How to Write a Screenplay

SCREENWRITING: BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND END

AN OVERVIEW OF THE ELEMENTS NECESSARY TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY

Before we discuss the process of how to write a screenplay, let’s look at the elements and stages of a screenplay.  It’s good to get a road map of the journey before you start this trip. 

ONE PROTAGONIST

Whatever you want to call him or her—hero, main character, protagonist—you have to have only one.  Why one?  Because you are telling a story and you get more power, ideas and impact by putting the choices and depth into one character.  Later, when you break the rules and tell a story with three different characters, each of those characters is going to be the protagonist in his or her own story.  All of these principles will still apply. 

INCITING INCIDENT

Your story has to begin at some point.  You have a protagonist who will pursue a goal.  To figure out at what point within the narrative to start your story, ask yourself why now?  Why wasn’t this character going after this thing yesterday or three days ago?   A necessary story event, called the inciting incident is called for.  You know, the incident that incites the story.  This moment causes a change in the status quo that affects the character’s life and causes him to embark on the journey that will be the story.

Without the inciting incident, the story does not start.  If Rocky doesn’t get the call to fight the world champion, he stays a club fighter.  There is no story.  Or at least not the one we’re used to.  Without it, Rocky might be a 2 hour love story where the inciting incident is the moment he meets Adrian.  In Silence of the Lambs, Jack Crawford invites Clarice to talk to Hannibal Lecter.  Without this event, Lecter never enters the movie and we have a static world where Clarice simply goes about the routine of her training.

The inciting incident obviously has to come pretty early in the story.  However, we still need to know where to begin on page 1.  How far from the beginning of the story can the inciting incident be?  The answer is that it has to be far enough for us to grasp the essence of the character, his world and his place in it before the critical change in this status quo is enacted by the inciting incident.  The character will take action to restore things to the way they were, or to a new status quo.  This struggle will lead him to places—literally or figuratively—where he hasn’t been before.   In order for us to appreciate the new world, we have to understand the old world.

Are characters going to sit around and solve problems by running ideas through their head?  Maybe in a novel.  Not in a movie.  Characters have to take action.  The characters react to the inciting incident.  And soon they must commitment to a plan of attack to make things right in their world.  In a thriller, this might require them to start a murder investigation, maybe with a new partner.  In a romantic comedy, it might involve the protagonist’s’ first date on page 24 with the character we met on page 12. 

Great storytelling is all about change and surprise.  Audiences want to be constantly engaged by new “information”.  This does not mean facts and explanations.  This means new characters, new motivations, revealed agendas, surprising dialogue and new environments.  Screenwriting paradigms have different names for the change or plot twist that comes soon after the inciting incident.  Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey talks about a character moving from an ordinary world into a special world.  Syd Field calls it Act II.  What this means is that the story has to cross over, at some point, from the beginning to the middle.

Often times, there will be a change of geographical location, as in Beverly Hills Cop.  Axel Foley starts in Detroit but ends up in Beverly Hills.  However, in Sleepless in Seattle, the change is not in physical location, but a change in an emotional state.  The story forces Tom Hanks’ character into a new situation, where he must consider love and emotional connection again. 

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