{"id":918,"date":"2015-07-21T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T12:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/makingcomics.spiltink.org\/?p=918"},"modified":"2016-04-19T00:53:33","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T04:53:33","slug":"focus_xy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salgoodsam.com\/mc\/focus_xy\/","title":{"rendered":"Focus Statements & XY Formulae"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Abel_final-cover-272x348-234x300\"<\/a>

Listen to the series on soundcloud, lots of great insights!<\/p><\/div>\n

Telling a good story is often about planning, and a great tool I recently heard about is something presented on\u00a0Out on the Wire,<\/a> a new story workshop podcast series about\u00a0making stories, step by step.<\/h4>\n

Cartoonist Jessica Abel & Co break down the principles of storytelling on the show really well, and while I’m going to present a slightly modified version of this key set of tools here, I really encourage you to go listen to their version of them and the rest of the series. Click on the image to the right here to stream the shows on Soundcloud. Or subscribe to the podcast here<\/a>, and consider joining their private workshop group via the form you’ll find on this page<\/a> to learn more and benefit from the community support of the hundreds of creative storytellers there too!<\/p>\n

In episode #2 Jessica presents an Idea she learned from Rob Rosenthal at\u00a0the transom workshop<\/a> — the Focus Sentence & XY Story Formulae<\/span>. For this post, I’m renaming the first as a\u00a0Focus Statement, but otherwise I’m borrowing directly from their description here for each. These are relatively new ideas for me, but I’m sure they will prove useful the next time I start a new story!<\/p>\n

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As I mentioned In the podcast they call the first a Focus Sentence but then many examples use multiple sentences so that’s why I took the liberty to tweak the name here. Each tool is a short bit of writing, used to help\u00a0clarify your ideas and make building the plot a lot easier. They serve as\u00a0directions to the story for you to follow!<\/p>\n

The Focus Sentence<\/span> <\/strong><\/span>allows you to slot in elements of the story in order to identify the essential question of the story.<\/p>\n

It goes like this:
\nSomeone,<\/span>
\ndoes something,<\/span>
\nbecause,<\/span>
\nbut.<\/span><\/h4>\n

Here’s a guide to what we would fill in each of these four lines to build the focus sentence.<\/p>\n

1. Someone<\/span>:\u00a0A main character. The protagonist.<\/p>\n

2. Does something<\/span>.:\u00a0The protagonist is in motion, in the middle of living his or her life.<\/p>\n

3. Because\u2026<\/span>:\u00a0The protagonist has a motivation\u2013inner, or outer\u2013for doing whatever it is that he or she is doing.<\/p>\n

4. But<\/span>:\u00a0There is something that stands in his or her way. Something that makes this action difficult or problematic, and means that the outcome is unknown.<\/p>\n

So here’s what that looks like as it would be written, to describe the story or the 4th episode of Star Wars.<\/p>\n

1. Good boy Luke Skywalker\u00a0is frustrated, living a boring life on a farm on Tatooine;<\/h4>\n

2. He buys some boring new farm androids, who turn out to have some kind of holo image hidden inside;<\/h4>\n

3. Because he\u2019s a sucker for a pretty girl begging for help, he sets out to find \u201cOld Ben Kenobi\u201d;<\/h4>\n

4. But the Empire is looking for those same androids, and when Storm Troopers kill his family, it sets him on a path that will determine the fate of the galaxy.<\/h4>\n

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The XY Story Formula<\/span><\/span><\/strong> is an even shorter statement of your project in two sentences.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a way of looking at that character and conflict, or that character-free \u201ctopic\u201d, and deciding how interesting it is\u2014how much do we need this story to exist in the world?\u00a0As a counterpart to the Focus Statement, it helps clarify your narrative arc, you\u2019ve conflict.<\/p>\n

Also, this kind of thing helps with that nagging problem of describing your story to others! What many call formulating an elevator pitch. How you would discribe your story to a movie producer if you had just a few moments in an elevator together to hook them. Here’s what it looks like<\/p>\n

I\u2019m doing a story about X.
\nAnd what\u2019s interesting about it is Y.<\/p>\n

X is a topic, any basic subject area, a person, an event.
\nY is the\u00a0special sauce that makes this,\u00a0worth our consideration! It’s where most of the drama comes into it.<\/p>\n

Y actually has to be interesting. It should be\u00a0something surprising, unexpected. Or inspiring? It’s the why people are going to care about our story.<\/p>\n

So to continue with the example of Star Wars episode 4:<\/p>\n

X<\/span>=A story about the coming of age of Luke Skywalker,\u00a0as he faces off against the\u00a0Emperor’s enforcer Darth Vader;<\/h4>\n

Y<\/span>=He starts out a niav restless moisture farmer, but\u00a0will come to lead the rebel alliance in destroying the Death Star!<\/h4>\n

Something like that?<\/p>\n

Once you have these two short descriptions written down, I think you’ll find it’s a lot easier to\u00a0start building a more flushed out plot.<\/p>\n

A big part of why this will help, is in doing so you’ll have thought about how general terms the story will end.<\/p>\n

And knowing how your story will end is more than half the battle. It’s a lot easier to plot out how to get there once you know where you want to go in the end.<\/p>\n

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To learn more about both ideas, listen here to the second episode<\/a> of the show. I’m going to embed the series here too, right below! It’s all very good and will prove useful to you!<\/p>\n

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