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Chapter 1

FILM IS NOT A VISUAL MEDIUM

So back to this nearly blasphemous statement.

I’m not trying to eradicate over one hundred years of filmmaking or a tradition of the most visually stirring and beautiful films we’ve ever seen. I’m only trying to clear the brush, eliminate the mush, and call it like I see it.

But first you’ll have to meet me halfway, abandon a few concepts you’re stuck with about screenwriting (and movies altogether), and come along with me for the ride. Let’s admit it: you’re looking for help. Admitting you need help is the first step. Accepting help is your next step. With that, we’ll be off on our journey just like in the movies.

Fundamentally, like a good story, it’s all about change. Ironically, in order to change, you have to give up something to gain something.

I’m starting here because I want things to be clear right from the start. This is (hopefully) a way to view and understand movies and screenplays that will help you write them and write them better.

First, let’s start by doing my favorite thing in writing: making sense.

If film really was a “visual” medium . . .

• Whenever we recommend or criticize a film, we would always talk about how “ugly” or “pretty” it is.

• Cinematographers, film editors, painters, sculptors, photographers, designers, and even choreographers would be the majority of successful filmmakers.

• Some of the greatest directors would not have risen from the ranks of writers and actors.

• Writers would not control every minute of the thousands of hours of television that we have watched and are watching now.

• We wouldn’t sell written screenplays using language, based on a story, dialogue, character, and description. We would probably sell a movie as a graphic novel first.

But none of the above is the case.

And while some of our most gifted directors have in fact emerged from some of these professions such as cinematographers Ridley and Tony Scott, film editor Robert Wise, and even production designer Albert Lewin, the vast majority came from four very important branches of filmmaking:

Acting: Orson Welles, Robert Redford, Jon Favreau

Writing: Billy Wilder, Francis Ford Coppola, Charlie Kaufman

Directing: William Wyler, Martin Scorcese, D. W. Griffith

Producing: Cecil B. DeMille, Alan J. Pakula, Joseph Mankiewicz

Why?

I’m not trying to be crazy. I will say that film uses visual tools to tell its story. We would be nowhere without the whole cinematographic idea of films, its images, motion, and sound; the whole wonderful visceral experience of movies. And I will be the first one to say that Gravity would be nothing if it had never been a film.

But it’s been a long time since audiences were simply held in thrall of the simplest kinographic qualities of film. After The Sneeze (1894) and Train Enters a Station (1895) everyone involved in filmmaking, including audiences, have been asking, “So what else have you got?”

Why?

Because we don’t really go to movies simply because they look good, just as you wouldn’t start a serious relationship with somebody simply based on their appearance (please, humor me!).

Let’s agree that when we go to a movie, we want to feel something even if it’s an avoidance of actual real-life emotional experience. We depend on movies to show us a story — hopefully one with some emotional content.

It wasn’t long after these two early films that the visual tools of filmmaking were applied to drama; to the telling of a story about a character in order to excite the audience. In 1903 Edwin S. Porter released A Day in the Life of an American Fireman and suddenly everything changed. Using something called film editing (or in French, montage) Porter created the illusion of things really happening onscreen — physically, graphically, and emotionally. They were happening right now, in front of our eyes, with a level of excitement, both on screen and off, that had never been experienced before.

Audiences went nuts! (in a good way). Followed by The Great Train Robbery, anyone involved in movies immediately recognized that what had really been accomplished was a method of bringing stories, like plays on the stage, to the screen, but it was different.

While stage drama asks us to suspend our belief in an extreme way (after all, we’re in the same room as Julius Caesar, yet surrender to the belief that he is actually murdered), movies suck us in. Movies conquer an audience like no other medium. For all intents and purposes, movies are real. And strangely, watching live human beings in theater, opera, dance, and the symphony is somehow artificial. Who can explain it?

So what kind of medium is film? We go to films primarily to see characters (played by good actors) get into and out of trouble (usually in that order).

So when taken as this hybrid package, I would say film is:

A STORY medium . . .

. . . where we experience PERFORMANCE of AN ORDEAL (by actors) . . .

