Pros And Cons Of Journaling For Screenwriters

Some screenwriters can’t write unless they keep a journal. For others journaling is a distraction or even a waste of creative energy. Some thoughts.

Opinions seem divided about the benefits or otherwise of screenwriters keeping a journal. In general, those in favour of journaling see it as a means of finding or keeping focus, putting problems and worries into perspective, or even overcoming writer’s block. On the other side, are those who believe journaling is a self-indulgent displacement activity, and even a waste of your creative resources. Here are some of the common claims about journaling for writers, make of them what you will.

Journaling Helps You Keep Focused
Describing what you think and feel about scenes or characters you’re planning to write, evaluating what you’ve already written, identifying specific story problems you’re wrestling with… these are the kinds of journaling activities that help you distinguish between important and marginal issues. Often, when you’re immersed in a project—especially if you work alone—it can be difficult to sense the relative importance of a scene or a beat. Journaling can help you step back, see the bigger picture and choose which battle to fight, as it were. It’s also a great way to explore your own emotional connection to the story, to check that the story is still exploring or portraying what you intend it to. Also, if you’re like me and you work on multiple projects at once, then journaling can help you decide what not to do on any given day, which can be an important part of formulating your writing and career goals.

Journaling Depletes Your Creative Juices
An often heard warning, which frames creative work as being driven by a kind of fuel that gets used up and needs to be replenished. There’s something to be said for this, as the act of sitting and formulating coherent sentences, requires focused attention and energy. I know from experience that if you love writing, then it really doesn’t matter what you’re writing, you just become immersed in the process of translating your thoughts into written text, and before you know it, it’s time to pick the kids up from school. So it can be useful to set yourself a limited time to journal, because once you’re warmed up (see below), you’ll be ready to get back to your story. Whereas, if you carry on too long, you’ll just be spent when you finally stop.

Journaling Helps You Overcome Distracting Thoughts and Fears

Sian Beilock documents this wonderfully in her book Choke, which describes the research she’s done into performance under pressure. One of the numerous conclusions she’s come to, is that people who are prone to freeze up or be distracted by intrusive thoughts during activities where they need to focus intensively, can benefit from writing about these intrusive thoughts before they start the activity in question. Sometimes, the mere act of articulating clearly what’s on your mind, without necessarily going into any deep analysis or speculation about the underlying causes, can reduce its impact on your performance. It’s as if writing about your concerns is a way of shrinking them and putting them to one side for a while.

Journaling Encourages Self-Obsession
Definitely the flipside of the above and a very real danger of journaling, especially if you’re struggling with self-doubt. It’s very easy to get carried away and wallow in self-pity. Much, much easier, in fact, than doing something about whatever’s wrong. At least, that’s how it can feel if you let yourself get carried away, penning reams and reams of reasons to be miserable. One of those famous and by now thoroughly debunked myths of popular psychology, is that punching a boxing ball gets rid of your aggression. On the contrary, it evokes aggression. The same is true for going on and on about how unfortunate you are. Rather than making you feel better, it usually makes you feel worse.

Journaling Gets The Writing Muscles Moving
This idea frames creative writing as a kind of sport, and views journaling as similar to warming up before engaging in sports. Just writing something, anything, even complaining about not knowing what to write, can get you into the zone, and help overcome writer’s block. But if you extend the sports analogy, at some point you do have to finish the warming up and actually get to the sport. Otherwise…

Journaling Wastes Valuable Writing Time
Here’s an obvious disadvantage, especially if you only have limited time to write besides a day job, kids and other time-consuming, non-writing responsibilities. There’s definitely something to be said for using small windows of writing time for short, intensive spurts of writing, whether that be brainstorming, outlining or even writing pages. Several people have written convincingly about this, including Adrian Mead and Pilar Alessandra. The knowledge that you only have, say, half an hour or even ten minutes, can sometimes really get your creative brain in gear, and it would be ironic, to say the least, to spend that time pondering what’s stopping you from writing.

Journaling Helps You Track Your Writing Progress
This can be pretty confronting if you’re not making good progress, but it’s a great confirmation when you are. I recently read back some early entries in a journal about a screenplay I’m writing, and I was horrified to realize I’d been going round in circles, wrestling with ideas I’d played with before and rejected! At the same time, it clarified some story problems and helped me leave certain ideas behind for good and move on. Plus, keeping a record of your progress is also a way of compiling a (digital) paper trail, especially if you regularly back up your files on a distant server. If nothing else, you have a dated record of when you first started working on a project.

