Building a world one frame at a time
There you are, reading Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series for the umpteenth time, inspired, ready to create your own world with intricate rules, vast lands, and exotic creatures.
Now, it’s time to begin your own epic story.
But where do you start?
What I detail here will be how to map out an intricate world and craft a story around it without getting too bogged down. Let’s start at the beginning…
My No. 1 rule for starting a story is:
Ending a story!
That sounds odd, but it’s true. To know how to map out a story, I need to know where it’s going. I’ll go so far as to have a final frame in mind.
Yes, things can change along the way, but generally, that’s how I work and it’s not a bad way to go.
With an idea of where you’re going, you can now take into account your format. For this post, we’ll focus on long-form storytelling, like movie franchises, book franchises, comics, and TV shows. I’ve mentioned before that format can change the nuance of your storytelling, but what doesn’t change is keeping the important information in a story and leaving out everything else.
Which leads me to my No. 2 rule– something I’ve said in several of my posts– straight from Alex Toth:
Eliminate the superfluous! (In other words, keep it simple.)
That sounds like a backward thing to say here, since we’re talking about long format. You’d imagine you would have room to include every small detail you’ve created. I know it’s probably fun to create all the little details, or have that amazing 10-minute chase scene, but you first have to ask whether or not it helps your story.
A friend recently posted about how much he loved Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. You’d expect him to gush about the giant robots and monsters, but what really drew him in were the little details hidden in the movie, like the scavengers that collect and make products like boots and medicines out of monster parts, or people being monster lovers with tattoos, or cities with emergency bunkers in case of attacks.
These are subtle details. They don’t need to be made a huge point of, as they add little to the important part of the story: saving humanity from monsters by using giant robots.
It can be really fun to do all that detailed work, but you have to hold your feet firm to story first! If it is going to help push your story forward, then include it.
The No. 3 thing you should do is:
Break your story into manageable chunks.
Finding a steady pattern or flow to your stories is hugely important. Some storytellers will set up their work in a pattern, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Harry Potter.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV show) uses the popular “monster-of-the-week” format while building up a longer storyline throughout a season. A regular episode will start with the main cast having some sort of problem while a new threat is introduced into the town they live in. The team ends up confronting the threat and, by the end of the episode, have also solved their problem.
All the while, some smaller threads will pop up from time to time, such as the introduction of the character Angel, until the end of a season, where that thread will get a dedicated story. Several TV shows have adopted this format and it works well for a serialized adventure series.
In Harry Potter, the early books follow Harry’s schooling to frame the entire series. In every book, Harry starts his adventures living with his aunt and uncle, preps for school by buying supplies for the year, starts classes, finds a mystery, plays quidditch, fights Voldemort or some menace, and celebrates the end of the school year. The books are so structured, we go through a whole school year with the characters, even celebrating various holidays as chapters. The books are even noted on the spine as being Year 1 (of school), Year 2, and so on.
Another format– also popular in comics– is the cliffhanger.
One recent TV show that was great at this was Breaking Bad. Each episode would end so outrageously, you had no choice but to come back each week.
But what about shows that release all at once, like bingeable shows on Netflix? How can we structure these stories to keep viewers coming back or pressing play right after the previous episode has ended? Several streaming shows OVER-rely on the cliffhanger or shock value to keep you coming back for more. One that particularly fell flat for me was the Netflix original Ozark, which relied too heavily on shock value. By the third episode, they had nowhere to go. Another pitfall of the streaming format is losing steam partway through a season, like so many of the Netflix Marvel shows were criticized for.
Another route to take is the traditional sitcom, where everything (mostly) resets by the end of the episode, like The Brady Bunch. While this may seem simple to pull off, it can be extremely difficult to pull off well.
So, how do we avoid mistakes in long-format stories?
Well, with my first three tips in mind, really focus on what’s important to the story and the characters. Building out from there, the story should fall into place a lot easier. If you know where you’re going, don’t overcomplicate things, and stick to a game plan, you’ll have all the tools to keep your long-format story going strong.
One of the biggest recent disappointments for me is the comic series East of West from Image Comics, by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta.
Hickman is known for his immersive worlds and deep worldbuilding, but after six or so issues, I still felt lost and stopped reading it. I’ve been told the series works better when read in one sitting, rather than month to month as it’s published, but I feel like that’s a fail since that’s the format that it’s presented in.
It’s still being published as far as I can tell, so maybe I’m wrong, but using my rules in mind, I’ll lay out why East of West didn’t work for me:
I have no idea where the story is headed as a viewer, while I don’t need to know the ending (what’s the fun in that?!), I should be able to get my bearings straight eventually. Mystery is a great storytelling driver, but you should be able to tell what that initial mystery is, fairly quickly.
Second, while I’m not going to worry about every detail thrown at me, too many things were introduced before earlier subjects were resolved or explained further. I can’t worry about this new ninja character if I haven’t learned more about the cyborg! The series felt all over the map for me.
Finally, there was no rhyme or reason to what was going on. I could not keep up with who was where or even when! There was a lack of structure to the story that also left me wondering.
All of these failures lead to the same feeling: confusion.
Confusion is the quickest way to lose any viewer or reader. And while East of West is still going strong, I’m not sticking around to find out how great it is, sorry.
Don’t let that happen in your stories! Tighten up before cutting loose with the details!
This goes for most storytelling. If you look to the Star Wars series, Marvel franchises, sitcoms, comics, etc., they all (to some extent) follow these rules and work (to some extent)!
I want you to try an exercise: take a book series that’s been made into movies, like LOTR or Harry Potter, and take note of what’s been changed, omitted, or added to the for the movies that wasn’t in the original source material. This exercise should give you a good idea of what we, as storytellers, count as important to the overall story. Think about why certain things are omitted or added.
Go back to your favorite stories and take a look. In fact, become an editor yourself.
Take a book or comic storyline that hasn’t been made into a movie and try to see what you would change, add, or delete as you adapt it for the screen. See what works and what doesn’t, and WHY. Doing this exercise should give you great insight to your own stories.
Some movies have official comic-book adaptations that are also a fountain of knowledge! I believe all the Marvel movies have adaptations, as well as older movies, like Tim Burton’s Batman films and I think I remember Jurassic Park the comic, released by Topps. These comics are almost like reverse-engineered movies and are well worth a look!
(This looks better than the actual movie!)
ONE LAST WARNING!
There’s a difference between being productive and doing massive amounts of work that will never be seen. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re being productive by creating a whole backstory for characters or places that don’t warrant it. Your energy is better spent progressing your story and characters that matter!
Until next time,
Board on!
Wahab
PS: I’d love to hear what you think works and doesn’t work in popular media adaptations. What’s your favorite and what misses the mark? Love the book Fight Club but hate the movie? Let us know!