the relationship between your Main Character and the main relationship character. The main source of entertainment in your script.

Back bone of the story.

the most important relationship in the story. Show how these two characters interact with each other why they need to be together and what they do.

character who opposes what the Main Character wants.

Any set-up, part of the journey or occurrence, caused by character interaction.

Describe your intended impact; tone, genre – it should all be easily identifiable.

Organize the story into a single sentence, using the following components:

• Main Character at a profound stage of life,
• described with an adjective to show a Misbehavior;
• Dynamic Character and their way of interacting with the Main Character;
• The Set Up, even by page 30;
• What the dynamic characters do in the middle of the story;
• The Opponent who stand in the Main Character’s way;
• Conflict and Language consistent with:
  • the Desired Effect
  • the genre expectations
  • the entertainment tone of the movie.

Example: Kramer v. Kramer:

When his wife divorces him, a negligent father boldly takes on the
care and parenting of his reluctant son until his ex-wife attempts to
regain custody.

WBC term for Flaw. Indication of a character’s need for change.

• 4 Acts
• 3 sequences per act
• 12 sequences total (10 pages each)
• Act breaks at 3-6-9

3-6-3 exercise: coming up with 12 sentences to summarize the 12 sequences in the script.

Dramatizing character traits - SHOWING a character’s attributes, rather than telling us about it, or having characters talk about it.

50/50 & 20/20 Exercises: coming up with 50 Windows examples for your main character or 20 for a non-main character, in an effort to gain facility at dramatizing traits.

(The other half of the exercise is to brainstorm scenes for the character; 50 for main, 20 for non-main

Combine the scene ideas from the 50/50 and the 20/20 to create a rough scene outline of the entire movie. Keep brainstorming until you have 100-120 scenes, then cut down the outline.

An exercise designed to keep you from getting stuck in your script.

Steps:

• Focus on capturing character emotion through interaction with other characters.
• Start each scene with a slugline
• Write a few lines of scene direction SHOWING what we see; this should establish characters, emotion, tone, and important business.
• Write important dialogue between the important characters about the main conflict of the scene. Feel free to write on-the-nose.
• Each scene will be about a half page long. Scenes with action should be shorthanded.
• Think of it as writing moment-by-moment instead of line-by-line.
• Write without censoring yourself.
• Start rewrites from this short, crappy draft and rewrite it into something good.