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Act II is where your character has to deal with surviving the obstacles that you put in front of him or her. What is it that drives him or her forward through the action? What does your main character want? What is his or her dramatic need? In Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the entire film involves Frodo, Sam, and the Fellowship's confronting and managing to overcome obstacle after obstacle, leading to the climactic battle at Helms Deep. All drama is conflict. Without conflict, you have no action; without action, you have no character; without character, you have no story; and without story, you have no screenplay.

It is held together with the dramatic context known as Resolution. I think it's important to remember that resolution does not mean ending; resolution means solution. What is the solution of your screenplay?

Does your main character live or die? Succeed or fail? Get married or not? Win the race or not? Win the election or not? Escape safely or not? Leave her husband or not? Return home safely or not? Act III is that unit of action that resolves the story.

It is not the ending; the ending is that specific scene or shot or sequence that ends the script. Set-Up, Confrontation, Resolution—these parts make up the whole.

It is the relationship between these parts that determines the whole. Plot Point I occurs at the end of Act I, anywhere from pages 20 to 25 or A Plot Point is always a function of the main character. It is the true beginning of that story. In Chinatown, Jake Gittes is hired by the wife of a prominent man to find out if her husband is having an affair.

Gittes follows him and sees him with a young girl. That's the Set-Up. Plot Point I occurs after the newspaper story is released claiming Mr. Mulwray has been caught in a "love nest. Mulwray shows up with her attorney and threatens to sue Jake Gittes and have his license revoked.

If she is the real Mrs. Mulwray, who was the woman who hired Jake Gittes? And why did she hire him? And who hired the phony Mrs. And why7. The arrival of the real Mrs. Mulwray is what hooks into the action and spins it around in another direction—in this case, Act II.

It is story progression; Jake Gittes must find out who set him up, and why. The answer is the rest of the movie. In Cold Mountain, as Inman recovers from his wounds he receives a letter from Ada. We hear her say, in voice-over, "Come back to me.

Come back to me is my request. Plot Points do not have to be big, dynamic scenes or sequences; they can be quiet scenes in which a decision is made, such as Inman's, or when Frodo and Sam leave the Shire. Take the sequence in American Beauty where Lester Burnham and his wife are at the high school basketball game and see their daughter's friend Angela Mena Suvari performing at halftime.

It moves the story forward and sets Lester's emotional journey of liberation in motion. He chooses the Red Pill, and this truly is the beginning of the story. All of Act I has set up the elements and led Neo to this moment. Any page numbers I reference are only a guideline to indicate approximately where the story progresses to the next level, not how it progresses.

How you do that is up to you. It is the form of the screenplay that is important, not the page numbers where Plot Points occur. There may be many Plot Points during the course of the story line; I only focus on Plot Points I and II because these two events are the anchoring moments that become the foundation of the dramatic structure in the screenplay. It is a story progression. As mentioned, it usually occurs anywhere between pages 80 or 90 of the screenplay.

In Chinatown, Plot Point II occurs when Jake Gittes finds a pair of horn-rim glasses in the pond where Hollis Mulwray was murdered, and knows the glasses belonged either to Mulwray or to the person who killed him. This leads us to the Resolution of the story. The script reads: "Somewhere in there is home, is Ada. He goes on. Do all good screenplays fit the paradigm? But just because a screenplay is well structured and fits the paradigm doesn't make it a good screenplay, or a good movie.

The paradigm is a form, not a formula. Structure is what holds the story together. What's the distinction between form and formula? The form of a coat or jacket, for example, is two arms, a front, and a back. And within that form of arms, front, and back you can have any variation of style, fabric, color, and size—but the form remains intact.

A formula, however, is totally different. A formula never varies; certain elements are put together so they come out exactly the same each and every time. The coat does not change, except for the size.

A screenplay, on the other hand, is unique, a totally individual presentation. The paradigm is a form, not a formula; it's what holds the story together. It is the spine, the skeleton.

Story determines structure; structure doesn't determine story. The dramatic structure of the screenplay maybe denned as a linear arrangement of related incidents, episodes, or events leading to a dramatic resolution. How you utilize these structural components determines the form of your screenplay. The Hours David Hare, adapted from the novel by Michael Cunningham is told in three different time periods and has a definite structure. Cold Mountain is also told in flashback, but has a definite beginning, middle, and end.

