He talks about how to begin a story:
Beginnings: Setting a Story in Motion
-
Endings: The Good, the Bad, and the Insanely Great
- Emotional Stakes
- Philosophical Stakes
- External Stakes
All of these usually intersect at a couple of key points in the film, the climax and dark night of the soul. Arndt says this is what makes an "Insanely Great Ending".
SIDENOTE: "Angel" Stories
There are also stories where the main character doesn't really undergo a lot of change from the start to end of the film, these films still usually have that character affect other around him in some way or another. So side characters undergo larger arcs than the main character, almost like playing the film from the mentor's perspective.
Examples of this could be something like Forrest Gump, where the people around him are more affected than him, or Star Wars could even be argued as an example where Luke doesn't change as much as, say, Han Solo.
I actually recently saw a video essay on this exact thing:
Patrick did mention this is quite common in kids films, here the guy mentions Paddington, I guess this is because these characters - while the leads of the films - are often required to act as a role model of some kind. I imagine this is the case with some biblical films and Neil Breen's movies too.
BSA204 Concept Roadmap
Title: Untitled
Genre: Horror
Themes: Success, Friendship (?)
Setting: NZ town
Protagonist: NAME
Protagonist’s character flaw: I don't know
Super-Objective: Become Successful (?)
Outer-want (external objective): Get money/survive?
Inner-need (internal objective): Escape his small town upbringings
Inner conflict: Taking responsibility
External obstacle (or antagonist) : Evil objects and things
How does my Protagonist react to this obstacle? : Finds ways to defeat them?
Further complications: Objects get spread around
Mid-point:
“Dark Night of the Soul”/2TP: There has to be a point where they are seemingly defeated
Character Arc: Learns to take responsibility
Resolution: They defeat the baddie(s)
I didn't realise I had so much work to do....
I didn't realise I had so much work to do....
Our protagonist and his friends finds a variety of supernatural objects, his super objective is to get out of the small town and make his own way in the world, the key to this is to make cash money. Him and his friends do this but he runs into trouble when the objects start causing trouble, he has to overcome this obstacle and save the town
The character does something they love, but this comes with a fatal flaw - what's my flaw (he loves being a capitalist, but...?)
He must make some kind of irresponsible or immoral decision when they decide to sell the objects. This could be his flaw and later this can be rectified.
He has to clean up his mess, lets play it from this angle - he makes a mistake that he has to fix, before this we establish that he doesn't often take responsibility and now he has to because of what he caused to happen. The story sees him learning to take responsibility and fix his mistakes. This could be the arc of the first episode and the super objective could be him escaping the town.
The inciting incident would be them finding the objects, maybe selling them is the mid-point?
So after this brainstorming fiasco I've finally decided on what the plot of the pilot is going to be:
- We meet two friends who want to escape their small town and do better than their own fathers before them
- One of these becomes friends with the rich kid at their school, alienating his best friend in the process
- The rich kid says his father has a cabin cleaning job for them, there they find a collection of supernatural objects
- We meet two friends who want to escape their small town and do better than their own fathers before them
- One of these becomes friends with the rich kid at their school, alienating his best friend in the process
- The rich kid says his father has a cabin cleaning job for them, there they find a collection of supernatural objects
I found this activity surprisingly hard because I hadn't really developed the script very well, even in my head, at this point. The activity was helpful though, I found myself quickly making adjustments that I think result in a cleaner and more entertaining product. What I've come to realize is that I write scenarios and situationally instead of from a character perspective, this whole concept is just an interesting scenario that I think would have good storytelling potential - the problem with this approach I find is that plot isn't automatically generated because there aren't really characters. Matthew writes in a way where the characters are key, usually superimposing opposites next to each other, in his writing there is always a very natural flow to things because the story is founded in the interactions and conflict between these characters.
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