The thing that can blow up your budget faster than anything is to allow your screenplay to become overly populated by subplots. Picture yourself as an archer. The finish of your screenplay is a target off in the distance. You are free to do what ever it takes to hit this target, but you are free only to take one shot. Would you pick up a half dozen arrows, awkwardly load them and launch them toward the target or would you select one arrow, carefully aim that arrow and fire it off toward the target?
One well aimed arrow is better than a half dozen shot off in the general direction of your target. One plot well aimed that is ruthlessly pursued is ten times better than a half dozen plots that ramble along, half of which ending no where. Decide where it is that you script is going and steer it there without hesitation. The funny thing about a story that is relentless it is hard to turn away from even if you do not like where it is headed.
The best example of relentless pursuit is the movie Taken. It spends about ten minutes allowing you to get to know the lead characters. The lead is a man who has done a great deal of dirty work for his government all over the world. He is a well trained killer who only really cares about one thing on earth, his daughter. Those first ten minutes tell you about the relationship between father and daughter. People close to him talk about how he would drop everything to be there for his little girl’s birthdays. He reluctantly agrees to his daughter’s overseas vacation. Within minutes of her arrival in Europe she is targeted and then taken by sex traffickers. In a short and bitter conversation with the man who has taken her he explains who he really is and if she is not released unharmed he will come looking, he will find them and he will kill them. Basically return my daughter or you will die. You can repeat this phrase after watching ever single scene that follows and ninety percent of them revolve around that simple phrase. There is no one that he would not torture or kill to complete this mission. There is nothing on earth that could be said or offered to him that would change his mind and nothing short of death will stop him.
Some say that the greatest modern script is Witness. It is a great script, but I would argue that for the sake of sheer momentum I would place Taken ahead of it. Never looking away from one’s goals as a writer or the characters that we create is a good thing. Give your characters something that they must do, that they must have and or something that they will die for and you will have created a memorable character if not as well a great script.
Actors always ask the question “What is my motivation?” In Taken it is to get your daughter back alive. In Hamlet it is to revenge a father’s murder. In the Wizard of Oz it is to go home. Find that one thing and your screenplay may largely write itself.
