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Prologue_You must know me before the 4th line

Part 1, Line 4 - The story begins with a question.

Chapter 1: The Story: No One Is Unfamiliar with It, No One Really Knows It
Chapter 2: Five Essential Conditions for Asking Useful Questions
· Useful Questions Workshop | Netflix Drama "The Glory"
Chapter 3, Line 1: Entering the Target Point

Part 2, 4 lines - Story, 4 lines is enough

Chapter 4: The story is about the protagonist's journey.
· Finding the Main Character Workshop | Film "Emergency Declaration"
Chapter 5, Line 1: The moment when the protagonist's inner self changes
Chapter 6, Line 2: The protagonist moves forward as he has decided.
Chapter 7, Line 3: When the protagonist's situation and feelings change suddenly
Chapter 8, Line 4: The protagonist's decision is fulfilled.
· 4-Line Writing Workshop | Extreme Job, The Glory, Suriname, Spring in Seoul, Giant, Anna

Part 3, Line 4 onwards - Time to move forward with the story

Chapter 9: The Difference Between Narrative and Description
Chapter 10: The Last and First Button: Treatment
· Practical Treatment Writing Workshop | Creative Screenplay
Chapter 11: The Dignity of Description

Epilogue_I will continue writing and moving forward.
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“Forget the predictable plot development.”
The '4-Line' Formula: The Key to Selling Stories

There's a saying in the film industry: "You have to steal the audience's heart within 15 minutes."
This means that within 15 minutes of the audience sitting in the theater, you have to tell them exactly what they can expect and then rush off to have fun.
If the 'event' is pushed back here, the story becomes stretched out and people lose interest.
Many writers know that events are important.
The problem is that we write according to the conventional structure of introduction, development, turn, and conclusion without knowing exactly what the event means.


An event, as we commonly know, refers to an unexpected event that happens externally, but in a story, an event refers to an 'unexpected event that happens to the protagonist's inner self.'
As we live, we may witness a traffic accident or encounter a horrific incident like a burglar breaking into our neighbor's house. However, if nothing changes in our lives because of it, it is not an event for us. In the same way, we should focus on the 'change' that occurs in the protagonist's inner self, not the external event itself.


Let's take an example.
The film director took the subway to go to school to teach a screenwriting class.
But then suddenly the subway stopped and the car fell over onto its side.
An unprecedented subway accident occurred.
They say a sinkhole has been discovered.
The tracks are tilting more and more towards the sinkhole, and if things continue this way, the car body will be sucked into the sinkhole.
The director, who is the main character, is worried.
Should I accept death and pray to go to heaven, say a final goodbye to my family, or try to break down the broken subway door and escape?
What does "occurrence of an incident" mean here? According to the commonly known definition, it would be the subway collapsing, but that's not the case in the story.
Whether it's praying, making a phone call, or escaping, the protagonist makes a decision he or she wouldn't normally make, and wishes for something he or she wouldn't normally wish for - that's an 'incident.'

The author of this book, who teaches a highly praised scenario class at Hanyeong High School, a cradle of creative writers, emphasizes the special "4-line" formula that can only be applied to stories, based on a new definition of events, rather than the stereotypical introduction, development, turn, and conclusion that applies to all writing.
These '4 lines', which focus on the changes in the protagonist's inner self, are the core, or rather, the entire story, that the author discovered through 20 years of writing and direct experience on film sets.
Students who experienced the power of the four lines firsthand discouraged the publication of the book, saying they did not want to share this information with others. However, the author wrote the book in the hope that many new writers would grow together with him.


“A story begins with a question.”
Why Questions Should Be Bad

The first step to the 4-line begins with a 'question'.
Saying you're going to talk about something is more like asking a question than writing.
So, can all questions become stories?

There is an important prerequisite here.
The question is, should it be 'bad'?
The worse the questions, the better, to lead the writer to a good story.
Let's think about which question you're more curious about: "Can a man born in a stream succeed and become a dragon?" or "Can a man born in a stream succeed and become a dragon greater than his father?"


Of course it's the latter.
The former brings to mind some economic logic, but the latter has a hurdle called 'father'.
The hurdle of being my ‘father’, who is neither my friend nor my competitor, but my foundation and my grace, makes this question bad.
What if the father were a gangster or a corporate CEO who perpetrated domestic violence? The story becomes even more intriguing.

I don't need to hear the cool, good, and good questions as a story, I can just ask them.
People gather around questions that are so secretive and bad that it's hard for me to come forward.
Why? Because the desire is hidden.
It's something that everyone dreams of and wants, but is difficult to express honestly, so when someone tells you about it, you get excited and want to listen. That's the question that makes storytelling possible.


The popular Netflix original drama "The Glory" begins with the question, "Can a victim of school violence get back on track by exacting perfect revenge on the still-popular perpetrators?"
It seems like a good question, but it harbors a bad desire.
There are ways to return to the starting point, such as forgiveness or turning away, but the premise is that 'perfect revenge' must be achieved.