Citizen Kane is also told in flashback, but this does not detract from its form. The paradigm is a model, an example, or a conceptual scheme; it is what a well-structured screenplay looks like, an overview of the story line as it unfolds from beginning to end. Screenplays that work follow the paradigm. But don't take my word for it. Go to a movie and see whether you can determine its structure for yourself.

Some of you may not believe that. You may not believe in beginnings, middles, and ends, either. You may say that art, like life, is nothing more than several individual "moments" suspended in some giant middle, with no beginning and no end, what Kurt Vonnegut calls "a series of random moments" strung together in a haphazard fashion.

I disagree. Isn't that a beginning, middle, and end? Spring, summer, fall, and winter—isn't that a beginning, middle, and end? Morning, afternoon, evening—it's always the same, but different. Think about the rise and fall of great ancient civilizations— Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, each rising from the seed of a small community to the apex of power, then disintegrating and dying. If there's a beginning, like the Big Bang, is there going to be an end?

Think about the cells in our bodies. How often are they replenished, restored, and re-created? Every seven years—within a sevenyear cycle all the cells in our bodies are born, function, die, and are reborn again. Think about the first day of a new job, or a new school, or a new house or apartment; you'll meet new people, assume new responsibilities, create new friendships. Screenplays are no different. They have a definite beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order. If you don't believe the paradigm, or in the three-act structure first laid down by Aristotle, go check it out.

Go to a movie—go see several movies—and see whether they fit the paradigm or not. If you're interested in writing screenplays, you should be doing this all the time. Every movie you see is a learning process, expanding your awareness and comprehension of what a movie is: a story told with pictures. You should also read as many screenplays as possible in order to expand your awareness of the form and structure.

Many screenplays have been reprinted in book form and most bookstores have them, or can order them. You can also go online and do a Google search under "screenplays" and find a number of sites that allow you to download screenplays. Some are free, some you pay for. These scripts are excellent teaching aids.

If they aren't available, read any screenplay you can find. The more the better. The paradigm works. It is the foundation of every good screenplay, the foundation of dramatic structure. Maybe that was something he lost. You see, Mr. Kane was a man who lost almost everything he had. From the very first frame, the full portrait of Kane's character is set up visually; the film opens shrouded in fog and the first thing we see is a high wired chain-link fence bolstered with the initial K.

Deep in the background, a huge, isolated mansion stands high on the hill. Moving closer, we see boxes and crates of antiques, artworks, and ancient artifacts stacked everywhere. Huge pens house exotic animals, and then we're inside the enormous castle, so full, yet so empty of life.

Then we cut to an extreme close-up of the man known as Citizen Kane as he whispers his last word: "Rosebud. Like a classic mystery, the story begins. Who is Charles Foster Kane? What is he? Who or what is Rosebud? As if in answer, we cut to a darkened screening room filled with chain-smoking reporters and watch newsreel footage of Charles Foster Kane, a man larger than life, filled with an insatiable appetite, a man of total excess.

It lent an authentic, credible look to the film. Kane's entire life is visually set up in less than a minute—through pictures, not words. Citizen Kane is truly a story told with pictures, a search for the hidden meaning of Kane's life, which revolves around the last words he utters on his deathbed. I call it "an emotional detective story," because the search for who and what Rosebud is leads us to uncover the life of Charles Foster Kane. It's the answer to this question that tells us what the movie is about.

It is the subject of the screenplay. What do you need to write a screenplay? An idea, of course, but you can't sit down to write a script with just an idea in mind.

An idea, while essential, is nothing more than a vague notion. It has no detail, no depth, no dimension. No, you need more than just an idea to start writing a screenplay.

You need a subject to embody and dramatize the idea. A subject is defined as an action and a character. An action is what the story is about, and a character is who the story is about. Every screenplay has a subject—it is what the story is about. So, when we talk about the subject of a screenplay, we're talking about an action and a character or characters. Every screenplay dramatizes an action and a character. You, as the screenwriter, must know who your movie is about and what happens to him or her.

It is a primary principle in writing, not only in screenplays but in all forms of writing. Only at the end of Citizen Kane, after his death which is where the story really begins , when the warehouse is being cleared of what seems to be endless piles of junk, curios, furniture, and unpacked crates, do we understand the significance of Rosebud.