. . . moving through TIME.

Those are the three key elements of what makes film a very special hybrid medium. This is what I propose will keep you on track as you work on your script. It will, hopefully, keep you focused on the emotional, and not so much the visual — although, I promise, visuals will be there to use as you wish.

We go to the movies to observe a person in a narrative, which is an account of a human struggle that will excite us in some way. This includes comedies and documentaries. Every movie is developed and sold to the public as a terrific story with wonderful, well-known actors. They are playing characters — not simply striking poses or moving in shapes and rhythms. They are acting out a story that will make us laugh or cry or both.

And let’s not forget the time thing. We mess around with time in movies more than any other medium. Certainly you can contain and manipulate time in novels and plays. But a movie has that special distinction of being able to entertain the audience with its treatment of time.

It’s a wild kind of ride when you actually think about it. You sit there watching a story that takes place “now,” yet it can, if it wants to, travel in any direction in time that’s feasible and yet still have a beginning, middle, and end — and it isn’t normally about time travel at all.

Memento proves this in spades. So does Citizen Kane. And in every way so does any other movie regardless of its treatment of time. As an audience we are utterly convinced that days, months, or years have passed, yet we’re out of the theater in about two hours. Amazing. But that’s not necessarily storytelling. That’s just the miracle of drama.

These days the thing that drives me nuts, especially in teaching screenwriting in various higher institutions is that my students go to see perfectly lousy movies and they come into my class saying, “Hey — I can do that!”

But they’re wrong. I assure you: those perfectly crappy screenplays were born wanting to be an Oscar winner. But a process occurred, almost like raising a sweet little baby who turns out to be a mass murderer, where all those involved took a silk purse and made it into a sow’s ear. Nobody really intended to do it. It just happens. That’s the sad part of our business and our craft. Good stuff gets ruined. Bad stuff gets made. It’s just the way it is.

That’s why when I teach I rarely if ever tell a student, “That’s good” or “That’s bad.” My only criterion is “Does it work?” Like a chair, people have to be able to sit in it. Your screenplay must abide by certain recognizable qualities yet it can’t go around copying every chair either. How do we do this?

It’s funny how if you’ve never played a musical instrument or studied composition and music for years you never feel you could just sit down and write a symphony.

I’m not sure why, but people would never think of picking up a violin and expect to play Carnegie Hall. Or put on a tutu and start rehearsing Swan Lake. But for some strange reason, everyone who’s seen a movie or watched TV thinks they can just sit down and write a script.

People suddenly wake up one morning, without any training in dramatic writing and say: “I’m gonna write and sell a screenplay! I’ve seen all these movies. If I just copy them, I’ll be successful!”

Good luck.

Yes, screenwriting (and to a lesser extent playwriting) are “folk” arts. You don’t need a PhD. Nobody who looks at your script asks, “Where’d you study?” You are not certified. There are no cumulative hours for a license (like an airlines pilot). You are free to do it in any way that gives you satisfaction.

But it helps to know what you’re doing. Learning to write scripts is no different than any other craft. You learn the basics and start doing it. You compare your work to that of others around you and find out how good you might be. You might get produced. Or you might earn the support and recognition of other practitioners.

It takes time, training, diligence, and patience. You cannot just sit down and be good at it. I don’t know a single TV or movie writer who just sat down and did it the first time out. I’m sure there are a few, but it’s rare. And I don’t teach rarity or genius. I do the nutsand-bolts approach. I will guide you toward writing a script that’s emotionally and intellectually satisfying; a script that makes sense and, above all, helps you see what it is that makes a script work.

So before you pick up that violin, let’s take a few lessons first.

Why It’s Taken You So Long to Write an Unfinished Script

This so-called script you’ve been working on for over four years??? — that’s a problem. I’m not talking about rewrites. I once spent over eight years on a script (not every day but stretched out over time). Working with a very smart director-producer friend, we kept overhauling this thing to make it better. We also kept submitting it to studios and networks, getting feedback and using what we agreed on to improve the script. That’s a terrific process in my opinion.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about this project you keep going back to you that you’re never satisfied with and that you probably haven’t shown to anybody who knows what they’re talking about.

