Screenwriting: What Great Movies do More Successfully than Good Movies

Why create a simple clear goal with a simple clear motivation for your hero?  Because this is a great way to move on to the most important point or goal of your story.  And what is that you ask?  Nope it's not theme.

What great movies do, and in fact great screenwriters do, is they make you fall in love with their hero's.

They don't simply try to have their hero "save the cat" and then rest on those likable laurels for the rest of the story.  They know that the plot is just a foil for their true intent: To make you want to spend 90 to 120 minutes with your eyes and hearts focused on their hero.  Think about your favorite movies and write down what it is your love about the character or characters in the story.  Pick one, put it on, and write down everything they do during the story that makes you really interested in them.  They are doing something in every scene that just makes you attracted to their presence.  Maybe their charming.  Maybe they're absolutely vile.  Maybe they're incredibly foolish.  It's something about them that just makes you want to watch!

How to create a character everyone will love?

One way is to think of cliches and stereotypes and mix them.  For example:

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Imagine Santa as a gang member.  Or imagine this gang member with the personality of Santa.  

How the quadratic formula relates to screenwriting and character

Old Pythagoras gave us the Quadratic formula:

f(y) = ax²+bx + c

Here I'm going to relate that to how we define a Character in a story.

a = their Conflict and it is squared or amplified by their internal and external problems.
b = their How.  Their how is their unique way of approaching and try to reach their goal.
c = their Goal.  This is their want.

Character = Conflict(Internal fear and external pressures) + How(their personal style) + Goal

Fiction Vs. Non-Fiction

Here lies the fundamental similarities and differences of fiction and non-fiction books:

Just finished reading a non-fiction book.  It's called DIRT.  It's about SOIL and how human agricultural methods have been eroding it since the dawn of agriculture.  It's led to the collapse of past civilizations and could be our demise as well.

It's about logic.  It showcases cause and effect of human activity on physical objects.

A fiction book example:  A guy spends an amazing night with a girl.  She pursues him after that one night of passion but he keeps rebuffing her.  He ends up dating her but sleeps around and treats her like garbage.  For reasons dispelled in the book he can't find the ability to love a woman.  He's been hurt by a past lover and won't let his heart be broken again.

It's about emotion.  It showcases how a man cannot let this woman or real love into his life because of a prior painful breakup.  It shows how old emotional wounds have hurt his soul and how they could happen again.

Both book types explore relationships.  However both explore them through different lenses.

Non-Fiction uses LOGIC.
Fiction uses EMOTION.

In Non-fiction writers use scientific data.  Such as from 1900-1950 over two feet of topsoil has eroded from the state of Kansas.(this is not true but using to prove point)

In Fiction writers use emotional data. Such as Tim's former girlfriend left him for her boss two years ago and he's never really gotten over it.  He's dated and slept with 16 women since then and sometimes he's dating more than one at a time.

Both types of writing can leave the reader wandering what will happen.
In Non-fiction the writer may say "Governments are now working to make X and Y policy to combat soil erosion.  Or Governments have yet to do anything about this problem.  Or as of this writing Governments have enacted a policy and soil erosion is reversing.

In Fiction a writer may have the main character give love a shot by the end of the story.  They may not let the character give it a shot.   It depends on how the writer wants the story to end.  If the writer feels like cheating is something that will ruin people than they may end it on that sour note.  If the writer feels like cheating is something that can be overcome then they may end it on a more positive note.

The ending a of a non-fiction book is based on past and current data.  It doesn't much matter what the author feels should happen.

The ending of a fiction book is based on how the author feels.

Beating the drum of Relationships

They're is a saying: "Your character is defined not by what you say but what you do."

But that's not the only way for us, as screenwriters, to define our characters.

Here's an interesting quote from a book that explores the subject of ecology.

"Humans are not specially privileged species but mere nodes in the grand web of life, properly defined more by their relationships to other species than by their individual characteristics."
- Rambunctious Garden - Emma Marris - 2011

When we surround our main characters with others, we are defining who they are - their economic means and their dominance or lack of dominance.  Through dialog and action we can contrast them against other characters to create a clear picture.

Character Vs. Characterization - Screenwriting

What is characterization?  It's the way a character walks, the tone of their voice, the clothes they wear, the transportation they use, etc.

What is character?  Character is more elusive to me.  It's motivation.  It's desire.  And expressing those can be hard to do.  Sometimes I write a scene or some dialog and move on and when I'm sitting around thinking about it, I think, "Crap, am I clearly expressing character here or just writing something that's characterization?"  I tend to write fast and without a clear intention.  So I have to go back and reread and cut and change anything that seems superfluous.  

Screenwriting Structure - The Ultimate Secret Answer to Every Structure You've Ever Heard of

If you've ever delved into the world of screenplay structure analysis, you'll probably agree that there are many ways to cut a movie apart.
There's the "classic" 3-Act structure and with that the 1, 2 , 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 Act structures.  (Why not 6?) You'll also find a Sequence Approach from Paul Gulino.  A Hero's Journey structure from Joseph Campbell exists.  Along with another version of the Hero's Journey by Christopher Vogler.  In addition to Jacob Krueger who writes about the Hegelian Dialectic.  Let's not forget Blake Snyder's Save The Cat.  And speaking of structure, you've got to talk about archetypes which you can structure your story around too.  Which leads me to one of the most complex systems of structural analytics known as Dramatica.  And so on and so forth.

What's intriguing is that when you take each of these approaches and analyze your favorite films they all work.  They all work.  Like the image above in which there is a face, a butterfly, an angel, an alien, a teddy bear, etc., all structural models are similar but different.  What you see is what you get and what you get is whatever you want to see.

What's doubly intriguing is that none of them can make you understand why a film connects with you or any other human being.  C'est la vie, right?

I would argue that a writer can take all of these models and place them in a drawer within a cabinet within a dumpster and safely land on their feet with a great story.

How?

If you focus on one scene at a time.  And focus on your characters as if they were real people who should react in a realistic way, you'll be writing well.  You'v got to be sincere.  You've got to stop and think after each action, "What would actually happen at this point, within the "rules" of the story I've been writing?"  It's realistic to spend a day or two on one scene.  You've got to read it and be honest.  Be sincere, even if it's comedy.

Screenwriting - Writing Tip

"A play can start with an image that can be as simple as two people in a room and I begin to ask questions about who they are in relation to one another."  - Donald Margulies

 A screenplay can also start that way.  But the main point I take from the above quote is asking "Who characters are in relation to one another."  I like to think of my characters as people.  I like to be sincere about who they are and what the want and why they want it.  A clear simple character can hook me and watching them deal with extraordinary or even ordinary issues can hook me too.