Story Sense founder
Michael Ray Brown teaches a popular class on screenplay structure. It was
such a hit at the Screenwriting
Expo that the organizers decided to offer it on DVD. As an
introduction, the producers of the disk asked Michael to describe what makes a
good screenplay. The following article appeared in the May 19th, 2006, issue of
CS Weekly, an e-mail newsletter published by the editors of Creative
Screenwriting magazine¹:
Expo Seminar DVD Series
"A Structure Checklist:
How to Plug the Holes in Your Script"
Writers often ask me what I look for in a script. I have only one rule:
The script must capture my interest, and keep me wanting to see what happens
next. But how do you do this?
Do you load up your script with action? Do you keep trying
to shock or surprise your audience? Do you create a "Whammy Chart" like Joel
Silver (producer of The Matrix) does, and make sure there's a "whammy" (a
big action set piece) every twelve minutes? Howard Hawks said, "There are only
six good scenes in any good movie." That may be true, but there's a saying that
you have to "murder your darlings." In other words, you have to be ruthless
about cutting out what doesn't work, even if it's your favorite scene.
Script doctors will tell you the most important thing is
structure. William Goldman says it in his book
Adventures in the Screen
Trade, along with the rule, "Nobody knows anything." But what makes good
structure?
A good story can be broken down into three acts. In act
one, you get your hero up a tree (inciting incident). In act two, you throw
stones at him (complication). And in act three you get him down again
(resolution). That may be an oversimplification, but it points out the one
essential ingredient in all stories: jeopardy.
A story can be defined as how a character copes with
danger. It's the protagonist's motivation to achieve an objective, coupled with
the threat of failure, that drives the plot. This threat is posed by at least
one antagonist. The antagonist is usually external, but there can be internal
obstacles, such as a character's fears.
It's also been said that the essence of drama is people not
getting along. However, conflict alone does not a story make. Again, the
conflict must be focused on an objective. Whether it is the physical
threat to protagonist's life (as in thrillers) or the more subtle threat to his
happiness (as in romantic comedies), the danger is always that the protagonist
may not achieve his goal. And that's what keeps audiences on the edges of their
seats, wanting to know what happens next.
Even if you've taken all the classes and read all the
books, sometimes a script will just stump you. Something doesn't quite work,
but you can't put your finger on it. When I was running the story department at
Metromedia, this occasionally happened to members of my staff. And so, as an
aid to my analysts, I decided to compile a list of everything that could go
wrong in a screenplay.
This list eventually grew to eighteen major wrongs, with
perhaps 100 sub-wrongs under them. When I decided to start teaching a class on
structure, I rewrote the checklist as a toolkit for writers. These are the
questions you must ask yourself about your script:
¹Reprinted with the permission of Erik N.
Bauer, Managing Editor, Creative Screenwriting magazine.
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