (2003)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Seraphim Falls (2006)
Pathfinder (2007)
The Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Historical: Postscript

SCIENCE FICTION GENRE
Equilibrium (2002)
Paycheck (2003)
The Jacket (2004)
I, Robot (2005)
Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
Cloverfield (2008)
SF: Postscript

FANTASY GENRE
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Beowulf (2007)
Fantasy: Postscript

What the Writer Does
2nd Edition Afterword
Dedication

About the Author