By Forris Day Jr.
Sometimes as a screenwriter it is difficult to come up with material. You may struggle with character development or just have a tough time coming up with a piece of story to connect two ideas together. In Jen Grisanti’s book “Story Line – Finding Gold in Your Life Story” you will learn some neat tricks to help out in the “I can’t think of anything to write” department because your life is filled with great stories and interesting characters. You just need to learn how to find them.
“Story Line” takes writing a fictional story and breaks it up piece by piece. You start by creating a good logline. a logline is made up of a few sentences that tell what your movie is about. It describes who the main character is, what obstacle is presented to them and what they must do to prevent the worst from happening. Once your logline is created Grisanti walks you through all the steps needed to create a unique story using events and people from your own life. It really is quite amazing when you begin to think about all the events that have shaped you as a person and then use those events to create and enhance a fictionalized story.
The book encourages you to dig deep into your own life and capture moments that can be put into your screenplay. Search for interesting characters you know, mix them up and create a fictional character that is interesting and different than anyone you may have ever imagined. Grisanti has developed some fun exercises at the end of each chapter. For example one tells you to watch your favorite TV show or movie and analyzing it to discover the key moments for the characters and story progression. By learning these moments you can them apply them to your story then add your own information from your life. A pretty interesting concept for writing.
The book takes the four parts of the logline – set up, dilemma, action and goal – and assigns a section of the book to each. This helps you understand in detail each part of the logline which in turn helps you craft your entire screenplay. There are plenty of examples from current TV shows and movies. She also shares details of things that happened in her own life, many which were painful for her, but helped her become a better writer and became material for her scripts.
“Story Line” teaches you to use the powerful resource know as “your own life story”. It is a resource that all of us have but sometimes forget to tap into. It can be used to create compelling writing that make people want to read your script and see your movie. I recommend having “Story Line” in your library. It is a wonderful read and a great book to reference back to when you need help creating an idea, character, event or moment in your script.