Lecture 7:

How do I Move My Story?

Almost Famous (2000)

Written by Cameron Crowe
Professor Michael Green
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 Previous Lesson
• Basic Three-part
Structure
• The Set-Up
• The Rising Action
(Developing the
Conflict), the Climax
and the Resolution
• Writing Exercise #5 –
Your Treatment Notorious (1946)
Written by Ben Hecht
 In this Lesson
• Plotting – The Twists
and Turns
• The Role of Conflict
• The Principles of
Action
• Writing Exercise #6

The Crying Game (1992)

Written by Neil Jordan
Plotting – The Twists and Turns

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Written by Francis Coppola and John Milius (screenplay) and
Michael Herr (narration) and Joseph Conrad (novel)

Lesson 7: Part I 4
 Writing the Plot
• Once you have an understanding of
structure and the purpose of each section of
the story, you can begin to think of the actual
step by step plan for constructing the plot.
• Plotting is the nuts and bolts construction of
your story. It orchestrates the action and
conflict, designs the sequences, and creates
the storyline so that the progression of
events makes sense, builds suspense and
moves your audience.
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 Writing the Plot (Continued)
• Writing plot is never easy and you shouldn’t
expect it to come to you just because you
have a concept, protagonist and goal.
• Plot develops as you turn a general theme
and characters into specific details – actions,
dialogue, circumstances, time and place.
• Good plot evolves organically from the
reaction of a particular character in a
particular situation.
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 Plot as Action
• Plot depends on the protagonist pushing
the action forward, whether by his own
design or as a reaction to a situation.
• If the plot is a mere natural sequence of
incidents, with no real orchestrated rising
action, it will be ineffective.
• The incidents may reveal character, but if
they don’t advance the plot a step further
towards the crisis, if they don’t lead to a big
situation, they’ll be of no dramatic value.
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 Obstacles
• Remember, plot is made interesting by the
obstacles standing in your character’s way.
• The audience watches with anticipation, in
suspense, waiting to see if the protagonist
will succeed or fail.
• If the attainment of the goal is too easy or
unrealistic, no one will care.
• But if the struggle is fierce and the
suspense intense, the audience will feel
satisfied at the end of the film.
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 Simple Plot
• A simple but very effective form of plot is
one in which the protagonist is put into a
predicament, stays there as long as the
writer can keep up the suspense, and then
is extricated in a surprising way.
• But in addition to the bare predicament, you
must find interesting and logical reasons for
the character falling into the predicament,
logical causes for his inability to get out,
and finally a logical but unforeseen escape.
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 Example
• In Powder Keg, the predicament of the
protagonists is that they are trapped in a
Latin American country, with killers after
them, and the photographer has been shot.
• The suspense, which is maintained for most
of the film’s running time, has to do with
whether or not they will make it across the
border to safety.

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 Example (Continued)
• The surprise comes when they make it
across in a daring escape, but the
photographer is killed.
• There are interesting and logical reasons
for the characters falling into the
predicament, logical causes for their
inability to get out, and finally a logical
but unforeseen escape.
• There is also irony, character
development and theme.
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 Plot vs. Story
• A story is a series of events recorded
in their chronological order.
• A plot is a series of events
deliberately arranged so as to reveal
their dramatic, thematic, and emotional
significance.
• Stories may not require conflict or
desire and may be designed simply to
inform or amuse an audience.
• Plot needs conflict and desire to work.
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 Three Factors in Creating Plot
• Creating a strong plot is dependent on
three important factors.
• First, plot refers to the arrangement of
events to achieve an intended effect. A plot
is constructed to make a point, to reach a
climax that produces a specific result.
• Second, plots are based on casually
related events. These cause and effect
relationships between scenes are
instrumental in creating continuity of action.
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 Three Factors in Creating Plot
(Continued)
• Third, a plot must have enough conflict to
awaken the audience’s desire to see what
happens next.
• Depending on the story, conflict can be
strong or subtle – but there has to be
enough to arouse and maintain your
audience’s interest.
• This conflict must be significant to the
characters to be meaningful to the viewer.
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 Some Plot Devices
• Conflict
• Suffering
• Discovery
• Reversal
• Surprise
• Suspense
• Frame Story
• Flashback
Ghostbusters (1984)
Written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis
 Defining Your Plot
• Once you know your protagonist and his
goal, a good starting point is to establish
– What internal and external forces are in conflict
with her?
– Which characters are trying to accomplish or
decide something?
– What will the result of the action/struggle be?
– What themes are you interested in elucidating?

