Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
When a humiliated teen starts visualizing the true desires of any female he touches, he gets a chance to win the girl away from his Machiavellian rival.
Lars:My point is that ?Blake Snyder makes a clear distinction between a "Death Moment" beat and a "Catalyst" beat. ? And after reflecting on your take on your story, I still believe the Catalyst beat in your story -- and in "What Women Want" is the protagonist acquiring the magic.?(That beat also crRead more
Lars:
My point is that ?Blake Snyder makes a clear distinction between a “Death Moment” beat and a “Catalyst” beat. ? And after reflecting on your take on your story, I still believe the Catalyst beat in your story — and in “What Women Want” is the protagonist acquiring the magic.
?(That beat also creates the story hook. Being humiliated, losing the promotion are not the story hooks.)
So we diverge on what the Catalyst (aka: ?Inciting Incident, aka: The Call) is in your story. ?Whatever. It’s your story. ?I have nothing more to contribute on that subject.
Except to ask that if the humiliation is not the “Death Moment” beat in your story (a la “Save the Cat”), ?then what is?
?(And for that matter, what’s the “Death Moment” beat in “What Women Want?”)
fwiw
?
See lessWhen a humiliated teen starts visualizing the true desires of any female he touches, he gets a chance to win the girl away from his Machiavellian rival.
>>I?m re-assured by Blake Snyder that the ?How? isn?t criticalBut you DO have to show the event in the story where the magic suddenly starts. ?Which is the case in "What Women Want". ?How an electrical shock enables Nick to hear what women think is never explained. ?The audience just has to suRead more
>>I?m re-assured by Blake Snyder that the ?How? isn?t critical
But you DO have to show the event in the story where the magic suddenly starts. ?Which is the case in “What Women Want”. ?How an electrical shock enables Nick to hear what women think is never explained. ?The audience just has to suspend disbelief and accept it. (And the Act 1 is the only place where events requiring a suspension of disbelief, ?or quasi-demi-deus-ex-machina moments can occur.)
The transforming event of him getting shocked is never explained — but it is shown. ?And that shock is the Inciting Incident.
>> in WHAT WOMEN WANT, the inciting incIdent is Mel?losing a job promotion to a woman
I beg to differ. I consider the loss of the job promotion as the “Point of Attack”, the first significant conflict in the story that has a direct bearing on the course of the plot. The Inciting Incident has to be the electrical shock because it’s the event ?that ?changes his fortune for the better. ?It instantiates the story hook. ?It?gives Nick the inspiration and the means? to realize his objective goal.?
>>>In the case of my OOTB comedy ? it is where our shy teen is humiliated by the rival and loses the girl of his dreams. ?As a result the status quo is no longer bearable, stasis = death for our girl-shy hero.
But the humiliating incident offers no alternative. ?It only exacerbates his Status Quo. ?It changes nothing for the fortunes of the protagonist.?
What the humiliation is in Snyder’s paradigm is a “Death moment”. ?And after that comes the “Catalyst”. ?It causes change. ? ?And ?in your story , ?it’s the magic power that ?is the catalyst event that offers the protagonist an escape route from ?his “Stasis” with one damn “Death moment” after another, ?more of the same ol’, same ‘ol.
And if ?the humiliation is the catalyst, then what ?event in your story constitutes, per the “Save the Cat” paradigm, the “Death Moment”? ?It’s not in your earlier list of “Save the Cat” beats. ?But Blake Snyder explicitly said it’s ?part of the Setup, that it’s a beat that should come somewhere between the Opening Image and the Catalyst beats. ?(See “Save the Cat Strikes Back!”, p 26) So, if you’re going to follow the “Save the Cat” m.o., you gotta have a “Death Moment” before the “Catalyst”. ?What is that moment?
>>My understanding is that the Inciting Incident needs to be in the logline because it gives our hero a cause/goal, so that even just reading the logline we?re rooting for him.
True. And it’s the sudden acquisition of the magic power that gives him the inspiration and the means to achieve his objective goal. ?Without that event, his objective goal?for the plot doesn’t exist — ?it can’t.
I am so bold to assert that the introduction of a magic element into the story (in the 1st Act) always constitutes the Inciting Incident. ?Because it’s what the protagonist inspires and enables the protagonist to escape the trap of his Status Quo.
See lessWhen a space trucker saves Elvis Presley from assassination he must return to Earth, a planet that abandoned him as a child, and recover Presley’s hidden time machine to prevent it from being used to destroy the galaxy.
>>>When a space trucker discovers Elvis Presley is not dead, and the future leader of the entire galaxy, he must help recover Presley?s lost time machine to prevent an alien from undoing all of history.This version sort of clears up one persistent problem I have had with the concept: ?sinceRead more
>>>When a space trucker discovers Elvis Presley is not dead, and the future leader of the entire galaxy, he must help recover Presley?s lost time machine to prevent an alien from undoing all of history.
This version sort of clears up one persistent problem I have had with the concept: ?since Elvis Presley is supposed to be dead, how can he still be alive, and be under a threat of an assassination? ?You can’t just toss Elvis into the mix of a logline without some explanation in the face of the assumption and common knowledge that he’s dead.
Discovering that he’s not dead means that even the protagonist –like everyone reading the logline and script –thinks he is dead. ? There’s an implied promise the script will deliver an explanation as to why he still lives.
However, the concept still seems disjointed and cluttered; consequently, ?it still seems difficult to buy into the premise by suspending disbelief. ?And suspending disbelief is ?always a primary challenge for a story of this genre.
By cluttered I mean that it has so many elements that require a suspension of disbelief. ?IMHO, you are asking a script reader — and movie audience — to swallow too much exposition to just kick start the plot.
?In order to buy into the concept, a logline reader must suspend disbelief and accept that 1]Elvis isn’t dead’ 2] He’s the future leader of the galaxy; 3] He’s got a time machine…somewhere; 4] An evil alien intends to “undo all history”. ?(What does that mean? ); 5] And all of this is causally connected.
I shudder to think how much exposition the script may get bogged down in explaining how ?it all fits together.. All of these elements have to be set up, explained and aligned in the 1st Act, 30 pages, 30 minutes, max.
In one sentence, what is your story hook for logline readers?
And what’s your personal hook in the story? ?Why do you want to — why must you — write it?
fwiw
See less