So, those are just a few of the arguments for and against journaling that I’m aware of. I come down on the side of journaling as a generally positive thing. I find it helpful to keep different journals for different projects I’m working on. These tend to be mostly notes about issues that relate specifically to the story at hand, but they can also touch on more general methodological or personal issues that come up. I also keep a more general writing journal, which helps me keep an overview of all the projects I have going at any one time. It’s a good place to identify similar problems that crop up in different projects, and it’s a place to reflect on priorities too.

But the main point is to avoid using journaling as an excuse for not working on your project(s). Journaling is best when it helps you keep a healthy balance between reflecting on your writing and… writing.

Why A Great Screenplay Is Like A Beautiful Woman

All the usual lists of requirements for a great screenplay can help screenwriters up to a point, but like a beautiful woman, a great screenplay is not reducible to a list of its formal characteristics.

I’ve spent a long time trying to understand why I’m grabbed by one film while another doesn’t really affect me. Sometimes it’s the subject matter, sometimes it’s the acting, sometimes it’s the dramatic tension or lack of it. But in the end, I always find that no amount of analysis really captures what makes a film work for me. In fact, the more I strive to improve my own writing by reading screenplays, by watching on screen how other people work their magic, by taking advice from people who know how great screenplays "should" be written, the more I realize there’s a limit to how useful all that analysis of existing material is. Even on an internet dating site, where you can describe your ideal partner, the proof of the pudding is in the first face-to-face encounter. The “chemistry”(or lack of it) is determined by a process than analysis and verbalization of past experiences.

What Does A Beautiful Woman Look Like?
There’s plenty of social psychological research into falling in love, into the link between physical appearance and social status, and into the ever-changing norms concerning what counts as beautiful in different eras and cultures. Nowadays, for example, it’s fashionable to point to colour-coded fMRI scans to show where in the brain people decide what’s beautiful. But in the end, if you try and describe what a beautiful woman (or man) looks like, the only truthful answer is: I know one when I see one. It’s not helpful to say she should have straight blond hair, this or that hip-to-breast ratio, a certain type of gait… all these things may be true, but only on average and in retrospect. When you’ve seen the beautiful woman, you can describe certain aspects that you think attracted you to her, but that’s obviously not what attracts you to her in the moment. Your description is just a crude attempt to verbalize an immensely complex process that happens unconsciously, in milliseconds.

What Does An Amazing Movie Look Like?
It’s a familiar exercise that screenwriting teachers and how-to books propagate: Imagine what people coming out of the cinema are saying to each other about your film. Or: Imagine the poster. These are just a couple of ways of trying to distil the essence of a screenplay into a few pithy statements, so that you can keep yourself on track during the writing, and to give yourself a catchy pitch. These, and many other tricks of the trade are absolutely helpful, but they don’t do the creative work for you. Because, think about it, what made the last movie you loved, so great? That question alone activates a plethora of unconscious, pre-existing notions about “aspects of a film.” So you might say something about the acting, the camera work, the dialogue, the emotional dilemmas, and so on. But that, too, is just a crude attempt to verbalize a complex, largely unconscious experience. What you loved about the movie was the experience, not a bullet list of cinematic criteria. And what you loved about it may not be what other people loved about it. They may even not have liked it at all.

Analysis Is Not The Same As Creativity
For me, then, the lesson is that you can’t turn it around and use a crude analysis of a film you loved as the basis for your own screenplay. You can adopt the same structure as an existing movie, you can keep the same actors in mind when writing your own characters, you can imitate pacing and transitions, you can even copy someone’s writing style. And because your screenplay is going to be read by a lot of people who have lists of “good screenwriting criteria” boxes to tick, you have to master all the formal aspects of screenwriting just to get attention. But in the end, what makes a screenplay stand out from the crowd (and hopefully the movie that’s based on it, too) is dependent on so many unpredictable factors, not least of all the personal taste of readers, that the only sensible thing to do is to be true to what you yourself want to write. Find your own personal, emotional connection with your story and follow that.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Just because your best friend’s beloved doesn’t attract you, you’re not going to try and convince them to stop loving that person, are you? But there are people who aren’t embarrassed to explain to you why you’re wrong, say, to enjoy the most popular movie of all time so far: James Cameron’s Avatar. It’s “actually” not a good story, they'll tell you. Go know. So I think that following your own preference is probably wise. Which is not the same as saying that professional craftsmanship is irrelevant, because that’s certainly not true. My philosophy is: Get the craft, then tell your own stories.

