[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: As a writer, how do you know you have a story?
Glenn Gers, Author/Screenwriter/YouTuber: Well, we can look at the video I made, which you guys titled that and it was really funny because I hadn’t thought of it that way.
Anyway, how do you know you have a story?
All right. I am going to be, I don’t know, countercultural.
You have a story when you decide you have a story that there’s no like, I believe that Terrence Malik, who makes movies that for most people are just completely incomprehensible.
He feels there’s a story. The people who like his work feel there’s a story, so there’s a story.
There’s an industry definition of a story which honestly is tied to various theoreticians who come along like I said Syd Field for a while, Robert McKee, for a while the Save The Cat guy whose name I keep forgetting. Blake Snyder, right?
Art is what you decide it is
The point is they’re different, [Christopher] Vogler. They’re different philosophers of screenwriting who have come into fashion and people cling to that when they’re in the business of making art or when you’re looking for something to hang on to in art to get past the actual truth which is art is what you decide it is.
Popular art may not be, well-paid art may not be, but the fact is you can do something that is obscure to others and it is still legitimate art.
Story Questions book — Now on Payhip here!
So to me, the way that you tell a story is going to be the way that you in your experience of the world and in your experience of having glombmed up other art and you’ll have said, I watched this movie and it spoke to me and I…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
If You Can’t Answer These 6 Questions You Don’t Have A Story – Glenn Gers
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BIO:
Glenn Gers was a professional writer of movies and television for 25 years. His credits include theatrical features including FRACTURE (2007) and MAD MONEY (2008), no-budget indies like DISFIGURED (2008), TV staff work and episodes, original cable movies, and many more. He has won multiple festival prizes and an Emmy. He shares thoughts about creative writing on his Youtube channel and his Substack, both called “Writing For Screens.”
BUY THE BOOK – Writing For Screens: Skills, Tools & Process for the Art Of Screenwriting by Glenn Gers
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