Final Project: Storyline

When I was taking part in a FLEX-ability Central Europe Workshop in Warsaw in 2019 I have had a designated class about storytelling and how to create a short story that would trigger emotion. This panel was held by Ruby Mitchell who is a storytelling trainer working on creating workshops with American Councils. Click here to access Ruby's website, where you can find many interesting resources about storytelling and click here to access Ruby's youtube channel. The things I have learned in Ruby's classes are greatly shown in the video presentation called "Telling your story workshop slides". 

What is very important is the outline of the story. Here I have created a basic graph showing how a story should be built. 

Almost every movie's storyline is based on this kind of simple graph. Looking from left to right, we start with a conflict, a problem for the main character. Then the wiggly line represents the build up. On top we see the climax, which is the most important part of the movie, it is when all that tension, created in the build up, is released. After the climax, a movie usually towards to the end. Of course, this particular graph does not work exactly for every single movie, sometimes there are a few climaxes or the climax is in a different moment of a film. Movies with more complicated plots, may have this kind of graph for a few main characters, not for just one. However, this is the most basic graph that can be applied in different situation. 

For example if I look at the award-winning animation "The Present".

In this animation, we start by getting to know the main character - the boy, who is playing video games all the time. Then the conflict appears - he gets a dog, who does not have a paw. The build up in this case will not be a series of additional conflicts, but the dog trying to get our main character's attention. By doing that, the dog gains sympathy from the viewer but also from the main character. The climax is when the boy decides to go outside with the dog. If I was going to put it all on the graph, it would look like this: 

This is how, using my basic graph, I can show a story. 

I decided to look at one more example and see how I would apply it on the graph. This time I will look at an animation called "Pip".

Here, the plot is a little bit more complex, however the simple graph still applies. At the beginning we meet the main character - a dog who wants to become a guide dog. The problem he faces is his size - he is smaller than anyone else and the course he joined is designed for bigger dogs. The build up in this case, are all the situations caused by his size, that he had to overcome and the build up ends with the an even bigger problem (crisis) - he is being expelled from his school. The climax is when the dog helps the blind woman in a dangerous situation, and from the climax the atmosphere gets calm and this leads us to the end of the animation. Once again, if I wanted to place it on a graph, it would look something like this: 

This is a good example of a plot a little more complicated than the one we looked at before, where the graph also applies. It is important to remember that it does not only work with short cut films, full-length films often base their storyline on the same simple graph. Especially all the superhero movies. 

Now it is time for me to place my storyline on the graph. 

The fact that I can place my storyline onto the graph, shows that it is a nicely created outline of the story. It gives me a good idea of how to present the story and what are the important parts that I should stress in my animation. I am really happy that the graph applies to my idea of a story, because it shows me I am on the right track.

I drew the graph using an app called Procreate on my IPad.