In this business of reading submitted screenplays, we see a number of common mistakes and weaknesses. This article looks at the readiness of your story idea.
It is very easy to get lost in the world of your screenplay. Writing takes you into a sphere where the focus between you and your computer become an impenetrable zone. Within this, it is easy to lose track and scope as you journey further, the typed words potentially leading you astray.
Before letting yourself get this far down the path, it is imperative to be sure your story is worth telling in the first place.
All too often, a personal event or nugget of family history is the spark for an idea, whereby a story is attempted before it is fully conceived. This is like a premature birth.
The problem is that there isn’t enough of a story there in the first place to survive.
What’s worse is what ensues months into your writing journey. You’ll begin to struggle and get frustrated as the words don’t flow. This is because of the potential lack of story and structure to hang scenes off.
Worse still, you’ll finish your screenplay and kid yourself that you are satisfied. You might pass it to a friend or screenplay business for appraisal. The lukewarm reception will piss you off, to put it bluntly. This is your story of the family struggle with Granny’s old Oldsmobile and the pains it took them through.
Take this article, for example. It also has to have a reason for being and have a structure to justify its worth. A beginning, middle and end, but wrapped around an idea worth sharing. No one would want to read about my own personal writing issues and reasons for productivity block. It would not necessarily be actionable advice relevant to others. It’s too personal and not likely conceptual.
While this advice might seem more relevant for bigger budget films, it is still to be considered for the new screenwriter. You are an unproven writer, therefore, the money men will want to be sure their investment is worth the gamble on your story.
If your story involves a specific period in time, the budget will increase to cover props, costume and set dressing on an epic scale. So, your story of Granny’s old car suddenly ends up an expensive proposition and without substance. Why would anyone outside the family care about Granny’s old car?
So what do you do?
Ensure a good story which is tangible and relevant to others. Leave the pet projects until you are an established writer or have an independent association willing to sponsor you.
Let’s assume you want to run with a personal idea. There are ways to make this work, but you must look outside your narrow scope of fixation on what that story concept is. You need to think of the audience and create something which will stir them. Look beyond the historical facts.
Adopt “Artistic License!” The story of your Grandmother’s Oldsmobile might mean something to you and your family, but to have traction for an audience you’ll need to use artistic license to deviate from the personal family events to make sure you have the necessary elements to fit a screenplay. More often than not, the missing component is ‘conflict.’ Stories need a sense of jeopardy and opposition to the proceedings to create emotion in the audience and the “What if they don’t make it?” scenario. Then we will care.
Let’s look at an example. “Titanic,” written by James Cameron, is based on the sinking of a formidable ship. If the writer had kept to the facts, the movie would have been really short and kind of boring. Even the action of “Iceberg dead ahead” and then the ensuing sinking would only be a little exciting.
To get around this, James Cameron created some fiction to augment the history. By creating some characters and adding a love story, he achieved the necessary conflict and emotion. He effectively “dressed up” the core story.
That would mean having Granny’s Oldsmobile stolen one night off the driveway and creating a sense of loss and activity in searching to get it back. What if the family safety deposit box key was also in the glove compartment? A story turning point to help get the car back could be that Granny’s grandson’s pet snakes were in the trunk, and when the thief got home and opened up, he got bit and taken to hospital. You can work out where this might go from here…
The point is that these additive events may never have happened, but with artistic license you create them to help your story along. What might read well in a novel does not work on screen. Something reasonable has to challenge the status quo.
It is useful to step back from your idea and see it as a whole. Use index cards to chart the story from beginning to end with what you have right now and you’ll see where you need to make additions. Refer to Michael Hauge’s six stage plot structure, which you can find on his site on storymastery.com
In summary, what you can do to sense check your story idea is to ask yourself these questions:
What is my story about?
Why is it important to tell?
Would people want to sit through this?
Remember that most personal narratives are un-relatable. The key is to make them relatable by inserting whatever it takes to get the reader/audience to care about your characters, the situation and feel emotion through some aspect of conflict.