# Big Difference Between A Story That Has Meaning And One That Doesn't - Adam Argot ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Film Courage - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nbtDglCNGI - **Дата:** 22.04.2026 - **Длительность:** 11:40 - **Просмотры:** 4,792 ## Описание Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS: How To Unlock Your Story One Question At A Time - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Adam Argot has worked in film, TV, games, and publishing as a director, writer, author, story and concept artist for over 15 years for both major and independent studios. Along with in-depth podcasts and interviews like Film Courage, Story Kinetics, and a YouTube video series The Art of Story, Adam has also taught story structure at Calarts and as a guest lecturer in the USC Screenwriting Program. 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Thank you for your support! #writing #author #story ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nbtDglCNGI) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) So, if we say that character is the vehicle, story is the road, how did you come up with that? — Um Okay. So, this idea of there is the character, there's a protagonist, and then there is the obstacles. So, I began to think about like um obstacles are basically everything we experience in life, all the conflicts we experience start to take on a kind of character. And they start to be like whenever we enter So, for example, when you enter uh um like a boardroom and you're surrounded by peers as well as, you know, maybe a boss or a high-end producer or a talent that you really respect. And you walk into that room, that room becomes its own moral sphere. And it takes on its own character. You know, you tend to see like oh, who's sitting at the head of the table? Who's the person that's leaning back and relaxed and in control? Who's the person that's eager and leaning in and trying to prove themself? And you unconsciously start to see all of these relationships. Now, what I started looking at was you know, you mentioned that around the world we all develop different virtues, different values, different cultures. And culture is defined by the stories we tell. Those are the borders of culture. If you tell a story to somebody outside of your culture, it might not resonate on the same level. Uh or it will have a different kind of resonance, you know, depending on how it's tapped into it. And what I noticed was, you know, this ties into it's not moral relativity because, you know, relativity ultimately just says it doesn't matter. There is no hierarchy of morals. But ultimately, it is a kind of recognition that in every venue, in every situation, you have a kind of moral sphere that defines the rules of survival. And that sort Those rules of survival becomes the conflicts you choose that you have to negotiate in order to survive in that world. Most character arc is interested in what do you have to transform about yourself to survive inside that world? And so, each conflict teaches you to adjust your values. So, what I started to see was character uh like ultimately uh as a storyteller, you want to go on the road. You want to say, "Hey, let's go see all these amazing things, these conflicts, these incredible experiences, these incredible spectacle. " That's the road where you're going to be going. The vehicle, the character, is the thing that's going to experience that those conflicts with you. It's going to drive you along the way, and it's through the values of the character that come into conflict with the road, with those spectacles and conflicts, that get you to experience it. It's It's not just tourism. You're not just going to see, you're going to experience it. And that's the difference between like a protagonist and a tourist. A tourist will go and just look at all the things, maybe they'll buy a few souvenirs. But a protagonist engages the world and experiences rites of passage. They become a part integrated into the world by integrating the values of that world into themselves. Right. Yeah, and you could think it'd be regional, too. You could come to Hollywood as a tourist, go to Hollywood and Highland, and you would be wowed by all this stuff. But to live here and to have to Let's say you work at Hollywood and Highland. Now you have to wait make your way through the crowd and the parking structure, and it's an entirely different experience. And it's regional, too. Could be tech world. There's different virtues there. Hollywood, different things. Farmland, you know, — the rust belt, whatever. Things that won't be regarded in the same way. If you took that same behavior Hollywood or the tech world and brought them to the heartland, you could be pushed out. — Yeah. — Actually, that's a good example. Like an example I use in the book is that I draw two distinct moral spheres as, you know, like urban life versus rural life. You know, and I include suburban life as part of urban life. And part of it, one of the defining features of the moral sphere of the urban life is that you don't really have much interaction with your neighbors. You don't have much emotional connection to them. They're virtually strangers, and yet they live right next door to you. You don't know what their ups and downs are. And because of that, you feel less concerned about what they think of you. And because of that, there's a kind of apathy that starts to fill. You walk down the street, you see someone begging for food, which if you saw that anywhere else, if you if that happened to someone you knew, you'd fall down the tears, throw yourself on their feet, pick them up, scoop them up, and take them to the ### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nbtDglCNGI&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) restaurant and feed them and take care of them. But because you start seeing that a lot and you're in the city and you don't know them, you start thinking, "Wait, are they going to take advantage of me? What if I want to give them a dollar and then they pull a knife on me? Or they stick me with a needle. " You know, then it starts to turn in your defenses. So, the values you develop the city will be totally different than the values you develop in a rural environment. Right. Where, you know, like tend to be like rural environments tend to be, you know, farmers. Um they tend to be smaller. They all tend to know each other. They know everything about each other intergenerationally. Right. — So, if you do something in