Stavros Stavrides | Cyber Film School

2. Story Structure Clarifies The Concept

Films that suffer from a lack of clarity and confuse an audience can usually trace their problem to poor story structure.

If you have trouble shaping your film’s concept into a narrative, think of how your screenplay should be structured and what you’re trying to say. If we still can’t get to the end of the story – that’s likely a structural problem.

Contributed By Glen Berry, Edited by Stavros C. Stavrides

Important Concepts

Start with a premise
Do your Research
Structure Clarifies the Concept

Although there are different schools of thought on the sections in a story, we will be discussing Aristotle’s Three Act Structure. This structure dictates that every story has three acts: a beginning, middle and end. I know this sounds elementary but each act has particular properties.

This structure can be described with a diagram called The Dramatic Curve.

The Three Acts

In the First Act, the main character, or protagonist, is introduced and the location is set. This description of the character and the setting is called Exposition.

Bridging the First and Second Act, the protagonist is confronted with some kind of obstacle. The presentation of this obstacle, or conflict, is the inciting moment or incident.

This second act is mainly comprised of the protagonist’s attempts to overcome this obstacle. The protagonist cannot accomplish their objective easily, for if they did, there would be no story. Complications arise, and tension increases as the protagonist attempts to overcome this obstacle. This rising action is what drives our story forward.

The Third Act contains the climax of the story, where this conflict is resolved and final obstacles overcome. If the story works out in favor of the protagonist, it is comedy. If it works out against the protagonist, it is a tragedy. Denouement is a French term that literally translates to the unravelling of a knot. In the denouement, we see the aftermath of the resolution and how it affects the characters in the story.

It is in the resolution of this conflict that we find whatever it is that we are trying to say. Most times, writers have difficulty with how their story ends. They may have an interesting setting or conflict but it is in the resolution that we find the content of the story. If you do not know how the story ends, you do not know your story.

This post is a support article from Cyber Film School’s
Multi-Touch Learning System, 2022 Edition

Contract With Your Audience

What do we want the audience to leave the theater with?

We do not have to create works that will change the world but we should know what idea we want to put forward. It doesn’t really matter what the content is of the story you decide to make but you do have an obligation to tell a story.

You cannot ask the audience to sit and spend time with you if you do not deliver something that will engage them. You have a contract with the audience. They spend time with you, you will entertain them. The subject matter can be serious, it can be odd, it can be comic, or it can be sad. It doesn’t matter what it is but you must deliver.

You must say something or you are wasting your time and energy.

Find an idea that intrigues you and then find what about it is important to you. Then you can build a story around communicating that idea to others.

Summary

• The concept of your screenplay should be reducible to a few sentences. Without this clarity, you cannot build a story.

• Invest time in determining how your concept is different from others and how it might be the same. This will save you from unwittingly remaking another film.

• Many independent films suffer from a lack of clarity, which can almost always be traced to poor structure. Breaking from the convention is encouraged but if the result is confusion, look at your story structure.

NEXT>>>
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
Protagonists, antagonists, anti-heroes and their relationship to the story

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3. Character Development

A valuable exercise in the development of your story is getting to know your characters. The definition and development of character is one of the central concerns of the writer. Their motivations are what drive the story forward. If you don’t know who your characters are, you don’t know why anything in your story is happening, and you are lost.

Contributed By Glen Berry, Edited By Stavros C. Stavrides

Important Concepts

Create “Real” Characters
Find your character’s motivation
Character Arc is the heart of the story

The Back Story

In a feature-length project, we have some time to develop character. In a short film, it is much more challenging. We must be very utilitarian with the words on the page to draw out an interesting character.

Often, the details about your characters may not even be exposed onscreen, but are the most important factor in making them rich and full and believable. Ask yourself:

What do they look like?
Into what social standing were they born?
What is their philosophical position?
Are they religious?
What phase of life are they in?
What events have shaped their lives up to this point?
Have they led an extraordinary life? Have they travelled the world?
Do they take risks?
Can they maintain a long-term relationship?
What are their personal quirks and traits?