It only takes one person in the right place at the right time to find my screenplay beautiful.

The Danger Of Committing Too Soon To An Idea For A Film

Sometimes, what initially seems like a great premise for a film, might actually only be part of a great premise for a film, or even not great at all.

Like any self-respecting screenwriter I’m always on the lookout for good ideas for spec screenplays. I love books like Bill Martell’s Your Idea Machine because they remind me how essential it is to always keep your eyes and ears tuned to the ideas ether. That means not just keeping up with the news, both global and local, staying abreast of developments in hard science, social science (and even pseudo-science), skimming magazines, but also eavesdropping on gossip, catching snippets of conversation, etc. Anything that might contain the germ of a film premise when prodded by a “What if…?” or when otherwise treated as a jumping off point for fantasy.

It’s A Premise Captain, But Not As We Know It
However, sometimes I’ll come up with an idea and mistakenly see it as a premise for a story, when actually it might function much better as a section of something larger. In other words, I might have “merely” thought of a scene, a sequence, or a sub-plot, or even a minor character’s story, but I’ve latched onto it too soon and given it the status of story premise. I find a really good way to play with the ideas I come up with, is to ask myself things like:

• Imagine this is a sub-plot. What is the main story?
• Imagine this is just one sequence. What happened before? What happens afterwards?
• Imagine this is only a scene. Where, chronologically, in the story does it take place?
• Imagine this character is a minor character. Who is the main character, and what is their story?
• Imagine this character is the antagonist. What’s he after?
• Imagine this is just the backstory.
• What if this were a major turning point somewhere late in the story?

Obsessive Logline Syndrome (OLS)
I guess the art of generating good film ideas also requires being able to tolerate a degree of uncertainty. Because ideas morph and evolve while you think about them. Some aspect of an idea may seem self-evident one day, only to fall by the wayside the next day as a result of a new twist or insight. This is something that has always bothered me about the notion that you must have a logline first, and only then start brainstorming scenes, sequences, etc. To me this is completely counter-intuitive. Sure, once you start writing a treatment or a first draft, it’s useful to have a good logline to hand in case anyone wants to know what you’re up to. In fact it’s always useful to use the logline format to check if your story still ticks the necessary screenplay boxes. But the logline evolves in tandem with the writing. So if I come up with something during the writing that makes the story better but, say, changes the main character from a man into a woman, then I go with that and adapt the logline accordingly.

Recognizing A Dead Horse
Clearly, you need to know when the idea isn’t big enough to carry an entire screenplay. Sometimes that’s obvious right away when you try and imagine a pitchable storyline with a main character who has a goal, and so on. Other times it might only become obvious after you’ve finished writing a two-page outline. It’s a matter of practice too, I suppose. But I know for sure that my own worst pitfall is committing to an idea too soon. I’m doing it less and less these days, but I’ve done it in the past. I once even found myself half way through a first draft before realizing the idea wasn’t sound as a film premise. I’m never doing that again, I can tell you!

My New Ideas Rule For 2012
I’ve instigated a new rule for myself for 2012: Whenever I think I’ve found a great idea for a screenplay, I have to brainstorm versions of the idea in as many different genres as possible, with different endings and beginnings, and other variations, before I settle on whether it really is worth pursuing to, say, a one-page synopsis. Plus this: If the synopsis doesn’t grab me, I’m allowed to admit the idea wasn’t as good as it first appeared.

Good raving writing to you all in 2012!

Does Your Screenplay Have A Unique Selling Point?

One glance at the most successful films at the box office these days, shows that reality as we know it isn’t a big seller. So what to do if your story is set in the real world?