Here’s some idea of the actual timeline of a professional screenplay.

When a writer signs a Writers Guild of America (WGA) agreement to write a script, the first draft is usually due in about three months — “13 weeks.” In other arrangements it might be six months. And in very rare situations, where there is a long-term development process, it will be delivered in one year. That’s a first draft. Then it spends some time going through rewrites (“development”), sometimes with other writers, sometimes with the original writer(s); sometimes with a director or sometimes with a star and his/her development team.

There’s a bit of a disclaimer here: the actual script can take 13 to 20 weeks. But if you are already doing what you’re supposed to be doing you either know the whole story, from beginning to end, or you have actually created a beat sheet or a treatment that summarizes, scene-by-scene, the entire script before you start writing that script.

So it’s not unreasonable for a buyer to think you can sit down and write it in a few months. And you can.

But first . . .

• You have to come up with the idea.

• Then make that idea “storyworthy” (keep reading . . . )

• Then, research and research and research your story (even if it’s a comedy. Even if it’s your own personal experience; even if it’s all made up!).

• Then, create a beat sheet, step outline, or detailed treatment (all different versions of the same document)

• Then you sit down and write this nuisance of a document called a screenplay.

But if you haven’t come up with a first draft in about a year, it’s because you started out wrong and just went wrong-er. You put yourself on the wrong path and you just kept going and going and going. You lost your way and I assure you, you won’t find your way back or out or any other “right” path because you weren’t right to begin with. You didn’t start off on the right foot and dozens of other euphemisms for “Go back to GO.”

This is totally your fault!

But don’t despair, you can totally fix it if you’re willing to start at the beginning with your idea and then go through all the necessary steps to prove and exploit the most important property of your idea: Is it “storyworthy”? This is like “seaworthy” for a ship. Will it float? Does it work? Or will it sink the minute it’s launched? Or will it just float around without going anywhere?

If You Feel Good Writing It, You’re Doing It Wrong!

I believe that you’re reading this book so I can save you a lot of heartache. And I apologize: I cannot advise you to simply sit down and write your script. If I did, you would write a pretty flimsy script, get it out there and wonder and worry why nobody is paying you an enormous sum of money for it.

Here’s another strange thing to say: your idea doesn’t need to feel good to you. That’s right. Just because your idea doesn’t get you excited doesn’t mean it’s bad. You shouldn’t feel like it’s going to be “fun” to write.

Sorry.

What your idea should feel is:

• Sound

• Solid

• Clear

• Compelling

That last word is the most important. It’s a word that’s thrown around a lot these days. You’ll hear it from other writers, teachers, film people. “It’s a compelling idea” or “That was a very compelling story.” But that’s a pretty fancy word for a medium as popular as movies.

What it means is this: it compels your audience to feel something or to know something that they came to your movie to feel and to know. This thing they get from your story isn’t unfamiliar to them. In fact, it’s pretty everyday. It’s one of those values we listed earlier. It’s something we all believe but for some weird reason, we never get tired of it. We like to see that belief reaffirmed over and over again. It is the feeling or the knowledge that your main character acquired in the process of going through your story.

That’s right. It’s not you (the writer) but you talking through the main character that got this story where it is.

It’s not you saying, “I’m going to get this audience excited.” It’s you saying, “I’m going to show my main character going through something so compelling that my audience is going to thrill, laugh, gasp, or cry, or all of them.” Through the experiences and responses of your main character, your audience is going to love (or hate) your movie. This is pure Aristotle.

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, scientist, and thinker who lived from 384 BC to 322 BC, the golden age of ancient Greek culture. Aristotle was not an artist, he was someone who liked to study things and then come to profound conclusions. One thing he looked at very closely was drama (and comedy). Playwrights such as Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles were still appreciated, decades since they passed away. They weren’t the only playwrights. There were others. But these guys were the best. They were the Shaw, Ibsen, and Miller of their times. Their work had remained popular for almost one hundred years by the time Aristotle began studying why it was so damned good.

