hello and welcome back in the last episode we looked at how we do brainstorming and how we start pulling ideas together but in this episode we'll apply a story model to take all of those ideas and turn them into a coherent narrative let's get started okay so here we are in the writing studio I have my notes from last time so we're going to write a ghost story and we're looking at a big steam train and if I bring it back down to the bottom the next thing we're going to do is look for a story model now there are a few different story models you can use but the one I prefer the one I think is the most rewarding it's called an eight-point arc and what this is is every good story has eight particular monetary points so the first is a stasis this is how things are there are characters and this is how they live the fat leads on to a trigger the trigger is something happens to drive the drama forward that leads on to a quest so now there's being a trigger some things happen now we have to go and do something to fix it and put it right and that will lead to a discovery we're going to find something that may not be a good thing we might need to do things in order to overcome it and that leads are probably the most important one which is critical choice or sometimes you see it as crisis often in films you will see a crisis where in literature is quite common to have a choice a very difficult choice that a character has to make and that will then lead on to the climax this is where you have your big explosions and your car chases and gunfights and bank robberies and I or if it's a drama this is where it gets really heightened and then from there that would feel like the end of the story but there are two important components we need to put on the first is called a reversal and a reversal is where we change things from the beginning so if people were poor and dying of poverty at the beginning in your status at the end we might want to have reverse pattern now they're full of wealth and riches and the final one is the conclusion and then the conclusion is important because people need an opportunity to feel as though they're saying goodbye to the characters you can't just finish it you need to have a way to close it out now to show this with my own students what I show them is back to the future the old movie from 1985 because it is the most perfect eight point arc I have ever seen and I really recommend that you study this but just to illustrate it I'm going to show you the eight points in Back to the Future so in Back to the Future the film begins with Marty McFly he's kind of a kid with no confidence he has trouble at school he has trouble at home because his father's very weak his father is still being bullied by the man who used to bully him at high school his mother is overweight and miserable and this is his status but then a trigger happens he has a friend called Doc Brown who has invented a time machine but when they come under attack the doc his shot and killed a Marty escapes in the time machine accidentally transporting himself to 1955 this leads onto a quest and his quest is in the title he has to get back to the future to do this they have to get a bolt of lightning to be channeled into the time machine to give it enough power and they know when that will happen but he makes a discovery it turns out his mother has now fallen in love with him instead of his father so he's really got to get them together otherwise he'll never exist and this leads on to our crisis and the crisis is getting his parents together because things start going wrong Biff the school bully is stopping his father the lead guitarist for the band injures his hand and can't play somehow Marty has to overcome all of these things and take him then finally to his climax which is to be in a time machine at the same time that a bolt of lightning hits the clock tower from there we go to the reversal mati gets back to 1985 but the dark is being shot now he's wearing a bulletproof vest because Marty was able to give him a message from the past and when he goes home Biff the bully is now polishing their car his father is a published author and his mother is sporty and athletic and has lost lots of weight and finally we have that conclusion a way to say goodbye to the characters and if for this the duck reappears in the time machine says Marty you've got to come back with me back to the future it's a really wonderful way to close out the film so now you've seen how an 8-point arc worked we can now apply that to some of the ideas that we've created so if I come back to the writing studio we have a stasis now we had a man and his wife had run out and got onto the steam train so he is going to be there sees our hero the hero is despondent after his wife as flashed on a steam train on a ghost train and will probably put in a prologue of the wife disappearing so I actually put up there this is it full of life disappears and then the hero is despondent so that's the stasis then it's a trigger somehow the hero has to find a way to chase the ghost ring on realized as a way to to explore so the hero discovers a method to chase the ghost ring and there's a quest he's out looking for his wife heroes sets out to board the train and find his wife that's want to lead to a discovery now what could happen on this train what's supernatural thing I've got a feeling that what it should be I mentioned earlier that there is a man who is like the engineer who created it and a little boy out of fire what I thought about it I thought maybe that little boy is his son and his son died in a fire or w son died in somewhere and he has used some kind of supernatural method to take people to hell and while he's taking them for every time he takes somebody he gets to spend time with his son and that's going to be the discovery so we put zero discovers the creator of the Train lost it let's put lost his son in a fire and now takes fresh source to help help in exchange for time with this son now that's going to lead to a critical choice so let's say our crisis assist should he get on should the hero evolve the Train the climate is kebabs the Train and did you find his wife maybe yes no let's just see Bob's the Train and confronts the engineer and the reversal well the mystery was going to be solved but we don't quite know what the mystery is yet which is he going to find his wife is she gone forever is he going now gone forever we just don't know but we'll come to that because later on we'll look at how do we develop this further the point at the moment is just to try and find out very basic story model and a conclusion we know that in this case it's a horror we know that it's kind of a a down ending or a sad ending that he may survive he may not survive but he won't find his wife and he'll discover that the answers he was looking for why had the answers that he wants it so this was probably warm find his wife but we'll learn the shocking truth of what happened to her and the high we call it the Obsidian maybe this train will continue out keep picking people up and it will continue but that's a nice way to put the story so from that will now look at it a little bit more think a little bit deeper and try and find a way to to grow it so in the next episode I look a little bit of characters and let's see about how you create interesting characters that would fit into this story we'll see you next time [Music] you