Need some advice on plot.

Aldenard said:

Ok, I have completly developed the characters, know every single setting I would like to have, know the begining, middle, and end, and the general themes of the screenplay. There's one big problem: The external conflict is nearly nonexistant. I have failed miserably at the goal of movies: to illustrate a story with action. Instead I have written something close to a small indie character-based drama, and it doesn't work, at least how I want it to be.

I know I need to develop a clear goal for the protagonist, and allow his character to react to the obstacles how he should. This has become tricky, especially considering how he needs to meet quite a few other characters at certain points. I'm probably going about this all wrong and making myself seem like an idiot, but I felt the need to seek advice if anyone here is willing to give it.

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There are a set of plot "types" that are used repeatedly in features, redemption and coming of age (or maturation) to name two.

There's the distinction between character-driven and plot-driven stories, which in the former means the conflict is an inner one and in the latter it is an external one.

What is your story about? I think that's the key question at this stage. If someone were to ask you what your story is about, what would be your 30-second answer?

It may be that your story is about the inner conflicts your main character suffers and grapples with, and if that's the case you have a character-driven story ... and there's not a thing in the world wrong with that.

And if it is you might consider getting your hands on some character-driven scripts and check how they were done. Character-driven stories are tough because the conflict is difficult to portray, it being inside your character's head and hence not directly visible.

But if it becomes clear that your story isn't about your main character's inner conflicts, then it's a plot-driven tale and yes, you do need to establish some external conflict that drives him along, beats him up, drags him through the gutter, and then gives him a chance to rise like a Phoenix in the third act and conquer all.

In your current rendition, what creates the drama? What is it that WE are interested in and why does it impart a sense of the dramatic to us?

It appears to me you are wrestling with a lack of clarity with respect to the conflict, is it inner? Is it external? You need to choose, it's gotta be one or the other, by and large it can't be both. Once you reach a conclusion on this, I expect the road ahead will light up and you'll know what you have to do.

HTH!

Aldenard...

I know this is going to sound corny but...

There is no spoon.

Ponder that for a while.

I can not believe if you have a start, middle and end to the film that the protagonist does not already poses a goal. Sometimes in this position i have found that you need to step back.... think about what motivated you to start writing, what is it that interested you about the subject matter… what you like / dislike about the character and what it is that makes you want to write this story.
This then becomes the goal. I have found I have read many a script where you feel like they new what the goal was before writing but by the end the character is a mush of contradictions. For me a characters arc or goal or objective (whatever you want to call it) is the heart to any story and if in re-writes this is not maintained the story you are trying to tell is lost.

With lost in translation specifically, for me, the film is purely and in simple terms about boredom and although that is not under the “normal” film terms it helps to underpin what goes on in every scene in the film.

Once you have found that word for your film it will help you to address any issues and to complete your screenplay.

Tom Pepper said:

I can not believe if you have a start, middle and end to the film that the protagonist does not already poses a goal.

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That's what I was thinking too.

Personally, Lost in Translation bored me. But that's me.

What you need is some help and the only help I can offer is a book I just finished and am re-reading and will probably re-read again before the end of the month.

Fiction Writing Demystified

It is written by Tom Sawyer (really) who was head writer/producer, etc. on Murder, She Wrote for 12 years.

While most of the stuff in the book is based on his experiences with this and other TV programs, I am finding it has helped and continues to help me develop my current novel.

It's $16 dollars at: http://www.ashleywilde.com/fwd.html

I just hope this post doesn't violate any of the guidelines on this site because I've found it too valuable to be kicked off.

Why do you need a plot?

Linear storytelling and the incessant duty of every scene to advance a story of some kind are killing the American cinema.

Just make your characters enigmatic or solid, passive or hyperactive, depressed or happy, or any combination of all these things so they represent actual well-rounded human beings, and the story will settle itself.

I watched an interview last night with Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard, and they were lamenting how few movies are written for characters, and they both giggled with outright disrespect for Ameeican movies that are little more than plot devices. What do we know of any character ever played by Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson? These guys make entertainment which is ridiculously handcuffed by the need for loud noises or strobe effects to keep their audiences awake, never mind keep their audiences actually caring what happens to their characters.

Don't feel handicapped by the plot or lack of it if you think you've got what you say you have in your post.

Why do you need a plot?

Just make your characters ...so they represent actual well-rounded human beings, and the story will settle itself.

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If I want to see what real human beings act like, then I don't need to spend money on a movie.

I can experience the stories of real human beings simply by experiencing life.

