Steve Coombs; Beginning, Middle and End and Moments

Today we had another session with Steve Coombs, his talk today further helped me to develop my story before i start the actual process of writing. A plot is what happens within a story, whereas a story can be defined as the significance of what happens. Steve compares writing a story to throwing a ball, a story can be like a ball because you throw it in the air and then you have to catch it. This further links to the idea of knowing your ending, the plot has to use certain devices to culminate in the ending.

Steve introduced to us the idea of having 'buts' in our story. He explained that if a story doesn't have 'buts' then it isn't a story, for example, a character description "Lucy is a cancer survivor but is an alcoholic", having a but makes the story more interesting, the but is essentially the story. Talking about  beginnings middles and ends of stories, the middle of a story has to be bigger and better than the beginning, it has to have more buts in order to create dramatic irony, which ends up in the culmination of the story. In the middle, the story that the audience think they have been seeing, has to materially change. The idea of 'buts' helps me when developing my own story because its something i can think about when writing. I am in the process of writing the beginning middle and end of my story, so that i can be very clear and know what I'm doing when i come to physically write the script. I can apply the idea of 'buts' to make sure i am writing a clear, coherent and engaging story.