Breaking your story

There’s a phrase professional screenwriters and TV writers use: “break the story.” Sounds like a bad thing, but in actuality it’s one of the biggest keys to being a successful writer.

Breaking the story is the part of the writing process where you figure it out, nail it down, wrangle it to the ground. I can’t swear to its derivation, but it probably has some connection to the idea of ‘breaking a horse’ wherein a horse trainer takes a wild horse and trains them: A writer takes a wild story [undeveloped content] and trains it [figures it out].

Some writers prefer to type FADE IN and find the story over their course of their meanderings in the page-writing process. That’s all well and good if you have endless time and no pressure to actually produce content at the end. However if you work as a writer in Hollywood or some other entertainment center, when you land a gig you have a matter of weeks to turn in a draft, therefore hoping to find your story while writing it is a short cut to anxiety and misery.

Nearly all professional screenwriters break their story before they move into writing pages. This provides them the maximum amount of confidence when writing pages because they have already done the heavy lifting.

After years of breaking stories, I devised an online screenwriting workshop called “Prep: From Concept to Outline,” featuring a set of six writing exercises to help steer writers through this critical part of the process:

Step 1: Protagonist Character Treatment

Step 2: Master Brainstorming List

Step 3: Four Primary Plotline Points

Step 4: Four Themeline Movements

Step 5: Ten Major Plotline Points

Step 6: Narrative Throughline [outline]

Six lectures, six writing exercises, six teleconferences, six weeks to break your story. What’s more, once you learn this process, you can use it on any future writing project.

The next session of Prep: From Concept to Outline begins Monday, June and there are just a few slots left in that class [I limit enrollment to make sure I have enough time to spend with each writer’s story].

If you are interested, go here.

I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!

Re breaking a story: You can go here to see writer Ken Levine’s thoughts on the matter.

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