As the camera moves into a darkened corner, we see a huge collection of toys, paintings, and statues. Slowly, the camera pans Kane's possessions, until it reaches the blazing furnace. Workmen are tossing various items into the flames. One of the items is a sled, the very one Kane had as a boy in Colorado.

Only then do we recall that when Mr. Thatcher, the executor of Kane's estate, first describes his meeting with Kane as a boy often or so, young Charles is sledding down the hill in the snow. It is an emotionally riveting moment, emblematic of the lost youth Kane would spend his life searching for, but never find. We cut outside the huge mansion as the smoke from Kane's lost youth curls upward into the night sky. The film ends with the same shot of the iron fence that opened the film.

Bernstein says during the film, adding, "Mr. Kane was a man who lost everything he had. If you want to write a screenplay, what is it about? And who is it about? Citizen Kane begins with a search based on a dying man's last words and ends up revealing the secret of his entire life. Seeking the answer provides the narrative thrust, the emotional through line of the film. Do you know the subject of your screenplay? What it's about?

Can you express it in a few sentences? Do you, for example, want to tell the story of two women going on a crime spree? If you do, do you know who these two women are? Where they came from? What their background is? And then, what crimes did they commit? And why? Do you know what happens to them at the end? Defining the answers to these questions allows you to gather enough information to write your screenplay from the position of choice, confidence, and security.

If you know what you're doing, then you can figure out the best way of doing it. Knowing your subject is the starting point of writing the screenplay.

And make no mistake: Every screenplay has a subject. The Last Samurai John Logan is about an embittered Civil War mercenary Tom Cruise who travels to Japan and is ultimately transformed by the people who were originally his enemy, a band of samurai warriors.

The character is the Civil War mercenary, and the action is how he is transformed in thought, word, and action, allowing him to regain a sense of self he had lost after the war ended. On a deeper level, what it's really about is how the American military adviser learns to embody the virtues of honor and loyalty. Cold Mountain is about Inman's returning home to the town he lived in prior to the war and returning to his loved one, Ada. But on a deeper, more emotional level, the story is about a place in the heart, a place filled with love and meaning, a place that was sacred before hostilities began and before people started killing in the name of political "correctness," a place that took this great gift of life for granted, before our sensibilities and moral standards began to crumble in the chasm of war.

Bonnie and Clyde David Newman and Robert Benton is a story about Clyde Barrow and his gang holding up banks in the Midwest during the Depression and the robbers' eventual downfall. Action and character. It's essential to isolate your generalized idea into a specific dramatic premise. And that becomes the starting point of your screenplay. Again, every story has a definite beginning, middle, and end. In the middle, they hold up several banks and the law goes after them.

In the end, they are caught by the forces of society and killed. Set-Up, Confrontation, and Resolution. When you can articulate your subject in a few sentences, in terms of action and character, you're ready to begin expanding the elements of structure and story. It may take several pages of freeassociation writing about your story before you can begin to grasp the essentials and reduce a complex story line to a simple sentence or two.

Don't worry about it. Just keep doing it, and you will be able to articulate your story idea clearly and concisely. Knowing what you are writing about is absolutely essential as you delve deeper into the action and characters. Because if you don't know what your story is about, who does? The reader? The viewer? If you don't know what you're writing about, how do you expect someone else to know? The writer must always exercise choice and responsibility in determining the dramatic execution of the story.

Every creative decision must be made by choice, not necessity. If your character walks out of a bank, that's one story. If he runs out of a bank, that's another story. Many times you may feel the urge to sit down and start writing a screenplay but you don't really know what to write about. So you go looking for a subject. Just know that when you're looking for your subject, your subject is really looking for you. You'll find it someplace, at some time, probably when you're least expecting it.

It will be yours to follow through on or not, as you choose. What or whom do you want to write about? A character? A particular emotional situation? An experience that you or one of your family members or friends has gone through? Many people already have ideas they want to turn into a screenplay. Others don't. How do you go about finding a subject?

An idea in a newspaper or on the TV news or an incident that might have happened to a friend or relative can be the subject of a movie. The Pianist Ron Harwood, from the memoir by Wladyslaw Szpilman is a film about survival, based on the writings of a survivor of the Holocaust, but it also reflects the childhood of director Roman Polanski.

