So-Called Screenwriting ‘Rules’: Part 14

Three weeks ago, I posted this about an occurrence that happens with irritating regularity in the online screenwriting universe: The contentious specter of so-called screenwriting ‘rules’:

What happens is pretty much this:

* Somebody posts something about how there is a rule against doing this or that.

* That circulates as people bat around the idea.

* Professional writers catch wind of it, then lambaste the shit out of the thesis in question.

* The ‘debate’ fades away…

* Until the next time it arises.

* Again…

* And again…

So it occurred to me, why not just deal with it once and for all! Get every single supposed screenwriting rule out on the table, then go through them, one by one, to see if we can take all the heat that typically gets generated when one of these online snits breaks out and collectively create some actual light.

In other words, let’s make this a real learning experience and hopefully in the process, put some of this nonsense to bed for good.

I asked for your help in aggregating these ‘rules’ and as always, the GITS community responded. I’ve gone through them all, thought about it, and here was my plan: I proposed to do a 3-week series on “So-Called Screenwriting ‘Rules’”. To continue to today’s post — There are no screenwriting ‘rules’ — click on “more”.

Week 1: As long as we’re takung the time to go through this stuff, I figured we might as well put it all into some perspective: historical, theoretical, and practical. Here are the five posts I did to frame the discussion:

Jan. 13: The Organic Nature of the Screenplay
Jan. 14: The Emergence of the Selling Script
Jan. 15: The Evolution of Screenplay Format and Style
Jan. 16: There are no screenwriting ‘rules’
Jan. 17: There are expectations

Week 2: I sorted out five real nuts-and-bolts items which we analyzed and discussed last week:

Jan. 20: We See / We Hear
Jan. 21: Unfilmables
Jan. 22: Action Paragraphs — 3 Lines Max
Jan. 23: CUT TO (Transitions)
Jan. 24: Parentheticals

Week 3: Readers made several suggestions that are about larger narrative choices, so we’ll take those on this week:

Jan. 27: Flashbacks
Jan. 28: Voice-Over Narration
Jan. 29: Sympathetic Protagonist
Jan. 30: Protagonist and Shifting Goals
Jan. 31: Certain Events By Certain Pages

Before we jump into our final week of this series, a caveat: Everything I post in this series is my opinion. I think it’s safe to say it’s a pretty well-informed take seeing as I’ve been writing scripts since 1986, teaching in my spare time since 2002, and even do a university course called “The History of American Screenwriting” created by my colleague Dana Coen, to my knowledge the only class of its type in the United States. But again, I’m simply expressing my perspective. It’s incumbent upon you to sort out your own approach to screenwriting style and the single best thing you can do in that regard is read scripts, especially screenplays written within the last 5 years as they represent the latest trends.

With that, let’s plunge into the rest of these so-called screenwriting ‘rules’!

Part 14: Protagonist and Shifting Goals

I have heard this bubble up in conversations from time to time. The ‘rule’ seems to be that a Protagonist must have a specific goal and that goal should not change over the course of the story.

Let’s try to be charitable here. Imagine a teacher tasked with running an Introduction to Screenwriting class. In reading the script pages of her students, she notices something: There is a lack of focus on the part of the Protagonists. In fact, they are difficult to get a handle on because they seem to flit from one concern to the next.

Fed up with this ongoing state of affairs, our teacher informs the class, “Your Protagonist must have one goal. And they cannot shift their goal.”

In one respect, she is performing a service for her students, getting them to zero in on this critical character and determine what is driving them, what is motivating them. If they have a specific goal, that can serve as a clear object toward which they steer their actions.

Moreover this has two residual benefits:

* By determining what the Protagonist’s goal is, you provide an end point for the narrative and this can help in crafting your story’s structure. Your Protagonist begins here and they end over there. Just knowing those two aspects can provide the spine of your plot structure.

* If the Protagonist has a specific goal in mind, they are apt to move toward it. By default, this makes them proactive which helps the writer avoid another so-called ‘rule’: Don’t write a passive Protagonist.

So our teacher would seem to be doing her students a solid, right?

