Mark Voelpel

Story Structure Specialist
-- Filmmaker, Writer, Educator --
Empower yourself with the craft of storytelling however you can.
Allow me to assist...

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

If you're looking for a place to start, consider this: Every single story you've ever loved is all about a protagonist (one or more) who wants something they don't have, and they want it more than anything, and they do everything they can to get it. Start with that and see what happens.

[Physics In History @PhysInHistory]

Why is there something rather than nothing? ✍️

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@jayson_smiley Someone I know does exactly that. You just have to get a job you can work 100% remote. Done.

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@TheCineprism The reason filmmakers are successful and sustain careers is that the embrace new techniques and new technologies. Period. (Except for Fred Wiseman of course...)

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@ScottJeschke You've cracked the code. Kudos

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@ScottJeschke Great advice! And history suggests that if you stretch that out to about 2.5 hours every morning, you can change the world.

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@suddenxfear punk not dead

[Prof. Carl Sagan @ProfCarlSagan]

The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all.

- Kurt Gödel

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@EntradaBooks AI destroyed the meaning of life.

[Phil Hoyeck @PAHoyeck]

“The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”

—Ludwig Wittgenstein

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@Kulambq Paul Bowles is in the ballpark

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@internetarchiva Dear Prudence

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@derkacz_mark @vivien2112 @Tomikazi66 @jp_siira @MetalMisstress7 @Linds0073 @moto0707irs @mrnic1319 @Shagggy79 @MRegan10135 @movie_gal_10 I went to see the Runaways at the Royal Oak Theater in Detroit. The opener was Tom Petty and the LA Heartbreakers (they dropped the LA soon thereafter). The second band was Cheap Trick.

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@yuriiiiButAStar @cilestialcins For you and Armie Hammer

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@SapienAssassin Enjoy your symptoms!

[David Perell Clips @PerellClips]

Every writer fears that following a formula will make their work feel predictable.

Steven Pressfield has spent decades studying the craft of a great story. Here's how he thinks about the tension between principles and originality:

"When I first heard some of these principles, I thought, well, I'm not gonna write this formula shit. But you realize that these moments work.

If you have a hero who doesn't change and you read the book over, people go, 'whatever.' I look back at the Iliad or The Odyssey or Shakespeare, the hero does change. It has to change.

The trick is, can you do it? Can you put these timeless principles in a new way?"

He then breaks down how The Big Lebowski is really a detective movie:

"The Dude is kinda given an assignment at the start by a rich guy. 'Here's the million dollars. I want you to give it to save my wife who's been kidnapped.' The Dude is kinda like a detective. He's solving what happened to Bunny.

There's even a femme fatale that becomes kind of a love interest, just like in every detective story. But the spin that the Coen brothers put on this thing is normally in a detective story, the hero is a hard-bitten detective. But to do it with the Dude, a stoner...that's the spin.

So that makes every scene new. In detective stories, the detective always gets beaten up a bunch of times. The Dude gets beaten up over and over. But it's always new because he's not the hard-bitten detective. He's the Dude.

If we can follow these principles but put a spin on them each time, make them just a little bit different, then everything is okay."

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

There's another way that the Coen brothers were playing with form (and formal principles) here, in that they surround their protagonist with characters are are all, by nature, extremely ACTIVE, while the Dude, by nature, is extremely PASSIVE. But, as you clearly point out, the story ACTIVATES the Dude, though his nature doesn't really change. This confuses many people, who think The Big Lebowski is a successful movie with a passive protagonist, which it is not.

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@fwjordanz @Uzonna7 Very underrated. One of the most visually extraordinary films ever made.

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@RaminNasibov Singapore

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@wcmartell Every good story taps into what is universally human. Hence the inherently global nature of good stories.

[Mark Voelpel @StoryScience_]

@DavidMatillo @GoIntoTheStory And the WANT makes something happen. They go together.