FAILED RELATIONSHIPS - The Soul of your Screenplay

While the concept of your screenplay will be the hook that catches the reader, it is in fact the exploration of a failed relationship that will be the soul of your screenplay.

Divorce, not making a team, getting fired, letting a friend die, not being in your kids life, being obsessed with someone, not letting go of a childhood behavior, causing a road rage accident, honoring a bad person, always taking advice from a racist, etc. ON AND ON.

Thousands upon thousands of failed relationships to be explored.

Yet another STRUCTURE

For all the monkey's in the middle...
Here's another structural model to check your work:

SETUP - STATE OF RELATIONSHIPS
STRENGTHS
WEAKENESSES
PROSPECTS

4 - ACTS

Powerful Screenwriting Tip - THEME EXPLOSION

Another way to explore a Theme:

Let's take Shake-spears Romeo and Juliet.

And pretend you're the writer.

"I'm going to write a story about two people who fall in love(obsession) against the wishes of their parents and families because I want to show that love, whether true or romantic is so powerful it can blind those that have been intoxicated with it and lead them to die."

What's going on here? 
The writer has created a controlling idea that will be his or her theme.  Theme as in, the touchstone to which you the writer check back in with as you're writing.

Let's come up with our own example:

"I'm going to write a story about two people who find a treasure map that suggests their is money hidden in the home of a family that needs money for healthcare costs to pay for the mom's traumatic injuries and rehab and the child's ongoing battle with a rare disease.  These people will go to all lengths to steal that money right from under these unknowing people because I want to show how intoxicating greed can be and how it can even lead to killing those who stand in your way and going to prison."

Another one:

"I'm going to show a story about a man who will stop at nothing to recover his daughter's lost dog.  Even though the dog acts like a brat, the man will risk losing his job to take time off to find it because I want to show how the spirit of adventure can excite and provide an excuse for a person to throwing everything to the wind and can lead to rediscovering the person's very soul.

What I like about this type of Theme:
Writing a sentence or two or three to create a touchstone for your story can be a nice way to free yourself from the "all's well that ends well" problem.  You'll be able to know that whether your main character triumphs or tragedies, you will have shown something you believe to be true about human behavior and life.

So whether the guy above gets the dog back doesn't matter because I've show that going on adventure and rejuvenate the soul.

Screenwriting - Exploring a theme - Here's how...

Theme = Elusive?

There are different ways to talk about Theme.  One way is to frame it with two contrasting states of being.  "To be or not to be"  "To run or not to run"  "To hide or not to hide"  "To trade or not to trade"  Etc.

Let's breakdown a scene and look at this type of Theme.

Two parts to a scene:
1) is the character trying to get something, taking a step towards, an overall goal.

2) is the "busy work" - the actions characters are doing in a scene.  This is also an area to show the different sides of a Theme.

EXAMPLE of "To lock or to unlock" Theme at play:

BRUCE leaves his car unlocked and the stuffed TEDDY BEAR in the backseat is stolen.

Bruce heads back into the store, explains to an exiting security guard what happened but the security guard says "should have locked it"  and they'll review the tapes in the morning and locks up the building.

Bruce goes back to his unlocked car and finds a ransom note for the Teddy Bear - $10,000 in cash

Bruce at his friend LEO's.  Leo is making dinner for his two kids, He has the stove "locked off" with baby barricades.  Bruce is begging him to lend him the $10,000.  Leo refuses.  Leo's kids come running in and bounce off the barricade which is keeping them from the open flames.  (example of how locking something is good)

Bruce grabs Leo's keys and "leaves", walks around the house, climbs the porch with Leo's unlocked ladder, and finds an upstairs window unlocked.
He slips back into Leo's house.
He goes into Leo's closet and opens leo's safe using Leo's key. (example of how locking something doesn't always mean it's protected)

Leo catches him and kicks him out of the house.

Bruce walks into a bar - tries to convince his father to give him the money - his father is trying to drink himself to death and keeps reaching over the "unlocked" bar to pour himself shots.

Father finally agrees - Bruce helps his dad back to his locked apartment and end up breaking a locked window because the old guy can't find his keys. (Here is an illustration of an argument to leave something unlocked.)
They discover his father's stash of cash in the shoe box under his bed is gone.
___________________

As you can see, if you want to explore a theme - you can do so by having the end of each scene, the completion, tap into the theme.  Show times in which locking helps your character and locking hurts your character.

Dramatica and the other BS story form-u-lies

Dear Wandering Screenwriter,

Dramatica is not a formula.  It's a writer's assistant.

Call it whatever you want.  It's a foundation to test your story against.  It's a framework to color in, just like those books you colored in as a child.

There's the main problem with Dramatica and any other narrative science idea.

A writer writes a screenplay using their unconscious collective of memories, understandings and tastes.  In a coloring book analogy...they create the lines in which the production team will color in.

By using Dramatica or any other story form modeling system to write OR check to see if your story is "working" is ridiculous.  You don't want to put yourself between a story form analyzer and the production team unless you want to be the MONKEY IN THE MIDDLE.

You can tell, and readers can tell when it's not working.  Just put your heart into it and you'll know and blow them away.  You're a fucking human being.

The ironic argument for Dramatica is that story forms like Save The Cat and the hero's journey are too simple and that using Dramatica will allow you to realize how complex your story can be. Well!

Forget those other story forms and you don't even need Dramatica to "remind" you that stories can be more complex.

Truth be told: An open mind and an open heart are all you need to write an engaging screenplay.  It's that fucking simple.

TA.... DA....,
G. Cottontail

Screenwriting - Functions

Think about your story and what it would lack without each character you have created for it.

Take out a character and say "Does it feel slower?" "Does it feel less clear?"  "Does it feel quicker?"  etc.

This will allow you to understand what function that character plays in the story.

The Second Draft - Screenwriting Rewriting

Don't let yourself fall into the lie that you will perfect your screenplay in the second draft.

It will become better than the first.  And you must finish it and not allow yourself to keep meddling and editing.