I’ve never been a big fan of supernatural stories. Despite some great scenes in movies like The Sixth Sense, I usually can’t get beyond the wet blanket of a sceptic in me, who knows the difference between superstition and science. It just spoils the story for me. Or otherwise, it’s just too scary for me, and I don’t like being scared. But the truth of the box office is, that a lot more people will pay to see vampires and werewolves, the tooth fairy, pirates, ghost stories, comic book heroes, outrageous comedy worlds, Father Christmas, sci-fi and animation, than plain old drama. Which means that the chances of finding funding for a spec screenplay based in reality are minimal compared to a story with a supernatural or fantasy element. Unless…

Reality, But Not As We Know It
I love watching trailers. Partly because I’ve got too little time to go and watch all the movies I’d love to see, and partly because they are such a good guide to what’s unique about a film. Two current trailers, Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam and David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method made me realize that a screenplay can have a unique selling point without necessarily having to pander to superstition. What these films share, as far as I can see, is a reference to a real-world phenomenon that everyone is familiar with, or at least familiar enough to be able to engage with, without the film having to explain anything. It’s this that elevates the stories beyond their basic plots, and gives them that something extra: a unique selling point.

Example: Habemus Papam – The Pope
Whether you’re a Catholic or not, the figure of The Pope is something that automatically evokes all sorts of associations to do with religion, tradition, history, celibacy, men in dresses, and so on. A bit like Father Christmas, but then… real. As far as I can tell from the trailer, the film does an excellent job of playing with these familiar aspects, while telling a really funny story. Because the starting point is something that most people have some kind of idea about, the film doesn’t have to do any explaining for it to work.

Example: A Dangerous Method - Psychoanalysis
Whether you’ve been in psychoanalysis or not (the vast majority of the world’s population hasn’t), the name Sigmund Freud is likely to ring a bell and evoke some associations with therapy, Freudian slips, the unconscious, a long cylindrical object a hairy orifice (Freud’s cigar), Vienna, etc. A bit like Sherlock Holmes, but then… real. Starting from that more or less familiar arena, David Cronenberg weaves a dramatic tale based on real events, about lust, unconscious desires, challenging authority and so on. Here too, because many people have a pre-existing idea about who Freud was and what psychoanalysis is, the arena is already there in the audience’s mind before the start of the film.

Tapping Into The Collective Unconscious
To me, this is one of the most difficult aspects of screenwriting. But I can see why it makes perfect sense. All the aspects of screenwriting craft, such as conflict, character flaw, character arc, sequences, three act structure, and so on, are all well and good. There’s no doubt that being able to write well and according to industry standards, is necessary. But perhaps not sufficient. What really makes a screenplay stand out from the crowd, is something at the centre of the story world, that goes beyond the familiar world we inhabit, while touching on something that lives in everyone’s mind, in the collective unconscious. Something original that has universal resonance. It sounds contradictory, but it isn’t. Very few people are intimate with The Pope, but billions of people have an idea of The Pope in their mind. The same is true of fantastic and supernatural concepts such as vampires, angels, werewolves and fairy tale characters. But also of familiar, real-world phenomena, such as historical figures (monarchs, dictators, politicians, artists, biblical characters, etc,) famous sporting events, battles, illnesses (mental or physical), festivals (national, religious, etc.), inventions, and so the list goes on.

Any one of these phenomena integrated into an otherwise "merely" dramatic or funny story, can elevate it to a level that makes it accessible and interesting to a much wider audience. It’s not a guarantee for success, because if the story isn’t emotionally engaging anyway, then nothing will help. But it certainly increases the chances of a screenplay getting attention, which is what a unique selling point is supposed to do.

Cognitive Dissonance As Inner Conflict: Part 1

All mainstream movies are about characters struggling with personal transformation. The concept of cognitive dissonance offers insight into why a character might resist change.

A while ago I read a wonderful book called Mistakes Were made, But Not By Me, by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. It’s full of eye-opening insights about how people go about convincing themselves they are doing the right thing, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The human mind has evolved to be able to cope with two contradictory thoughts, by reasoning away the contradiction. Thought A is, say, a positive thought about oneself, and thought B is a negative thought about your choice or your actions. The underlying idea is that once you commit to a position, however seemingly insignificant, your (unconscious) priority becomes to justify that position by selectively noticing things that support it and ignoring things that don’t. The authors call this “self-justification.”

A simple example might be the decision to buy a certain kind of car. Before you decide which make or model, you shop around, weigh up pros and cons of various types of cars, etc. But after you’ve signed the deal, you only pick up new information that confirms your choice of new car and proves that other cars are inferior. Even if this isn’t correct.

Bad Choices Lead To Cognitive Dissonance
However, this phenomenon isn’t limited to the purchase of consumer goods. It applies to any choice a person makes. How you vote, who you marry, where you choose to live, what school you send your kids to, career choices, and so on. And what’s most important in terms of writing a screenplay is, it also applies to decisions you have secret doubts about or even deeply regret… In other words: Inner conflict.

