Reader Question: Are there specific ways to focus a story?
“What is the central theme of my movie? If you can’t answer that question, then that’s probably an area where you would benefit spending…
“What is the central theme of my movie? If you can’t answer that question, then that’s probably an area where you would benefit spending some time brainstorming.”
A question from Zach:
Anyone know of any specific ways to simplify a story? I feel like I lose touch with my main idea pretty quickly.
There must be some comparable aspects between essays and screenwriting…
Short of knowing the specifics of your situation, here are a few general thoughts.
1. I think your instinct is correct about there being something “comparable” between essays and screenwriting. In an essay, you typically have a central theme upon and around which you craft your ‘story.’ Likewise a good screenplay will almost always have a central theme. For example, the movie Tootsie has a theme that Michael (Dustin Hoffman) states point blank: “I was a better man as a woman than I was as a man.” You can go through virtually every scene in the movie that involves Michael / Dorothy and see that theme at work. Likewise in the movie K-9, I knew from Day 1 the central theme of that story: The dog humanizes the human. Again you can see that at work in every scene of the movie.
So ask yourself a question: What is the central theme of my movie? If you can’t answer that question, then that’s probably an area where you would benefit spending some time brainstorming.
2. While the theme is basically an expression of a movie’s central ‘wisdom,’ don’t forget how important your story’s underlying concept is. For example, take the movie District 9 where the central story concept is — set against a backdrop of aliens having landed on Earth, stuck here, and living in apartheid type camps — about a Protagonist (Wikus) who becomes ‘infected’ by alien fluid and begins to transform into a ‘Prawn.’ That central concept not only informs the events of the plot, it also provides the backbone of the Themeline where Wikus moves from a rather racist attitude toward the aliens into sympathy and understanding of them.
So ask yourself a question: What is my story concept? You should be able to articulate that in a few lines, quickly and cleanly. If you can’t, then again, probably an area where you can spend more time digging into your story.
3. In my view, most stories lose their focus in Act Two or even Act Three because the writer has failed to answer some basic questions at the very beginning of the story. So here are some fundamental questions you should be able to answer about your story before you type FADE IN:
Who is the Protagonist?
The central and most important character in most stories.
What do they want?
The Protagonist is typically conscious of this External World goal.
What do they need?
The Protagonist is typically unconscious of or repressing their Internal World goal.
Who is keeping the Protagonist from their goal?
This is most likely your Nemesis.
Understanding who your Protagonist and Nemesis characters are, and what is at the core of their central conflict, is critical in shaping the spine of your plot, and also in how the Protagonist’s needs emerge into the daylight and reshape who they are and how they see their ultimate goal.
There are other character questions you can ask, but for starters, there are the most critical. Now some plot questions:
What happens at the beginning of Act One?
How does your Protagonist begin the story?
What happens at the end of Act One?
What event thrusts the Protagonist out of their ordinary world and into the new world / world of adventure (per J. Campbell)?
What happens at the end of Act Two?
What plot point is a major blow to the Protagonist per their goal, an All Is Lost moment?
What happens at the end of Act Three?
How does your Protagonist end the story / what transpires in the Final Struggle?
Once again, if you can’t answer all those questions with a good deal of clarity, then you would do well to go into your story even deeper than you have.
A final piece of advice: Watch movies and read scripts. As you do that, pay close attention to how they keep their stories on track. In fact, you might benefit from doing a scene-by-scene breakdown as I did here for Shakespeare in Love. It’s a great way to visualize the ‘spine’ of a story and to see how in a well-crafted script, every scene is tied to and advances both the Plotline and the Themeline.
For 100s more Reader Question articles, go here.