yes you read the title correctly forget philosophical conflict you know on my channel I have focused a lot about the beliefs worldviews and ideas that are behind story I believe that that is the foundation of story in the sense that it is the reason for why we tell stories if you look at all major religions all major religions are built upon the important stories and the meaning behind the important stories that they are expressing right the story of Christ and The Parables that he told for example is a fundamental part of Christianity that being said
when you are coming into writing a story when you're coming into writing a screenplay sometimes I have encouraged writers to start first and foremost from this perspective of I need to know exactly what the philosophy is before I even get into Pages before I even get into my outline I know I have to know exactly from this sort of intellectual mental frame exactly what I'm trying to say and that is not the right way to think about this that can be very misleading um and I have noticed this more and more as writers have come
to me asking about the philosophy behind their story or the the theme or these sorts of things uh and recently I had a writer come to me on a live stream and he was asking me about his story and he was saying that he wants to make this more not so black and white story with kind of an obvious hero and an obvious villain and he wanted to tell this story about different perspectives and these sorts of things but then when I asked him to describe the plot of his story he couldn't give me anything
he couldn't tell me any major plot points he couldn't really give me any sort of character web he hadn't been thinking at all about the physical world and plot of that story and the physical world of your story is fundamental right because that is what we're putting a camera on and so rather than starting from this sense of I have to be able to intellectually understand my story before I even hop into it start with whatever grabs you start with whatever fun piece hops you into that story if that's a scene idea if that's a
character if that's a sense of your structure if that's a sense of your plot start with the physical world of your story because that physical world is the embodiment of the philosophical and emotional ideas you were trying to express and many times you don't know what it is you're trying to say until you actually spend the time developing that story from the physical perspective and so this is something that I think this is a flaw uh in those who have listened to me heavily about story and story theory that comes from me and comes from
how I perceive the world because I am very much or have been in the past very much caught up in the um logical ideology formation of things and I think that's been a good thing because initially when I started talking about philosophical conflict in the way that I did it was a reaction against the nihilism that has been rampant in Hollywood and rampant online um and it was also a reaction against stories as a business first rather than understanding stories for what they truly are which is the fun fundamental way in which we communicate as
a human society right this is why all of the fundamental cultures of the world are based on a certain set of shared stories right shared histories that are agreed upon shared religious stories that are agreed upon uh stories that share and express important moral truths right but how do they share and express those important moral truths they do it through physical symbolism right physical symbolism is ultimately how you are bringing together a philosophical moral ethical or worldview idea and imbuing it into the physical world so that you can actually put a camera on something and
now you have an embodiment of the three fundamental pieces of a story which is the physical the emotional and the philosophical right this is three in one this is essentially the Trinity of a story you cannot separate the physical from the emotional from the philosophical even here right now to get meta for a moment this video is I am a physical human being expressing to you an idea emotionally and expressing a philosophical idea to you not only through my speech but also through a physical symbol that's what you're doing when you're writing a story and
so instead of saying oh I need to understand the philosophy of what I'm trying to say before I get into the physical world of my story that is that's only going to trip you up right every each of the three buckets here the physical the emotional the philosophical by feeding one you feed the other two by imbuing your story with a physical world like a physical setting you are now making important choices that will impact what the story is saying at large even if you're unaware of that because the reality is you don't tell the
exact same story is every single other person right you're going to make specific decisions in your story that are going to be specific to you that are going to be choices that other writers are not going to make this is one why when I am working with a screenwriter and they're coming to me with a first draft and I'm reading that first draft and they say oh this first draft is terrible and blah blah blah blah blah and I hate it and I wish I'd never written it and all this stuff it's so beneficial for
them to have that first draft because even though it's not totally and completely unified and perfect what they have done is they have made a thousand decisions already for that story right every single character placed into that story is a decision every single scene in order in that story is a decision every single argument in each of those scenes is a decision every object is a decision and so these different pieces some will have more meaning naturally imbued to them and some will have less meaning naturally imbued to them and some will have a tangential
or side idea that doesn't really fit into what we're trying to discuss which again comes back into theme and now we're saying okay you have given me this starting point right this first draft that has all of these decisions that you have made and it gives us our sandbox it gives us our starting playground to start to say okay why were these the physical plot decisions you decided to make and so the point of this is you are naturally making philosophical choices worldview choices belief choices in that story regardless of your own conscious awareness of
you doing that because that is the natural law of making story choices if you have a dramatic narrative that has a plot you are making choices right you made a choice about what characters are going to be in that you're making choices about what events are going to take place you're making all of these choices and those choices have meaning and you can deepen the layers of those of the meaning of those choices and you can switch and change and morph and unify the layers of meaning in those choices when you are able to be
aware of what choices you are making and what those choices mean for the story and so again all this to say don't get caught up in the philosophy of your script forget the philosophical conflict especially if this is your first screenplay ever and don't tell me about short scripts short scripts do not count if you are only writing 10 page shorts you have not yet written a screenplay when you write something longer you will notice the difference you will notice a different layer of depth required to bring that story forward you will notice a different
layer of your autobiographical world view and sensibilities being placed into that story you will notice just how much some of the characters are emulating who you are and who the people in your life are and so focus on the physical world focus on the plot if you bring a story to me I want to hear about plot and characters I want to hear about scenes I want to hear about story moments I don't want to hear about the World Views until it's time for us to have that conversation right it is important and I still
utilize it regularly to operate with stories but you do that once you have a plot that is already at some level working and so if you're working on a script right now especially if it's your first screenplay plot and characters your worldview will naturally come forward in that story and if you follow this advice and you write that script and you just think about plotting characters the whole time you will be surprised how much that story is already imbued with beliefs and IDE ideas because you are an amalgamation of the World Views that you have
been exposed to and the beliefs that you have integrated as part of who you are you are a walking talking soul of beliefs right you are a physical emotional philosophical thing entity person spirit that is all coming together in one unified person and that is what you are reflecting in your story and so start with plot start with characters if you're writing a script for the first time who are your characters what's your inciting incident what's a midpoint and get us to a climax and blast a draft plot in characters first worry about the philosophy
later because all you're doing when you do that is you're getting into this ocean of word salad that that does nothing towards helping you practically put a draft on paper so forget philosophical conflict happy writing thank you guys for watching and I'll see you in the next one for