The protagonist is a 'victim of school violence' who is 'allowed to take revenge' and is permitted to take the most perfect revenge against the perpetrator.
Of course, it could be a 'life sentence inmate who was wrongfully imprisoned' or a 'parent who lost a child', but timeliness was at work here.
At a time when the issue of school violence was at the forefront of discussion, the term ‘victim of school violence’ would have been appropriate for someone who could take revenge.

If you try to 'create' a plausible protagonist without focusing on the question itself, the story will go astray.
The protagonist is not created by looking around, but rather by looking deeply into questions and encountering them.
The exquisite protagonist who will answer my question on my behalf is within the question.
So the first thing to do is to ask a question.
When the question is right, the story is right.

“Four lines will do.”
A milestone for lost creators

Now, the protagonist carries the questions posed by the author and moves forward, fighting against numerous obstacles and changing.
The four lines are a diary of the protagonist's growth and events.


If we apply 〈The Glory〉 to 4 lines, it is the process of the protagonist, who is a victim of school violence, harboring a desire for revenge to return to the starting point (first line - the protagonist's internal change occurs), carrying out his decided revenge (second line - the protagonist moves forward with his decision), encountering obstacles from the group of perpetrators (third line - the protagonist's situation and feelings change rapidly and intensify), and after many twists and turns, succeeding in his revenge, but realizing that what can return him to the starting point is not revenge but 'love' in the end, he changes into a character who returns the love he received from the person he loves (fourth line - the protagonist's decision is resolved).

At first glance, the introduction, development, climax, and conclusion may seem similar, but there is a big difference here.
If you focus on the traditional introduction, development, turn, and conclusion, you can easily get caught up in events or elements that seem powerful but are superficial and deviate from the protagonist's core desires.
Let's think about the protagonist's mother, who appears as a nuisance no less than the perpetrators.
If the author had given too much weight to the protagonist's mother, who is the protagonist's Achilles' heel, the group of school bullies who perpetrate school violence on the victim suffering from domestic abuse would have been nothing more than a secondary distraction, and the protagonist as an adult would have no reason to get involved with them at all.


Judging by the fact that she has provoked the anger of viewers with just a few appearances, it is clear that from the writer's perspective, this mother is a villain that he wants to further utilize for dramatic development.
You'll be dying to see more of this character's sabotage.
But the moment it starts like that, it becomes a completely different story from what was originally planned.
In a story where the main character is a victim of school violence, the mother is actually an unexpected obstacle.
That's why it becomes a more painful story.
In addition to the mother, this drama is filled with obstacles that add to the hesitation of the woman's stubborn desire to continue her revenge, such as the polite husband who is the perpetrator and the man who offers to be her helper.
The reason why we can move forward without being swayed by these things is because of the ‘4 lines’.
To stay focused on the questions you need to address while fighting against distractions, you must stick to these four lines.

The story is quite mathematical, more so than you might think.
At first glance, it may seem reasonable and persuasive, but no one who spends time and money to enjoy a story will even look at it briefly.
If one corner is off, consumers will notice it right away and kick the conversation away.
In order to accurately arrange the story, it is essential to clearly divide it into four lines and check the necessary elements for each line to structure the story.
If you ever get lost while writing, come back to these four lines.
This way, you can avoid going astray and head straight back towards your destination quickly.


"An open ending is different from a no ending."
If you don't want your story to be a flash in the pan

There are so many works that start off well but then fall apart at the end.
It's only at the end that the story ends up being a complete waste of time and affection by ending with an ambiguous ending that leaves the audience who have been rooting for the protagonist until now feeling like it was all a dream, or by making it unclear what message it was trying to convey.
You can reveal or hide the answer, but if you ask a question, you must provide your own answer.
That is what the author ultimately wants to say through the story, the message he wants to send to the world.

There are writers who often pose questions and then don't follow through with the lame excuse of "open endings."
If the author had truly created a story with an open ending, there would have to be both an ending A and an ending B.
And people don't question the ending.
Because we would have already stood at the crossroads that the author had opened and walked towards our own conclusions.
Otherwise, the ending would likely have been a 'no ending' rather than an open ending.

This isn't the only thing writers easily overlook when contemplating endings.
We also need to consider the question of who is the 'happy subject' when we talk about a happy ending.
If the protagonist dies or becomes unhappy, is it a sad ending? If they survive or become happy, is it a happy ending? While it seems simple, a writer should think differently.

In the movie Train to Busan, many characters loved by the audience die.
Even the main character.
But people don't say this movie has a sad ending.
Rather, there is no doubt that it is a happy ending.
The reason is that the protagonist's wish to 'bring his daughter back to Busan safely' has come true.
He never desired to live.
The fact that one 'dies' is sad, but a writer should not be immersed in the word 'die'.
As a writer, you need to be able to focus on the protagonist's desires rather than the physical outcome of death.
This ending is a happy ending because the protagonist has achieved what he wanted to achieve.

The reason the story ends up being a flash in the pan is because it is too hasty to resolve the situation rather than changing the protagonist while trying to resolve the incident.
If you are a true writer, you must not take your eyes off the protagonist's transformation until the very end.
The story only ends when the protagonist, who harbors desires, finally reaches the desired state.
The writer must fulfill his responsibility to ensure that the audience accompanies the protagonist's journey to the end, so as not to make the protagonist suffer in vain.