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Learn how to maintain focus in screenwriting by understanding your story's core theme and protagonist's desires to build a cohesive narrative that captivates audiences.
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Lecture 14:How do I Make My Script Better? Professor Michael Green Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Written by Steven Spielberg
Previous Lesson The Role of Subtext The Emotion Beneath the Lines Revealing the Subtext Writing Exercise #12 Rob Roy (1995) Written by Alan Sharp
This Lesson Keeping on Track Approaching Revision Writing Exercise #13 What’s Love Got to do With it? (1993) Written by Tina Turner & Kurt Loder (book) and Kate Lanier (screenplay)
Keeping on Track Lesson 14: Part I Sullivan’s Travels (1941) Written by Preston Sturges
Staying Focused • One of the toughest obstacles a screenwriter faces, whether beginner or veteran, is keeping the story focused. • This is as true of writing a short film as it is of writing a feature; but where a feature might survive an inventive interlude away from its main theme, if a short film strays from its central topic for more than a moment, it can easily mean failure.
Losing Focus • Contradictory feedback from readers of an early draft is usually the result of an unfocused screenplay. Readers experience a plotless story, a loss of momentum or just a general lack of cohesion in a screenplay, the purpose of which has become ill-defined. • There are many indications that a screenplay has lost focus. Usually, too many ideas are competing for attention, causing the writer to lose grip of her characters, plot and theme.
Two Questions • When a screenplay begins to wander, with too many ideas competing for attention, or writer’s block (a failing of imagination) strikes, the best way to get back on track is to return to the two questions you asked of your screenplay when you started it: • What is the story really about? • What does the protagonist really want?
What is the Story About? • It is inevitable that as a work-in-progress develops, it will change. A theme or controlling idea that led you to write the story may bear little resemblance to the central idea in the finished draft. The theme may have changed without you even being aware of it. • Coming back to the original question of what the story is about can remind a writer what he originally found interesting and exciting in the material.
Re-discovering • To rediscover - or discover, if the theme has significantly changed - what the story is really about, you need to look at the screenplay as a whole and determine what the unifying idea is. • If there isn’t a self-evident theme, and you can’t with confidence say what your film is about anymore, than there are few things you can do to uncover it.
The Protagonist • First, look at the protagonist. If she succeeds, what special quality enables that success? If she fails, what leads to the failure, and why has the antagonist been successful? • The answers to these questions should provide a clue to what your film is about, since the fundamental qualities that lead to the protagonist’s success or failure hold the answers to what you are writing about. • You can ask yourself later if a theme is valid, but first you have to know what it is.
What does My Protagonist Want? • This second question holds the key to success in getting a screenplay back on track. Many screenplays wander because writers forget what their characters want or need. • Sometimes the want and need are underdeveloped, causing their importance to be lost and the plot to break down. • In other cases, the protagonist’s want or need may not be compelling enough to involve the audience – or they may just not be believable.
Goals • A protagonist must have a clear goal or need that drives the character and screenplay forward. • Every scene must depend on this driving action: revealing character and information that motivate and stoke the central conflict as it rises to the crisis and climax. • The driving force demands that other characters react to and oppose our hero or heroine as he or she acts.
Cause and Effect • The interactions between characters with opposing goals should lead to a direct cause-and-effect relationship from one scene to another that keeps the plot linked. • If the scenes of the plot are interdependent, that is, if one scene leads inexorably to the next, thematic problems can be more easily discerned and worked through.
The Set-Up • The set-up of a screenplay must introduce the character’s want or need. This want or need can be in place before the story opens, or grow out of the opening situation. • Many short screenplays stall right at the beginning because the protagonist’s story goal doesn’t emerge soon enough. • Short films don’t have much time to work with and must hook their audience quickly.
Humanizing Your Characters • The character’s want or need must be compelling, definite, forceful, and believable enough for the audience to identify with – to win their sympathy and hold their attention. • It must also be visibly important to the protagonist. Scenes that show the emotional reactions of the protagonist from actions that he or she has taken will strengthen the audience’s understanding of the want/need and humanize them.
