Another open forum question – from attatt:
when you write a script, do/did you usually start with a character, a specific plot point, or a specific ending you want to reach?Curious how others write because I tend to have plot point ideas out the yang, then have to connect the dots and find a successful ending.
In thinking about it, I guess I’ve started scripts from characters, plot points, and endings, as well as geographical locations, themes, and titles. I remember reading that the Coen brothers wrote the movie Miller’s Crossing beginning with a single image: A hat being tossed over a creek.
So I think the answer to the first question is this: You can start generating a story from anything.
But there’s an implied second question in your post per the ending paragraph: “How do I connect the dots between plot points?” And actually even a third question: “How do I find a successful ending?”
Sure, it’s great if you’ve got a creative mind and brainstorm up a… well… storm. But if you end up with “plot point ideas out the yang,” and no discernible path from here (FADE IN) to there (FADE OUT), what good is your creativity?
So let me give you a short answer: Characters. Your characters should tell you where the plot should go. And in particular, your Protagonist and Nemesis.
Let’s consider 8 questions. If you can answer these questions, you should be on the path from your story’s beginning to ending.
1. Who is your Protagonist?
Determine which character is the most important one to your plot. Typically it is their goal (see questions 2 + 3) that establishes the backbone of the Plotline, the story in the External World (the realm of action and dialogue).
Also it’s their transformation, going from a Beginning Emotion State to and Ending Emotion State (typified by four movements: Disunity – Deconstruction – Reconstruction – Unity) that dictates the arc of the Themeline, the story in the Internal World (the emotional / psychological realm).
2. What do they want?
This is the Protagonist’s External World goal, something they are typically conscious of. It is an end point that requires action and effort.
3. What do they need?
This is the Protagonist’s Internal World goal, something they are typically unaware of. It emerges from within their core essence, an authentic part of their ‘self’ that, as a result of the journey, emerges through the Deconstruction – Reconstruction process in Act Two.
Together the Protagonist’s want and need represent their goal. And this should steer you straight toward your story’s ending, especially when tied to the character arising in question #4.
4. Who’s keeping them from their goal?
This is the story’s Nemesis, the character (or characters) who provides opposition to the Protagonist. They have their own interest in the P’s goal, generally hoping for a different outcome.
Typically the P and N will be joined in some sort of ‘final struggle’ in the story’s third act, giving the story a big event to build to.
Now answer the next four questions:
5. What is the story’s beginning?
If you understand where the Protagonist is in relation to their Ordinary World (the world they have lived in up to FADE IN), the nature of their want and need, and the problem this disjunction between want and need signifies, then you should be able to have a pretty good answer for this question.
6. What happens at the end of Act One?
You need to have a big plot point that transitions the Protagonist out of their Ordinary World and into the Extraordinary World of Act Two and beyond.
7. What happens at the end of Act Two?
A major setback for the Protagonist, an All Is Lost moment which causes the P to doubt their ability to go on.
8. What is the ending?
Again if you’ve figured out your Protagonist and Nemesis, and whatever Final Struggle they engage in, then you’ve pretty much got a cue on your story’s ending.
Okay, this is a severely truncated approach to the story development process. And by all rights, I should insert a big list of caveats including the fact that sometimes there are multiple Protagonists, sometimes the Protagonist doesn’t change, they change others, etc.
But most mainstream Hwood movies have these two narrative features: A single Protagonist and the transformation of the Protagonist. By grounding your thinking in the Protagonist’s transformation journey and their relationship with the Nemesis character, you’ve got a good shot at creating a spine to the story’s structure.
Attatt,
I think you're on the right track: have plot points, then seek to connect the dots.
Not that I'm an expert or anyhing like that, but I like to start with the visualization of cool scenes, THEN fill in the dark areas of the map.
Have a basic idea of your whole story, THEN explore character questions and motivations. THEN invariably those now realized characters will tweak your plot and make it their own.