Dog Day Afternoon Frank Pierson was a newspaper article before it became a movie. Before Robert Towne wrote Chinatown, he once told me, he wanted to write a Raymond Chandler-type detective story. He found the material for Chinatown in a Los Angeles water scandal he read about in an old newspaper of that period, and used the backdrop of the Owens Valley scandal for his detective story. Shampoo Robert Towne and Warren Beatty grew out of several incidents involving a celebrated Hollywood hairstylist.

Collateral Stuart Beattie emerged during the writer's conversation with a taxi driver. It's very simple. Trust yourself. Just start looking for an action and a character. The next step is expanding your subject. Fleshing out the action and focusing on the character broadens the story line and accentuates the details. Gather your material any way you can.

It will always be to your advantage. Over the years, I talked to a lot of people who wondered about the value, or necessity, of doing research.

I began my career in film by making documentaries for David L. It was while I was at Wolper that I learned the value of research. It became an indispensable part of my writing and teaching experience. On every show I've ever been associated with, as writer, director, producer, or researcher, I've begun the process by finding out as much as I can about the subject. As far as I'm concerned, research is absolutely essential.

All writing entails research, and research means gathering information. Remember, the hardest part of writing is knowing what to write. By doing research—whether in written sources such as books, magazines, or newspapers or through personal interviews—you acquire information. The information you collect allows you to operate from the position of choice, confidence, and responsibility.

You can choose to use some, or all, or none of the material you've gathered; that's your choice, dictated by the terms of the story. Not using it because you don't have it offers you no choice at all, and will always work against you and your story. Too many people start writing their material with only a vague, half-formed idea in their heads. This works for about thirty pages, then falls apart. You don't know what happens next, or what to do next, or where to go, and you end up getting angry, confused, and frustrated.

Then, in most cases, you give up. One I call text research. That means going to the library and pulling out books and newspaper and magazine articles and reading about a period, people, a profession, or whatever. If you're writing a period piece or a historical piece, you need to gather information about the time and the events that happened during it and then weave your emotional through line into your characters.

I get most of my information from reading about the period and any first-person writings I can find. If you're writing about a subject that you don't know much about, you need to get information to make your story line real, believable, and true. Zwick spent more than a year reading about the Japanese culture and the samurai tradition.

The second form of research I call live research. It means going to the source—doing live interviews, talking to people, getting a "feel" for the subject. If it is necessary or possible to conduct personal interviews, you'll be surprised to find that most people are willing to help you in any way they can, and will often go out of their way to assist you in your search for accurate information.

Personal interviews offer another advantage: They can give you a more immediate and spontaneous slant than a book, newspaper, or magazine story. It's the next best thing to having experienced something yourself. Remember: The more you know, the more you can communicate. And be in a position of choice and responsibility when making creative decisions.

At present, I'm writing a sci-fi epic space adventure, about a cosmic phenomenon that drastically impacts Earth. Since I know nothing about cosmic events of this magnitude, I made contact with the media relations person at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and she gave me a lot of information, along with the names of some scientists.

I then spent almost three months learning about the phenomenon known as a "gamma ray burst. Craig created a jet-propelled car that traveled at a speed of miles per hour for a quarter mile.

The rocket system was the same system used to land a man on the moon. I spent several days hanging out with him and reading the history of the Land Speed Record. The story is about a man breaking the World Water Speed Record in a rocket boat. But a rocket boat doesn't exist, at least at this writing.

I had to do all kinds of research to find out about my subject matter. What is the Water Speed Record? Where do you go to break the record? Is it possible for a rocket boat to beat the record? How do the officials time the boats? Is a speed of over miles per hour on water possible? From my conversations with Craig, I learned about rocket systems, the Water Speed Record, and designing and building a racing boat.

And out of those conversations came an action and a character. And a way to fuse fact and fiction into a dramatic story line.

The principle rule of storytelling bears repetition: The more you know, the more you can communicate. Research is essential in writing a screenplay. Once you choose your subject, and can state it briefly in a sentence or two, you can begin preliminary research. Determine where you can go to increase your knowledge of the subject. Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, once wanted to write a movie that took place on a train.