Not exactly… if she leaves the conversation there.

First off, the intimation is that this is a rule. As we have seen, there are no screenwriting rules. We are trying to get rid of that way of thinking and the imperative she announces works against that goal.

Next there’s the not so insignificant issue of looking at goal as a single layered item. If a movie just took place in the External World, the domain of Action and Dialogue, then a single goal — Stop the asteroid from blowing up the Earth / Find the serial killer before he commits another heinous crime / Convince the bride to marry me, not the groom — would be just fine.

However movies don’t just exist in the External World. There is also the Internal World, the realm of Intention and Subtext, the psychological and emotional aspects of the journey. In other words, what does the story mean? And so, movies will often — and I’m tempted to say always — have other goals at work.

I like to think of it this way:

By the end of Act One, a Protagonist will almost invariably have a Conscious Goal, a specific known target toward which they are aiming their efforts.

But they will also have an Unconscious Goal, something that exists within their Authentic Self that will over the course of Act Two emerge into the light of consciousness.

Some language systems use the terms Want and Need.

A few examples:

* The Wizard of Oz: Dorothy’s Conscious Goal is to get home to Kansas. Her Unconscious Goal that emerges in her journey is to feel like her home is her home, she has to find a connection to it in order claim it as her home.

“There’s no place like home.”

* The Apartment: Baxter’s Conscious Goal is to land a promotion at work. His Unconscious Goal that emerges in his journey is get in touch with his inner Mensch, claim his self-respect, and quit playing the corporate game.

* The Silence of the Lambs: Starling’s Conscious Goal is to save Catherine Martin. Her Unconscious Goal that emerges in her journey is to kill Buffalo Bill as a form of redemption on her father’s behalf.

* Groundhog Day: Phil’s Conscious Goal is to stop having to relive the same day over and over. His Unconscious Goal that emerges in his journey is to get in touch with his caring self and find meaning in relationships with others.

* Tootsie: Michael’s Conscious Goal is to make enough money playing Dorothy Michaels to pay for his friend’s play. His Unconscious Goal that emerges in his/her journey is to discover he is a better man as a woman.

* King’s Speech: Bertie’s Conscious Goal is to overcome his stuttering. His Unconscious Goal that emerges in his journey is to confront the underlying psychological issues related to his speech defect enabling him to find his Voice.

Sometimes this process — of the Unconscious becoming Conscious — does in fact cause a Protagonist’s goal in the External World to shift. For example in Tootsie, Michael goes from desperately wanting to find work as an actor to desperately needing to find a way to quit the soap opera gig for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is that he yearns to be able to start an honest relationship with the Attractor character Julie.

However even if the Conscious Goal does not change, movies almost always have a sort of shift that does happen, whereby the Unconscious Goal emerges into the light of day, and the Protagonist learns to embrace it and make it a part of their New Self.

We can call that shift metamorphosis.

This is what Joseph Campbell calls the entire point of the Hero’s Journey (he uses the word transformation, I prefer metamorphosis).

So if a teacher says, “A Protagonist cannot have shifting goals,” that not only comes across as a rule, it also come perilously close to steering writers away from one of the most important dynamics in a story: The Protagonist’s metamorphosis.

Once again we see the danger of these so-called ‘rules,’ how they can tend to restrict creativity and even lead writers astray.

Much better to remember our old friend Mr. Mantra: Tools, not rules.

Instead of thinking about a single goal and writing a story with one layer of possible meaning and depth, use the tool of curiosity to go into your characters, particularly the Protagonist, and see what is going on in their Internal World, determine what their Unconscious Goal is, then work with that to see how it informs your understanding of the character’s psychological journey and their destiny as it translates in the External World.

If you do that, you are on your way to deriving Plot from Character… which in my view is a splendid way to go.

If you have any questions or observations, please head to comments. Again, as long as we are taking such a comprehensive approach to this content, let’s do it to the max. I want to hear your thoughts and am glad to make this an extended conversation with a goal of putting this subject into a more helpful perspective.

Next: Certain Events By Certain Pages.

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