Screenwriting and the one story that makes them all – a dive into the language of creative writing for Film
If you ask ten writers what they think is the best way to tell a story, you will probably get a different answer from each of them. The reality of creative writing is that there are infinite ways one can approach storytelling: some start from the characters, some from the plot, some reverse engineer a story from an ending, and so on. None of these methods is inherently better or worse than the other. However, when it comes to analytical theory, the tool we use to understand and study storytelling, most students of the craft can agree there’s mainly one common template everyone will end up referring to: The Monomyth.
When we apply a structure to a narrative, we are analysing said narrative based on concepts of history, psychology, sociology and so on. In time, humanity, and more specifically one brilliant human by the name of Joseph Campbell, has realised that despite differences of culture, religion, upbringing and so on, we all seem to tell stories in the same way. Some, like Christopher Booker, say there are only seven plots in the entirety of literature; others claim there’s three. Joseph Campbell says there’s just one: The Hero’s Journey, or Monomyth.
I can see how this might sound farfetched. How can I compare the way Tarantino tells a story, to the way Lynch does? How can I group Tolkien and Stephanie Mayer together? Shakespeare and Michael Bay? The genre of a story, the characters, the storytelling techniques and, most of all, the style all go a long way in making every plot feel distinct, every storyteller unique, but when analysing the story itself, there’s no escaping the truth: every story is the same. Every good story, that is.
Even filmmakers who famously dismiss film theory and traditional plot structure like Guillermo del Toro and Charlie Kaufman end up writing stories that adhere to those rules. Just like language, artistic composition has grammar, and that grammar is not there to limit creativity, but to enhance it. It’s nothing more than an intricate articulation of the workings of the human mind. Writers are drawn to this template; the laws of physics, logic and expression inform the way everyone approaches the story they want to tell. It’s subconscious, it’s engrained in our DNA, and we cannot escape it. So, let’s see what we can do to decipher it. Understanding how stories work is the first step to confidently tell our own.
1. From Order to Chaos.
A good, functioning story always has recognizable characteristics. We always move from a place of stasis, to one of change, just like real life. Life is all about remarkable people venturing into the unknown and coming back with something new: new knowledge, an invention, anything that will help our society advance. Stories are about this dichotomy between the known world, where we feel safe, and the unknown world, with perils and trials we need to overcome. Order and Chaos, Life and Death, Consciousness and Unconsciousness: these are the elements that dictate the journey a character goes on, diving and then re-emerging. But first things first.
Everything needs to start with an idea, and ideas are not easy to come by. Like legendary American screenwriter Aaron Sorkin once said, we have an idea when we can explain what happens using words like “but, except, and then…”. In a nutshell, we need conflict. How do we develop conflict, though?
This is where the two most important elements of drama come into play, the foundations of any plot, the origin of dramatic tension: intention and obstacle. A character wants something, but there’s something else in their way. This is how every story works at a fundamental level. Once your intention is well established, and the obstacle direful enough, it’s time to develop the story around these elements.
2. The Story Circle.
Comparative mythology owes a great deal to Campbell’s studies. His Monomyth can be applied to stories of any kind, to pop music, even to dreams. The concept of the Hero’s Journey has evolved throughout the years. Many writers tried to find new ways of visualizing it, of applying their own knowledge to this model, but no one has made a bigger impact on the way we look at the Monomyth today than Dan Harmon with his Story Circle.
In Dan Harmon’s story circle, we can see a lot of the elements we’ve already discussed. There’s a known world (ORDER), the upper half of the circle, where our story starts. The PROTAGONIST (1) and their relationship to the known world is established, as well as their NEED (2), that pushes them out of their comfort zone (3) and into the unknown world (CHAOS). A hobbit leaves the Shire to venture into a hostile world, on a quest to destroy the one Ring. A man must pair up with an eccentric wannabe actor on a road trip and get to Los Angeles in time for the birth of his son. A young man returning from the war is forced to leave his hometown and goes to St. Petersburg to reconnect with his older brother.
Now, the protagonist is in a place (metaphorical or real) he’s never been to, a place of chaos and change. Their quest forces them to ADAPT (4) to a new situation, transforms their character. Armed with this new knowledge or resolution, the protagonist FINDS (5) what they were looking for or realizes what they wanted is not what they needed. Whatever the case, they pay a HEAVY PRICE (6) for it. Luke Skywalker leaves his home planet and learns the ways of the Force, saves Princess Leia but loses his mentor Obi Wan in the process. Furiosa finds out the Green Place has been claimed by the desert and realizes the only way forward is to take over the citadel by killing Immortan Joe.
