This is impossible! I need help

Why not have some of the characters that know each other call on the phone to tell their friends about their luck/good fortune/windfall, and have that friend respond with something like, "that's so bizarre, because I too, just came into some extra cash..."

Dusty,

Look around the net and see if you can find a copy of the script for Magnolia - it introduces a lot of characters in a very short time. It might help.

Kat

why not start the script with six really quick vignettes of each them getting their windfall. After they've all been introduced you can start delving deeper into all of them

Okay, I am VERY new to screenwriting (only one partially completed so far), so take this with a grain of salt, but I think that introducing six characters in ten pages, especially if they're all going to receive their money, is TOO MUCH. As a viewer, I would have trouble keeping everybody straight.

I would probably pick the three characters that are the strongest, and whose stories are the most compelling. Introduce them and their situations first, in the first ten pages. Then introduce the three additional characters, as you are continuing to tell the stories of the first three, in the next ten or fifteen pages.

I feel a montage sequence coming on...

a simple picture tells a story, a character holding a giant check receiving lottery winnings, a character signing a document at a bank and loan officer handing them a check... possibilities are endless, you can go into the backstory later. No dialogue needed, you could go through all six characters in a relatively short time just by showing and not telling how they received their wealth.

3 pages, 5 max.

That's what I was thinking. No Dialog, no "getting to know them" just visual introductions.

Another way you could do it, is the way Sin City did. They weren't all introduced at once, just when their time came.

Rainy Night said:

I feel a montage sequence coming on...

a simple picture tells a story, a character holding a giant check receiving lottery winnings, a character signing a document at a bank and loan officer handing them a check... possibilities are endless, you can go into the backstory later. No dialogue needed, you could go through all six characters in a relatively short time just by showing and not telling how they received their wealth.

3 pages, 5 max.

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DustySterling said:

I am working on an ensemble script with six main characters who all come into a lot of money in different ways. Each character has their own story and some mix in with others. This is my problem. I'm in a screenwriting workshop in May where they go over the first ten pages of your script. I have six character to introduce and show how they get their money.

I have cut and cut the script to try to make it so I introduce all six by page 12 or so. (which kind of sucks since the workshop is for the first ten) As of right now I have three characters introduced (two of them haven't gotten their money yet) and I'm on page 8! I still have three more characters to go.

I dont' know if I should just use another screenplay for this workshop. But either way, I still have just 10 or so pages I need to introduce everyone, right?

Help! I'm stuck.

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Who says you have to start the story at the beginning?

Don't these characters ever meet? Okay, let me rephrase that.

You're the writer. This is your world. You can make them meet -- and if you want (and why wouldn't you?) -- you can make that meeting happen in the course of a really dramatic and critical moment for all of them.

That is, the stories may start in all sorts of different ways, but somehow or other (well, not "somehow or other, but really because you've constructed it that way) -- all of the various stories converge in some really disastrous fashion --

So start the movie there -- with all of the disastrous thing converging -- but cut away before anything really resolves, leaving a kind of cliff hanger.

Then go back -- maybe cut from somebody about to be shot or shoot somebody or something terrible -- to that same person before he got the money -- that is, before the initiating incident, in a completely different and essentially neutral situation --

-- and then let the story unfold.

And at that point, because you have, in essence "anchored" the story at the far end -- by letting people know where it's going, they will then have a much greater degree of patience while you introduce these various characters, because they will know, as you're going through all of this set-up stuff -- okay, how is what I'm seeing here -- or here -- or here, of what I'm learning about this guy, or this one, or this one -- going to connect up to that crazy chaotic thing that I saw at the beginning?

Of course, if you do it that way -- you'll have to ultimately answer those questions.

But in terms of the ten pages, the opening scene -- what will probably be the "end of Act Two' scene -- will introduce those characters at a moment of crisis, where we will see them in action.

Then, you can go back and maybe meet one or two of them in an "intro" setting -- and the readers will sort of get the idea of what's coming up.

NMS

I'm a nub, but I really enjoy movies that have a lot of characters that cross paths. I believe theres a movie called crash that's sort of like this. I suggest a peek into the lives of each character in the first 10 pages. That will give us a sense of what they have to gain or lose later in the story. Magnolia and Crash did this to an extent. I would save the money for later and develop the characters and their hardships.

Although, I do remember a movie with Brendan Frazier in it called 20 dollars or something like that that followed the path of a 20 dollar bill from character to character and didnt introduce the characters until they came a cross the 20. So it all depends on what kind of script you want to write. Is it something that flows from character to character, or do we follow the stories of all 6 of the characters throughout the script?

Do it the way the Taoists do it, flip some coins.

icerose said:

Another way you could do it, is the way Sin City did. They weren't all introduced at once, just when their time came.

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And Pulp Fiction. And the Red Violin...? (haven't seen that one)


Some ensemble pieces have a "key" character central to the relationships. Think Steve Martin in Parenthood. We begin with him and are introduced to the other characters at a family gathering. THEN we break off into the subplots. Same as in Boogie Nights which begins primarily with Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg, and through them we meet the other characters. Don Cheadle and Julianne Moore's subplots don't begin until after we meet them through Mark and Burt's journey of the Dirk character.