How to Write a Screenplay

Even the designers of roller coasters understand good storytelling.  The ride starts out on a few fun hills, but when the roller coaster reaches its farthest point away from the beginning, it usually swings you around a curve and accelerates you toward the end.  You know the biggest hills and the literal twists are yet to come. And although you can make these turns out in the silhouette in the distance, you don’t know exactly what they are. 

Movies are like roller coasters.   Both have ups and downs, hills you must traverse.  These are like the obstacles in a screenplay, especially the ones leading up to the midpoint.  However, the metaphor only goes so far.  A story is not merely the physical chase, the events, the new and exciting changing external situations the character has to face. It’s not just the action.  There must also be meaning.

The physical action/obstacles/conflicts of the best stories serve a dual purpose.  They must logically connect to each other and place obstacles between the character and that physical, tangible goal.  (Tangible is key.  Success in achieving the goal has to be readily identifiable.  Otherwise, we’d never know that the story was over.)   The action and events also have to impact the protagonist and his nature in a meaningful way.

If two-thirds of the way through a movie, a character is put through a meaningless obstacle course that would equally challenge Columbo, Dirty Harry or Lethal Weapon’s Murtaugh, then the story is generic.  However, think about the way the obstacle course in An Officer and a Gentleman functions.  Zack has a chance to break the record, but instead he chooses to help his teammate over the wall.  This event presents a physical obstacle:  beat the course.  More importantly, this moment provides internal conflict, forcing the selfish character, to choose to help someone else.

In An Officer and a Gentleman, the obstacle course moment is not arbitrary.  It exists because it relates to Zack’s flaw, his selfishness.    Your protagonist will also have a flaw.  Why wait until the middle of the story to bring this up?  Because this mirrors the character’s understanding of how he is screwing up.  Up to now, everything has worked fine.  His old ways have brought him some temporary success.  However, the nature of Hollywood storytelling is transformative.  Remember one of our key words: change.  Part of the change in the world of the story is the change in the characters.

The characters’ flaw or their flawed way of perceiving the world is probably the most important obstacle to their achieving the goal.   The events of the story are orchestrated such that the last physical obstacle coincides with the confrontation with the internal obstacle.  The character will only succeed in achieving his or her goal if the flaw or flawed way of looking at the world can be overcome.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  We’re still in the middle of the script.  The protagonist’s chance for redemption comes at the end of the movie, in the climax.  However, if we are going to end the story with the protagonist overcoming his internal obstacles, we can use this to figure out where we need to be at the end of the middle. 

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