Tim Kashani Shares a Story Template to Accelerate Writers | Broadway and Film

Hi, my name is Tim Kashani, and today we're going to be talking about story. And we're going to be using a template that we created here to help artists when they're telling their stories. The topics in the template come from many different sources. Therefore, we're not reinventing the wheel. We're taking the wheel and we're letting you put custom hubcaps on that wheel. But in all seriousness, story goes all the way back to the days of cave people sitting around the campfire telling stories to survive. Now, why is that relevant? Because that survival instinct is still built into us, which is why conflict is such an essential element when it comes to storytelling. And our amygdala, our reptilian portion of our brain, connects to stories that have some form of action in them that remind us of what it is to be human. We have tried to distill a number of different sources that I have personally used and other friends have used over the years when it comes to telling stories. What kind of tools, techniques, tips can we use to help tell the best story? We're not trying to cage you in and say you have to follow a particular template. Instead, we're looking at them as tools. And structure does help. It helps us quantify, codify, take our ideas and put them in a form that we can use. But also, we use this to help collaborate, because when you're working on a film or you're working on a theatrical production, you are working with many different departments. And the better you can collaborate when it comes to the essence, the core values of your story, the easier it is for them to be creative and do their jobs as well. We use this template in our Theater Accelerator. Theater Accelerator derives from our belief that storytellers are also entrepreneurs, and we blend the startup methodology and mentality with artistry to create this 2-week virtual program that allows people to find their community, make their connections, do their product-market fit, create minimum viable products. A lot of fun aspects that take the financial aspect and make them less scary because ultimately we want to take the starving out of artists. And by doing that, we create a community of people that want to share and, as we say when it comes to musicals, sing it forward. Thus, we are singing it forward today, and we want to share this on a broader level with you and take one aspect that we found very useful in our Theater Accelerator, which is this template on storytelling. We have a link at the bottom which will allow you to go ahead and take your story and apply it however you want to. And please comment, let us know other aspects that you think might make it into this, because in no way are we saying this is a comprehensive guide of everything that is storytelling. This is just what has worked for us so far. Also, we'll put links at the bottom which share some of the sources that we pulled from because there's a number of great masters who have written books, or people have written books about them, that cover the foundational philosophy that we're talking about when we're mentioning some of the bullet points and milestones in this document. There are thousands of people that will tell you about how to write a script, how to write a screenplay, how to write a musical. You are the only one that knows exactly what you want to write, And the key component is your originality, your you, what you're bringing to this world, what you are uniquely sharing. But the principles in how you do that help you structure. Therefore, we are going to combine a number of sources that I personally have found very useful, and many of our teams that have gone through our Theater Accelerator have found very useful. This template that we're looking at was geared for a Broadway musical, but it's very easy to adapt to any form of a traditional screenplay. Instead of a 2-act structure, you might break it into a 3-act structure. We also do reference some sources that are specific to musicals, like Jack Fertell's book, The Secret Life of the American Musical. If your characters don't sing, you don't have to reference that part. Therefore, it is still very valid to use this for a traditional screenplay or even a play. For that matter. All right, well, let's kick into the template. Top, the name of your show. What do you want to call it? Now, if you don't have a name yet, just leave it name of your show for now. Don't freak out trying to name this thing right away. That can come later. But the next one you should have before you start to really dig into writing, and that is your theme. That is the essence of why you are telling your story. What do you want your audience to walk away with? A theme is something that should be active. For example, "It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all." Whatever your theme is, is the essence, the core of your story as to why you're telling it. And when you go back and look at some of the films or some of the stage plays that have really touched you, try to distill them down to what the theme was. What was the author trying to convey when they built this? Next up, we talk about the general tone and setting for your piece. This is a background structure. Use adjectives and words that give a descriptive feel for what's happening. We usually correspond this with visual medium as well. As we take this template and we start to get into production, that will tie to things like mood boards or swatches or whatever you use to convey a sense of setting, the world that your people are living in. Again, just some background information. Give us a sense for the tone and where we are in the world. For example, in American in Paris, the show we did on Broadway, that was set in France. But what was also important is not only that it was set in France, but when. It was right after World War II, in a time where not only the city was rebuilding, but the people were rebuilding. Backstory. There are many schools of thought on backstory. Some people love to write a long, eloquent backstory about the character even before they were born. That gives them a sense for exactly who these people are. There are other people that will say, for example, I just watched Aaron Sorkin's MasterClass, which is quite good, and he doesn't spend a lot of time on backstory. He feels that what's happening in the story happens right now. There are some things that happen to the character that might be important, but but he wouldn't say to write thousands of pages of backstory. He would say, however, to do your research. And this is a way for you to write down some key facts, and that's why we've simplified it rather than long paragraphs. It's what are those components that