the downtown area and you screw up and crash your car or you're drunk driving, They're going to know about it. — every everyone's going to know. And everyone's going to care, and they're all going to have an opinion about it, you know? And both have their plusses and minuses, you know? But they're clearly different moral spheres. You have to adopt different moral values to survive in one. So, the classic character arc is, you know, the country mouse that goes to the city. They come with country values and have to learn what it's like to survive in the city, and then vice versa. Right. Whereas the city person might see everything as Here's our big T word, transactional. Yeah, there you go. The the country mouse might be it's about honor and doing the right thing, you would hope. — could end up going for quite a ride when you're dealing with people that see everything as transactional. Yeah. So. Yeah, for example, yeah, like the the city person like Perfect example is I was working on a film and it was in production in Utah. So, I'd never lived out there, and I just got an apartment out there. And all of a sudden my neighbors were like someone was knocking on my door, total strangers saying, "Hey, we need some help with this grass up here. You're a big strong guy. Can you just help us put all the grass down? " Oh, wow. And I'm busy. I can't do that. I'm I got to take a call. And they're like, "No, the truck's here. We need you to come. " And I was like, "They just I ended up just going like I guess I'm working on someone's lawn right now. I don't know what's going on. " And at first my feeling was to dismiss it and say like this I'm private. I'm a private person. You don't do that. Like where I'm coming where I come from, you don't just knock on someone's door and say, "Hey, come work on my lawn. " And then the interesting thing is when I was doing that, all the neighbors came out and like, "Oh, you got the backhoe out. " And they're all like working on the lawn together, and it became this social experience. And my instinct was to kind of be like, I don't know if I like this, you know? And slowly I was like, "Oh, this is how they take care of each other. " You know, everybody knows and all of a sudden I became connected to the neighborhood. I was like, "I'm just renting an apartment here. I don't really need to connect with these people. " But it became a communal experience. So, like that was kind of my small arc with that community. And I think that's, you know, that's what we're interested in with these stories is so many stories we're seeing right now are you see the characters, you say, "Here's the person who is this. " And they maintain that same virtue, that same value all the way through the story. And that's why we're getting all these boring characters that are like, "Yeah, we knew what they were the second they presented themselves. " And guess what? They're going to make this decision every single time. You always have, you know, the jealous boyfriend who always acts petty and silly and ends up, guess what, sabotaging the relationship, and then, you know, the girl goes off to like the sweet loving guy. And I'm like, "That's not interesting. We've seen that a million times. " But on top of that, it doesn't really speak to any truth. You have to always believe that jealous petty boyfriend is always petty and jealous. There's no humanity or depth to him. Right. — Therefore, it's not surprising. And you just jog my memory in terms of like the sort of the city person going to the country cuz when I was in my early 20s, I did go to sort of farmland area, and there were other people my age, and they did know about a car accident and all of the dynamics behind it because they were listening to the CB radio. And so, everyone was talking about it even though it's so spread out, and it would take miles to drive to the next person's house. But because of that, and I had never been exposed to that world before having grown up in suburbia or the big city. So, yeah, you just jog my memory of that. — feel like your boundaries were kind of being invaded a little bit? — Well, yeah, and I was also a fish out of water, and then it turned out they were talking about me, too. Yeah, exactly. — And I found out. But I didn't realize that I just thought, "Hey, these places are spread out, and it's farmland, and they don't care about me. " Well, no, it was because I didn't look the part. I didn't fit in. I knew somebody that was from there, and their family wasn't, that's why we went. But I didn't realize that it was all connected like that. — Mhm. So, you just jog my memory. So, yeah, you're right. Different regional Maybe I struck them as odd because of my city values or whatever. And I didn't ### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nbtDglCNGI&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 11:00) know that I offended someone. Yeah, and it takes that kind of maturation to be like, "Oh, okay. It's not just me. " You know, it'd be that the self like the less mature way of going about it would be like, "Oh, well, they're wrong because they're judging me. " You know, and then we'd just have endless stories about this one martyr who is just completely misunderstood by everyone around them. When, you know, the more interesting thing is, you know, what if that actually revealed your contradictions, you know? And then in so doing it they revealed their contradictions and then learned to, you know, Um Gilmore Girls is a great example. — I'm a huge fan of Gilmore Girls. I love it. The showrunner of Gilmore Girls, like she has such regard and affection for every character on there that they all become human. They all have depth. And like, you know, that the conflict between Lorelai and her mother, um you're so easily tempted to just say, "Well, the mom's wrong because she's a snobbist snobbish elitist. " But then they go and give depth to her and show how much she loves her husband and how kind they are to each other and how deep down inside she just wants her daughter to survive, but doesn't have the tools to communicate to her. And you start to see the way they build out the whole community. Everybody has those contradictions. Like if you want to understand great character, go watch Gilmore Girls. Not the movies, though. I didn't love the movies. The the first series, absolutely beautiful. Thank you for watching the video all the way to the end. Here is a complimentary question from our Book Story Questions. --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/49119*