Help keep me from Bashing my head into a wall!

Here what you do before killing yourself and us, there is no story that haven’t been told a thousand times before (The hero with thousand faces), the only NEW thing you can add is looking at it, like a crystal ball (from a different prospective), turn it around, play with it, look at from an outsider point of view(Jack in the box of sort), don't try to beat yourself down in trying to be GOD, well at least not yet, just relax and simplify it, great things come with simple approach, ask yourself what are you trying to say, or what the heck is bothering you, what are you trying to tell us, take your story out of this world, go down deep in the ocean, go back in time, do something, just try to find a cradle for it, is it about our feelings, or is it about our differences, is it going to free our souls or it's simply going to make us think, laugh, cry, or loose 7 bucks in the box office on Saturday night, or just flip the channel whenever it's on Cable or education channel, don’t worry about being the greatest screenwriter to walk this earth (You’re not), don’t try to beat the big Kahuna’s records (You’ll never achieve that), just tell your story. Why you chose to write a screenplay from the get go, why carpeting or black smith was not an option. What the hell are you trying to say DARN IT? Say it. End of transmission.

On serious note, good luck!

I agree with the above comment

Pretty much anything has been done before. Harry Potter is basically the retelling of a hero who sets out to defeat an evil wizard (just like The Lord of the Rings). What makes it appealing is the personal touch the author gave it.

Don't worry about making your plots original, try to capture us with exciting characters and rivetting settings. Just give things your own personal touch.

Sometimes it's the trip that counts, not the destination. Probably ninety percent of all stories have the same ending. A happy one. Good guys win. And we keep watching them. If you give us something entertaining to watch, we will.

Ask yourself, what is the final effect I want to achieve? What is the last thing I want to leave my audience with? The last thing you do will make a comment on everything that came before.

Ucla_sb said:

So, me and my writing partner have been lucky enough to find a mentor of sorts to guide us through the process of making a film from beginning to end. We approached him and he agreed and we've been collaborating on developing a story. Throughout hes been very gracious, positive, and supportive. We've nailed down a story he likes and is giving us feedback. (i guess this would technically be "notes" lol) As research i've been reading scripts and watching movies in the vein of what we are writing. So here we are thisclose to financing stage, and a problem keeps coming up with the ending, the big final showdown. everything we come up with has been done before, and we all know it. My positivity is waning and my thought process is what the hell hasn't been done before. Even putting new spins on old ideas is still essentially its been done before. Maybe i should stop reading the screenplays and watching the movies? its killing me, everything else works except the ending. Advice guys? Ive even taken my own and tried something insane, didnt work totally tonally differnet. I'm stuck here! lol

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Generally, if you have a problem with act three, the solution is in act one. That's because you're usually stuck because, whatever the resolution is, has to be set up at the beginning.

If you haven't aimed the gun, it's always going to be hard to hit the bull's eye.

It's even harder to the hit the bull's eye if, from the beginning, you never really were aiming at anything.

This isn't really rocket science. You don't necessarily have to come up with some brilliant "twist."

Look at something like "twelve angry men" -- where the resolution comes down, at the end, to the Lee J. Cobb character's rage against his son -- and we realize that his hatred against the defendant, and his holding out to the end was really all about that.

But you go back and you find that the son is referred to right near the beginning. He's referenced later when the Cobb character talks about getting into a fist fight with him.

Even though we stick to the case all the way through, we are given hints about what this character is about -- again, there's what he "seems" to be about on the surface -- the facts say the kid is guilty -- but we're given the hints that tell us what he's really about -- that he's using the defendant as a kind of surrogate to pour out his resentment against his own son.

That's what you need to do. You need to decide what's really at stake -- what lesson do you need your main character to learn?

That lesson has to be embodied in the final conflict and in the final resolution. That conflict has to come down to a final *decision* -- to fight or not to fight. To chose this or to chose that. To reject this or to accept that. To face that fear or to run from it.

And then, when you know what that "bull's eye" is -- you have to go back and make sure that, from the very beginning, the whole trajectory of your story is bringing us toward that final moment.

NMS