So he took a train from Los Angeles to New York, and when he stepped off the train he realized he didn't have a story; he hadn't found one. That's okay. Choose another subject. Richard Brooks spent eight months researching Bite the Bullet before he put one word on paper. He did the same thing with The Professionals and In Cold Blood, even though he based the latter on Truman Capote's exhaustively researched book.

Waldo Salt, who wrote Midnight Cowboy, researched Coming Home by speaking to and recording some twenty-six paralyzed Vietnam veterans, which resulted in two hundred hours of taped interviews.

I had the good fortune of having several conversations with Waldo, and he was not only an extraordinary writer, but an extraordinary person. We talked about the craft of screenwriting a lot, and Waldo told me that he believed the character's need the dramatic need—what the character wants to win, gain, or achieve determines the dramatic structure.

It was a powerful moment for both of us as we sat in an unspoken glow of communication that was more powerful than words, and it led to a long and passionate discussion about capturing "the truth of the human condition" in a screenplay. The key to a successful screenplay, Waldo emphasized, was preparing the material.

Dialogue, he said, is "perishable," because the actor can always improvise lines to make something work. But, he added forcefully, the character's dramatic need is sacrosanct. That cannot be changed, because it holds the entire story in place.

Putting words down on paper, he said, is the easiest part of the screenwriting process; it is the visual conception of the story that takes so long. And he quoted Picasso: "Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

A sprinter or a long-distance racer? Where do the bicycle races take place? Where do you want to set your story? In what city? Are there different types of races, or racing circuits? Associations and clubs? How many races are held throughout the year? What about international competition? Does it affect your story? The character? What kind of bikes are used? How do you become a bicycle racer? These questions must be answered before you start putting words on paper. Research gives you ideas, a sense of people, situation, and locale.

It allows you to gain a degree of confidence so you are always on top of your subject, operating from choice, not necessity or ignorance.

Start with your subject. When you think subject, think action and haracter. This is what subject looks like in a diagram. Physical action can be a battle sequence, like the opening of Cold Mountain; or a car chase, as in Bullitt or The French Connection; or a race, or competition, or fight, fed by revenge, as in Kill Bill I and II Quentin Tarantino ; or the shoot-out on a farm that makes up the last act of Witness.

Emotional action is what happens inside your characters during the story. The search for the correct way to live in our times is the centerpiece of the maestro's oeuvre.

As you can see, most films contain both kinds of action, physical and emotional. Ask yourself what kind of story you are writing. Is it an outdoor action-adventure movie, or is it a story about a relationship, an emotional story? Once you determine what kind of action you're dealing with, you can move into the life of your character. First, define the dramatic need of your character. What does your character want? What drives him to the resolution of your story?

In Chinatown, Jake Gittes's need is to find out who set him up, and why. You must define the need of your character. Sonny Al Pacino holds up the bank in Dog Day Afternoon to get money for a sex-change operation for his male lover. That is his need. The need of your character gives you a goal, a destination, an ending to your story. How your character achieves or does not achieve that goal becomes the action of your story. As I said before, and will say again, all drama is conflict.

If you know the need of your character, you can create obstacles to fulfill that need. Conflict, struggle, overcoming obstacles, both inside and outside, are the primary ingredients in all drama—in comedy, too. It is the writer's responsibility to generate enough conflict to keep the reader, or the audience, interested. The job of the screenwriter is to keep the reader turning pages. The story always has to move forward, toward its resolution.

And it all comes down to knowing your subject. If you know the action and character of your screenplay, you can define the need of the character and then create obstacles to that need. It is the fuel that feeds the story engine. It is also his dream.

And, as far as he's concerned, he's going to make a lot of money and satisfy a lot of women in the process. What are the obstacles he immediately confronts? He gets hustled by Ratso Dustin Hoffman , loses his money, doesn't have any friends or a job, and the women of New York don't even acknowledge his existence. Some dream! His need collides head-on with the harsh reality of New York City. That's conflict. Without conflict, there is no action. Without action, there is no character.

Action is Character. What a person does is what he is, not what he saysl When you begin to explore your subject, you will see that all things are related in your screenplay.