But I enjoy movies simply because I enjoy cool stories and cool (non-well-rounded characters). Sure, we don't know much about Indiana Jones, but they are great movies.

What is 'wrong' with the American film market isn't because people aren't writing 'well-rounded' characters - it's because of people like me who are willing to pay to watch Indiana Jones but won't spend money to watch Win Wender classics like "A Notebook on Cities and Clouds" (!?)

Plenty of people are writing movies with characters that Win Wender would approve of. But people like me aren't interested in watching those movies.

There are plenty who do want to watch those movies - enough to make a decent 'indie' industry. But if Win Wender wants to run a restaurant that specialises in French cuisine, it makes no sense to make fun of customers who want eat Pizza instead.

He could change the focus of his restaurant and make Pizzas - or just choose to make good French food. But mocking Pizza Restaurants (and hence their customers as well) ? It doesn't make sense.

Mac

Mac --

I like pizza, too! I screamed my head off during the first five minutes of Indiana Jones. And half of Wim Wenders films are bad, terrible.

I'm responding to the question of how films like Lost in Translation have that special feel. If Aldenard is Spielberg, great, he or she shouldn't waste their time here. But if Aldenard wants to capture that "Lost in Translation" feel or get a script or story noticed by professionals, the plot just isn't as important as the characters.

The problem isn't Indiana Jones being served up with pepperoni, it's that Spielberg is hard to copy, and the plotline paradigm that serves as the staple of American movies is ahindrance to anyone breaking in, from any angle. As writer, producer, filmmaker . . . worry about making people interesting rather than tossing characters through a silly schedule of twists and turns which in the wrong hands usually become moans and yawns.

Going back to your original post, I just want to offer a story from my own life.

I recently switched agents to a highly-respected and very successful guy who has clients who've done it all from television to films and who have won most awards going including the Oscar. Given that we're just starting to work together, he read a couple of scripts I'd written and we had a face-to-face a couple of weeks ago.

He told me that I have his words, "an extraordinary talent for scriptwriting" and that my craft is absolutely second-nature. He was also very impressed by the range of stories I had and the frequency and diversity of ideas I was able to come up with.

But... he just doesn't feel my voice is coming through in the scripts. He thinks that for so long I have been constrained by trying to write big movies, trying to anticipate what people want and trying to be the best craftsman that I can be that my own voice has become smothered.

He wants me to relax and start writing things that I care about. He told me, do not worry about 'the rules'. Know the rules and respect the rules but do not become so obsessed with regurgitated conventions that you lose sight of the story you're trying to tell.

Lost In Translation works so well because it's a story Copolla deeply cares about and told from the heart against whatever screenwriting dos and don'ts were probably buzzing around her head.

Make sure this is a story you actually care about telling and not because you think its successfully checks a lot of boxes. Then, tell the story from the heart using your voice and not some mutated screenwriting-speak. You should not flagrantly break 'the rules' but similarly, your own voice should not suffer because of them.

My agent told me he'd take original voices over efficient writers any day. Thankfully he's happy to wait and see what I come up with. It's a scary thought for me - doing something based on me, on my passions but I know I'm up to the challenge.

seanie blue said:

Mac --

I like pizza, too! I screamed my head off during the first five minutes of Indiana Jones. And half of Wim Wenders films are bad, terrible.

I'm responding to the question of how films like Lost in Translation have that special feel. If Aldenard is Spielberg, great, he or she shouldn't waste their time here. But if Aldenard wants to capture that "Lost in Translation" feel or get a script or story noticed by professionals, the plot just isn't as important as the characters.

The problem isn't Indiana Jones being served up with pepperoni, it's that Spielberg is hard to copy, and the plotline paradigm that serves as the staple of American movies is ahindrance to anyone breaking in, from any angle. As writer, producer, filmmaker . . . worry about making people interesting rather than tossing characters through a silly schedule of twists and turns which in the wrong hands usually become moans and yawns.

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Not sure I agree with any of this. There's about 5 truckloads of scripts on Triggerstreet that neglect plot and focus more on character. I read about 90 of them and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. The best scripts I read on TS were plot based, and very attentive to good dialogue. Good dialogue IS character as far as I'm concerned, and plot matters more than anything in the commercial film world. I will never bother writing my mute Greek bum with leperosy pushing his popsicle cart outside the walls of a Malyasian prison while he searches for his stolen imaginary pet cricket and confronts his drug and gambling addiction and the fact that he has a small dick script because Indie films have just become another avenue for middling writers with nothing really artistic to say to get recognition while they secretly try to sell their halfassed romcom to Paramount.

