One of my 59 new things I’m trying to do in my 59th year is writing a screenplay. Today, for One Thing Thursday, I offer this very short video to watch. It features Pixar screenwriter Michael Arndt, and is a terrific tutorial (or reminder) for how to get a story started, with easy-to-follow, examples.
The executive summary:
He starts with a metaphor, that trying to write is like climbing a mountain blindfold, and then points out that the hardest bit of that … is finding the mountain.
The summary (but really, watch it!) is that if the first 20 pages or so of a screenplay (or the first few chapters of a novel), you need to establish:
1. Your main character, and their setting
2. Your main character’s “grand passion”: show them doing the thing that defines who they are as a person
3. A hidden flaw that arises out of that grand passion–a good thing that has been taken too far (The examples he gives here are pride and insecurity)
4. Storm clouds gathering.
5. Baboom! Something comes in and turns your hero’s life upside down, and that grand passion gets taken away from them–and that something should have an element of absolute unfairness
and then … this bit is pretty interesting:
6. Faced with a choice, your hero eschews the high-road healthy reaction, and instead takes the low-road, unhealthy choice. And yet it’s what the audience wants him to do, because we feel his pain.
If he takes the high road, “You really don’t have a story.”
Trust me, it makes sense if you watch it.
