What is a Story?

The Beginning.

Starting the Ideas

For our first lesson we looked into the creation of a story and how an idea can be formed, taking a look at the 'ingredients' for a story and idea, and how that can eventually develop into a script. The starting point is 'The Meeting', and I've brainstormed a few very rough ideas that hopefully will expand into something more detailed over the next few days.

From class I had already come up with 2 possible sets: a coffee shop, and a prison. The coffee shop set was easier to source and so I tried to think of a story that could fit into that scenario but struggled as I had already thought of a snippet of a story set in the prison idea: a son meets his criminal father for the first time and is ready to go in and hate him for what he did but ends up wanting to have more of a relationship with his father but has conflict from his mother who does dislike the father. My issue is I've struggled to think of how to create a realistic set for this encounter. With the coffee shop however, I already know where it would be filmed, I just needs characters and conflict to fit into that scenario, and I feel like I'm starting this story from the wrong point- the set.

With other members of the class I had a study session which meant that we could help each other out with ideas for our stories.

The Ingredients for a Story

• Character
• Goal
• Conflict
• Change

Character

I started with brainstorming what characters I could begin with in order to branch off from. I thought up of pairs of characters that could interact and here's what I came up with:

The circled ideas are the ones that will be easier to achieve. I have also considered these ideas:

• An artist is working freelance making commissions for people and companies to make money for something- he spills coffee on someone or someone shows an interest in his art
• Someone who has a routine that they do not want to break- such as getting coffee from a particular coffee shop so he has to go somewhere else and meets someone new in the process.
• Someone who has to care for another person with an illness- or they have an illness themselves. 
• A flat party- A single shot of 2 people walking through a party talking. Different things are happening in the background that all lead to something that happens in the end.

All of these may be a good place to start, but they all have their own challenges. I think my challenge will be picking which challenges are the most realistic and will have the best reward.

Character development through a 'happy ending' story is important to take into account, but this will be worth coming back to at a later date:

• Stage 1. The character is introduced, and the audience have an idea about what kind of person they are.
• Stage 2. They glimpse the future. They get a taste of what could be theirs- a goal is formed.
• Stage 3. They move towards accepting the goal is possible but they're still wary. This is where conflict comes in, they may be scared of the losses they may face in order to achieve goal.
• Stage 4. Point of no return. They decide they want to pursue the goal but are still afraid. They may face more conflict throughout, and question if it's worth it.
• Stage 5. They have no fear and are willing to risk anything to achieve the goal. The 'big fight scene' generally happens here.
• Stage 6. They achieve their destiny and they have become a changed person. They may be happier/ friendlier/ wealthier.

Goal

The 'goal' in story telling is what the protagonist wants to achieve. It could be something they want to solve or find (such as love) and it can even change in the middle of the story.
Examples of goals include:

• Game of Thrones- To have the iron throne, although each character has their own goal i.e. Daenerys wants to have a large army and defeat the Lannisters.
• Breaking Bad- Walter White wants to make money for his family before he dies of cancer.
• Scream- to find out who the murderer is and to stop them from killing the friends.

A goal is what will supply the basis of the story. This is the area that I'm struggling with at the minute with my ideas and I need to focus on developing this more.

Conflict

This is what will make the story gripping and give it depth. The character chosen will face a conflict in the story which will challenge them and cause suspense. There is always a story behind any conflict- a fight or argument will always have some background to it happening. If I expanded on the idea of the artist in the coffee shop, his conflict could be that he has a tight deadline to hand in his commission and he accidentally spills coffee all over his work, so he needs to find a way of creating drawings a lot faster. It's not very interesting but it's an example.

A very obvious example of conflict would be in Game of Thrones, the different families are fighting to win the Iron Throne. However as each character has a goal, they all have their own conflicts too. Daenerys' conflict is with her kindness- she risks losing things close to her to save others. 

Conflicts and goals tend to come hand in hand- the character will have a goal, but a conflict will challenge them, and make their journey to the goal harder.

Change

This is the final part of the story that will show the development of the character's journey. The 'change' in the story is how the character or world changed (usually for the better) after all of the conflict and after either reaching or not reaching the goal. As mentioned in the character section, under stage 6 of character development, This is where the character has, for example, become kinder. a good example of this would be Shrek as at the beginning of the film, Shrek just wants to be left alone. However by the end he has many friends and has accepted that it's not as bad as he made it out to be in the beginning. This shows a positive change in his character.

I imagine it's clear to see that I need to work on my story a lot more to make something out of what I have. I plan to do some primary research on character ideas- try sitting in a coffee shop and take notes of people that walk in and try to write short stories about them. I'm hoping this may spark something that I can work from over the next few days.