Dramatic structure

Willamette Writers asked me for "a writing tip" to include in an email series they have. I sent them this:

Playwright, screenwriter, director David Mamet presents the foundation of storytelling this way:

• Once upon a time …
• And then one day …
• Just when everything was going so well …
• When at the last minute …
• And then everyone …

If you can complete these sentences, you have the outlines of a tight, beginning-middle-end story. Let’s work it out for a film you probably are familiar with, E.T.

• Once upon a time … there was a lonely boy.
• And then one day … he met a stranded alien.
• Just when everything was going so well … the alien said, “E.T. go home.”
• When at the last minute … the boy revived E.T., rescued him from scientists, and helped him catch his spaceship.
• And then everyone … was sadder but wiser, learning that love is letting go.

Mamet’s paradigm focuses on the major turning points in the story, the foundation of a tight structure. Structure is like a skeleton: as skeletons, all of us look alike. But add flesh, we are different. We react to the flesh of a story – but it is the tight skeleton, structure, that holds it all together.

I incorporated this into my own take on structure to create ...