Sounds like your mute Greek story is more plot based than character based. What artistic statements have been made by the gunk coming out of Hollywood? What was the last movie born and bred to Paramount which anyone could say was "artistic"? I agree with you that "Indie" is as polluted with commercial intent as the cinema mainstream, and I agree with you that a character can be exposed chiefly through good dialogue, but a single writer working alone is much more likely to make a piece of art if he or she stays completely outside the movie mainstream, and when that art is made, regardless of whather it makes money or not, the author can then choose between Hollywood or "independence." Copying Tarantino or using a piece of junk like Mystic River is a surefire way for a writer to get totally lost along the way to self-expression. I have yet to meet a single HAPPY screenwriter in Hollywood's mainstream, because they know they are purveyors of trash, and they're fully capable of feeling the guilt, despite appearances to the contrary. The happy screenwriters I've met have maintained control of their projects from start to finish, even if some of the product is labeled a big fat failure commercially. And if writing something as ultimately light and silly as a screenplay can't make you happy, why bother?

seanie blue said:

Sounds like your mute Greek story is more plot based than character based. What artistic statements have been made by the gunk coming out of Hollywood? What was the last movie born and bred to Paramount which anyone could say was "artistic"? I agree with you that "Indie" is as polluted with commercial intent as the cinema mainstream, and I agree with you that a character can be exposed chiefly through good dialogue, but a single writer working alone is much more likely to make a piece of art if he or she stays completely outside the movie mainstream, and when that art is made, regardless of whather it makes money or not, the author can then choose between Hollywood or "independence." Copying Tarantino or using a piece of junk like Mystic River is a surefire way for a writer to get totally lost along the way to self-expression. I have yet to meet a single HAPPY screenwriter in Hollywood's mainstream, because they know they are purveyors of trash, and they're fully capable of feeling the guilt, despite appearances to the contrary. The happy screenwriters I've met have maintained control of their projects from start to finish, even if some of the product is labeled a big fat failure commercially. And if writing something as ultimately light and silly as a screenplay can't make you happy, why bother?

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Because my mute greek is mute, the plot points unfold slowly and randomly through his facial and bodily expressions of real life angst. I don't get him up a tree, keep him there then let him back down. Any trees you will see in my mute greek art film will be symbolic of his plights and struggles to die with a fleeting smile of contentedness in a monsoon while his last popsicle melts away down a drain

Cool! But what is he actually thinking?

He's thinking of the bygone glories of Ancient Greece, where playwrights were like unto modern-day rock gods and got plenty of poon from the temple girls.

But don't overlook the poignant symbolism of the pet cricket.

-Derek
My Web Page - shameless vampyre fiction & other shameless writings.
Nice shooting, Reverend. It's like I always say, put a fox in the henhouse, you'll have chicken for dinner every time.

seanie blue said:

Why do you need a plot?

Linear storytelling and the incessant duty of every scene to advance a story of some kind are killing the American cinema.

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If this is true, American cinema is dying an excruciatingly long and slow death, because the hero story paradigm has been with us in Hollywood features since day one. I'd grant they've been dumbed down good deal in recent years, 1990 onward let's say, but movies are about movement and you know as well as I that "Waiting for Godot" wouldn't make for a very appealing film ... because it has no movement.

How many movies have been about starting at point "X" and ending up at point "Y" in their telling? The characters are going somewhere, they have something to do when they get there, or not, maybe their journey is the story. In "Easy Rider" they rode to New Orleans; in "Thelma and Louise" they were headed West. The fugitive was trying to get back to Chicago. Thousands of movies have used this story setting, the trip, the voyage, the journey, the river run, a fleeing ... because it provides movement. Think "The Fugitive."

You need a plot because your story has to be about something. No plot, no something. Just characters. Okay, they're "enigmatic or solid, passive or hyperactive, depressed or happy, or any combination of all these things" and "they represent actual well-rounded human beings," but so what? What are they doing? Anything?

Plot tells you what they doing, robbing a bank, doing a drug run, getting married, getting divorced, killing someone, having a baby, drinking themselves to death, gambling away a fortune, trying to find the ark of the covenant, chasing a fugitive ... what are they doing? No plot, no coherent doing.

It is in their doing that characters are revealed, the decisions they make, the choices they make, the things they say and do and how they relate to others and the world. We need to see them in action, doing something.

seanie blue said:

Just make your characters enigmatic or solid, passive or hyperactive, depressed or happy, or any combination of all these things so they represent actual well-rounded human beings, and the story will settle itself.