Here’s how a character’s cognitive dissonance could be relevant to the beginning of a screenplay, where the story world is being established, as are the main character’s goal and weakness. Remember, for our purposes, cognitive dissonance means reconciling two contradictory thoughts by (unconsciously) reasoning away the contradiction. This leads to the denial of a problem, rationalizations that cover up the problem, avoidance of the problem altogether, etc. This is precisely the kind of unfulfilled state you want your main character in at the beginning of your story, in order to create both inner and outer conflict and to create the potential for emotional growth—at a price.

Rationalizing Away Cognitive Dissonance
We all know her: The neighbour who’s all smiles and cheerfulness, but who’s married to a scumbag. Everyone knows he treats her like dirt, but the more people urge her to consider a life away from him, in which she’ll find real love and affection, the more she insists that she’s really very happy with the scumbag. The cognitive dissonance here is this: Thought A = I’m an intelligent, loving woman. Thought B = I’m married to an abusive bully. Those two thoughts are dissonant, they contradict each other. The coping strategy here, is self-justification through rationalization: My husband’s under a lot of pressure, he’s not good at expressing his feelings, he’s such a good lover… and so on. What does that set up in terms of story? It promises the audience that a character who rationalizes away a problem like this, is going to be confronted with what they’re denying, later in the story.

A classic movie example is Bruce Willis’s character in Die Hard, who after six months is still angry at his estranged wife for choosing her career above their marriage. His cognitive dissonance: Thought A = She makes me feel like a loser; thought B = I’m lonely, I miss her. His rationalization for not praising her achievements and showing her affection: I’m a tough guy, I don’t need her, I can manage fine on my own, she’ll realize she needs me sooner or later, etc.

Another example might be Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character in 500 Days of Summer, who hangs on to the delusion that the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with, feels the same way about him, despite plenty of clues to contradict this. His cognitive dissonance: Thought A = This girl is the best thing that’s ever happened to me; thought B = This girl is totally unwilling to commit to me. His rationalizations for not heeding his 12-year old half-sister’s advice to forget the girl and move on: But we like the same music; this isn’t what women are really like; she just hasn’t realize yet that wants to be more than just friends, etc.



Cognitive Dissonance Questionnaire
Here are a few questions that might help bring this concept into focus for the beginning of your own screenplay, or at any other point where it feels relevant:

• What dissonance between contradictory thoughts does your character reason away?
• How is this self-justification visible in their actions and choices?
• What other character benefits from the contradiction?
• What evidence is the character (deliberately) ignoring?
• Which of the character’s contradictory thoughts do they really need to reject?
• What is the character afraid will happen if they resolve the dissonance?
• What does the character stand to gain if they resolve the dissonance?

Theses are just some suggestions. There are inevitably lots of other ways to explore this aspect of a character. But part of the fun of writing, I find, is discovering your own way.

Next time, I’ll have a look at how cognitive dissonance manifests when a character is confronted with their dissonance, but continues to resist change.

Five Ways To Think About Your Screenplay’s Arena

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of when and where a story is set, but arena is an integral part of every screenplay.

Here’s what set me thinking about this: I wrote a short screenplay, which I hope to get up and running with my director brother Jonathan (check out his impressive showreel here). He read the script, liked it, had a few notes and then said, deadpan, “I’d like to set it in the 1970s, that would be visually really cool!” I swear, the first thing that came to my mind was: how is this relevant to the story? The second thing was, budget. Then all the beats with mobile phones and other 21st century tech stuff flashed in front of my eyes. Then I realized, okay, my brother’s used to directing big commercials, with budgets you could shoot three indie features for. But I’m a struggling screenwriter, happy if something of mine is shot for nothing, so I’m used to weighing every detail very carefully. One such ‘detail’ is arena.

Era As Arena
The time in which a story is set, determines a lot more than just wardrobe and props. Just think of the difference in attitudes to sex, authority, or religion in, say, 1550, 1850 and 1950. It’s not just impossible to ignore these differences in values, it’s a real waste! Using the arena to add a layer of meaning to a story can be really effective. For example, imagine a story about an unintended pregnancy, like Knocked Up or Juno, set in the 1950s. The story would be much more about the taboo and shame of pregnancy out of wedlock, rather than about the difficult personal choices facing the main characters. A story is set in a particular era for a reason, both to comment on that era and as a way of reflecting the personal dilemmas of the main characters in the social events of that time.

