The Lone Ranger Method

[dr_mabeuse]

The old Lone Ranger radio dramas were written by a former English Professor from Albany, New York. The way he worked was interesting.

He had a list with four columns marked, Character, Obstacle, Objective, and Outcome. Under each heading he had 42 items.

Under Character he had things like: Ingenue, Poet, Scientist, Bully, Foreigner, Victim, Bystander, long-lost relative, Blackmailer, etc.

Under Obstacle, things like: Jealousy, secret identity, blindess, cowardice, misunderstanding, inexperience, temper, poverty, false accusation, etc.

Objective comprised: Love, Vindication, Wealth, Revenge, Marriage, Possession, Honor, and so on.

Under Outcome were: Achievement, sacrifice of love/pride/wealth/life, disgrace, abandonment, victory, truce, understanding, and so on.

Then he would just choose one from each column, and use that as the bones of his plot. Using a list with 42 items in each column, the plot combinations would come to 42^4, or something like 2,560,000.

Maybe not the most inspired way to work, but when you’re churning out one or two scripts a week, probably pretty clever.

---dr.M.

 

[BlackSnake]

Clever indeed

 

[cantdog]

You ought to do up a blurb and post it under the Writer's Resources.

this is the ultimate "Story Ideas" post.

 

[Guest]

 

[Liar]

Yeah well, it works. So why not?

Check out tv series screenplays and you can find alterations of that scheme in almost every half hour show there is. Add two sub-plots based on the same thing for the more serious productions with one hour shows, character depths and whatnot. It's still there..

 

[Guest]

Good - formula is back.

Reality TV is OUT.

Paris Hilton was the most henious creature I had ever witnessed, Holmes (her fatter, uglier sister maybe good in porn).

 

[shereads]

The old Lone Ranger radio dramas were written by a former English Professor from Albany, New York. The way he worked was interesting.

He had a list with four columns marked, Character, Obstacle, Objective, and Outcome. Under each heading he had 42 items.

Under Character he had things like: Ingenue, Poet, Scientist, Bully, Foreigner, Victim, Bystander, long-lost relative, Blackmailer, etc.

Under Obstacle, things like: Jealousy, secret identity, blindess, cowardice, misunderstanding, inexperience, temper, poverty, false accusation, etc.

Objective comprised: Love, Vindication, Wealth, Revenge, Marriage, Possession, Honor, and so on.

Under Outcome were: Achievement, sacrifice of love/pride/wealth/life, disgrace, abandonment, victory, truce, understanding, and so on.

Then he would just choose one from each column, and use that as the bones of his plot. Using a list with 42 items in each column, the plot combinations would come to 42^4, or something like 2,560,000.

Maybe not the most inspired way to work, but when you’re churning out one or two scripts a week, probably pretty clever.

---dr.M.

I waited in vain for the episode that would combine blindness, jealousy, cowardice and false accusation, and arrive at "wealth" as an outcome. If I had known he only tackled one obstacle at a time, I'd have given up when I was seven instead of nine.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

I've always hated formula when writing. It seems like a betrayal to the notions of creativity and style. The idea should come as a wry feeling or something that causes one to stare off into space with their eyebrows wrinkled. It's these inspirations that bring out stories that anyone cares about rather than the pap we get spoon-fed to us. Did Bradbury use a formula or Adams or Gaiman or Whedon or Verne or McCafferey? No.

Formulas are a way of turning the greatest chaotic pursuit into an emotionless game of numbers. It's a betrayal of the very tenants of writing and a gross insult to those writers who actually "create". (Yes, my college writing teachers hated me. Why do you ask?)

 

[My Erotic Tail]

Intriguing~

Rather "Clever"

The charactor comes to life
on set by the true actor/actress
there fore he only had to provide
actions and motives.."Objective
and Outcome" ...witty...

Inspirational...information..."Doc"
Thanks...Art

 

[cheerful_deviant]

I think most of the sitcoms on TV still use this method. The problem is that they only have 2 or 3 enteries in each column.

 

[cantdog]

I think most of the sitcoms on TV still use this method. The problem is that they only have 2 or 3 enteries in each column.

Alas

.http://no-troy.planetaclix.pt/images/mexico.gif