The Best Writers In The World Use This Process To Structure Their Stories - Corey Mandell

Summary

Corey Mandell argues that many successful writers approach story structure differently from writers who begin by committing to a detailed outline. Instead of starting with “this happens, then this happens,” they decide what they want the audience to experience and then find story events that create that experience. Mandell calls this approach plot casting.

He compares story development to planning a vacation: first decide what kind of experience you want, then choose a destination and make the smaller plans. For a story, this means starting with the intended audience experience and working backward toward the scenes and events that will produce it.

Mandell emphasizes that there is no single correct process. Writers should find the method that suits them, but he encourages them to try plot casting rather than dismissing it. In his teaching, many writers who try it continue using it or incorporate parts of it into their own process.

Plot-Casting Method

1. Clarify what you are trying to write. Begin with the characters, the story’s concerns, or what you want to say—not necessarily a sequence of plot points.
2. Define the audience’s experience. Consider what viewers or readers should feel, understand, or anticipate. This may be an underlying emotional experience they do not consciously identify.
3. Map that experience across the story. Decide how it should develop, intensify, or change over time.
4. Brainstorm possible events. Generate a range of things that could happen to the characters or in the story world before committing to a fixed outline.
5. Choose events that create the intended experience. Select and shape the events that best serve the audience experience, then build the story from them.
6. Use scenes to establish the larger story experience. A scene can express a central conflict or emotional pattern early, with later scenes expanding and escalating it.
7. Stay open to other methods. If this process does not suit you, adapt it or use a different approach. The goal is to find a productive path to a well-structured story.

Examples Discussed

Lady Bird

Mandell describes the film’s central experience as Christine’s painful effort to become independent and establish her own identity despite her mother’s controlling influence.

In an early car scene, this conflict is concentrated into a specific moment: Christine wants her mother to call her “Lady Bird,” while her mother insists on calling her Christine. Christine’s attempt to break away culminates in her throwing herself from the moving car and getting hurt. In Mandell’s reading, the scene makes the film’s larger emotional conflict immediately tangible.

Cheers

Mandell says the writers wanted the audience to feel that a bar could be a safe, welcoming place for a sitcom family. The opening scene introduces Sam Malone teasing an underage boy who asks for a beer, while warmly refusing to serve him. This presents Sam as funny and a little edgy, but also caring and responsible. The scene helps establish the bar’s tone and the kind of experience the show wants audiences to have.

The Cheers pilot continues building this welcoming feeling, introducing the characters and encouraging viewers to return to this unconventional, dysfunctional “family.”

Speakers and Sources Featured

Speakers

• Corey Mandell — Screenwriter and writing teacher who explains the plot-casting approach and the examples.
• Interviewer — Unnamed; asks Mandell about writers’ processes and how experience mapping works.

Works and Other Sources Discussed

• Lady Bird — Used as an example of a scene expressing a film’s central emotional conflict.
• Cheers — Used as an example of shaping a pilot around the audience’s desired experience.
• Story Questions — Mentioned in the video’s closing as the source of a complimentary question.