Answering these kinds of questions is the background work necessary to create a complete character. You need to know many things about your character outside the framework of the story (the back story) to understand what happens inside the story. A clear idea of the character will translate to the page. It will be easily understood by a competent director or actor. If your idea of the character is unclear, it will also be unclear to the actors when they try to work through the lines and understand who it is that they are portraying.

The Environment

Research is the key to finding the details to wrap around your characters to make them three-dimensional people. Know your setting, the environment in which this person lives, even if it is imaginary.

The environment will shape the person and allow you to dig into the development of their psyche. Think about the actor that will have to portray this character, to be believable in these imaginary circumstances you set up. It must be clear who the characters are and what drives them forward.

The Protagonist

Every story has a protagonist, the main character, and usually a hero.

If a person stands in the way of the protagonist, they are called the antagonist. In the classic sense, the antagonist is the ‘bad guy’. It is the differences between the antagonist and the protagonist that provide telling information about the protagonist’s character.

The antagonist and the protagonist maneuver in a push-and-pull dynamic that results in conflict, which drives our plot forward. We have many types of conflicts that drive our story forward, it could be human vs. human, human vs. society, human vs. nature, human vs. the supernatural or human vs. him/herself.

No matter what the approach, you must still identify the protagonist and what motivates them to discover the heart of your story.

This post is a reformatted section from the chapter “Screenwriting” in
Cyber Film School’s Multi-Touch Filmmaking Textbook.

The Character Arc

The protagonist has an objective to obtain and an internal drive to obtain it. The way we learn about the protagonist is what they are seeking, how they go about the search and how they handle obstacles put in their path.

This is commonly described as a character arc. Like the dramatic curve, characters go through a transformation over the course of our three acts.

The protagonist, in particular, is going to have highs and lows as they move through their struggles to overcome obstacles and resolve the conflict that they face. By the end of the story, the protagonist will be changed in some way by the events that transpire.

We ourselves are shaped by the events of our lives, and so are our characters.

Such changes can be positive or negative but it is the effect that events have on the behavior of our character that demonstrates to the audience what it is that we are trying to say.

If the protagonist meets with failure, why do they meet with failure:

How does it affect them?
Does it destroy them or make them stronger?
Does success yield happiness?
If it does not, why not?

And if the main character does not change at all, what does that say about them and their life? In these questions, we will find the heart of our story.

The Hero’s Not Always Good!

A common mistake in character development is to assign the protagonist all good traits and the antagonist all bad traits. This is a device of comic books and Kung Fu movies and although entertaining, it does not make for a believable character.

We all have weaknesses (as we dare to admit). Our frailty, or dark side, makes us more human, and more believable. If you do not have a believable character, there is little authenticity for the actor to grab onto.

Real life is not so simple – there is no such thing as all-good guys and all-bad guys. Although difficult, introduce some vices to your knight in shining armour and some virtues to your wicked stepmother.

It is the natural tendency of the audience to identify with the protagonist. Giving him or her some flaws will make that character more sympathetic, particularly if the antagonist exploits those weaknesses. Have no fear; your protagonist can absorb a great deal of trashing before he or she is sullied in the eyes of your audience.

The Anti-Hero

This interesting effect gave rise to the anti-hero popularized in several of the Spaghetti Western Clint Eastwood films where the protagonist is nearly indistinguishable from the antagonist in character.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is an excellent example of the anti-hero. In one scene, the protagonist dissolves his partnership by leaving his companion in the middle of the desert without water to die or be captured and executed.

What makes a protagonist that would behave in such a way the ‘good guy’? That’s the kind of question that draws in the viewer instead of boring them with clichés.

The distinction between good and evil can be so subtle as to be nearly indistinguishable. It is in those small differences we find the difference between a good person drawn into the evils of the world and a person who has given themselves over to evil acts.

