The Beginning and Ending of a Screenplay

An 8-minute video featuring… me!

I pack a lot into this video excerpt of an interview I did back in August with the fine folks at Film Courage — Karen Worden and David Branin. In just eight minutes, I talk about:

• 4 things you need to know about your story before typing Fade In
• How a story’s ending has its seeds in the beginning
• An analysis of the Protagonist’s Disunity to Unity arc in The Apartment
• Why Ben was so obsessed with Elaine in The Graduate
• Multiple impersonations (evidently, this is a thing I default to)

Expanding on the central point — that a story’s ending is rooted in its beginning — this is a big reason why it’s so critical to immerse yourself in the life of the Protagonist, specifically exploring the various ways in which they begin their journey in a state of what I call Disunity. They are disconnected from who they are supposed to be, psychologically speaking they are living an inauthentic life. Since most (but not all) stories feature a Unity Arc, by drilling down into the Protagonist’s psyche, it’s quite possible to project out what the nature of their end point can be. This character development process can not only inform the trajectory of their psychological transformation, it can also spark scenes and events in the story’s Plotline. For example:

• In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy begins feeling disconnected from her life on her uncle and aunt’s farm. How does the story end? Dorothy back to Kansas from her fantastical trek to Oz, happily proclaiming, “There’s no place like home.”
• In Casablanca, Rick begins as a cynic and a loner, selfishly in denial of his former life in which he was an idealist who fought on the side of the loyalists in the Spanish Civil War. How does the story end? Rick reconnects with that idealism and acts in a selfless manner by giving the letters of transit to Victor Laszlo and Rick’s former lover Ilsa Lund, so they may escape Casablanca.
• In Tootsie, Michael Dorsey begins as a guy who views women as an extension of his own needs. How does the story end? After his experience as Dorothy Michaels, Michael tells Julie, “I was a better man with you, as a woman… than I ever was with a woman, as a man.”
• In Up, Carl begins as a widower stringing out the days of his life, caught up in grief over the death of his wife Ellie. How does the story end? He recaptures the adventurous spirit of his youth and is revitalized with a new surrogate family: Russell and Dug the dog.

In a way, there is a kind of inexorable drive to a Protagonist’s arc, what I call the Narrative Imperative. As screenwriter Javier Grillo-Marxuach says, “A great script creates an irresistible narrative flow that propels a reader to an inevitable dramatic conclusion.” And that ‘dramatic conclusion’ has its seeds in the very nature of the Protagonist’s beginning state of being.

Knowing the ending of a story can be critical to a writer’s success… and the ending has its roots in the beginning.

This is all content I explore in the book I am writing The Protagonist’s Journey. It should be released late 2020 or early 2021.

There’s more of my interview which you can check out Film Courage.

Twitter: @filmcourage