are very important for us to understand who these people are and why they begin this journey. What got them to where they are when your story starts today? So many books, so many people have written about what Joseph Campbell created and has done. A true scholar, he went back and looked at great myth and found patterns and similarities across many of these great myths. If you look at Bill Moyers' interview of the 5-part series of him sitting down with Joseph Campbell, for you storytellers, to me, it's still one of the best things to understand classical structure and the relationship between human beings, religion, culture, myth, all of the above. Up top here in the main body, just talk about your hero in some general terms. What are some of the struggles your hero needs to go through to come out on the other end? Key decisions for each character. Everything your character does will be based on key decisions. Your character has something that they want. They're going to be facing a number of challenges and obstacles in that journey, and during those challenges and obstacles, they must make a decision. Those decisions define your character or your characters. And one thing I suggest, and this goes back to when I was acting, is to look at scripts and find those key moments and underline them, and then look at why they are making those key decisions. You should be putting your character into tough decision-making points. Robert McKee likes to say, "Put your character into the worst possible situation that you can think of because that will help define who they are." What your characters need versus what your characters want. In the beginning of your story, your character has some form of want. That want may be very simple. It may simply be, "I don't want anything to change." Or it may be something grand. "I want a new life. I want to change a system. I want to grow." Whatever that might be, they have a want. You need to know that want up front. But what they want is usually represented by something external. That want is usually tied to they want something to change. And that's where the need comes in. The need might be, I need to feel self-sufficient. I need to feel empowered. I need to feel released from my shackles. And usually through the journey, they find that they might get what they want, but if they haven't fulfilled what they need, they're not complete. And some people talk about this as an external or an internal motivation. External motivation would be the want. Internal motivation would be the need. However you define it, talk about what they're saying versus what they're feeling inside and what they need to get to. And it's fun to go back and look at some old films or theatrical productions and actually track your characters to see what they want and what they need. Time. Be specific, at least in your outline, because that will help you structurally. A, how many days does your journey take? Does it all take place in a few minutes, or is it an epic journey that passes many different years? Break it down and understand the emotional beats as to what happens in these different time components. I tend to find, and other people will say this too, that the more you can compress the time, the better chance you have of controlling the drama of your piece. Aristotle said that all stories should take place in one day. Why would you say that? Because it is an area of time that we can wrap our minds around, and it has dramatic tension from the sunrise to the sunset. Now, not every story is going to take place in your world in one day, but think about that and think about why time compression is your friend. The ticking clock. Creating a sense of urgency, gives us a sense of drama. Well, your ticking clock can be anything like the TV show 24, which was right on the nose telling you that what was happening in those 24 beats, to something where the clock is not necessarily time-based but can be action-based. Something needs to happen before this next thing takes place, and that will tie into some of the other aspects of your character components as to why do they need to do this, Why does this story have to happen now? And that will also help you as you look at your other characters. Do they all share this same ticking clock, or do they have their own set of ticking clocks, which then can create conflict in the story if people have different needs and wants that they're working towards? Rules. You create whatever world you want to create. That world can be very literal. That world can be a complete fantasy. Whichever spectrum you find yourself on, there are going to be rules for all of them. Know those rules. And those rules can be things like cultural rules based on your character's background. But now we get into the lore, the historical world. What are these components that we need to inform the audience about that will help us understand the actual story that we're in? Whatever those rules are, define them up front so that we can help the audience relax into the story. Everything that we've talked about now, they all tie together. And one key component is whatever you set up in the beginning, whatever magical qualities that you have, stay true to them. What are the key objects that your character is going to use? It could be something as mundane as a purse, and it could be something as fantastical as a time machine. Whatever these are, define them so that we know not only what they are, but why they are. Why are these important? What do they do for your character and what do they do for your story? How do they change or how do they help the character arc or change? Your character grows throughout the story. What is the reliance on them? Do they deceive the character? Anything that can help us understand the relationship of these items will then help us understand how your character uses and interacts with these items within the culture, the world that you have created. A while back, I was reading something written by Pixar, and Andrew Stanton was talking about the idea of a skin jump. It's when you jump out of your physical skin into the virtual or literal skin of the character you're watching on screen. You don't have to sympathize with every character, but if you don't have any empathy, chances are you're not going to connect with this show. Lastly, additional thoughts. This is for you. This is a free space. This is something that becomes useful when you're collaborating. And it also, because it's a free space, you don't have to worry about the structure. So you literally can just put 3 or 4 bullet points or put a couple paragraphs that anybody else that's picking up this document might want to know. In the second part of our template, we break down each individual scene, and there will