You are having problems with your screenplay. You know how it begins,
but the middle and the end have you at a loss. I can tell you this much. The
place that you start should be the place where you finish.
A good script is a perfect circle and allow me to explain how and why.
You story will most like begin with your characters living in their idea
world. A perfectly calm existence is shattered and it is a never ending scramble to return to that perfect life.
Sounds crazy?
Remember the Godfather?
The opening scenes?
The family is happy and intact. They are celebrating a wedding. The
Godfather and is inner circle are in total control of a world that is going to be
attacked from both outside and within. This world is destroyed. The Godfather
is shot. Sonny, his oldest son is killed, his enforcer is killed and his youngest
son Michael is beaten. From this point on there is a never ending quest by those
left standing to put their universe back into its proper order.
The last scene of the film, after all the violence and bloodshed, is Michael
in his father’s place as Godfather conducting business as his father did when the
film began. All is right with the world. The natural order has been restored.
You can look at a saga like Lord of The Rings and the same holds true. Where
does that story begin? Home, comfortable and safe. After an endless quest
where does it end up. Frodo and Sam back to where they started. Missing
a finger here and a lot of bruises there they are back to the perfect world
that they had to flee.
Some stories begin with that perfect world already shattered and through
flashbacks it is revealed through out the story. The character is forever trying to
find away to or back to their idea world. Some characters do not realize that their
world was great until they venture outside of their comfort zone and after having
all of their illusions shattered to they really appreciate what they had going for them.
A great example of this is in the minor UK classic Mona Lisa starring Bob Hoskins.
Your characters do not travel along an arc if the story is going to be
great and memorable, they travel along a circle. That circle traveled in the Wizard
of Oz. Dorothy has to leave home to realize that there is no place like home.
Send your characters on grand adventures, but always keep the end zone
in sight. The place that they are headed looks a great deal like the place that they
have just left behind. I am not suggesting that it should be a steady walk
toward the place that they just left. Put obstacles in their way.
See if they can jump through an endless series of hoops, but at the
end of it all if they have proven themselves worthy let them come home.
They do not need a hero’s welcome, but they need to return to
the world where they feel most welcome. There is a line in one of the greatest
of all westerns, Ride the High Country, where the lead say that all he wants at the
end of the day is to come home Justified. He wants to go off into the world, do
what his code of honor will allow him to do and come back home knowing
that he could not have done things any other way.
Look at Michael in the Godfather or Sam in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy both
of these characters did things their way. Always guided by their own personal
code and in the end they make it back to a world where they belong.
The greatest stories ever told are not straight lines.
They are not rocky hills and valleys, but as Scarlett traveled in
Gone With the Wind, they are a full circle and the fuller the better.
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