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 Defining Your Plot (Continued)
• Next, establish the inciting incident and the
climax – not exactly what happens, but
whether or not your hero succeeds.
• Next, focus on the active moments in your
material – the moments of conflict, change,
growth and discovery. These moments are
usually the most dramatically significant.

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 The Basic Outline
• A general plan for your script:
– A balanced situation (main exposition)
– Some force that unbalances the situation
(inciting incident)
– The character’s reaction/decision to act
– Consequences of your character’s action
(obstacles and complications)
– Re-establishment of balance (climax and
resolution) or
– New balance or degeneration into chaos
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 The Basic Outline (Continued)
• This is only a general plan from which to
work. Don’t be afraid to change, organize
or even delete scenes as you move
ahead. Once you have your outline,
creating a more specific scene-by-scene
outline of the plot will provide the
connections between the story beats.
• Remember to always keep the conflict at
the front of your mind.

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 The Role of Conflict

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Written by George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson (story) and David Koepp (screenplay)

Lesson 7: Part II 20
 The Function of Conflict
• Remember, conflict:
– Engages and sustains your audience’s interest.
– Reveals your characters to the audience.
– Forces your character to choose between the
easy and the hard and in doing so defines his or
her character.
– Forces emotion out into the open, which creates
a connection between characters and audience.
– Gives the screenplay balance, purpose and
forward momentum.
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 Positive and Negative Conflict
Development
• Conflict must develop both positively and
negatively for your protagonist – in other
words, she must win some and lose some.
She can’t succeed in every attempt at a
goal, nor be turned back on every attempt.
• When conflict develops this way, it makes it
less likely that the audience can predict how
the film is going to end. They can’t assume
the protagonist will definitely prevail.
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 Failure as Teacher
• In addition to creating suspense and making
the ending difficult to predict, negative
outcomes to conflicts set up incidents of
failure from which your protagonist can learn.
• Failure can be a great teacher for your
characters, just as it is for us in real life.
• Failure demands examination. If we are
committed to our goals but have trouble
reaching them, then we must examine our
lives to figure out how we can succeed.
 Failure as Teacher (continued)
• Your protagonist’s failure to hit his goals can
either defeat him or force him to change in
ways that allow him to grow and succeed in
his quest.
• How he changes – grows or disintegrates –
deepens your characterization of him.
• It also creates surprise twists and develops
the theme.
 Unity of Opposites
• Conflict between a protagonist and an
antagonist works best when the characters
are locked together in a zero sum game with
no possible compromise between them.
• This creates a strong rising conflict because
the characters have strong purposes and
convictions and will fight for what they want.
• The more evenly matched they are, the
stronger the battle and the more suspenseful
the outcome.
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 Unity of Opposites (Continued)
• If the conflict of your story revolves around
a situation, or the antagonist is a force and
not a person, find a way to personalize the
obstacle for the protagonist.
• A clash of man against nature can be
translated into personal conflict only if
nature objectifies a challenge that the
protagonist has set for himself. It is not a
conflict between man and nature or beast,
but a struggle within the man himself.
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 Types of Conflict
• In film, conflict doesn’t always mean
physical violence. Audiences relate better
to emotional violence than to physical,
because more of us have experience it.
• Physical violence makes for good drama
as well. Just make sure – especially in a
short film – that it has a point and is not
used gratuitously.
 Conflict Rises in Waves
• To be effective in constructing a plot,
conflict needs to rise in waves. Along
the way, between episodes of conflict,
there need to be episodes of respite and
temporary “fixes.”
• These short-term solutions just prolong
the final confrontation with the
antagonist. Delaying the confrontation
often builds tension.
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 Conflict Rises in Waves
(Continued)
• The respites between the conflict also
allow the writer the chance to fill in
important details about main characters.
These details help the audience define
their relationship to the characters.
• A plot deepens by dramatizing the main
character’s reactions to the events. As with
real life, we need time to understand the
allies we have and the foes we face.
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 Possibilities, Probabilities and
Necessity
• At the beginning of a screenplay, anything is
possible. But after the first scene the
possibilities of what can happen become
increasingly limited.
• Once the beginning defines specific
situation, group of characters and conflict,
the screenwriter leaves the realm of the
possible and enters the realm of the
probable.
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 Possibilities, Probabilities and
Necessity (Continued)
• The characters must follow one or more lines
of probability in reaction to the conflict as the
plot unfolds so that by the end the writer is
limited to only what is necessary – there can
be only one resolution.
• However, this does not mean that the climax
is inevitable from the start – and the plot
must appear as though it is changing
directions – only that it is logical and borne
out of character actions and decisions.
 The Ending
• Problems with the end of a script generally
indicate more than trouble with the final
scenes. More often then not they reveal a
plot that has disintegrated along the way.
• As a screenwriter, you must learn how to
avoid problematic endings through effective
plotting long before the final scenes.

