Tweetstorm: Ed Solomon on Story Structure, What It Is, and How to Find It

“A script’s structure grows out of its own internal DNA. Your job is to assess what the organic rules are for that specific script. It’s like parenting. Your job is not to turn your child into ‘every child,’ it’s to help them grow to be the best manifestation of whoever they are.”

Twitter can be a gold mine for writers. Case in point, when pro writers generate a tweetstorm about the craft. Two days ago, screenwriter Ed Solomon (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Men In Black) uploaded an excellent series of tweets on a subject we have dealt with many times before here at Go Into The Story: Story structure and how to find it. Reprinted here by permission.

To underscore Ed’s last point, here are two visuals which show how important story structure is to him:

And how about this photo of Ed quite literally surrounded by the story structure for the innovative HBO series ‘Mosaic’:

The big takeaway from Ed’s tweetstorm is how you get to a story’s structure and that’s through the characters. One more time:

“To me, what’s realllly important is: Do your characters have LIFE in them? Does your movie have a SOUL? A POINT OF VIEW? A VOICE? *YOUR* *SPECIFIC* VOICE? Does your structure grow out of the desires and needs of your fully-breathing CHARACTERS — and does your plot turn on THEM?”

A great thread well worth printing out and pinning up at your writer’s desk.

You may follow Ed on Twitter: @ed_solomon.

You may read an interview Ed did about the “branching narrative” story structure for the mini-series ‘Mosaic’ here.

For more screenwriter tweetstorms, go here.