[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Why does story structure exist?
Cody Smart, Writer/Script Doctor/Teacher: I think that story structure exists because people have expectations. Obviously it all started in my opinion with Aristotle’s Poetics. He described the three-act structure, he described the way stories move but it’s not just that, it’s the fact that we want to see a journey. Regardless of what story structure you’re following or what school of thought you’re following, you want to see a journey. You don’t want to see someone doing something and then not see an ending. You don’t want to see someone just remain the same through an entire story. I think that you need structure because you need a pattern of change. You need to have a protagonist that is going through something and because of the events of the story they change, they arc, they grow in a way that by the end they don’t necessarily become a whole new person obviously, but they’ve been affected by those events and they have overcome something or they have changed in a way or something has happened to them.
I think that structure is the expectations that we have but also because that’s the way life works, from birth till death you expect that journey. There are steps to follow and I think that’s what we want to see in a story. Obviously we’re not watching someone literally from…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Cody Smart is an independent writer and script doctor from Chile. She holds degrees in English Literature & Linguistics, Screenwriting, Development and Producing. She worked as a script analyst for Sony, she’s a judge for multiple script and film competitions, she’s written some award-winning shorts, she’s head of the coverage department at a script hosting site and she does a bi-monthly vlog with tips for Screenwriters for Story Data. She takes pride in helping writers take their work to the next level.
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