First thing he understood was that their work was compelling. Even though some of their stories were well known and many based on familiar ancient myths and folk history, audiences ate it up, over and over, generation after generation. Aristotle noticed how audiences flocked to see these plays while they stayed away from other playwrights and he asked himself “Why?” (He would have made a great studio executive! I think he would have loved HBO.)

He realized a few basic things:

• These stories were carefully put together so that they had an identifiable beginning, middle, and an end. An audience always knew what part of the story it was and Aristotle figured out this was just as important as what the audience was seeing performed.

• They all had vivid characters. In a few, there was always one main character, like Oedipus, who went through a remarkable ordeal, composed mostly of his own missteps, ending in a wrenching final moment of self-realization. The Greek word for this is catharsis. Its meaning is actually closer to “a purging” or a “release” of emotions.

• This he realized was the most important attribute of great drama: without the main character’s ordeal, the audience would feel less, and that is what is called in show business “a flop.”

• Finally, he stated very plainly what our job is as dramatists:

“Write what the story demands.”

Think about that. It’s not about you. It’s not about “I’d love to see this on screen.” It’s not about, “wouldn’t it be cool if . . . ” He was telling us that it’s about the protagonist. You, the writer, are telling this story because it must be told to the main character, not the audience.

So, what I strongly recommend is that you simply forget the audience. You actually don’t know who this audience is. They number in the billions and for you to identify everything that amuses or moves or compels them as a group would not only be impossible, but incredibly time-consuming and ultimately stupid.

Forgive me. I just said you were stupid for considering the audience. I didn’t mean that. I simply meant that for the time being, once you have come upon and created this marvelously storyworthy idea, then you must trust that you will now use the “moving parts” of your screen story to fulfill everything you hoped for in your audience’s expectations.

I only ask that you don’t keep them over your shoulder, laughing (or not) and applauding (or not). It’s too damned noisy. You need to concentrate on your main character and his/her ordeal. You are permitted to understand why you as a writer have decided to do this to your character. That is vitally important. That is what makes you an artist. But don’t get hung up on being “liked.”

Aristotle also identified a great number of other attributes of great drama that we still use, whether we realize it or not:

• The climax. A Greek word, and yes, it’s no coincidence that we use the word in relation to sex as well. It’s just the most important, loudest, most exciting moment in a movie.

• Protagonist and antagonist. Two very important words in dramatic writing.

• Prologue and epilogue. One comes before your story begins, the other after it ends.

• Praxis. This was the word Aristotle used for action. Not a word we commonly use. It is all the stuff that happens and everything that the main character does.

• Aristotle also states something that I feel fully articulates the use of action:

“Drama is the psyche of the protagonist pushing outward.”

Wow.

That to me is the essence of drama. The inner mind and soul of the main character made manifest through action. But what does that mean? Does that mean it’s all the character’s inner thoughts? No. Lots of dreams sequences? No.

Plain and simple, it’s the actions that this character takes to get to the end of the ordeal. The things that are “pushing outward” are coming out as actions. Everything the main character does based on how he/she feels, which is in turn based on his/her response to the action preceding and the one after, etc.

Get it?

You Can’t Learn to Write a Crappy Screenplay

If you haven’t studied writing of any kind, this might be a difficult thing, this writing a screenplay.

Fundamentally we look at screenwriting the way we look at rock music. It appears that anyone really can sit down and write a hit song. They don’t seem to need a college education. The Beatles barely made it out of high school. Carole King and all those Brill Building kids never got a degree in anything.

Since screenwriting can be classified as a “folk art,” it springs from the people; from the folkways of down-to-earth philosophy and thinking that we are all a product of. But writing is a craft. Writing is a skill. Writing requires training. I would no more ask you to spit out a script than I would a mahogany shelf unit. You need to know some carpentry to do that. You need to know how to cut straight and how to use a hammer. Also, you need to lay out a good design plan if you’re going to build a piece of furniture. Would you just pick up a hammer and saw and start building? No. You would measure the space. Make a drawing. Decide how much wood you’ll need and then — sticking to the plan — set about to cut and nail and glue everything together. The more complex the project, the less confidence you’ll have if you haven’t had proper training and experience. Remember: you’ll waste a lot of time, money, and wood if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Same with screenwriting. You have to know what you’re making. You have to know the history of that thing you’re making. You need to know the basis for two thousand years of dramatic writing and all that other stuff.