This is the moment our protagonist RETURNS (7) to the known world, a place of order and stasis, but something important has happened on the journey: they have CHANGED (8) and are now masters of both worlds.
Any character arc in any story can be boiled down to these fundamental elements. A character needs to go on a journey, literal or figurative, and reach the end of their story having changed. A selfish man learns to care about others. A young and naïve warrior becomes a hero. A guy manages to fix his failing marriage. Or maybe not, maybe he doesn’t. A protagonist doesn’t need to succeed in their quest, but they at least must try. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a story.
Films and TV series can often present plots that are not completely adhering to this structure, especially in European countries. However, these stories still have their origin, and/or are a subversion of the universal archetype we’ve been discussing. The tradition is there to be distorted, changed, reacted to, but it will always be there. All great artists understand the rules of storytelling whether that knowledge is conscious or not.
Now that we have determined the stages of our character journey, it’s time to insert that journey into the larger story. If a story has more than one protagonist, each of them will have their own story circle. All these elements are now ready to be put into the script.
3. Three Acts.
There’s a lot of overlapping between the Story Circle and the Three-Act Structure, the most wide-spread template for storytelling in film. This is because they both serve the writer in outlining the main beats of the story, but where the story circle focuses on the journey of the character, the three-act structure looks at the plot as a whole and identifies the direction of the action. The three-act structure is not the only way of looking at a script, nor the more legitimate. The five-act structure is just as functional, but for the sake of brevity, we’ll be focusing on this version.
The key to understanding the Three-Act Structure is to think of it as a way of compartmentalizing the story. A good story doesn’t waste time, it knows when to withdraw information and when to give it away. Good stories have a certain flow to them, a rhythm: this is because they adhere to this (or a similar) structure. A script, a story, is a series of acts with a specific story function. Each act is made up of sequences. Every sequence is composed of scenes. And every scene starts, develops and ends through a series of beats, the smallest unit of story.
The 1st act of a story is the SET UP, where we introduce our characters and the world they inhabit. Now, something needs to happen, an event that pushes the story forward. This is called an Inciting Incident. A Central Question is asked, and our character needs to leave the known world in order to answer it. At this point in the story, the protagonist can still back away. The world around them has changed, yes, but it’s still in a state of stasis. The Journey actually starts when the First Act ends, when the resolution is made to go forward and venture into the unknown. This is the Turning Point, the point of no return for our protagonist and the beginning of the Second Act.
The 2nd Act, or CONFRONTATION, is always the longest of the three, and it’s where the bulk of the story takes place. 2nd Acts can be so long that they are usually split into two parts, to better discern the rhythm of the story. During the first half of this act, the action slowly escalates: new allies are made, subplots are established, and the protagonist must overcome a few obstacles. Everything proceeds smoothly until the first culmination, where a major story beat takes place: a big revelation, a death, anything that will escalate the action and the stakes. This is the Mid-Point, the pivot for the story, where something humongous needs to happen to push it forward. It could be a huge high, or a huge low. Sometimes, the Mid-Point brings a formidable shift in the narrative, where the Central Question that was driving the narrative forward is answered or changed, bringing a new narrative into the mix.
From this point onward, the action escalates at a rapid pace. This is where a race against time starts, where the urgency of the plot manifests itself like never before: the protagonist needs to do something, or everything will be lost. The obstacles get more and more prodigious until the last trial. The Crisis is inescapable now, and everything seems to be lost. However, against all odds, the hero prevails right at the 2nd Act CLIMAX, where the action reaches its highest moment of tension and then releases it. Even in narratives where the main character fails or dies, this is, metaphorically speaking, the culmination of the action, the high point from where to slowly descend into the 3rd Act.
The 3rd Act is the RESOLUTION and, more often than not, the shortest of the three. All loose ends are tied, and the EMOTIONAL CLIMAX of the story takes place: a confrontation between characters, a funeral to commemorate those we lost, a long-awaited reunion. The story wraps up and credits start rolling.
4. All Stories are the same.
Human Society runs on stories. Since the dawn of time, we’ve been telling stories to each other. And even if it’s hard to be sure that early cavemen used the three-act structure or the Monomyth template to tell theirs, it’s safe to assume they did something similar. Because all stories follow patterns, whether we decide to ignore them, or embrace them.
The same anecdote told by two people will vary greatly based on one’s experience, and if those same two people tried to describe a film you haven’t seen, they’d probably choose very different words to talk about it. But the film is the same, its story beats are the same. What changes is the eye of the beholder. Any storyteller out there trying to figure out how to best approach their tale can find comfort in the idea that that same story has probably already been told. But it has never been told by you. Because even though all stories are the same, we are all different, and that’s what really matters.