be overlap from what we talked about in the overall general portion of the template, but now you get specific and you want to understand within the context of that quantifiable unit that we call the scene, how are things like decisions or ticking clocks coming into play in that particular moment. And then there are also some other aspects that we'll be talking about here that we haven't discussed yet that work very well in the scene-by-scene breakdown. When we hit each scene, start with the location. Let us know physically where we are within the world. Then give us some brief description. What needs to take place in the plot? This should not be the actual body of the script itself, but this could be a 1 or at most 2 paragraph description of what's taking place in that scene. If this is a musical, what song is being sung in that scene? Then distill it down to key points. What do we need the audience to walk away from in that scene? Emotional charge. This comes from Robert McKee's lecture series or book on story. Many moons ago, I sat in his live session, and for me, it was transformational because I'd always studied story more as a bystander on the side, looked at it, read about it, watched things, but the way that he quantified different aspects of stories got my left side of the brain thinking and realizing that, ah, this structure can actually help. One thing we want to look at is that charge at the beginning of the scene and the charge at the end of the scene. An example would be happy, sad, rich, poor. Whatever emotion you come up with, you want to look at where they sit on the charge level. Happy would be a positive charge. Sad would be a negative charge. In the book, Robert says, "Do the charges change?" If you start a scene negative and end a scene negative, or you start a scene positive and end a scene positive, chances are high that you've created exposition. How can you get around it? Our next line helps with that. Scene type. This is from Mike Nichols. In an interview that I watched, he said there are only 3 types of scenes: a negotiation, a seduction, and an argument. Anything else is exposition. Therefore, if you combine this emotional charge and the scene type, you can help discover what your characters are wanting and needing in that scene and how they're getting them. And when he talks about the negotiation, argument, seduction, they don't all have to be literal screaming-at-the-top-of-our-lung arguments. In fact, nuanced arguments or Seductions that don't involve romance can be just as useful, if not more, in these certain cases. Decision. That is specific decisions to this scene. And you will have more decisions in the body of your story than you did up top because up top is not all of the decisions. Up top are your key decisions. Therefore, the decisions that the characters are making scene by scene should still have some weight to them, and they will lead towards the big decisions that they have to meet. And your character might make a really big decision in the beginning of the story and the end of the story. This will help you weight your decisions. You don't want every scene to be this epic, life-gut-wrenching decision or the audience will be exhausted 30 minutes into your show. Ticking clock— where is that clock in its ticking mode in that particular scene and is it progressing? The conflict and the weight of that conflict. What is the conflict in that scene and how strong is it? Similar to decisions, they shouldn't all be really, really difficult conflicts. The conflict that they're facing usually makes them make a decision, or a decision they make causes a conflict, and I like to see if the two of them are aligned. In each scene, when you talk about the empathy/skin jump, we're looking to see where in that scene does the bond take place, and with which characters you would see an emotional connection to. Another term we talk about a lot in Theater Accelerator is your personas, or which type of audience members are going to connect with which types of characters. Be specific in the scene when certain types of audience segments are going to connect and skin jump during that scene. The next section focuses on the genre of musical theatre. In our Theatre Accelerator, we use the book "The Secret Life of the American Musical" by Jack Viertel. Jack has done a fantastic job of looking across many different musicals over time and seeing some patterns that relate to why shows work. And he'll be the first to tell you this is not a blueprint that's going to guarantee success or even that you have to follow this to have success, but he will say these are patterns that are noticed, and also there are reasons behind this for the emotional development of the characters as it relates to the musical theatre genre. And he breaks down the chapters in the book with some fun little titles. For example, you have "Curtain Up, Lights Out." It's the opening number. What does an opening number need to do in a musical? In a musical, it needs to, as he would say, get the audience out of trouble. Set up what we talked about earlier. Set up the rules and do it as quick as you can so that the audience can move from their left or logical brain where they're trying to figure it out into their right brain or their emotional brain where they can enjoy the journey of the story. Then the next chapter is the Wizard and I, the want song. In every musical, there is usually a moment where the character wants something and they sing that to the audience. As Jerome Robbins once said, "The only reason a character should sing or dance is because that's all they can do." The book should lead us to a point where the emotion is so high that somebody needs to explode out of their body and dance or sing. In the individual scene, what step does your heroine or your hero take. So, for example, you're going to find somewhere in the first part of your story that they need to cross the threshold, and then they get into the journey itself. And then somewhere in the middle of your show, they need to be at the abyss. They need to be at a dark moment. They need to feel like all is lost. Looking at structurally what your hero needs to go through is very useful for you when you come to understand Where am I going to bring the elixir back? What is that chalice that I return with? How am I transformed? It is one of the classic forms of storytelling that tell us that the hero changes and they can never come back and be themselves at the end of this journey. They now have too much knowledge. Hopefully you were able to take away some knowledge and use it to benefit yourselves and make it your own. If you found this information useful, please subscribe to our channel. It'll help build our community for storytellers in the future.