You Have to Know What You’re Doing

Most screenwriters are pretty well-educated people. They know stuff like history and philosophy. I was raised in the theater; in show business. My parents were actors. My father appeared on Broadway and in films and on TV. He never studied anything! He dropped out of school in eighth grade. But, he was a standup comic for fifteen years before he started acting. He used his own senses to learn his craft.

Even though I was making films since the age of fourteen, I still went to NYU film school. I hated school, all of it. But sitting down and learning about literature was the most important thing I ever did. I thought I was going to be a director. I never thought of myself as a writer. But then, I started writing plays. They were easy to put on in New York. Two actors, a chair or two, some lights, a place for the actors to face an audience, and that is all that was needed.

But the thing is, I started studying how this is done. I read the great books. I read books on writing. I taught myself the craft. I used what I had learned in watching my father rehearse and perform. In short, I immersed myself in the world that I was hoping to succeed in.

You have to do the same. Writing a screenplay is no small task. I would say it’s just about as hard as remodeling your kitchen or building a small house. It’s no easier than writing a novel or composing a symphony. It’s arduous work that requires knowledge and skill.

Notice I haven’t even used the word talent yet. We will get to that.

Just as Brando dropped out of high school and came to New York to be an actor, he recognized immediately that he had to train and so (to also meet girls) he enrolled in training that would make him a skillful actor. He had talent. He had energy. He had a vision of himself as a successful performer. But he had to train.

I’ll cut you a break: because you are reading this book you recognize your need to get more knowledge. To find out how other, more experienced writers do it. So you’ve taken an important step. You realize you need help. You understand that this thing may not be as easy as it looks.

As difficult as it is to write a script, it’s not easy to sell one either. Notice I didn’t say “good script.” That’s not only difficult, just as difficult as writing a bad script, but of the 287 people in the industry who are trusted to know such things, all of them are wrong at least 75% of the time. (PS: Okay, these numbers are arbitrary. But most of my colleagues would probably back me up.)

Imagine the movie trailer with Don LaFontaine saying in that deep rough voice: “In a world . . . where eighty-five percent of your output makes no profit . . . where those in charge of making the final decisions are wrong almost all of the time . . . a young writer decides to make his mark in a world where . . . NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING! . . . coming this summer to a theater near you. ‘NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING!’”

That last phrase, coined by one of the greatest screenwriters of the past generation, William Goldman, sums it up completely. Expertise can only be measured by the most elusive methods. So it’s almost impossible to “know” based solely on looking at a script if a movie is going to be any good or not. And if it’s any good — will it make money?

Nobody actually “knows-knows.” It’s full of unknown-unknowns (sounds like Donald Rumsfeld!). That’s because it is just as surreal. Most moviemakers simply look at a script and decide: “This is worth doing. I believe there’s a decent-sized audience out there for this. And I believe a few good actors will be interested in doing it.” That is the most substantial moment in the inception of a film. That’s when it begins. The years-long trek toward the completion of a feature-length motion picture begins because somebody really wants to make it.

You have probably seen a bunch of unimpressive movies. They may not have been horrible, but they weren’t great. You also saw a few great movies, movies you really loved. You’re probably thinking, “Well, I don’t think I could write that really great movie. But I’m pretty sure I can write that slightly crappy movie I saw and get some money for it. Maybe that would start my career as a screenwriter.”

’Scuse me?

First of all, if your first movie is crappy, it will most likely end your career, not start it. The stories behind what happens to perfectly good scripts on their way to becoming a movie would fill another few books. Some of those stories are contained in the remarkable memoirs written by William Goldman. He’s a great screenwriter. He has written award-winning scripts and also scripts we’ll never see and at least one that really flopped. But he was convinced, in his amazing Oscar-winning mind, that these would be great scripts. That’s just the way you have to feel. He’ll be the first and not the last person to tell you: “We work just as hard on the bad ones as we do on the good ones.”