The Antagonist • A primary antagonist gives strength and clarity to a screenplay. • As locus of the opposing force, she makes the conflict distinct and understandable. • Just like the protagonist, the antagonist must have a want and a need and the same questions apply to her: is her want/need sufficient enough to drive the story conflict and, if not, how can you make it so it is?
The Antagonist in the Short Film • Remember, a short film can survive without a main antagonist to oppose the protagonist. • However, if this is the case, the controlling idea or theme must be all the stronger or more clear to bind the drama together and get the audience’s attention.
It’s Not Easy • Writing a good screenplay, short or long, is a difficult job. There are no magic formulas that insure success other than starting from a strong premise and creating compelling characters, a powerful story and a moving theme. • Always try to approach your material in a fresh and inventive way, and, of course, be prepared to do a lot of revising.
Character and Theme • Remember, the best short films embrace complex personal issues – themes that feature films tend to avoid – and often this is the source of the short film’s success. • The plots of short films don’t need to be complicated, but the characters do. • Think of the plot as the story you tell to explain how a character emerges from an initial state to a final, changed state.
Character and Theme (Continued) • The focus on character pushing plot, and not the other way around, is what distinguishes all good drama and literature. • While other dramatic arenas may have lost their focus on character as the defining story element, characters thrive in short films. • Characters are why the art form exists. Your short film will be as complex, intriguing, exciting and ultimately as satisfying as your lead character.
Approaching Revision Lesson 14: Part II American Pie (1999) Written by Adam Herz
The Writing Process • Never forget that writing is a process and that when we lack inspiration or feel “blocked” we can always turn to proven methods and strategies. • Write at the same time each day. • Write at the same place each time. • Read or watch a film for ideas or inspiration. • Exercise before you write. • Whatever your strategy, you must come to write with adequate mental energy.
Revision • Revision is changing and rewriting a draft to make it better. In this step, we add, rearrange, or eliminate story elements. • Revision is crucial. Without revision, we aren’t really writing, only brainstorming. The screenplay for every good movie you have ever seen has been revised countless times.
Re-vision • The resistance to rewriting is often greater than the resistance to the initial writing. • Yet the chances are that once you have committed to the first draft, you’ll be unable to leave it unfinished – you’ll be unhappy until it is right. • This involves a second commitment to seeing the story fresh and creating it again with the advantage of this re-vision.
Strategies for Revision • Journaling • Freewriting • Discovering • Layering • Drafting • Breaks To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) Written by Harper Lee (novel) and Horton Foote (screenplay)
Seeking out Feedback • Revision is facilitated partially through the workshop process. Since you are writing for other readers and, ultimately, viewers, it is important to listen to the constructive criticism of others. • Though we must trust our own instincts, we must also have the wisdom to look beyond our pride and take the advice of others—particularly other writers.
Making it Better • A screenplay gets better not by polishing and refurbishing, not by improving a line of dialogue here and there, but by taking risks in the structure, re-envisioning and being open to new meaning itself. • “Talent is a long patience.” – Chekhov • “In the first draft is talent, in the second is the art.” – Paul Valery
Editing • With editing, we carefully examine our script to see that it contains no errors of grammar, spelling or punctuation. • We edit to achieve clarity and quality writing, but also in the interests of professionalism. Producers don’t finish scripts that are filled with errors. They recognize such work as amateur.
Sticking With It In the beginning, we are often frustrated that our writing seems so far removed from what we envision. But no one produces a brilliant result on the first try. Think of writing as sculpture. You begin with a chunk of marble and only consistently whittling away at it will produce the eventual statue. To be successful with your writing, you must stick with it!
Assignments Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) Written by Harve Bennett Lesson 14: Part III
E-Board Post #1 What is your experience with revision in the past? Has it been difficult for you? How have you approached it and how has it helped your writing? Has not revising hampered your writing? 31
E-Board Post #2 Name a few of the concepts that you have learned in this course that have been most helpful with your writing. Are there things you didn’t learn in this course that you wish you had? 32
Writing Exercise #13 Write a comprehensive list of the things in your script that you know that you need to revise. Make the list as detailed as possible and use it when writing the final draft of your screenplay. 33
End of Lecture 14 Next Lecture: How do I Develop a Longer Script?