Nothing is thrown in by chance, or because it's cute or clever. The same principle applies to your story. It is the subject of your screenplay. If need be, look through the daily newspaper to see if a person, or incident, or situation grabs your attention. Think about how you might want to structure your story, then reduce it to a few sentences in terms of action and character, then write it out. Remember, it may take you a few pages to find out what you want to do, and another page or two to clarify it, but then you'll be able to eliminate the unnecessary and focus on your subject.

The Creation of Character "What is character but the determination of incident? And what is incident but the illumination of character? That's a question that has haunted literary theorists from the beginning of the written word. The challenge of creating real people in real situations is so varied, so multifaceted, so unique, so individually challenging, that trying to define how you do it is like trying to hold a bundle of water in your hands.

Generation after generation of noted writers, from Aristotle to Aeschylus, from Ibsen to Ionesco, from Eugene O'Neill to Arthur Miller, have struggled to capture the art and the craft of creating good characters. One of the most articulate literary theorists of the nineteenth century was the great American novelist Henry James, author of Portrait of a Lady, Wings of the Dove, Turn of the Screw, and Daisy Miller, among other masterworks.

James was fascinated with the art of fiction writing, and approached it like a scientist, the same way his brother, William James, the famous psychologist, studied the dynamics of the human mind. Henry James wrote several essays trying to document and define the intricacies of creating character. In one of those essays, The Art of Fiction, James poses a literary ti question: What is character but the determination of incident?

And o what is incident hut the illumination of character? The key word, of course, is incident. According to the dictionary, an incident is "a specific occurrence or event that occurs in connection or relationship to something else. It is the major source of all action and all character.

After twenty-five years of reading and analyzing screenplays and movies, I have only recently begun to understand the importance of the incident. All good movies, it seems, focus on the unfolding of a specific incident or event; and it is this incident that becomes the engine that powers the story to its completion.

Frodo's assuming the mantle of ring bearer in Lord of the Rings is the key incident in that film; as is Lester Burnham's seeing the young girl Angela in American Beauty; as is Jake Gittes's being confronted by the real Mrs. Mulwray in Chinatown. Sometimes incidents and events in our lives bring out the best in us, or the worst. Sometimes we recover from these events and sometimes we don't— but they always impact us.

At other times how we act and react, or deal with a particular situation, reveals our "true" nature and tells us who we really are. Miles in Sideways is a good illustration of that.

When he is saving his special bottle of wine for a "special occasion," he sees he doesn't have a special time or place for opening it. So he sits alone, in a fast-food joint, hiding his bottle of wine.

Events in a screenplay are specifically designed to bring out the truth about the characters so that we, the reader and audience, can transcend our ordinary lives and achieve a connection, or bond, between "them and us. In The Art of Fiction, Henry James says that the incidents you create for your characters are the best ways to illuminate who they are—that is, reveal their true nature, their essential character.

How they respond to a particular incident or event, how they act and react, what they say and do is what really defines the essence of their character.

How can we relate this concept to the process of creating character? If you take a look at these two characters, they are two distinct, individual people who have the same dramatic need: to escape safely to Mexico. They are different aspects of each other, and they share everything, their life as well as their death.

And during the course of their journey, we get to know them, love them, and wish that things might have been different. Thelma Geena Davis and Louise Susan Sarandon set out for a weekend holiday in the mountains, stop at a bar, and meet a guy named Harlan, who takes a liking to Thelma.

He plies her with drinks, then attempts to rape her in the parking lot. It turns ugly, until Louise comes along, threatens Harlan with Thelma's gun, and, when he mouths off to her, loses it, pulls the trigger, and kills him. Plot Point I. It is the key incident in the movie. Now the "real" story is about their attempt to escape to Mexico. For the rest of the story, Thelma and Louise are on the run.

As they race down the highway of their life, like so many other characters in so many other movies, they are forced to come to grips with themselves, find out who they really are, and ultimately take responsibility for their lives and actions. And it begins with the incident, the hub of the wheel of action. It is the character that determines the incident, in this case Louise's killing Harlan, then fleeing in fear and uncertainty.

What's important for me, and you, as writers, is to ask what it was within Louise's character that caused her to pull the trigger—because this incident is what ultimately reveals and illuminates the character. In Louise's case, it is an incident that happened to her when she was a young woman; it's only mentioned briefly, but it's implied that she was raped in Texas and then brought charges against her attackers, but could get no satisfaction, no revenge, no justice.