It is a fine line to ride. Strive to create an imperfect and real character that challenges the viewer’s notions of right and wrong, yet allows them sufficient justification to believe in their good traits and intentions.

The audience will identify with the main character if you give them half a chance and they will excuse his or her flaws and sympathize with their struggle.

The Foil

A story-telling device that often proves useful is that of the foil. The foil is the friend or companion of the protagonist that is great, but not that great.

The purpose of the foil is to make the protagonist look good. The foil is often a likeable and charismatic sidekick.

The foil is never far from the protagonist’s side but lives constantly in his shadow. The death of the foil at the hands of the antagonist is commonly used as the spark that sets the protagonist in motion to the final confrontation, which we will discuss in more detail later.

Less is More

When establishing your cast of characters, remember that less is more. You only have enough time to develop so many characters who have a meaningful role in your story.

The audience will only care about a few, so make your choices well. Combine characters where possible to focus your attention and the attention of the audience on as few people as possible. It’s no mistake that films with large casts tend to be sweeping epics. Character development takes time.

When you are creating a short film, you have very limited time to introduce characters and develop them. Focus on your protagonist. They will be the star of your film and the agent of your concept. Be very mindful of any character development that does not revolve around your protagonist.

Summary

The concept of your screenplay should be reducible to a few sentences. Without this clarity, you cannot build a story.
Invest time in determining how your concept is different from others and how it might be the same. This will save you from unwittingly remaking another film.
Many independent films suffer from a lack of clarity, which can almost always be traced to poor structure. Breaking from convention is encouraged but if the result is confusion, look at your story structure.

NEXT>>>
SCREENPLAY FORMAT
The importance of a properly formatted screenplay

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STORY STRUCTURE
The importance of a property formatted screenplay

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Scene Design: Exit Late, Leave Early

When I’m talking about scene design, I’m not referring to the furniture in a room or what’s hanging on the wall. I’m talking about how a writer, and later a film editor, structures each scene in a screenplay.

In particular, I’m talking about the length of those scenes, which is determined by when a scene begins and when a scene ends.

By Charles Deemer, Edited by Stavros C. Stavrides

UPDATED DECEMBER 7 2022

This article gets to the screenwriting application of “Exit Late, Start Early”. We further cover this concept for film editors in our article Three Pitfalls of the Editor. You’ll find this link at the end below.

Typically, a beginning screenwriter will write scenes that are too long, and that are too inefficient. This error is pandemic because screenwriting is the most efficient narrative form we have.

Every word, every moment, has to matter in a screenplay. Beginners almost always begin their scenes earlier than they should and then carry them on longer than they should. So…

When Should a Scene Begin?

A screenplay is built in modules, scene by scene. For this reason, it is difficult to talk about any single scene out of the context of the whole. All the same, basic principles of efficient scene design are part of the screenwriting craft.

A scene in a screenplay should begin as late as possible. What does this mean? Let’s take an example.

A husband and wife have been separated. The husband is the protagonist in the story. He and his wife are meeting for lunch to talk about their future. The wife is going to tell him she wants a divorce.

Most beginners would spend a lot of time getting the husband to this lunch meeting. He might take some time to decide what he is going to wear. He might dawdle on the way, so as not to be early and appear to be anxious. He might fortify himself with a drink or two. Finally, he’ll be met at the restaurant by a hostess and led to the booth where his wife waits.

There will be small talk. A waiter will take an order for drinks. More small talk. A waiter will take their lunch orders. More small talk. Eventually, they’ll get around to talking about their marriage, at which time the wife will say she wants a divorce.

Although there are dramatic contexts in which this slow development can work (see below), in most cases this scene will be too slow. It has too much fat. What is the point of the scene? The news of divorce. A more skilled screenwriter, therefore, would open the scene just before this moment. The couple is already seated at lunch. They are eating silently. Suddenly the wife pops the news.

But there is a context in which the slow version is stronger than the more efficient version. Let’s say that while getting ready, the husband fetches a handgun, loads it, and hides it on his person.

