[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: What is linear story structure?
Andy Guerdat, Television Writer, Producer, Instructor, and Podcaster: A linear story structure to me is a bad thing because linear means in a line and I don’t think it’s a useful mental image for a writer to have, to think of their story as being a straight line. I like to tell my students to think of it as a zigzag because your purpose in telling a story and structuring a story is to try to keep ahead of the audience, keep the audience off balance. I tell them to think of themselves, picture it as being more like a you’re like a broken field runner in a football game and you’re trying to elude tacklers, you’re trying to stay ahead of them, you’re trying to zigzag. That’s a more useful mental image.
Linear to me (which is the way a lot of people teach you how to write) is there’s a straight line, here’s where the end of act one is, here’s where the end of act two is, here’s the midpoint, here’s where that and there’s little hash marks that you’ve got to hit at a certain point it tends to make the the the story flat and predictable and straight. I don’t like it as a mental image. I don’t have it in my head when I’m writing and I encourage other people not to.
I teach story structure from more of a Z, like a first act, second act, third act so it looks more like a Z because that’s what it should feel like. You should feel like you’re shifting gears and heading into another direction, shifting gears heading into another direction the three major acts but as well within those acts you’re also going to be zigzagging.
Look at any good movie and you’ll see that there’s twists and surprises in almost every scene. Certainly in between scenes there’s more twists and turns but those three acts are the major ones. I don’t like thinking of the process of being linear. You certainly can do it but I don’t think it’s a useful image to have in your head.
Film Courage: So similar to what a richter scale looks like where…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
Andy Guerdat has been a working writer/producer in film and television for the past 45 years, with hundreds of credits in movies, half-hour comedies, hour-long dramas, theater, and animation. He is currently a consultant at Disney TV Animation.
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