Recently with some script stories I'm working at in the brainstorming stage I started with some ideas of cool characters, BUT what comes next is what they do, and what will make what they do special and enjoyable to watch on screen. It all comes back to, "finding the cool stuff."
Where's the cool stuff? Scenes you can visualize like the Coen brothers did. HUGE believer in the Coen brothers use of memorible visuals in their movies. "Fargo"; the cool stuff is the chipper scene. Can't remember the whole plot of "Fargo," but I remember that chipper scene! "No Country for Old Men"; I remember Anton Chigurh and his compressed air, cattle killer which he used several different ways. Also I remember the needle of the meter that Chigurh used to track down Llewelyn Moss…
IF you think about it, the writer's belief in "the cool stuff" about his or her story is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT thing about story development. If your "cool stuff" registers with an audience, they are likely to forgive other shortcomings.
Attatt, my advice to you is this: find the cool stuff and build from there.
Point to be considered: cool stuff trumps characters.
- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
Scott, you just saved my story. I have been working for the last few days on figuring out my plot, and nothing was really coming, and I think your "severely truncated" approach just blew it wide open.
I would really love to see a version of your not-so truncated approach. Have you made posts about it? You probably have, but I am drawing a blank on whether or not you have for sure.
@Nicholas: Check out Narrative Throughline under Lists (on the right-hand side of the blog). You can reverse engineer the questions from there. And here is a link to four major plot questions with illustrations in Star Wars: A New Hope. That should give you some more background.
Scott, on the subject of MILLER'S CROSSING, there was another image that had a hand in inspiring the film, and its name was (still is) THE GLASS KEY, the Alan Ladd film, novel by Dashiell Hammett. Check it out and see if you don't find yourself marveling at how little was said about that.
Here's what Richard Matheson (novels – I Am Legend, Stir of Echoes, What Dreams May Come) said about how he gets stories, and it indicates that he starts from premise, usually:
“…I never went into stories based on characters. I went into stories based on a story idea. Then I put characters in the story that I hoped would be believable and realistic in real life and maybe move you. But I’m a storyteller. The story is the thing. They can put that on my tombstone: Storyteller.” And later, “…some of my ideas would come from other books (and movies)… someone would mention something… and I would pounce on it like a tiger… For example, (in Charles Fort’s book Wild Talents,) he describes, literally, a sequence that I made a whole short story out of… He said, in future times, psychic girls would fight wars; they will visualize terrible things happening to soldiers. And I got a great story out of that.”
And later,
“I went to see a DRACULA film and the idea came to me: If one vampire was scary, what if the whole world was full of vampires? That became 'I Am Legend.' Another time I went to see a comedy, and (the character) was leaving an apartment and he put on (someone else’s) hat and it came down way over his ears. At that second I thought, ‘What if a guy put his own hat on and that happened?’ That’s where I got the idea for 'The Incredible Shrinking Man.'"
From his interview by Patrick McGilligan in "Backstory 3," University of California Press, 1997, pp. 252-3.
Not to belabor it, but…
Readers (and writers) might be surprised to know that Shakespeare lifted the plots for every one of his plays but "The Tempest."
So, he usually started with someone else's idea.
Okay, I'm belaboring it, but it's different for everyone, so here's an opposing view:
In Levinson on Levinson, Edited by David Thompson, Faber and Faber, 1992, p. 42, writer-director Barry Levinson said: “I don’t know how to write with an outline structure. I have to work from the characters, not a structure into which I then try and put the characters. I get the ideas in my head, and then at a certain point I begin and just go until I get to the end… I’ll play music constantly… trying to go as fast as possible, because all these voices are talking and these events happening and I’m just trying to keep up with it. In a sense I’m just taking dictation, but I have to race through because one scene starts suggesting other scenes. Sometimes I’ve had an idea, but I don’t necessarily know how to put it in, and then all of a sudden I go, wow, that will tie right into this, and this feeds into that. That’s the way I work. If I had to write an outline, then I would still be writing the outline for DINER!”