Is my script big enough to be a movie, Part 7: The Beginning

Following yesterday’s post, here’s another question to ask about how ‘big’ your script is.

DOES MY SCRIPT HAVE A BIG ENOUGH BEGINNING?

By the end of Act One (The Beginning), a reader not only should know where the story is headed, they have to be gripped by it. The combination of the Plotline and the Themeline has to have enough going on to grab a reader’s imagination, excite their curiosity, and propel them into Act Two (The Middle). 

Certainly one way to do that is through a set of bombastic circumstances. Another is to establish sizable stakes at play in the story. But movies often fail when they don’t provide any emotional connection between the events that transpire and what the characters are experiencing. This is especially true with the Protagonist.

Often the Protagonist begins the story with an acknowledged goal, but over the course of Act One, a second goal emerges, usually related to what they need as opposed to what they want. For example, in The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling begins with this Want: to solve the Buffalo Bill mystery. But once she meets Hannibal Lecter and experiences how he can see into her ‘soul’, she feels compelled to open up to him in order to explain the mystery of her recurring nightmares. That becomes her Need.

One way of looking at Adaptation is that at the start, Charlie wants to accomplish the goal of adapting “The Orchid Thief” into a screenplay. However, once he becomes consumed with Susan Orlean, he finds himself lured deeper and deeper into the author’s private life, needing to find the secret to the mystery of his own writer’s block (which is itself a metaphor of his own emotional blockage). 

If your story’s Beginning feels too small, dig more deeply into your Protagonist and search for a deeper dimension tied to their goal, one that speaks to their Need.

Next: Does my script have a big enough Middle?

[Originally posted February 15, 2009]