Story and Plot

Help! Everytime I think of a cool screenplay idea, and start
developing a treatment, I find out later that practically the exact same idea
is already
in development somewhere in Hollywood! What should I do? Ditch the idea and
move on, or stick with it?

–Frustrated and slightly paranoid screenwriter

Every working screenwriter I know has been in this situation, where you flip
open Variety and find that Paramount has just bought a project that sounds
horribly similar to yours. Just remember that you’re only reading a one sentence
description, and the script itself could be completely different.

For instance, the logline might read, "The project concerns a team of
scientists who must stop an ancient evil." That storyline could be describing
THE RELIC, or just as easily be about GHOSTBUSTERS. And no one would say those
are the same idea.

In short, my advice is not to worry about it, unless (a) you find out more
details about the other project which prove it to be very similar to yours,
and (b) there’s evidence that the other movie is probably going to get made.
While occassionally two competing projects will get greenlit, such as ARMAGEDDON
and DEEP IMPACT, or VOLCANO and DANTE’S PEAK, far more often neither project
will, as happened with the multiple Janis Joplin biopics.

Just remember that a well-written script has value for a writer even if it
never gets made, in terms of its ability to showcase your talent. If you have
a great idea that can make a great script, don’t be afraid to write it.

I’m a great fan of movies.
After so many years of watching films I decided to write something. One day
I conceived a subject. I developed it in my mind until I decided to write
it down. But, unfortunately or fortunately, I saw VANILLA
SKY. My main story
and character is very much like that film. Even some details are exactly
the same. What would you do if you watched a movie that is very close to
the
story you’re writing?

–Anonymous

A philosopher who’s studied up on
the nascent field of memetics might argue that people don’t actually think of
ideas. The ideas are already out there, competing with each other to get people
to think them.

In the case of your movie, there was an idea floating out there about a guy
who was experiencing life strangely because, it turned out, he was already
dead and dreaming. This idea came to you. Unfortunately, it also came to Cameron
Crowe, in the form of the Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar’s movie ABRE
LOS OJOS.

Back in college, I kept thinking about doing a movie or TV series about an
asteroid headed for Earth. I wasn’t the first person to come across this idea.
I opened the trades one day to find that ARMAGEDDON and DEEP
IMPACT were suddenly
racing into production. I was a little bummed, but reassured to think that
at least I was capable of a commercial idea.

If you’re halfway through a script and you see a movie that is almost exactly
your story, then you have fair reason to moan and cry and tear your hair out.
In general, though, writers who abandon one of their projects because "it
was too much like" whatever, were just looking for an easy excuse to stop
writing it.

I often find myself writing
half of a screenplay, and then throwing it on the scrapheap because my characters
have totally lost their direction. How do I build on my characters to help
me, by taking the story in their own direction?

–Colin

In your case, I would urge you to really figure out the end of your story
before you begin writing. Otherwise, it’s very easy to keep writing scene after
scene and end up with interesting characters in a mess of a story.

One trap that many beginning writers encounter – especially those who’ve read
some of the more notorious screenwriting books – is taking the truism "character-driven
story" too literally. Yes, the most successful and engaging movies are
those where the characters seem to be in control of their own destiny, where
every turn of the plot seems to derive from an element of their personality.

But it’s naïve to think that all a writer has to do is come up with amazing
characters and watch them go to work. The truth is, great characters are useless
unless we see them doing interesting things – and coming up with those things
is the screenwriter’s job. Don’t start writing until you know both who your
characters are and what they’ll be doing.

After viewing many films and reading many books on the craft of screenwriting
one of the most important aspects of film seems to be theme. I’m sorry, I’m
starting to ramble. My question is this: is it bad to formulate an entire screenplay
on the basis of a theme, or does that get in the way of creativity? Should
an idea stem from a theme, or should the idea produce the theme, or can it
work both ways? I thank you in advance for reading this, I know that you have
a tumultuous schedule.

–Brian Formo

"Theme" is one of those words that’s thrown around a lot without
any consensus about what it’s supposed to mean. Here’s my definition to add
the to mix:

Theme is the emotional, intellectual or spiritual issue at the core of the
story. It is the "dark matter" that gives a movie weight – you don’t
notice it directly, but when its missing, the movie seems frivolous and disconnected.

Sometimes, it can be summarized in a word. In X-MEN, the theme is mutation,
and all aspects of the story radiate around this word. The heroes and villains
are all "mutants," different than normal people. The villain wants
to change – mutate – all the world’s leaders. Rogue and the others suffer prejudice
and persecution because of their "otherness." In crafting the story,
the writers focussed on parallels in the real world: particularly Martin Luther
King versus Malcolm X, and the controversy over gay rights.

In ALIENS (the sequel), the theme is motherhood. Almost asexual at the start
of the movie, Ripley adopts a surrogate child in Newt. When Newt is kidnapped,
Ripley must face off against the alien mother, resulting in one of the best
lines of dialogue ever shouted: "Get away from her, you BITCH!" (Interestingly,
in Cameron’s original script we learn that Ripley did have a child of her own
once, but after all these years asleep in space, Ripley
has outlived her.)

In GO, the theme is shouted by several characters in crucial moments: "GO!" Which
means, "I don’t care which way you go, you have to go now!" In each
of the three stories, characters get in way over their heads, but there’s never
time to stop and think through to the best answer. You’ve made a mistake, but
you have to keep going.

Which comes first, idea or theme? Ultimately, I think they’re too inter-related
to divide. When I was brought in to work on TITAN A.E., I explained to the
studio executives that I loved how the Earth was blown up in the first three
minutes, but that the only way to thematically balance the Earth’s destruction
was to create a new world at the end. The story, which had previously been "Treasure
Island in Space," with the Titan holding the Earth’s fortune, became a
Genesis allegory, albeit with a lot of laser blasting and cartoon cleavage.
Thematically, it was now a movie about Home, and every beat of the story focussed
on some aspect of it, from the initial destruction, to the derelict station,
the drifter colony, and finally the Titan itself.

The movie tanked, but how ’bout those themes?
In your own work, it’s definitely worth sitting down and looking at whether
you’ve really explored the idea-within-the-idea. The world doesn’t need another
hollow action movie, but it could use another SPEED (you can’t slow down),
MATRIX (reality is an illusion), or RUN LOLA RUN (what if you could do it again).
It’s no coincidence that the best movies of a category generally have the best-explored
themes.