On 07/22/2013 11:26 AM, turquoiseb wrote: > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozguru@...> wrote: >> I'm waiting for Turq's daily rant written using the 15 >> beats. Or maybe we ought to have a posting contest for >> posts using the 15 beats. I was looking through those >> and imagining posts written that way. :-D > Warped minds think alike. :-) I actually was toying > with both of these ideas earlier, but followed up on > neither. > > I *did* like the article, and recognize the (gulp!) > truth of and the effectiveness of the formula. And > I am the first to admit that a film or TV episode > can be brilliant and wonderful even if it slavishly > follows this formula. > > But in real life the only formula I have ever written > to was haiku -- the number of syllables, and all. I've > never even felt constrained, when attempting poetry, > to stick to the formulas of rhyme and meter often > associated with that art. > > If asked to pin down my approach to anything creative > I write, I would have to describe it as "bardish." > > That is, I wind up approaching the writing the way a > traveling bard of old might have approached coming > upon an open fire in the wilderness late at night, > being invited to join the party huddled around it, > and then -- having been recognized, possibly by the > harp you are carrying, as a bard -- being invited > to pay for your spot around the fire by telling > a story. > > For the fellow travelers around the fire, the story > that emerges as the result of such a request is a one- > time event, here and Now. They will draw whatever magic > they can from the tale told during the next hour in > which it is being told, or they will miss the magic > forever. There are no "do overs" when it comes to > bardic tales, and the appreciation thereof. You > either get it as it is being told, or you do not. > > For the bard, however, the request inspires another > kind of koan. The crowd has asked for a tale, and you > have many. Which is the appropriate one to tell tonight? > How will you manage to tell it in such a way as to > cause everyone in the audience to believe that it is > the first and only time you have ever told this tale? > > Because -- from the bard's side -- that is the magic > of telling stories. Every one is new. Even if you have > told it a thousand times before.
When telling a story be it around a campfire or bar table one usually watches for cues that your audience is losing interest which means even if it's true you start to embellish to keep their interest. I like to record TV shows on my computer and then edit them with the free Linux OpenShot editor cutting out the commercials. I realized the commercials came in blocks and that the number of blocks had increased. So I did a search and came up with several articles on the 1 hour TV series format including the in-depth one I posted the link to by one of the writers for "Charlie Jade" and a number of other well known shows. The hour long TV show has 5 or 6 "acts" and it's funny to watch them end an "act" at a high point. Back in the day the formula was 2 acts which I relate to well being that music is often written in antecedent consequence phrases. IOW, question then answer. In the first season of HBO's "Treme" John Goldman played a literature professor who in one of his lectures tells the class that all novels are about a hero solving a problem. That's it in a nutshell and the same can be said for any story, movie or TV show. I still think that subconsciously writers still write TV shows in two acts. They just break scenes up into the 5 or 6 acts. The reason I wanted to know the format was to quickly find and remove commercials. I had some software that did that but it depended on the black screen break, lack of network "bug" and HD shows with SD commercials. But that wound up with me still have to manually edit some sections due to all HD commercials. I think the three act format evolved to stretch out the hero trying to find a solution to the problem before solving it in the third act. For longer plays and movies you would need that though I have seen movies that were definitely two acts. Two act plays seem a lot easier to write than trying to figure out what you're going to do with the second act in a three act.
