The great debate: character to story or concept to character. Face it: you\u2019re either one or the other. If you think you\u2019re both at the same time, I\u2019d really love to hear from you and learn how you do it, because it seems to me there\u2019s a huge canyon in between and I\u2019m waiting for someone to build me a bridge. <\/p>\n

What is \u201cinside out\u201d and what is \u201coutside in\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u201cInside Out\u201d is when a writer finds the story seed with a character or character trait and then grows the story out from there. The story and in effect the plotting all grows from the internal world of that character. <\/p>\n

\u201cOutside In\u201d is when a writer begins with a premise, a concept, a situation, and then works backwards from that concept to find the character that best suits that world. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m an outside in writer and always start with an interesting \u201cwhat if?\u201d That is the compelling seed for me \u2013 the trust of story. I like projects that are heavily story driven. If I don\u2019t have a compelling \u201cwhat if\u201d situation, then I never get enough momentum within the world to grow that into a hook. I\u2019ve had a couple of character-driven story ideas, but they never get big\/hooky\/commercial enough to justify me spending any time on them, because I think they\u2019re a hard sell \u2013 and also it\u2019s not my passion. I\u2019d rather see something smart with a hard-driving story than something pretentious and meandering with no story at all, just concept or relationships. But, that\u2019s just me. <\/p>\n

I know a lot of inside out writers. These writers start with character and try to grow that character and the relationships into something that will motivate a feature film. <\/p>\n

I think I\u2019m starting to understand that inside out writers start with the details and then work to grow those details \u201cout\u201d into an umbrella idea or concept. These scripts can offer up tangible, real-world characters who connect with the reader and make the reader really feel for that character\u2019s choices. The flip side of that is relationship nuances aren\u2019t concepts \u2013 most times, you can\u2019t boil that down into a universal concept that\u2019s easily pitchable in 10 seconds. The pitfall with the inside out is that the writer will never actually end up with a concept big enough to motivate a feature film. <\/p>\n

For myself, I can say that these are my least favorite scripts to read \u2013 the indulgent little character drama wherein people chitty-chatty their way through a stage play of a screenplay hoping to somewhere, somehow, magically find a story in there. Woe to you if I\u2019m your reader. I can sniff you out in five pages. <\/p>\n

Outside in writers start with the big picture, an umbrella concept, and then discover the details underneath that umbrella as they go. As they say, god is in the details \u2013 and many concept driven screenplays never find their god. Many concepts are an easy sell \u2013 the scripts I read where I know what the conflict is within the first 5 pages and laugh and think, \u201cNow here\u2019s a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the pitfall with the outside in script is that the characters never seem fully real. The world never takes on any real consequence or density, and I never feel emotionally invested in the characters, or, consequentially, what they do. <\/p>\n

So, I\u2019m asking you, how to bridge? Which writer are you, and how do you cross the divide?<\/p>\n

I spoke with an outside in professional writer recently who told me that he beats out his story, writes the first act, and then once his characters are on the page and he finds their voice and they start to come more to life, he stops writing, returns to the beat sheet and then re-beats, directed by his newly fleshed out characters. I\u2019m going to use this technique in my next script to try to create more depth of character. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great debate: character to story or concept to character. Face it: you\u2019re either one or the other. If you think you\u2019re both at the same time, I\u2019d really love to hear from you and learn how you do it, because it seems to me there\u2019s a huge canyon in between and I\u2019m waiting for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7,62,10,11,6,42,1],"tags":[37,118,40,5,21,3,4,38],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":493,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions\/493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}