So first, before you start writing crap, you have to know what you’re doing. Only the best singers can actually deliberately sing offkey (and often for comic effect).

This means humbling yourself to the task, understanding what “mastery” of this craft actually means, and applying your knowledge to a professional working life — even if you’re not earning any money at it. So relax. Open your eyes, your ears, and your soul. You’ll get there if you take the necessary steps.

There’s No Such Thing as a “Bad Idea,” Only a Story Poorly Told

Story ideas can be tricky things. Sometimes an idea seems great because you have the potential to surprise the audience at the end (The Sixth Sense). Sometimes an idea can be a way of telling an utterly familiar story, yet it can contain nagging anticipation (Titanic). Or sometimes an idea can be just a value; simply a human emotion, like “madness” (Repulsion) or “lost in space” (Gravity) or “you can’t win against real power” (Chinatown).

Tips

• “Don’t try to be clever.”

• “Don’t struggle to be original.”

Clever is simply a way of tricking the audience. That’s fine, but you can only do that trick once. That’s what “spoiler alerts” are about. A “one-trick” movie is simply that. And believe me, you’re welcome to try. There are many satisfying experiences from these one-trick movies. Yes, The Sixth Sense, because both Bruce Willis and the audience reach their understanding at the same moment. But it’s an amazing value in the end. The main character learns to live with the truth about himself.

But who wants to write a movie that can only be seen once?

Then there’s Psycho. Forgive me for defying the cult of adoration around this movie. Hitchcock is a genius. An absolute master of filmmaking. But where the heck did that come from? And who is the main character in that movie anyway? In my opinion Hitchcock doesn’t so much resolve that story as simply put an arbitrary surprise on the end and then wrap it up with a pipe-smoking psychiatrist. I believe that Aristotle would have called this deus ex machina. This was an actor who was lowered on a mechanical platform, imitating a god (for authority) and explaining the story to the audience because the story couldn’t explain itself.

Fundamentally, if you can’t explain the story to yourself, who else will understand it?

So many of my students say, “I’ve got it all in my head, but I can’t explain it. Just let me write a script and it’ll all be clear.”

Don’t kid yourself. Nothing’s clear until it hits the page.

Creating your story is the process of creating clarity. Every movie you’ve ever loved is clear. Its story, its main character, and its value are always crystal clear. And yet, they appear to be “original” (they’re not) and they appear to be “clever and surprising” (not really) and they are said to be “subtle” (well, sort of). But when you go out afterward with your date or your friends and discuss it you will always agree on major points of that movie. You will agree on what happened (that’s the plot) and you’ll agree on what it’s about (that’s the story). That’s because everything about it is clear.

Good movies are thoughtful works of art. They have to be well thought-out because if they weren’t, then there would be a lot of money wasted. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just get out there with a camera and a cast and a crew and just mess around until you came up with something? I did that when I was in high school using an 8mm home movie camera. It was great. And then I’d get the film back from the lab and I would scratch my head, not being able to figure out what went wrong.

I didn’t have a script. I didn’t have a main character. I didn’t have a story. Fundamentally I had a lot of exposed film, but I didn’t have anything resembling a movie. That’s how I learned. Although I went on to make some fairly abstract adolescent movies in high school (hey — it was the ’60s!) I still had a script whenever I went to make my little movies. That helped me plan my movie so I could call a friend and say, “Hey, it’ll only take a couple of hours because I only need you do this part of my script.” Rather than, “Hey, we’re going to go out with my camera today and mess around and I have no idea what we’ll be doing.”

Which makes more sense?

This struggle is shared by everyone who makes a movie or tells a story. Jim Jarmusch shares it with Sidney Lumet. David Lynch shares it with Martin Scorcese.

So, even though you’re a gifted artist, you must set out to create something that is clear and must in some way do something very important. This thing that we’re all struggling to do:

It’s gotta make sense.

