Sometimes when you have an idea for a movie you need to break down the story to see how strong it will stand on its own. But what happens when you want to break it up? Build on it? The Internet has changed how we can approach the genesis of storytelling—including the building and the structuring of our ideas. The paramount consideration of this process is being able to outline the structure of the story in a way so that the many parts suggest the makeup of not just a story, but a great story. Some enjoy the process of writing on-the-fly, they start writing on the page and see where it takes them, while others like to plan beginning, middle, and end (not necessarily in that order) even before they write FADE IN: For those of us who like to use a framework to organize and develop our ideas there are a variety of ways of outlining, from using index cards to software specifically formatted to break down an idea. If you’re looking for ease-of-use then you needn’t look any further than Movie Outline 2.0 by Darc Production Ltd. They’ve designed and developed a simple story outlining program that you’ll be using well within the first 30 minutes of downloading a copy from their homepage. Because the whole writing process proved to be a lot more lengthy than he wanted, Darc Productions' CEO Daniel Bronzite (screenwriter of Long Time Dead) decided he needed to use something that could speed things up as well as strengthen his story structure. When it came to meeting with producers and development executives he had to write outlines/treatments to get commissioned work. “This, at first, was a bit of a pain because I had to think a little bit more about the planning,” reflects Daniel. “But then what began as a necessary evil turned out to be a very effective process and ultimately meant that when it came to writing the screenplay I already knew the entire structure, character arcs and story progression since I had planned it all out in detail for them. Now, I step-outline all my work before jumping into the screenplay. Unfortunately, using my regular word processor slowed me down since it was not specifically tailored for the job, and there was no software on the market that did this for me without complicating the process unnecessarily. That’s why I developed Movie Outline.” The simplicity starts when you want to plan and outline the idea into a story. After you open the program, you fill in your movie title, genre, theme, and synopsis. You write the scene headers (much like you would your screenplay with INT. FRANK’S PLACE – DAY). Then, you can fill in the action of that scene (Frank’s house is a mess. The maid hasn’t been seen for 18 months and…). It can be as short or long as you like. The software also offers ready-to-use examples of movie features in the desired genre of your writing, so if you want to flesh out a scene or two in the action genre, you can pull up a Die Hard outline alongside your script to compare it against. Version 2.0 now offers more useful functions in structuring and presenting your outline. PowerView incorporates the use of color-coding to structure the acts within the story. This will give you a good idea/overview on the number of scenes used within whatever act. You can also see where your characters come in and out of a scene with a “find” feature called SmartSearch. For example, there might also be a time where you want one of your characters to appear and do something, or an event you’re writing the “cause” on, but haven’t got around to putting in the “effect.” And if you're not ready for that “effect” scene yet and think you will have a hard time remembering it in a month’s time, you can just add it to the Story Tasks window, so you have a list of things to do. Got a writing partner you want to share your outline with? Movie Outline 2.0 allows you to convert it to HTML so you can save it as a web page for viewing in all the colour and layout you want. You can choose TXT, PDF, and RTF as well. Overall, the strength of Movie Outline 2.0 lies in its simplicity for ease of use. Everything you need to do or see is mostly on the screen in front of you. It’s one of the few writers’ software tools where I was comfortably upto- speed in the first few minutes of creating and outlining my story. Alan Lakein said, “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” Now is as good a time to do something about outlining your next movie as ever.
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