Why This is Good

While it’s important to make the goal personal, often by involving the hero’s friends and family by putting them in jeopardy, it’s also vital that the hero stands to lose something extremely valuable should they fail. The stakes should be literal, or at least emotional, life-and-death.

If the hero has nothing big to lose, the movie will not be that exciting. We need to feel that if the hero fails in achieving their goal, something devastating, either to them or to humanity at large, will occur. In some genres this can be literal life-and-death for the hero. If Ripley doesn’t stop the Alien it will kill her.  Other times, the hero is working to save another person, or group of people, as in Schindler’s List. If Schindler doesn’t outwit the Nazis, his workers will be sent to concentration camps. Epic, action adventure, science-fiction, or superhero movies often involve the hero saving the world and humanity at large, as in Star Wars, The Terminator, Transformers, Armageddon, or The Lord of the Rings. In I Am Legend, (spoiler alert) if Neville doesn’t get his antidote containing blood to Anna in time, there will be no hope for what remains of the human race.

Literal life-and-death stakes aren’t always plausible, or necessary. Often times failing to achieve the goal will mean emotional life-and-death, or a life not worth living. If Andy doesn’t succeed in getting out of Shawshank, he will face emotional death and a lifetime of imprisonment, which, although he would still be alive, would not be worth living. If David and Jennifer can’t bring color into the black-and-white world of Pleasantville, life would still go on, but it would be the bland, dull, stagnant life that would not be worth living after the town’s residents had glimpsed what a real life could be like.

If Dorothy can’t find the Wizard and get back home, she’ll be stuck, unhappily, in Oz forever. If Woody and Buzz can’t get to the moving van in time, they’ll be abandoned, alone, and not living the lives they cherish with Andy. While the stakes are not life-and-death, they are nonetheless vital to the hero’s happiness and emotional well-being. If the stakes were lowered and the heroes were pursuing something less important, the story would be less powerful. If Dorothy was ambivalent about going home and couldn’t care less whether she ever saw her Aunt and Uncle again, we wouldn’t care whether she made it to Oz or met with the Wizard, and neither would she.

Love stories use emotional life-and-death. Failing to win the love of the other character will mean emotional death for the hero. If Noah cannot get Allie to marry him, he will never be happy, and at the same time, if he cannot get her to remember, even for a moment, who she is and what their love story meant to both of them, he will be devastated and she will be stuck in her Alzheimer-induced fog. If Phil cannot get Rita to love him, he will not only lose her and face emotional death, but he will be stuck in a life not worth living, reliving Groundhog Day forever. If Harry and Sally can’t eventually get together, they will never find happiness and continue to drift in and out of unfulfilling relationships. Neither will die, but their love lives and emotional well-being will.

The ticking clock is an important device that can be used in all genres. Establishing a ticking clock helps build suspense by giving the hero a defined timeline during which he must accomplish his goal. In superhero movies, a ticking clock is nearly always utilized, as Batman, Superman, or Spiderman have to save the girl, the public, or the world from the evil villain’s dastardly plan before it’s too late. They never have much time, but they always have some time. If the villains acted logically and simply killed their captives or enacted their plan for world domination right away, the hero would have no chance of stopping them and the story would end right there. Conversely, if Mary Jane were kidnapped for an indefinite amount of time, and was in no imminent danger, the goal of saving her from the clutches of the nemesis would have no sense of urgency. Spiderman could take his time, figure out the safest, most rational method of rescuing her, perhaps get the police involved. He would have time to visit his Aunt, go to class, and work at the newspaper, because it wouldn’t endanger Mary Jane one bit. Whether he took three months or three days to save her wouldn’t matter. Of course, the idea of a superhero movie playing out so leisurely is ludicrous, and clearly illustrates how vital a ticking clock is to establishing a sense of urgency for accomplishing a goal.

Action-adventure films frequently utilize a ticking clock, as this helps move the story forward in the fast pace these genres require. In Speed, the ticking clock is established when the characters learn that they only have a certain amount of gas before the bus stops and therefore explodes. This heightens the emotional involvement of the audience because we not only have something to root for, we are rooting for it to happen as soon as possible, before it is too late. If the bus held an infinite amount of gas, then they could ride on forever, the bomb squad could come on and figure out how to disarm the bomb, and they could take as long as they needed without making the audience or the characters worry. If the bus ran out of gas in Act 1 and just exploded, the film would end there.

In Armageddon they establish when the asteroid will hit the earth so that there is a defined timeline in which they must destroy it before the world is destroyed. This anxiety urges the characters on, and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats hoping that this will be accomplished in time. It is important not just to establish a ticking clock, but to frame the timeline in parameters that make sense for the movie-too short and it’s impossible, too long and it’s boring and the sense of urgency is gone. If the asteroid were going to hit the earth in two minutes, there would be no movie as everyone would have to give up and wait for the inevitable impact. If the asteroid were discovered a year or two prior to its impact, we would yawn because the scientists could be deliberate and careful in figuring out a safe method to destroy it.

