Film Courage: What is the normal world?
Steve Kaplan, Author/Instructor/Script Consultant: In The Comic Hero’s Journey (my second book) I tried to translate The Hero’s Journey into narrative for a comic film. The Hero’s Journey talks about The Ordinary World. The Normal World is like that but what’s important about the normal world in a comic narrative is that your hero does not have greatness with them. Like in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker has greatness within him, it just has to be released. In a comic narrative your Normal World, your Hero, is as far from having greatness within as is humanly possible. Your hero is a nerd or a dweeb or a jerk. He or she has some missing part of there’s a hole in your character but they don’t know it because if they knew it they do something about it, but in comedy after comedy there’s a character who is blind to their own flaws in the beginning of the movie. If the inciting incident…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BUY THE BOOK – THE HIDDEN TOOLS OF COMEDY:
The Serious Business Of Being Funny
BUY THE BOOK – THE COMIC HERO’S JOURNEY:
Serious Story Structure For Fabulously Funny Films
BIO:
Steve Kaplan is the author of The Hidden Tools of Comedy and The Comic Hero’s Journey, best-sellers in their field. He’s working on a third book about writing comedy for television. In addition to having taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale and other universities, Steve created the HBO Workspace, the HBO New Writers Program and was co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan Punch Line Theatre. In addition to development projects for HBO, he has taught workshops online and around the globe and at companies such as DreamWorks, Disney Animation, Aardman Animation, and NBC’s Writers on the Verge. Steve has worked as a script consultant and script editor for productions companies, studios, directors and individual writers.
UPCOMING COMEDY INTENSIVE ONLINE CLASS WITH STEVE KAPLAN
Kaplancomedy.com/product/the-comedy-intensive-online-2023-spring
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