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No story will ever "settle itself." You have to write it, create it, make it appear on the page, make it work, give it reason, coherence, cause and effect, a place to go, and an ending. That takes work, and plenty of it.

seanie blue said:

I watched an interview last night with Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard, and they were lamenting how few movies are written for characters, and they both giggled with outright disrespect for Ameeican movies that are little more than plot devices. What do we know of any character ever played by Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson? These guys make entertainment which is ridiculously handcuffed by the need for loud noises or strobe effects to keep their audiences awake, never mind keep their audiences actually caring what happens to their characters.

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Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson characters are revealed by what they do, the choices and decisions they make, how they relate to others and the world. The underdeveloped notion we get from them is because they have no flaws, no demons to deal with and conquer, they are too perfect; and that's becuase their stories are weak, they approach superhero status, and as we all know, a super hero by definition has no flaws, e.g., Superman, Batman, Spiderman, James Bond.

But in "Dead Man Walking" we see a character who is flawed, is much less than perfect. We see this in "Shawshank Redemption" and in "Perdition" and see it in spades in "Forrest Gump."

No hero should be perfect; they all have flaws which they endure and eventually overcome, or die by, one or the other. Modern action pictures fail in this regard, their heroes are perfect, which works for the comic book crowd but is less than satisfying for us elders. Thing is, us elders don't go to the movies anymore, the biggest demographic is 12-18 years, and that's who these flat, dull, uninteresting movies are made for, not for you and me. Hollywood panders to its audience.

Indie producers are willing to make pictures that will appeal to you and me ... because they have interesting characters doing interesting things, good dramatic structure and emotionally satisfying endings.

I find Wenders' work dull and boring and uninteresting. I'd rather see Brad Pitt playing a killer on death row.

Agreed: gotta have "well rounded, fully articulated, emotive, interesting characters, even compelling ones," but also gotta have a story, a fresh and unique tale that goes to the heart and makes us feel ... and that won't happen unless you write it.

Cheers, eh?

well

Goodwriterguy said:

The underdeveloped notion we get from them is because they have no flaws, no demons to deal with and conquer, they are too perfect; and that's becuase their stories are weak, they approach superhero status, and as we all know, a super hero by definition has no flaws, e.g., Superman, Batman, Spiderman, James Bond.

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I would even argue that all good superheros have a flaw also! Think about these examples: What's Superman's flaw? He allows himself to fall in love with Louis Lane! Batman's? A tramatic childhood motivates his going after justice. Spiderman? Gives up his powers to get the girl. James Bond? Well... he is flawless. Although he is a womanizer, I don't see that as a flaw though

Flaws, even in superheros is what makes someone human and that is what makes the audience relate to them. No flaws? Who cares. Flaws make people vulnerable and that's what we need in almost every character.

Aldenard said:

Along the same lines as the mute Greek, I have a question: are there any screenplays where the protagonist IS mute?

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Gigot starring Jackie Gleason comes to mind. Have never read the screenplay though

Oh yeah ...

golfaddict68 said:

I would even argue that all good superheros have a flaw also! Think about these examples: What's Superman's flaw? He allows himself to fall in love with Louis Lane!

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Would Louis be Lois's brother?

Uh oh! That is a flaw! Well, unless you're gay, then it would be a virtue.

golfaddict68 said:

Batman's? A tramatic childhood motivates his going after justice. Spiderman? Gives up his powers to get the girl. James Bond? Well... he is flawless. Although he is a womanizer, I don't see that as a flaw though

Flaws, even in superheros is what makes someone human and that is what makes the audience relate to them. No flaws? Who cares. Flaws make people vulnerable and that's what we need in almost every character.

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Batman's "flaw" is a virtue. Gets justice done.

Spiderman just realizes that life with love is better than life without it.

Bond is flawless; womanizing isn't a "flaw" it's just good clean fun.

The "super" in "superhero" is the giveaway; these guys aren't human, they're superhuman.

But you're right, all non-superhero characters need flaws, otherwise, they're not normal and we don't have much to write about. But superhero's? Exclusively plot-driven stories.

Goodwriterguy said:

But you're right, all non-superhero characters need flaws, otherwise, they're not normal and we don't have much to write about. But superhero's? Exclusively plot-driven stories.

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I think a better word than "flaw" is that all super-heros are VULNERABLE. That is the word. If you have a superhero that is not vulnerable.... where is the fun in that? You can certainly find vulnerabities in every superhero.