Architecture of Emotion

I got some phenomenal feedback on Revealed from several Divas. Jodi suggested some great websites: Michael Hauge’s article Screenplay Structure and The Unknown Screenwriter’s article on Transformational Character Arcs. She also recommended the book Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot by Emmy award winning TV producer Peter Dunne, which has me itching to dig more into the architecture of emotion.

Jasmine also gave me excellent feedback much in the same vein – a need to see more justification behind the actions shown.

People (Hi, Bria and Jennifer!) have also said it needs to be longer. I’m good at making things over complicated. Considering the female lead was pulled from an abandoned novel idea, trying to fit her story in 1k words and even ending up with 2400 didn’t give it room to fully bloom. More experienced writers could probably pull it off, but not me.

This building characters from the ground up in a static medium is MUCH trickier than constructing them with more outright “told” and emergent behaviors that I’m so used to doing for online role playing games. So, it’s back to the drawing board (or at least will be after a weekend of camping with no ‘net) and burying my nose in theory again.

3 thoughts on “Architecture of Emotion”

  1. Nice chart.
    How’d the camping go?
    Are you all in on peice? No bears, right?

    You’re story looks great, Kaige. Very brave of you to post an excerpt. Good luck with the edits. See you around.

  2. Thanks. I didn’t crack a book all weekend. Too busy talking. I did get my journal entry done Sat morning, but other than that no writing either.

    Camping went pretty well. Basically in one piece. No bears, we could hear the wolves at the preserve nearby though. Lots of Poison Oak. We’ll see how many boys can’t sit still for scratching on Tuesday at our meeting. Leaves of three… roll in it, right? Nice weekend over all. A bit cold, but fun and relaxing for the most part. It was a 15 minute trek to the nearest bathrooms — did NOT like that part.

  3. Kristen – Thanks for mentioning my article on structure. Your subscribers might also want to take a look at STRUCTURE: The 5 Key Turning Points of All Successful Stories http://www.storymastery.com/story/screenplay-structure-five-key-turning-points-successful-scripts/ which goes into more detail about my 6-stage approach to plot structure. And doing a site search on “structure” or “character arc,” they will link to several other related articles and analyses.
    I really enjoy your site. Thanks again!
    – Michael

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