Lesson 11: Visualizing Story Structure

This Moral Premise Storycraft Training series is designed for storytellers of all media and genres, but particularly for filmmakers and movie audiences. The Storycraft Training consists of 12 Lessons presented on YouTube as 12 videos. Originally there were 25 videos, but I've combined them into these 12 YouTube videos for your convenience. As you go through the program you'll see slates for all 25 original videos. The home website is here: https://storycraft.stanwilliams.com. On that page you'll be able to access individual Lessons or the entire series, and see a listing of course objectives for each. Lesson 11 contains Episode 21 (Video 11A), Episode 22 (Video 11B), and Episode 23 (Video 11C) This 57-minute, 3-part lesson examines four useful diagrammatic methods for visualizing and breaking down traditional story structure. The first video summarizes and reviews the 13 basic beats and 7 accent beats of the linear major beat structure discussed in greater detail in Lessons 5-9. An important feature of this breakdown is the regular emotional roller-coaster effect these beats provide. Taking those 20 beats, the second video breaks down the Moral Premise Story Diamond and explains one-by-one nine (9) different story structure models, layering each side-by-side to reveal how each model provides a fresh perspective of the same Natural Law of Story Structure. The models explained come from Stan Williams-Michael Hauge, Chris Vogler-Joseph Campbell, Michael Arndt, Blake Snyder, Jeffery Schechter, Bernard Brock, Küber-Ross, Allison Fisher, and Joseph Gulino. The resulting Story Diamond Key (a free download from MoralPremise.com), provides writers a one-sheet story-breaking aid that minimizes writer's block. The third video takes the same fundamental 20 story beats and applies them to a third graphic metaphor for breaking a story—the Eight Mini Movie Beat Sheet. Based on Gulino's Sequence method and the Williams-Hauge model, this video shows how each mini movie should end in a disaster. Lastly, at the end of the third video there is a brief look at the progress Final Draft 12 is making with their Beat Board, Outliner, and Script Insertion function that dramatically smooths the process from beating out a story graphically and inserting the outline and cards directly and quickly into Final Draft script pages.