Donald L. Vasicek

Category: How to write a book

  • Writing Story Beats

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    When writing a screenplay, by writing story beats first, it helps you organize your thoughts into a more coherent form. Once you complete writing the story beats, you can then begin writing each scene for your screenplay. By following this approach, you will find that you have a road map to follow with respect to your story beats. So, much of your grunt work goes into the story beats, while most of your creative work goes into the writing of each scene.

    Story beats should show each scene in brief form. They do not have to be written in perfect grammar. They simply need to be written down in order. Story beats can be looked upon as idea beats. You have an idea for a scene. What should take place in that scene.? “Oh, yeah, this, this, and this.” Bang! You’ve written your story beats for the first scene. A word of caution, always enter your scene at the last moment and get out of the scene as soon as you can.

    For example, on page 1/minute 1 of my screenplay/movie, “The Caller”, I introduce the setting. I introduce the main character. I show what she does as a professional. I show how she acts and reacts around other people. Bang! I move to the next page/scene. The story beats are: Introduce the setting. Introduce the main character. Show what she does as a professional. Show how she acts and reacts around other people. Get out, move to the next page/scene.

    Once you get some story beats down, you will find that ideas come up where you want to write more in story beats you’ve already written. So, do that. If you want to expound on the setting, e.g., then add to introduce the setting, behind the stage of a fashion show. Then, get back to your story beats for the scene on which you are presently working.

    Writing story beats are refreshing and very helpful to writing a multi-dimensional screenplay, something for which every screenwriter should strive.

    Story beats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…

  • “How to Write Theme”

    If you eat a tortilla with cannabis butter, within 15 minutes, your body will feel an electrical-like blitzkrieg coursing your body. This charge is a dichotomy. It reverberates throughout your organs, muscles, nerves, etc. Your body is charged. Yet, your mind, which is part of your body for those of you who failed Biology 101, relaxes. And you are fine for the time.

    Can you name the theme for this story? What defines the story? One word? Cannabis.

    With theme, whether you’re writing a t.v. commercial, an online ad, a short story, a poem, a book about engineering, a novel, an article for a legal journal, a screenplay, etc., theme is what holds everything together that you are writing. Just like the cannabis theme for the above story, without cannabis in the story, it would be anyone’s guess as to what the theme is.

    In my Disney-type screenplay, “The Real Ghost”, a boy is racing his bicycle in the dark night to sneak a meet with his girlfriend. It is a small town. As he whizzes past the corner convenience store, one end of a sign advertising Marlboro cigarettes, drops. The sign swings and clangs in a quiet breeze. Frightened by the silence in the street and his not supposed to be doing this attitude, with no one present, the boy glances over his shoulder at it. What is the theme here?

    “The Real Ghost” is about a teen boy who tells stories that aren’t true. At the meeting place, his girlfriend yet to arrive in the yard of an abandoned house, he suddenly sees Babe Ruth appear. When he tells everyone in town of this sighting, they accuse him of lying, like he did last summer when he told everyone he saw Sammy Mango walking in Butch Carlisle’s yard at 1 a.m. Seems Sammy had been dead for several years, the victim of a falling pallet of landscaping rocks while sneaking a toke of a joint at the local lumber yard.

    Has anyone guessed the theme of this movie yet? Lying is the theme of the movie. The Marlboro sign dropping and swinging reflects the theme of lying. The boy has lied to his parents. He told them he was going over to the gym to shoot baskets. They had forbidden him from seeing his girlfriend, because her father is the mayor, and the mayor does nothing in the town but blow smoke. They don’t want him influencing their boy in anyway, particularly since their boy already blows smoke himself, just to get attention. The clanging sign is a warning to the boy that what he is doing is wrong because he lied to his parents, and the boy doesn’t heed the warning.

    By telling everyone that he saw Babe Ruth, the boy’s problems about lying escalate.

    The fine point of theme is that it should be reflected in some form, physical, or mental,
    in every change of location or time regarding what you’re writing. Every time! It matters not what you are writing. It matters yes that you paste your theme on your and in your characters, their surroundings, and their time in what your are writing. This approach to writing theme will have the same effect that the roots of a tree has. Without the roots, there would be no tree. Without theme, there is no story. Without story, there is just a blob of words.  Without a tree, there is no shade.

    Warning: Watch out for falling pallets of landscaping rock.

    Donald L. Vasicek at Wrigley Field in Chicago

  • “How To Destroy Writer’s Block”

    What I learned several years ago was
    to push myself to write.  By writing
    at the same time each day, even if
    it is for 15 minutes, I write.  If it is
    not writing an article, screenplay,
    book, etc., but just writing, I write,
    at the same time each day.  This
    approach to writing is vital to
    the professional writer.  It is like
    professional athletes do before
    a practice or a game, they loosen
    up to reduce the danger to injuries.
    A writer must loosen up before they
    write, or they will experience an
    injury, some refer to as “writer’s
    block.”

    I select something about which to
    write.  A pen setting on the table
    in front of me, for example.  I
    study the pen.  I think about the
    pen.  I ask myself, “What can I
    write about this pen for 5 minutes?
    I define the shape, the color, and
    the angle to the table the pen is
    laying.  I define the metal clip
    on it.  I define the steel tip on it
    I define the color of the ink in
    the pen.  I note the name of the
    pen.  I write about the pen in a
    Zen-like story form.  I take all
    of these elements and put them
    together in a fashion that tells a story
    about the pen.  The theme of
    the story, is the pen.  The theme
    is what holds every story together,
    like the roots of a tree.

    One can always write.  The question
    is, how much brilliance does one
    have to write, when the mind
    refuses to give one anything to
    write?  This is when the writer
    must take charge and write.

    When one desires to write their article,
    screenplay, book, personal letter,
    business letter, etc., and has
    difficulty in getting started for the
    day, or night, or what have you,
    do a writing exercise such as I have
    described above.  This warms up the
    mind to turn to what one sets down
    to write in the first place.  Write only
    long enough to get the mind to
    working again, before you return to
    what you want to write.

    And remember, anything anyone
    writes is brilliant.  It’s just a matter
    of how the writer puts what they
    write together, that defines brilliant.

    I hope this has been of help to you.

    Best Regards,

    Donald L. Vasicek
    Olympus Films+, LLC
    http://michaelc.nextmp.net/wordpress
    dvasicek@earthlink.net