Geographical Location As Arena
Similarly, where a story is situated determines a lot more than the palette and soundtrack of a film. The local culture (which can even differ within a single city) is the context within which a story plays out. It has values and social conflicts which offer specific potential for conflict, metaphor, action, etc., which if related to what the story is about, can infuse a screenplay with more meaning. Plus, contrasting locations within a story can emphasize thematic or narrative developments in the story, too. A classical contrast is city-countryside, in which the urban environment represents modern values and the rural setting represents traditional values. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, the emphasis depends on what argument the film is trying to make. Similarly, the nature of the terrain can be very expressive too. There’s a big difference between action set in a isolated, physically demanding location such as a desert or a mountain, and action set in a luxurious tourist resort or a crowded slum.

Fantasy World As Arena

Science fiction and animation (or a combination of both) offer the opportunity to specifically design a story world to explore a particular thematic issue, or philosophical question. By stepping outside normal reality, the film can explore big questions in a very focused way. Questions about ethics, free will, about artificial intelligence, life on other planets, and so on. What would it be like if the police could see a future crime happening and still have time to prevent it (Minority Report)? Or: what would it be like if humans were raised like livestock to harvest their organs (Never Let Me Go)?

Limited Physical Location As Arena
Setting a story in one building, or on a ship, or some other location with clear boundaries and a specific character, is a great way to create a microcosm in which differing world views battle it out. A classic example is Twelve Angry Men, in which almost the entire film plays out in one room, where a jury sweats over a case they’ve heard. But a limited location can also be a source of great suspense, like in films such as Die Hard, Titanic, Alien, and plenty more, where the viewer is constantly aware that “there’s no way out.” But it’s not just a source of cinematic tension, it’s also a metaphor for life’s limitations, for our awareness of our own mortality and how we deal with that.

Organization As Arena

Whether the story is set within an official institute (e.g., a prison, a psychiatric hospital, the army, a school), an informal organization (e.g., the mafia), a small or large business, a sports team, or even a family, all of these groupings represent certain values. All types of organizations suggest some degree of required conformity to the system and its values, so there’s an inherent potential for conflict there. The story might be about a conflict between an individual within the organization trying to get out, an outsider trying to get in, a faction trying to bring about change from the inside, or some other variation. Whatever the specifics of the conflict, the organization itself offers a great opportunity to establish a clear set of values as a backdrop for the narrative. There are countless examples of prison, mafia, army, sports and family drama movies that use this kind of construct.

I’m sure there are plenty of additional ways to think about arena, but what’s clear is that arena is an integral part of what a film is about. It expresses something about the challenges the main characters face, both in terms of the concrete goal they have to achieve and the underlying, internal flaw they have to confront. Sometimes, a thought experiment in which you change the arena of your story, can be a great way to prize out what the story is about. Kind of similar to imagining the story being told from the point of view of a different character. Even if you decide not to change the arena, just imagining the change can reveal aspects of the story or characters you were missing. You quickly see whether the change would add a layer to the story or just distract from what it’s really about.

And my short? All the 1970s historical circumstances that I came up with were interesting, but essentially distracting. So for the time being, anyway, the short is still set in the present.

Three Great Ways To Find Your Main Character’s Flaw

In mainstream cinema, the main character’s flaw is the key to their transformation, or arc. So a well-defined flaw is an invaluable guide during the writing process.

I’ve recently been inspired and helped by Pilar Alessandra’s wonderful book, The Coffee Break Screenwriter. Written for screenwriters juggling day jobs, kids and other time-consuming distractions, the book consists of a series of brief questionnaires, each designed to focus your mind on one aspect of your screenplay for ten minutes. I find it a great way to make optimal use of a limited amount of time. However, the main character’s flaw as a basic story element isn’t really treated separately in the book, so I’ve come up with my own coffee break questionnaire…

The main character’s flaw is an essential ingredient in a screenplay, because it’s what stops the them from achieving their goal. It’s the thing they’re most reluctant to face up to, because of the pain or loss involved in really acknowledging the flaw and then changing. It’s also what the antagonist latches onto and uses to make things increasingly difficult for the main character. But the flaw isn’t just important for writing the story, it’s also an essential ingredient in a good logline. It’s the essence of the description of the main character, and as such it indicates what kind of arc the main character will have to go through for there to be a satisfactory resolution to the story, regardless of genre.

