Screenwriting - Gardens

When you create a story you create a path.

You bring your audience along that path to various spaces that build toward a grand garden.

Emotion - into a story

When writing a scene, there is an emotion the character will express based on how you think she should feel.

And there is the emotion the character will express based on how she should feel.

For example:

She should feel angry here but she doesn't.  How can I get her to be angry?  Well, the truth is that if she's not angry than that is how it should be.  Go with that.

Ok, so she's not angry.  She's indifferent.  Well, a reader won't be interested in an indifferent character.

Well, it's not true that she's indifferent.  The fact is that she wants to feel one way but she can't get herself to do what she needs to do to feel that way.

She wants to be someone but she doesn't have the drive to be someone.  She's phoning it in and following formula.  I want to be someone but I am a robot.  

Formula for StoryMaking

Formula for storymaking:


A problem arises
Analysis of the problem
Organize analytical information concerning the problem
Initiate a plan to correct the problem
Follow through with enacting the plan

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:

+ 

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.