Authors

Big Difference Between A Story That Has Meaning And One That Doesn’t – Adam Argot

Filmcourage

Published

3 hours ago

[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]

Film Courage: If we say that character is the vehicle, story is the road. How did you come up with that?

Adam Argot, Story Artist/Instructor/YouTuber: This idea is there is the character, there’s a protagonist and then there is the obstacles.

I began to think about obstacles are basically everything we experience in life.

All the conflicts we experience start to take on a kind of character.

For example, when you enter a boardroom and you’re surrounded by peers as well as, maybe a boss or a high-end producer or a talent that you really respect, and you walk into that room, that room becomes its own moral sphere and it takes on its own character.

You tend to see like, Oh, who’s sitting at the head of the table?

Who’s the person that’s leaning back and relaxed and in control?

Who’s the person that’s eager and leaning in and trying to prove themselves and you unconsciously start to see all of these relationships.

Now, what I started looking at was, you mentioned that around the world, we all develop different virtues, different values, different cultures, and culture is defined by the stories we tell.

Those are the borders of culture.

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If you tell a story to somebody outside of your culture, it might not resonate on the same level or it will have a different kind of resonance, depending on how it’s tapped into it.

What I noticed was, this ties into it’s not more relativity because, relativity ultimately just says it doesn’t matter.

There is no hierarchy of morals. But ultimately it is a kind of recognition that in every venue in every situation you have a kind of moral sphere that defines the rules of survival and those rules of survival become the conflicts you choose that you have to negotiate in order to survive in that world.

Most character arcs are interested in:

What do you have to transform about yourself to survive inside that world?

Each conflict teaches you to adjust your values.

What I started to see was as a storyteller you want to go on the road.

You want to say, “Hey, let’s go see all these amazing things, these conflicts, these incredible experiences, these incredible spectacle.”

That’s the road where you’re going to be going. The vehicle, the character is the thing that’s going to experience those conflicts with you.

It’s going to drive you along the way…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).

About:

Adam Argot has worked in film, TV, games, and publishing as a director, writer, author, story and concept artist for over 15 years for both major and independent studios. Along with in-depth podcasts and interviews like Film Courage, Story Kinetics, and a YouTube video series The Art of Story, Adam has also taught story structure at Calarts and as a guest lecturer in the USC Screenwriting Program.