A GUIDE TO STORY-TELLING

First, be advised that these tips apply only to those works where storyline is crucial to, what I like to call, the entertainment factor.

1. Suspending Reality: The key to a successful storyline is believability by suspending reality. In other words, is your story too far fetched to be convincing to your audience? As the one telling the story, the audience has to buy what you're selling. It all begins with the most important question, "What if..." and then you must answer that question. Example..."What if my vampire is fleeing from a group of vampire slayers, and the sun comes up...". If your vampire burns to a crisp when exposed to sun light, the chase is over. Or perhaps your vampire can survive indirect sunlight, so he will need to stay in the shadows during his get-away, but you must find a way to establish this prior to the chase so that your story is believable...you have suspended reality.

2. Time Restrictions: Now, you've asked all the "what if's" and you've answered the questions, so you've got an idea of where this story should take us. Your next challenge is more difficult. You're facing a time restriction. We have discovered that the average attention span of people who watch machinima is roughly three and half minutes. So, you've got, at most, five minutes to tell your story. That means, every split second counts. Don't waste a single eye-batting moment. If a particular video capture doesn't add anything to your story, no matter how brilliant the captured moment may be, omit it. Every frame has to be part of the journey from beginning to end. A good example of this is found in our, "Scars & Souvenirs" video, where we span four decades of the lives of two individuals.

3. Telling The Story: So, you've developed your plot, you've worked out your time frame, and now you have to actually "tell" the story. The most effective way to tell your story is through your characters. In other words, you've come to the character development part. You may think you don't need to develop character for just a five minute session, but it's probably the most crucial point of the story. You should stick to the basics. You'll need at least one of the antagonist and protagonist. These two key elements don't necessarily require human form or something resembling that. The point here is to establish a conflict. Conflict creates interest. Example...in "A Different Song", there is one protagonist and several antagonists - the teenager who discovers love is the heroine of our story. The antagonist, that which creates the conflict, is an unyielding society and peer pressure. An example, using a simpler formula would be the vampire example above. Can you recognize the protagonist and antagonist in that example? The protagonist in that example is the vampire, conflicted by trying to escape from the group of slayers meant to destroy him, the antagonists.

You have to decide which character is most responsible for carrying your story. You have to assign certain characteristics and personality to these characters so that your audience can relate. As an audience we need to be able to like and dislike your characters. The more we relate to your characters, the more of our attention we will give to your story. And example of this can be found in, "Scars & Souvenirs", Our main character was a difficult one to develop. We didn't want the audience to be put off by her, We wanted her to be likeable, yet she did something no one could like. Still we gave her good qualities that offset the not so favorable things, and we ended up with an extremely human woman who was likeable despite the bad decisions she made.

4. Storytelling without dialogue: Finally, we come to the question of "to speak" or "let there be music". We use a method of storytelling that is more difficult than dialogue based creations. We tell our stories through images and music. If creating a dialogue piece, your voice actors must have the ability to act the part of your characters. If using music, the music should create the atmosphere. The lyrics don't need to tell your story. Be careful when trying to create videos where your images are meant to depict the actual wording in the lyrics. Remember that lyrics are interpreted. Chances are, the one who wrote the lyrics didn't see the same things as the one who is listening to the lyrics. If you apply images to the lyrics of a song, you're actually giving the audience "your" interpretation of that song, and yours may conflict with those of your audience. You'll put your "suspended reality" at risk.

Scriptwriting Links:

Celtx - free scriptwriting tool

Celtx Overview/Tutorial

How To Break Down A Script For Machinima: by the ILLClan

Script Breakdown: Script and Screen Analysis: by Peter D.Marshall

Thanks to Michelle & Kheri of Britannica Dreams for contributing this article.