If you’ve got a real job, the average screenplay, written on your own time, can take anywhere from six to eight months to complete - if you know the story you want to tell. A quick plot synopsis is the best way to make sure that the story you’re starting to write is one you want to spend half a year on.

It took me quite awhile to get started writing this morning. Looking over the seven terms for the quick synopsis, I could not get my ahead around the random story Dramatica had given me.

The quick synopsis I refer to is straight out of the fantastic book by Armando Saldana-Mora, Dramatica for Screenwriters. Much of the development of this Story Project will come out of this book. Armando has a great understanding of Dramatica and has always come up with great ways of using the theory to quickly understand your story. Years ago, I used to collect all his posts off of the Dramatica Mailing List in a folder titled “Armando’s Tips.” The best was Instant Dramatica - an updated version of it appears in the same book (and I’ll be using that later).

So this morning I sat down with my storyform and the chapter entitled “Dramatica in Thirty Seconds.” If you are new to Dramatica the next section might seem a little odd. Learning and Conceiving are scary enough terms even for the seasoned Dramatica user. For now, just go with it - concentrating more on the ideas generated from the terms themselves.

With respect to Armando, I won’t go into exactly how he suggests combining these terms. You’ll have to read the book for that!

Interpreting the Terms

Learning as a Goal

Gathering some kind of information is the goal of the story.

Conceiving as a Consequence

If they don’t learn what they are after, they’re going to have to come up with their own idea.

Action as a Driver

The major plot points in this story will be actions.

Optionlock as a Limit

This one is easy - tension will be built as the characters run out of choices as they reach for their goal.

Doing as a Requirement

The only way they’ll acheive their goal of learning is by engaging in several different activities.

Preconscious as a Forewarning

Preconscious!? What the hell does that mean? Basically - something to do with reactions or impulsive responses leads the characters to believe that they won’t reach their goal.

Success as an Outcome

The characters successfully learn what they set out to learn.

That’s it. With those seven terms I can come up with a reasonably good understanding of my story and decide whether or not it’s worth working on. Remember, all I’m starting out with is the idea:

a hitman going through a mid-life crisis while it snows in Las Vegas

Again, not too promising, but let’s see if we can’t make something out of it.

Basic Plot Points

Let’s start with the easy stuff: I know my Inciting Incident and my Climax are going to be brought about by actions. Whether they are brought on by forces outside of my characters or they are actions taken by the characters themselves, these two pivotal plot points have to be driven by external actions.

OK. Easy enough. Some would even argue that plot points are always actions - especially in a screenplay. There is an argument to be made against this type of thinking, but I’ll move forward.

The goal of my story has to do with learning something - gaining some kind of knowledge. What about:

A hitman heads to Las Vegas to learn who his daughter’s murderer was.

As with most first ideas, this sounds like something I’ve seen before. It reminds me of a Terrence Stamp film called The Limey. I’ll have to try something different. How about:

A young kid who wants to learn how to be a hitman.

It’s OK, but not enough - there needs to be some conflict in there - some inequity.

Often times with Dramatica, it’s not enough to simply fill in the blanks - there has to be some sort of inequity behind the ideas you go with. The above has no imbalance to it - nothing off kilter. The kid would have to be someone who wouldn’t usually want to learn how to be a hitman - someone you would never suspect - like say, a doctor or a teacher…or even better a housewife.

a widowed housewife arrives in Las Vegas to learn about killing by signing up as a hitman.

That’s great - and different. But I have no idea how to write a story about a housewife - I know housewives, but I don’t feel qualified to really write a story from their perspective. Oh, I could write a cliched one, but aren’t you supposed to write what you know?

That’s when I came up with an idea that really interested me:

a pacifist writer who wants to learn about killing by entering the underground world of hitmen

I have a feeling that there might be something like this written already, but it’s strong enough that I’ll go with it for now.

Another thought: I’m not really excited about writing a story about a writer. It always seems like an easy thing to go with and perhaps too self-referential. However, whether or not his profession changes is inconsequential to the plot - the structure will still be the same. So his job as a writer might change.

For sure I know that in the end, he’ll have to kill someone to finally learn what killing is all about.

Limits and Tension

With that in mind, and knowing that this writer will have to run out of choices towards the end I just rifled off the following:

A sheltered wanna-be thriller writer struggles with his first novel. His “writing fund” is running out and if he doesn’t do something drastic, he’ll have to come up with an entirely new profession. He’s wanted to be a writer his whole life - nothing else matters to him. But his writing just feels fake and insincere. He writes about dangerous men but has no idea what a life of danger really is. And unfortunately for him, it’s the early to mid-90s, so there really isn’t any war he could join to see real danger up close.

So he decides to leave for Las Vegas to learn about dangerous men. Along the way he’ll have to do things that dangerous men do - steal from casinos, carry messages for organized crime, burn down businesses, and maybe get into a fight or two. But it won’t be enough - he’ll feel like he hasn’t truly learned the life of a dangerous man, and the fact that even after doing all this he still reacts like a sheltered writer is killing him inside - he does not want to get a regular job.

But he’s done practically everything he can think of that dangerous men do…short of one - killing someone. With the last of his education fund gone and the last of his friends willing to give him a place to live, the writer knows what he has to do.

But it has to be somebody bad - he doesn’t want to kill anyone innocent. Through the connections he has made along the way, he gets himself a hit job - a real nasty sonofabitch. There will be a lot tension back and forth here until he finally does kill someone - and learns what it’s like to be a dangerous man.

Now obviously he’s not going to be real happy with himself, which the storyform agrees with, but I’ll work on that another time.

For now, it’s enough to see what an impact Dramatica the writing partner has had on my writing process. When I started out this morning, I hated my idea. I had no idea where I was going to go with it. I could’ve fired up Screenwriter and had a go at it, but I don’t think I would’ve really arrived anywhere - at least, not in that short a time.

Now I’ve got this fantastic plotline - something I’m really excited about writing. This synopsis gave me a great title as well - Dangerous Men. Unfortunately, a quick search through Google showed me that there was already a movie with that title. Hopefully I’ll write something a little different than that :). Maybe I’ll call it The Intern…

I originally wanted to set it in the 90s, but this sounds even earlier, like in the 30s or 40s. I still have no idea how the snowlocked Las Vegas idea will fit in there, but that, like the writer profession, is mere window dressing.

I started out this morning not having a clue what I was going to write about. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to spend time on this project at all today. I had a bunch of terms and a loosely conceived story idea. But within an hour or so, I came up with a strong plotline that, at least to me, is interesting enough to continue working on.

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