So, without further ado, here are three questions which can easily be brainstormed during a ten minute window in between the ironing and the washing-up, or while waiting for an appointment or a meeting, or while your daughter has her ballet lesson… Oh, and here’s my disclaimer: I’m only saying this kind of brainstorming is useful, because I’ve found it useful. As always, my motto is: whatever works for you. Feel free to vary or ignore these questions at will.

How Does The Story End?
If you know how you want your story to end, where does that leave the main character? What are they capable of (physically, emotionally, spiritually, morally, etc.) at the end of the story, that they weren’t capable of at the beginning? Here are some examples. Not from Jaws, Tootsie, The Wizard of Oz, or even Casablanca, though...

By the end of Hallum Foe Jamie Bell’s character is capable of real intimacy. That’s a satisfying ending, because his flaw to begin with is his inability to grieve his mother’s suicide, a psychological obstacle which manifests in his bizarre and anti-social behaviour, and results in his alienation and loneliness.

Here’s another: By the end of Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg’s character is vindicated in his ruthless commitment to justice, which is precisely the ‘flaw’ that gets him demoted to a seemingly uneventful village in the first place. In this story, the main character’s unwillingness to ‘play the game’ (i.e., he works too diligently, making his police colleagues look bad) remains steadfast, but turns from a flaw into a strength.

So, knowing how your story ends allows you to ‘reverse engineer’ the main character’s arc, and determine what the most appropriate flaw is to start with.

What Is The Antagonist’s Goal?
Every great antagonist has their own story, something they are trying to achieve which is being obstructed by the main character. So the main character is going to battle it out with a force that knows them well and is hell-bent on stopping them, particularly by hitting them where it hurts most. Often, the antagonist essentially wants the same thing as the main character, but has a diametrically opposed moral worldview.

In John Patrick Stanley´s Doubt both Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman have the best interests of the pupils at their Catholic school at heart. However, they differ in their ideas about how to achieve this. Meryl Streep’s character is an old-fashioned disciplinarian, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is an open-minded liberal. She will do anything to prevent him from introducing a more tolerant, lenient culture into her Catholic school, including fabricating an ‘incident’ to justify firing him. Hoffman’s flaw is his belief that being open about his doubts will bring about positive change. By the end of the story, however, Hoffman is able to accept that there are some things he can’t change. This insight is the direct result of the intense and ultimately successful attack on him by Meryl Streep.

So, if it’s clear what the antagonist wants, then the main character’s flaw is going to be just what they need to get the job done.

What makes the main character’s goal so hard to achieve?
What specific thing does the main character have to achieve for us to know the story is over? What do they have to win, conquer, escape from, retrieve, deliver, refrain from… etc.? And what makes it so much harder for them to achieve this than for anyone else? Why is this the worst possible situation for this character to have to deal with? I mean, none of us wants to be buried alive or stuck on a hijacked plane, so that level of generic, primal emotion works on a plot level. But what specific difficulty does this particular goal raise for the main character in this particular story?

In Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan Nathalie Portman’s character finally achieves the lead role in a major ballet production, after years of hard graft and numerous disappointments. However, this achievement turns out to be the beginning, not the end of her story, because in order to dance the part to the director’s satisfaction, she must unleash the dark side of her psyche, which she has kept hermetically sealed away. What makes this task so hard for her to fulfil, is her extreme emotional and sexual repression and its manifestation in her ruthless perfectionism. Her flaw is her inability to let go without losing control, which ultimately proves fatal.

Here’s another example: In Tangled the main character Rapunzel wants to go to the beguiling lanterns that float in the distant sky once every year, but she’s locked in a tower by her wicked stepmother, Gothel. In order to achieve her goal she must escape, but in order escape she needs to lose her innocence, her naivety, and to rebel against her stepmother. This is particularly hard for Rapunzel, because she has been kept completely ignorant of the outside world. She wouldn’t know where to start. Rapunzel’s flaw is her innocence and ignorance, which is precisely why her goal seems so impossible to achieve.

So, the specific reason why achieving the goal is difficult for the main character, is intimately linked with their flaw.

These are three questions I’ve found useful, but I’m sure there are others. In any case, being as clear as possible about the main character’s flaw is a powerful way to focus on what obstacles to put in their way, it helps to crystallize thematic issues and it’s a hugely important component for a good logline… in short, well worth spending ten minutes on!