The ticking clock works in other genres as well. In Toy Story, the ticking clock is established very early on-Woody alerts the toys to moving day in the first act, and we know then that Woody and Buzz must get back before the family moves or face being lost forever. If the family wasn’t moving, there would be no excitement or suspense, as Woody and Buzz could take as long as necessary to get back to Andy’s house. Similarly, in Toy Story 2, Woody and Jesse must escape before they are shipped to Japan. If the collector was just going to keep them on display indefinitely, the toys could take their time to rescue Woody, and there would be no story.
In My Best Friend’s Wedding, Julia Roberts must win the love of her best friend before his fast-approaching wedding. Imagine how dull the film would have been if the wedding were a year away, or he wasn’t engaged at all and just dating someone else.
In the Hangover, the ticking clock is established right away, when Vick calls Tracy to tell her they lost Doug, she mentions (good subtle exposition) that the wedding is in four hours. If the wedding were still a week or even a few days away, the sense of urgency would be lost, and the film would be much less exciting. Not only would it be less suspenseful, but the guys could take their time and perhaps choose more logical, less hilarious methods for finding the groom.

As I touched on in the last post, boring your reader is death to a screenplay. It is your job to keep them interested and intrigued enough to keep turning pages, rather than putting your script down and picking up one of the other stories in their stack.

The best way to do this, and the way that will work in all genres, is to constantly challenge your hero. Don’t make anything easy for them. Set up impossible obstacles, then cleverly show how your hero overcomes them. This question-answer rhythm will not only keep the pages turning, it will establish a pattern of emotional highs and lows that will give the script the right feel. If every page is emotionally draining due to constant suspense or chaos, the audience will become desensitized and the emotional impact will wane. Look at good horror movies, for example. Horror films play on one of the most primal human emotions-fear. There’s nothing complex about what you feel when watching a horror film. You feel scared, because you put yourself in the character’s shoes and fear for their life, and emotionally, your own. However even the simplest of successful horror films utilizes the emotional high-and-low pattern by scaring you, then lulling you back into a sense of safety, then scaring you again. Whether the situations are life-and-death thrilling with horror, suspense, or action or normal everyday drama in a romantic comedy, the hero needs to constantly face obstacles that stand in the way of them achieving their goal. No matter what their goal is, these obstacles can be present and you can tailor them to the story you are telling to make sure they are believable in tone and scope. Every page or few pages should ask a question that the next page promises to answer. Will the hero escape the psychotic killer? To find out, turn the page. Will the hero get the girl to kiss him? To find out, turn the page. Make sure your script asks and answers questions so your reader is compelled to keep reading and experience how great your story is from start to finish.

Conflict should not be something you create and impose upon your story. I would never tell a writer to sprinkle in some conflict here, or add more drama there. Conflict is not just people fighting, arguing, or disagreeing. Conflict is not characters being moody or dissatisfied with their lives. In a properly structured, well-written screenplay, conflict arises naturally when the hero, pursuing a goal, faces opposition, in the form of a person, a circumstance or a situation. When conflict is created this way, it is believable as it is organic to the very nature of the story. Conflict is an essential part of the story. If your hero has a goal, and if there is something in the way of him achieving it, conflict arises.

In stories devoid of conflict, there is either a lack of a concrete goal, a lack of obstacles, or both. The hero doesn’t know what they want, and is just meandering through the story, letting things happen. If the hero wants nothing, pursues nothing, and thereby does nothing, then conflict cannot exist. If your hero does not know what they want but is instead swept along by the tide of other people telling him or her what to do where to go and who to be, then they are not going to run into any opposition or conflict. If the hero wants nothing, than there is nothing in the way of him achieving this.

If the hero encounters no opposition, then no conflict can exist. Even if you have a compelling goal and a hero pursuing it, you will not have conflict if you do not have obstacles and opposition. A conflict laden story can be created out of a hero trying to do something as simple as delivering a letter, if there are obstacles and circumstances that make accomplishing this task nearly impossible. On the other hand, a story could be completely dull and lack conflict even if the hero’s goal is monumental.

A story about a hero whose goal is to fly to the moon can have less conflict than the story about delivering the letter. If our wannabe astronaut is instantly accepted into the flight program at NASA, passes all the tests and immediately gets put on a mission to the moon and has a smooth ride there where everything goes as planned, the story will have absolutely no conflict, even though the goal was there and seemed impossible to achieve. If the hero trying to deliver the letter can’t find a nearby post office because he lives in a rural area that doesn’t get regular mail pick up, so he locates one miles away and drives there, but his truck breaks down on the way, and when he hitches a ride he leaves the letter in the car, and then by the time he finds the car and the letter and makes his way back to the post office to find that it is closed for the day, his story will have much more conflict than our astronaut because he encountered obstacles that created conflict.

The moral of the story is that goal + obstacles = conflict. Take away a goal or obstacles and you are left with a neutral, boring flat story.