Your story must be coherent, cohesive, and in its own way, make its own sense. The Sixth Sense makes its own special sense according to the rules of the living afterlife. Star Wars makes sense in its own interplanetary Federation v. Empire thing. And certainly we accept everything in Gravity even though I’m not sure you can hop from space station to space station as if they were rest stops on the interstate. But the movie made sense.

Most of all, what you’re focused on as an audience (and you will be as a screenwriter) is the struggle of your character through whatever ordeal you’re putting him/her through. That’s your initial concern. That’s the first thing that will determine if your story is working:

Before this thing is over, what will this cost the character?

In The Sixth Sense, it costs him his marriage, his relationships, his life. In Star Wars Luke Skywalker must sacrifice everything, be humiliated by Yoda, lose his hand — and still do the right thing, kill his father (I really like that one!). Yet, it all makes sense.

So, one of the first things that should occur to you is what kind of ordeal you’re going to put your character through. But how do you think that up?

One thing you have in common with your audience; the quality that you are certain to share with all of them; the only predictive factor you can rely on; that one thing that you can dependably say you share with any moviegoing audience:

You’re human.

Your story will be about a human being. Even if it’s about a fish (Finding Nemo) or a baby deer (Bambi) or a group of toys (Toy Story) or a hobbit (Lord of the Rings) or a hero with superpowers (Superman, Spiderman), your story will be about a person struggling with something important.

This important struggle will be generated from what appears to be the normal, everyday things in life: Work? Love? Adventure? Or how about Fear? Greed? Loss? These are all human conditions and circumstances that allow us to identify with some common human value. Something that we all think about. Something that we may have actually struggled with ourselves. Some of us may have been successful in this struggle. Others failed. But whatever it is, it’s what the story is about. It’s why we came to see this movie (besides the thrills, the laughs, and the emotions).

In the end, there are only a few possible outcomes for your story:

• “Wow! The hero really did it!” (happy ending, Gravity)

• “Oh no, the hero really messed up. That’s too bad.” (sad ending, Chinatown)

• “Oh well, even though the hero didn’t succeed, I bet they learned something from this experience.”(ironic ending, The Sixth Sense)

Believe it or not, any of these three might be the “motor” of the movie you just liked or what’s inside the idea you’re trying to develop right now. Whatever the case, you will need to know this at some point in your process before you go ahead with that script.

What I mean is, you can write a script right now if it makes you happy. But you’ll still have to go through it and make it something of value. Something that tells us about your character’s problem, his/ her struggle and why you are putting your character through this ordeal.

This is what gets you and any other movie audience excited.

So, first big question:

Does your idea generate value?

A human value is simply something that we believe and we want to reaffirm by means of telling our story. That’s pretty simple. All decent movies, even the The Fast and the Furious series, generate a human value. How about the movies we’re watching today? Here, in one short statement each, is the dramatic and emotional value of these Oscar nominees:

Gravity: Under the worst kind of pressure, you can find within you the will to survive. She’s under time pressure, a threat to her life, and she has a problem in her head about her dead daughter. All are important in the story.

12 Years a Slave: A man’s freedom shouldn’t be taken for granted. Sometimes you have to fight for it! He’s trapped, can’t get out, and doesn’t want to die trying.

American Hustle: Friendship, trust, and love are much more important than money.

Blue Jasmine: Not facing the truth of your life is a disaster. People may lie in order to get the big score, but in fact they only need to empathize with and love each other to have what really matters.

Captain Phillips: We need to be prepared that on certain days, things can go horribly wrong. The routine of life is sometimes a dangerous experience.

Dallas Buyers Club: The path from selfishness to compassion is a worthwhile struggle. But first, you will have to face your mortality in order to see the truth of yourself.

EXERCISES

Fill in the value statements for the following other Oscar nominees:

Her

Nebraska

Philomena

The Wolf of Wall Street

Now make your own list of six movies (hopefully, movies you like!) and fill in the value statements.

Make the value statement about your current project. If you’re stumped, make it a longer list and see which statement is the strongest.