Rollercoaster Charts

Just finished a couple of revision passes on D.K.N. (Naughty Little Nazis) a screenplay by Nikita Mungarwadi that we're developing.

Log Line: A 14-year old German girl battles an Nazi S.S. officer and his platoon to rescue her Jewish friends from the ghetto before they are liquidated.

The most recent revisions dealt with pacing. Since this is a war-time action picture, we had to make sure there were no long slow spots. In fact, while producing this graph we eliminated six pages that slowed the story down.  The numbers on the bottom indicate "calculated" pages based on Final Draft's 1/8 page as the smallest scene length... the actual script is shorter than the chart indicates.

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The top chart (Progress vs. Regression toward Goal) measures the scene's portrayal of the protagonist's progress or lack of it toward her goal. The Moment of Grace is near the center of the chart at the GREEN ARROW. Until that scene the protagonist's efforts are up and down, without any great progress. But after the protagonist learns some tough lessons that takes her to apparent defeat (end of Act 2) -- she rises to apply the moral premise and finally make serious progress toward her goal. Yet, there are repeated set-backs of ever escalating danger all along the way.

The bottom chart shows how much reflection vs. action exists and where.  As we should hope, as the story progresses the action becomes more intense, with the clear majority of the story above the line, well into the action arena.

The RED arrow is the Inciting Incident. BLUE the beginning of Act 2. GREEN the Moment of Grace. PURPLE the Climax to Act 2. YELLOW the beginning of the Final Conflict, with the Act 3 Climax occuring there the action and the coaster action gets the most fierce. These turning points are not positioned perfectly, but they respect the dynamics of the story. As we move forward we may find the need to adjust them.

If you want to know how these charts were created, HERE ARE THE INSTRUCTIONS. I began with Final Draft's Scene Report and used Excel 2011 chart generator.

Story Structure Basics - 13 Major Beats

[Revised 18 March 2015]

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Often when a producer or writer sends me a script to analyze it's because they sense that there's a problem with their story. Usually they're right, and the biggest offender is a lack of structure.

The problems reveal themselves in several ways. There may be three acts, but the protagonist doesn't have a physical goal that the audience can see and root for. Their protagonist may have a physical goal, but the turning points are not the result of the protagonist's moral decision or action. There may be turning points initiated by the protagonist but not for any singleness of moral purpose. In biographies the writers are often so taken by what they presume to be the moral virtues of their protagonist that they fail to include any serious conflict or an antagonist that forces the protagonist to change. The result of problems such as these is the lack of drama, weakened entertainment value, or no way for an audience to become emotionally engaged. 

Perhaps most difficult to obtain is an even emotional roller coaster effect throughout the story. Often critics and viewers complain about a slow second act, or a "sagging middle." The beat outline describe in this post can solve that problem. Each beat (13 or 20), when properly understood and applied, creates a regular roller coaster from front to back. Notice the wavy blue line in the graphic; this represents one ideal of how an audience's emotions can be manipulated by understanding the placement of the 13 (20) beats. Each peak and valley of the line corresponds to a beat. If the beats are missing or misplaced, the blue line sags or plateaus.

What causes the ups and downs is whether or not the protagonist is portrayed as achieving his goal or not. Is he or she being successful or endangered? That emotion is tied directly to the           assimilation of the Moral Premise in the life of the protagonist—will the protag. learn the truth of the moral premise and achieve his or her goal or not. All of this happens in the minds and hearts of your audience on a subliminal level, but it should never be subliminal to the creator, you.

What follows is a generic summary of what I might write in a story report to such writers or producers, as I explain the basics of what's missing in their story. I usually start off by describing that what follows is a natural law of story telling. It's not my opinion, but the consequence of untold experiments of storytelling over the ages. If you want a story to connect, then you can't ignore this stuff, at least not story foundations. [See subsection Story Development Steps/Story Foundations]