At that moment, she made a promise to herself: She would never take one step inside the state of Texas ever again. This decision ultimately brings about her death. Joseph Campbell reflects in The Power of Myth that in mythic terms, the first part of any journey of initiation must deal with the death of the old self and the resurrection of the new. Campbell says that the hero, or heroic figure, "moves not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within.

The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. She never recovered from her experience, and it simmered in her consciousness below the thin veneer of time and memory, just waiting for a chance to erupt.

Writers create characters in a variety of different ways. I once asked Waldo Salt how he went about creating characters, and he replied that the first thing he did was to choose a simple dramatic need; then he would add to it, coloring it until it became a universal chord common to Everyman.

For Waldo, that became the essence of his character. And he was a master screenwriter, a major artist. What's the best way to go about creating character? And how do you establish a relationship between your character, his or her dramatic choices, and the story you're telling? Character is the essential internal foundation of your screenplay. The cornerstone. It is the heart and soul and nervous system of your screenplay.

Before you can put one word down on paper, you must know your character. In a screenplay, the story always moves forward, from beginning to end, whether in a linear or nonlinear fashion. So what is character? Action is character; a person is what he does, not what he says. Film is behavior. If you're writing your script and snse your characters are not as sharp or defined as you think they should be, and feel they should be stronger, more dimensional, and more universal in terms of thoughts, feelings, and emotions, the irst thing you must determine is whether they're an active force in the screenplay—whether they cause things to happen, or whether things happen to them.

But first, who is your main character? Who is your story about? If jur story is about three guys preparing to steal moon rocks, which one af the three is the main character!

You have to know that. In Lord of the Rings, do you know who the main character is? Or is it all of lem? If you aren't sure, just ask yourself: Who is this story about? In Lord of the Rings, you could say, with good cause, that Aragorn is the main character because he leads the Fellowship, makes the decisions, and becomes the king.

But take away all the trappings and the story is really about returning the ring to its place of origin, Mount Doom, so it i be destroyed. That's what this story is about; therefore, Frodo is the main character. You can have more than one main character, of course, 3ut it certainly clarifies things if you identify a single hero or heroine. Frequently a story is about what distinguishes the main character from the other characters.

Who is the main character in The Shawshank Redemption7. Red, the Morgan Freeman character, has the largest part of the movie, and he is the character telling us about idy Dufrense Tim Robbins. But the story is really about Andy, so even though his part is not as large as Red's, he is the main character because the story is about him. What about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid7.

Butch Paul Newman is the main character. Butch has a great line where he broaches one of his usual wild schemes to Sundance Robert Redford , and Sundance just looks at him, doesn't say a word, and turns away. Within the context of that screenplay, Butch Cassidy is the main character—he is the character who plans things, who acts. Butch leads and Sundance follows. It is Butch's idea to leave for South America; he knows their outlaw days are numbered, and to escape the law, death, or both, they must leave.

He convinces Sundance and Etta Place to go with him. Sundance is a major character, not the main character. Once you establish the main character, you can explore ways to create a full-bodied, dimensional character portrait.

There are several ways to approach creating your characters and all of them are valid, but you must choose the best way for you. The method outlined below gives you the opportunity of choosing what you want to use, or not use, in developing your characters.

First, establish your main character. The interior life of your character takes place from birth up until the time your story begins.

It is a process that forms character. The exterior life of your character takes place from the moment your film begins to the conclusion of the story. It is a process that reveals character. Film is a visual medium. You must find ways to reveal your character's conflicts visually. You cannot reveal what you don't know. Thus, it's important to make the distinction between knowing your character as a thought, notion, or idea in your head and revealing him or her on paper.

Is your character male or female? If male, how old is he when the story begins? Where does he live, what city or country? Where was he born? Was he an only child, or did he have brothers and sisters? What kind of childhood did he have? Physically or medically challenging? What was his relationship to his parents? Did he get into a lot of trouble as a kid? Was he mischievous? What kind of a child was he?

Outgoing, an extrovert; or studious, an introvert? When you begin formulating your character from birth, you begin to see your character build. Did a single parent raise your character? Mother or father? Aunt or uncle? How did they get along? Is your character streetwise or sheltered? What kind of jobs did the parent s have to make ends meet? Move into the second ten years of your character's life, ages ten to twenty. That means middle and high school. What kind of influ ences did your character have while growing up?