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The Principles of Action

Dream Girls (2006)

Written by Bill Condon (screenplay) and Tom Eyen (book)

Lesson 7: Part III 33

 The Principles of Action
• The Principles of Action describe three sets
of scene relationships that help us weave
the threads of a story together and create
real narrative momentum. They are:
– Cause and Effect relationships between scenes
– Rising conflict (attack and counterattack)
– Foreshadowing Conflict

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 Cause and Effect
• Each scene or moment should advance the
action and cause a reaction in the following
scene and moment – the language of drama
depends on this, that we see the cause and
effect to understand what is going on.
• The successful story shows not only actions,
but reactions, allowing the audience to better
identify with them through their own
emotional responses to what’s happening.
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 Action and Emotion
• Cause and effect scene relationships allow
you to show emotional reactions within the
parameters of the plot. Without dramatizing
the emotional side of the story, films lose
dimension. If plot is all action and no
emotion, it winds up melodrama, and the
audience will be less likely to fully embrace it.
• As you plot, ask yourself ‘what would my
character feel as a result of what just
happened and what would he do then?’
 Example

Apollo 13 (1995)
Written by Jim Lovell & Jeffry Kruger (book) and William Broyles, Jr. & Al Reinert (screenplay)
 Rising Conflict
• Rising conflict is also based on casual
scene relationships and it entails attack and
counterattack. We see this when characters
battle each other, most often during the
second half of the story.
• They become increasingly threatening to the
protagonist as the story progresses and
lead directly to the last crisis and climax.

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 Foreshadowing the Conflict
• To foreshadow means to show, indicate
or suggest something beforehand. In film
or fiction, when we foreshadow conflict, we
are letting the audience know it’s coming.
• Foreshadowing is also based on causality,
but it’s different than basic cause and
effect and rising action because the effects
of the foreshadowing aren’t felt until later in
the story.
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 Foreshadowing the Conflict
(continued)
• Since there is little time to waste in short
films, foreshadowing isn’t as readily
employed, yet it does appear, often in the
setting up of opposing characters – as in
who is going to become an antagonist.

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 Assignments

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

Written by Danilo Bach (story) and Daniel Petrie, Jr. (story and screenplay)

Lesson 7: Part IV 41
 E-Board Post #1
• Watch the short film from the lesson,
Copy, and analyze how the film uses
some of the plotting devices we’ve
covered in this lesson, including
obstacles, positive and negative
conflict development, failure as a
teacher and conflict rising in waves.
You may need to return to the lecture or
the book to brush up on the concepts.

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 E-Board Post #2
• Choose any feature film you have seen
and describe how foreshadowing works.
What is it’s purpose within the film? Is it
needed to complete the telling of the
story? Why or why not?

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 Writing Exercise #6
• Write one scene (or potential scene) in
your script. Make sure that the scene is in
proper screenplay format and that it
includes conflict in one of the many ways
that we have seen it manifested in the
course so far.

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 End of Lecture 7

Next Lecture: How do I Fade In?