FUNDAMENTALS OF SCREENWRITING (CONT’D)

 What does the character give to get what he or she wants? We have stated
that nothing comes easily to anyone in life. So it applies in the world of dramatic
storytelling. To get something, your character would have to give up something, whether
this something is his comfort, his security or his fears. If he doesn’t his stride to his goal
would hold less of an effect on us. If your character has to confront an enemy stronger
than he, he may have to give in time to learning the rules of physical combat, or the
handling of a weapon, or something. If he has to free his abducted daughter without
paying the stipulated ransom, he would first have to give up the security of his life, the
attention of whatever he has hitherto given attention to, or give up a relationship.
Something must be given up or given to. Then we see the price he has to pay for what he
wants. Always create this, even if it takes just a scene to do so.

 Who is the antagonist?

Who is the villain of the plot? Who is the character that stands in the way of your
protagonist and makes the attainment of his goal an impossibility? If your story doesn’t
have an antagonist, create one. Whether a human or a superhuman.

Know that the antagonist must have a goal also. He must be after something, too. The
antagonist must be stronger than your protagonist whether by brawl, by brains or by
bombs and the victory of the protagonist against the antagonist would be merely the
function of fate, as it is in the victory of good over evil.

If your story is such that there can’t be an antagonist in a certain person, create one by
combining natural or supernatural elements into an antagonistic force. For example, your
character is stuck in an unknown jungle. His goal is to find his way out of the jungle.
There is nobody to confront him and bring about conflict here, but there are natural forces
you can use to do just that. He encounters a menacing terrain which poses great risk to his
life. He gets confronted by a wild beast against which he tests his fighting skill. He
battles the darkness of the jungle by trying to make fire. He confronts a serpent or
dangerous critters, and so on. Combining all these forces, you have created antagonism.
And the essence of this is just one thing – conflict.

 How do the protagonist and the antagonist confront and conflict? Though
it is not at their first encounter that the confrontation and conflict between the antagonist
and the protagonist becomes spelt, you must create an encounter and then make the
conflict. Their first encounter may be impersonal, like in the case of the protagonist
receiving a threatening phone call from the antagonist demanding that certain sum be
paid if the protagonist wants his abducted daughter released. The conflict which the
protagonist experiences in his journey to free his daughter is the initial conflict the
antagonist had caused. And their eventual confrontation must spell the ultimate conflict,
or a series of conflicts which builds up to a climax.
 However, in certain cases, the protagonist and the antagonist can confront on many cases
and conflict in those cases. Like in the movie, The Matrix, the antagonist Agent Smith
confronts the protagonist Neo (Mr. Anderson). The initial conflict was not one of fist and
punches, but a demonstration of Agent Smith’s villainy and Neo’s naivety. The rest of the
movie shows how Neo gives up what he thinks was his real life for what becomes the
reality of life in which he gives in his time to tutelage and then confronts Agent Smith in
a series of conflicting situations which builds up to a spectacular climax.

 How do you create conflict?

It is all up to you. But give it to us bit by bit. If you throw out the best you have of the
conflict of the plot you may have nothing else to hold the audience by. Start with little
conflicts, build them up, and then wow us with a spectacular climax. The climax must
signal the end of the protagonist’s struggle.

Always remember that conflict may also be between the character and himself. And then
also you have the villain and other forces to build conflict with. Take your best shot.

 What is the beginning and the end of the plot?

This is about how the story starts and how it ends. The secret of effective plot creation is
in knowing the beginning and end of your story. Some teachers advise that you start with
the end and come to the beginning. That is fine, but a lot of writers find it challenging to
do that. I advise you start from the beginning, moving in progression to the end. You can
do this by working with a notepad and putting down how you want the plots of the story
to be played out from situation A to situation Z. Simply have in mind that your conflict
must build up. Do not give us the same very conflict we had earlier seen. If we have to
see the same kind of fight, arrange it in a different scene where elements of that particular
scene could be employed to spice up the fight. Build your conflict; create tension and
suspense here and there, and more conflict. You are the god, give it your best.

Do not take all that is said here on plot as the only thing you have to read on the subject. Allow
yourself time to read from other materials on screenwriting. If you do not know which is best for
you to read, feel free to send me an email to that effect and I will send you a couple of resources
you can check out. On you own you can also find some helpful resources on virtual and physical
bookshops. You will have to pay, of course.

Now, we will go on to more of the fundamentals of screenwriting.

 Characterization
Characterization is the process of giving the character(s) of the story the following:

 A face
 How does your character look like? Man or woman, buy or girl? Fair, dark or Albino? Is
your character young or old? Whoever your character is, you must give him/her a human
face. Even if you create a monster as your character, it still requires a face.

How old is he/she, and where is he/she from? The age of your character is important also,
this you know very well. And his age must in turn have an effect on the strength or
weakness of his life.

 A nature
How does the character behave? Is he fickle, bold, fearful or fearless? Does your
character have traces of melancholia, or what other attributes can you give to him to help
drive the plot of your story? The plot can determine the nature of your character in the
same way as the nature of the character can drive the plot. Characters must have emotion;
that way we can connect with them on an emotional level. Your audience doesn’t want to
see a powerful storyline run by a dull character, or a powerful character set in a dull plot.
The personality of your character must be real.

Characterization is the process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character.
And this occurs throughout the course of the story, not just in one or two scenes.

* * * *

 On character arc
Character arc refers to changes which occur in the life of the character in the course of the
unfolding of the plot of the story. A character starts out as some somebody in his/her usual
environment and then situations occur, things happens and he/she does some things or go a
different direction, which in turn changes who he/she is so he/she now becomes a
different person from what we have known the character to be.

Character arcs are so easy to explain because we’ve all experienced them. None of us is still the
person we were three years ago, or thirteen, or thirty ago. We’ve all change, some for the better,
some for the worse, and some change sideways. And this is alright, as long as we move on. It’s
the same with the characters of your story, they move on as the story progresses, but the WAY in
which they move on usually falls into one of three major categories.

1. The Change Arc – this is our good old ―hero’s journey‖ arc, which basically has the
protagonist change from an unlikely fellow into a savior and hero. From the whimp we
know him to be, he becomes Mr. Nigeria, flying across the sky and saving the metropolis
from the terror of the bad winged monster! This transformation is quite radical, and
despite some inner strength that was ―always within him‖, pretty much all else about the
protagonist changes drastically by the end of the story.
2. The Growth Arc – in this character arc, the protagonist overcomes an internal
opposition (weakness, fear, the past etc.) while he faces an external opposition, and as a
result he becomes a fuller, better person. He’s still the same person he was, he just
happen to have been upgraded.

A common yet often overlooked variant of the Growth Arc is The Shift Arc — in this,
the protagonist changes his perspective, learns different skills, or gains a different role.
The end-result is not ―better‖ or more than the starting point, just different. The
protagonist has not overcome a grand inner resistance or anything, he simply gained a
new set of skills or assumed a new position, maybe discovered a talent he forgot he had,
or a different vocation.

3. The Fall Arc – commonly known as a ―tragedy‖, the Fall Arc follows the protagonist
as he dooms himself and/or others, and declines into insanity, immorality or death. This
is an apt definition of this arc. The protagonist meets some kind of waterloo, caused may
be by something he did, or something he failed to do.