Trevor L. Smith - The EEEEasy Approach to Great Storytelling and Screenwriting

The purpose of this book, like many others, is to demystify the process of telling a great story and writing a professional industry-standard screenplay. This book was written to empower you as a storyteller, equip you as a writer, and help you to embrace and learn from your own uniqueness and individuality so that you can tell impactful, professionally written stories in your own creative voice and style.

In the real world, your life experience, relationships, and personal character development play a vital role in your day-to-day life; they influence your beliefs, behaviors and attitudes, words and actions, the messages you communicate and how you communicate those messages, and the same should be true for the characters within your stories. You want your reader or audience to experience something from what youre expressing, and your story-characters themselves, along with their unique experiences, expressions, and the conflicts they face, are the vehicles that will carry the message of your story to accomplish your intended purpose.

In this book, you will learn to evaluate and extract the events (plots) and dialogue that happen within your stories that are not true to your characters experiences and what you want your audience to experience, and you will learn how to skillfully embody the dialogue of your characters through action or inaction. There are many great methods to improve storytelling and screenwriting, but needless to say, I am a huge fan of the EEEEasy Approach and I love every aspect of the process because it is so personal and unique to each writer. For many years it has worked wonderfully for me and the aspiring writers Ive had the privilege of teaching and mentoring.

This book was written in a simple and easy to understand way, to give you the tools and inspiration needed to tell a great story and write a properly formatted screenplay or manuscript. I consider myself a lifelong learner, and I encourage everyone to continue to pursue knowledge. However, I believe some that pursue writing become so overwhelmed with knowledge that they become paralyzed and unable to act upon that knowledge; they were taught one way in a class, told to do something entirely different in books, videos said do it this way, seminars said do it that way, one working professional said this is the correct way, and yet another professional said do the opposite. Many of you know exactly what Im talking about. Like a twisted game of Twister, some aspiring writers dont take action because they simply cant. Their minds are so warped and bent from the knowledge theyve obtained, they cant take physical action because of their opposing thoughts and understandings; so they just keep doing what they can; they acquire more and more knowledge, which feels like progress, and it is If they would actually write something.

If you are a new writer or screenwriter, this book was written to give you a sense of freedom and to inspire and encourage you to not only learn, but to act on the knowledge you obtain. Strive for excellence in the things you do understand, and continue to chip away to become better in your areas of uncertainty while you are writing. My wife is admittedly terrible at backing up and parallel parking our car, but that does not stop her from driving. As you write, I encourage you to work on developing any areas you dont fully get, while having the mindset that you will maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses, until you are able to eliminate the weaknesses. It is my hope that this book will also help struggling writers to get unstuck so they can finish their projects, and that experienced writers might gain a fresh perspective or new tools to add to their creative arsenal.

This book will teach you my personal approach for telling great stories and writing screenplays, but ultimately you must do what works for you to get you the results that you are wanting. So I encourage you to learn, adopt this process, or change and customize this method to best suit your individuality. As we will discuss later in this book, your process doesnt matter to your readers, the end result does.

Foundationally, you cant have a great story without story structure; a beginning (set-up), middle (conflict), and an end (resolution). This book will teach you step-by-step how to outline your stories using the three-act structure (a form of good storytelling, not a formula), how to properly format a spec screenplay, and you will learn the rules and laws that govern screenwriting, so that you know the rules you can bend to help you to uniquely express yourself, and know the laws that you should never break.

It is my hope that the information contained in this book will not bind you, but release you to do what you have been doing your entire life, telling stories. Here you will learn how to couple your natural abilities with the knowledge and insights you gain from this book, to craft great stories and write in such a way that you can reach a wider audience with your message, and accomplish the goals that you have set for yourself. Its just that EEEEasy.

Experience, express, extract, and embody, are the foundation of The EEEEasy Approach to Great Storytelling and Screenwriting . This book in no way attempts to take away what anyone else teaches or has taught regarding what you need and should learn about storytelling and screenwriting, but it encourages you to focus on and lay a foundation that is unique to you based on your individuality, your real world life experiences and relationships, your personal observations and understanding of human nature, and what you are wanting to express in your stories.

Complexity in the well-crafted screenplay is built on simplicity.