Scriptcake

14. Emotion Pushes Action

January 19, 2022 Lovinder Gill Season 2 Episode 14
Scriptcake
14. Emotion Pushes Action
The Scriptcake Podcast
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Show Notes Transcript

Developing your story from an emotional point-of-view instead of an action first ideology can really help you tell layered, nuanced stories. Listen and find out how Emotion Pushes Action instead of the other way around. 

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For more information on Lovinder Gill's best-selling book "Scriptcake Secrets" or his public speaking schedule, please check out www.lovinder.com.

Speaker 1:

We are so excited that you were here to listen to the script, take podcast, go ahead, make my day. We wanna help you develop your idea into a great screenplay and who knows, maybe you'll write the next big blockbuster. So you're telling me there's a chance.

Speaker 2:

Yeah,

Speaker 1:

Well, there's always a chance, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Are you ready to learn about screenwriting? All right, then let's get started. Enjoy. Welcome to this week's episode of the script kick podcast. If you've been listening to any of the podcast before, I think you should have a good sense that I'm a strong proponent of telling emotional stories. And, um, I need you to understand that that is not a surface based thought process. Emotional stories are what really pushes, um, the action throughout your screenplay. A lot of screen writers will write some cool stuff, write some action, sequences, write some entertaining stuff, and then attempt to put a little bit of emotion into those scenes when they can. And I would challenge you to do the exact opposite. I would challenge you to find the emotional point, the emotional information, the emotional beats that you want to tell and then find a visual way to do so. Um, I think if you choose to do that, um, you come across with much more meaningful scenes. And for this episode, I just want to deal with, you know, act breaks, what pushes characters to do, what they do. Let's use some of those for examples. Um, the first act break of wonder woman is when she leaves the hysteria, because her people are attacked by Nazis and her aunt is killed. Captain America becomes a hero. When he chases the killer of Dr. Abraham kin who's become the equivalent of a father figure to him. Batman's parents are killed when he is a child's Superman's parents die. When he is a child iron man's parents are killed when he is young Aquaman loses his mother. When he is young Spiderman loses uncle Ben at the first act break has, uh, may kidnapped at the midpoint crisis and has Mary Jane kidnapped for the third act break. Can you see how every act break? It's the emotion that pushes the action that goes on into the next act? Even if you look at something like star wars, uncle Owen dies, you know, OB one Kenobi dies. A lot of these characters die and these big action movies, because it's an excellent way to motivate the protagonist to move forward in their physical journey. So when you're designing these ideas and these stories and these thought processes that you wanna build to these screenplays that you're writing stop thinking about the action that happens first, and then how do I imbue a little bit of emotion into this? That's backwards, do it the other way around, figure out emotionally, what will motivate these characters emotionally, what you're trying to say. And then you find a visual way to do it so that when you're doing that, it's not just a random visual by itself. It's a visual with a layer of emotion beneath it, which makes your storytelling all that more powerful until next time. Thank you for listening to the script cake podcast. If you have any questions on screenwriting, please feel free to reach out to us@infoatca.com. Also, please like our social media pages. We're on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and, uh, check out our website, script.com until next time.