Facebook Live: The Protagonist’s Journey

A recording of my half-hour Willamette Writers Conference Q&A yesterday.

Yesterday, I did a Facebook Live Q&A with Victoria Rau as part of the ongoing Willamette Writers Conference conversations with writers. In this chat, we cover a lot of territory:

• What is ‘character driven storytelling’?
• Why is the Protagonist such a central character in the story-crafting process?
• How to determine who your story’s Protagonist is
• The screenwriting mantra: Begin with characters. End with characters. Find the story in between.
• Carl Jung: Screenwriting Guru
• The Protagonist’s Journey as ‘individuation’
• Five Character Archetypes: Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, Trickster
• The synergy between a story’s internal world and external world

During the conversation, I reference a wide range of movies including The Silence of the Lambs, Tootsie, Moonlight, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Crazy Rich Asians, Bridesmaids, It’s a Wonderful Life, Back to the Future, Lady Bird, The Wizard of Oz, JoJo Rabbit, The Graduate, Whiplash, and Finding Nemo.

This conversation is a distillation of Character Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling: The Protagonist’s Journey, the book I am writing for Palgrave Macmillan. It is scheduled to be published in 2021.

You may watch the 30-minute video of the Facebook Live event here.