What kind of interests? School, athletics, social, political? Did your char acter take an interest in extracurricular or after-school activities, like a debating club? What about sexual experiences? Relationships with peers? Did your character have to work part-time during high school? What about any sibling relationships? Any envy or hostility present? What about rela tionships with teachers?

Did any major traumatic event happen that may have emotionally influenced your character? Take a look at Mean Girls Tina Fey. The whole film is built around feeling unpopular. Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia deals with the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness, revealing how parents' actions shape and influence their children.

In Magnolia, Earl Jason Robards is on his deathbed and confesses his sins, attempting to forgive himself for walking out on his dying wife and son, thus leaving the then fourteen-year-old Frank Tom Cruise to care for his dying mother alone.

That incident has affected Frank's entire life and led him to develop a lifestyle where he seeks to convince men that sex is a weapon that can be used to "destroy the opposite sex. Move into the college years. Did your character go to college, or even consider college? What college or university did he or she go to? What was his or her major? Was your character active politically?

Did he or she join clubs or student body organizations? Did your character have a significant relationship while in college? What happened in this relationship? How long were they together? Did they get married? When the story begins, is your character married, widowed, single, separated, or divorced? If married, for how long and to whom? Continue to trace your character's life until the story begins.

Many times reality collides with dreams and fantasies and generates a sense of conflict within the character's life. Ask yourself questions; be observant; notice your own friends, family, and acquaintances. Sometimes you can use the information you observe in a slightly different form.

However, Screenplay does not allow for the existence of good screenplays that violate its underlying ideology, nor does it recognize the need for screenplays that expand the grammar of screenwriting.

This is a very good travel guide to a very small world for people who don't plan on making any additional Well I wasn't goin to read the book cause I'd heard rumors about how simple the book is. But I decided to give it a try myself and there we go This book is considered a bible in the industry -- ALL Hollywood screenwriters now conform rigidly to Field's notions of screenplay structure -- and that's why I consider this book to be the Root of All Evil.

Clear and straight to the point. Good practical knowledge and examples, still I wish Field would have used more than the same half a dozen books over and over again to prove his point. Would totally recommend for aspiring screenwriters of all ages and generations, this book has a few years on his hardcover but it still stands.

A bit repetitive but very informative. Also learned that Chinatown is the best screenplay in the world haha. I read this book because it was recommended in The DC comics guide to writing comics.

The idea was to use this book to help solidify an idea for a comic I'm wanting to create. I'm really not sure how to review this book. It's really bad in some areas and really good in others.

There are a couple exercises that are suggested that might be helpful I haven I like film, but I don't write screenplays. Maybe I'll write one some day, though I'd much prefer to adapt my bestselling, breakout novel, whenever I actually get around to writing it ;-. But I saw an old copy of this lying in my neighborhood's 'tiny library' book exchange, so I figured I'd give it a try.

It sounds like Field provides some really good, basic tips on constructing and writing a screenplay. As I said, I really had no intention of writing one when I read this, but I certainly felt The author is truly a genius.

This book is a guidebook written to teach the reader. I took copious notes while reading the book that I later highlighted in a notebook. The only negative thing I can think of is that because of the many examples of movies cited in his book, I started watching more movies than writing and watched them all with a critical eye. Now, It's more challenging than ever to enjoy a movie as I am always thinking, was that the best way to show this, should this be omitted, wa But I enjoyed and gleaned from this book on so many levels, not least in quenching my curiosity about some of the behind-the-scenes crafting of movies.

It allows you to see the basics of structure at a glance, break it down to manageable chunks, and realize the big picture. This is by far the best screenwriting manual that I have read! I came across it quite by accident in a used book store when I was first getting into screenwriting and it has helped me immensely. I liked the author, Syd Field, so much that I then went and purchased all his other books.

If you were to only choose one of his many helpful writings, I would say this is the one to choose! This got me excited and motivated to write! I would recommend it for anyone who is either beginning in the industr Even if I never write the screenplay, this book gave me a greater insight into writing in general. Learning about Plot Points enriched my idea of an outline giving me a better handle on my current work in progress. I highly recommend this book to students and writers.