Now where there was slow development and fat before, there is tension because we are on the edge of our seats, wondering what he is going to do with the gun. And the longer we have to wait, the tenser the story becomes.

In other words, for slowly developing scenes to work, there must be an element to justify their pacing; in general, the crisper the scene, the better.

So what about getting out of this scene?

When Should a Scene End?

In the first version, without the gun, beginners would have the wife pop the news and have this lead into an argument, probably the kind of argument we’ve heard many times before. This argument may take several pages, even though we learn nothing new from it.

A more skilled screenwriter might have the wife’s news be the last line in the scene. A quick look at the husband’s reaction and cut: maybe to the husband having a drink in a bar, talking with a friend, or sleeping with his mistress.

Once again, the gun changes everything because it adds a dynamic new element to the dramatic mix. The wife gives the news. A beginning writer might have the husband take out the gun and shoot her. Chaos results. The husband is wrestled to the ground by customers. He barely gets away.

A more skilled screenwriter would surprise us. The husband takes out the gun and points it at his temple. Would he really? The wife looks like she’s about to have a heart attack. He pulls the trigger. Nothing. “I was going to shoot you but I chickened out,” he says. “I took out the bullets. Have a nice life.” He leaves.

This post is a support article for the “Screenwriting” chapter in Cyber Film School’s
Multi-Touch Filmmaking Textbook

Effective Scene Design: ‘The Birdcage‘

Hollywood has mastered good scene design and even otherwise poorly crafted movies are likely to have efficient scenes. But good movies, of course, use good scene design to better dramatic effect. In my University screenwriting class, I use The Birdcage as an especially good example of film storytelling with efficient scene design.

Let’s look at two scene transitions from The Birdcage.

In the first, Armand has been trying to teach Albert how to walk like a man. When Albert accidentally bumps into a customer on the patio, Armand rushes to his defense like a macho hero. The customer stands up. Here is what follows:

Study this transition carefully because it reveals the key to efficient scene design. What is left out is as important, maybe more important, than what is left in. Notice that what is missing is the physical confrontation itself. In a comedy like this, physical violence would be inappropriate and Albert’s subsequent description of the fight is far funnier than seeing the fight.

A beginning screenwriter would take a page or more to make this transition. We’d see the fight, and we’d see Albert helping Armand get home, and we’d see Albert helping Armand to the couch and running off to prepare cold compresses. But in the context of the story, all those details are irrelevant.

The story itself always determines what details you need to show because they support the story and move it forward, and which details are “fat” because they do not move the story forward.

Another example. Armand has come up with the idea that Val’s mother might help them in their charade as a straight family. Here is what follows:

Again, this transition has great efficiency, leaving out all the unnecessary details that a beginner would put in: Armand’s going to the phone to make the call, a secretary at Katharine’s office answering the phone, and so on.

Tips

Although it is always the particular context that determines scene design, there are some principles that will help you make tighter scenes.

Think of ending a scene with a kind of “punch line” or a moment that raises or asks a question. Each naturally leads to something new, the next scene.

Think of scene beginnings as starting in the middle of an action at the point where new story information begins to be revealed.

In other words, cut all the “set up” material of the scene and let the context itself set the scene. Get to the point of the scene from the beginning

Admittedly, there are other factors that justify more leisurely scene development, such as pacing and suspense. If we see a serial killer hide in the closet as a woman comes into her apartment, that knowledge will keep us on edge for a much longer scene than we’d accept otherwise, if the apartment were empty. We are constantly thinking, “Is he coming out?”

But in general, the problem beginners have is putting too much detail into a scene, starting it too early, and ending it too late.

If you concentrate on scene openings and endings when you rewrite, cutting from the top and from the bottom, you should learn to write tight, focused scenes that have no fat and no dull moments.

Be sure to read further applications of “Exit Late, Start Early” in film editing in:
Three Pitfalls of the Editor.

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