John Hattaway

J. Michael Straczynski wrote a book on writing screenplays titled, The Complete Book of Scriptwriting, wherein he outlines how to outline writing for movies, television, plays, and more. I have actually found this method of outlining to be interesting in that you deal with a lot of plot and a little dialogue and you essentially work through the ideas before you work through writing an actual screenplay or teleplay or stage play or whatever. I’ve actually come across some other methods of outlining that are similar to this, but since this is germane to what I am currently working on, the J. Michael Straczynski outlining method, which may not actually be his method but I am applying this name to it, seems to work for me.

With that said, some weeks ago I came across Paperback Writer’s Novel Outlining 101 post that kind of uses a bit of what Straszynski does and a bit of what was presented to me by a professor at BYU in building up a story from an idea. This also includes some of what Sol Stein’s method’s as illustrated through How to Grow a Novel and Stein On Writing where Stein talks about developing the story from conception through final product. Sol Stein was an editor who made it is his business to make sure that author’s had the best possible success in creating stories that not only worked but were well written and formulated and functioned like a story should. (For the morbidly curious, more information about the professor and his methods can be found here.)

In my case it is taking the basic outline (that wasn’t exactly basic) of my one-act play and expanding it with more plot oriented details and some cues for dialogue that will need to be written. Since it is a play, the majority of the story is told through dialogue and acting. The audience shouldn’t see most of what is happening. On top of that, because of the project, I am also having to work on an afterward that talks about the influences of the play and how it connects with Western Literature and western lore. This needs to include a historical basis for what I am writing about that, in turn, includes research. Interestingly enough, I’ve found a museum that has a library in Colorado that I might be able to contact and see if they can provide some of the historical connections that need to be made. On top of which, speaking with my mother, I found out that spur lines (for the railroad) connected lots of southwestern Colorado communities together combined with my understanding of the people who built the railroads (I need to know who was actually hired for these areas) combined with some more simple understanding of various world mythologies (as analogy) and the outcome is that I have a complex piece that is slowly building itself together.

My hope, though, is that I find a way to combine it all before the end of the semester because one of two things will happen: either I will finish a draft of the play and then present the project as mostly complete; or I will not finish the project and the present on why I didn’t finish the project.

In either case, things are moving forward.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

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This entry was posted by smokingpen on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Outline, school. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.