|
|
|
|
|
|
[Analysis Home] [Spec Script Reference] [Trilane Store] [Trilane.com] |
|
|
|
Fixing the Story The story needs work. Not enough action. Holes in the plot. All true, but how fix it? I made good experiences using The Hero’s Journey to systematically address story problems. It’s not a must. A good story doesn’t have to follow that pattern, but it doesn’t hurt either. The term Hero’s Journey was created by Joseph Campbell who described the steps of the journey in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Christopher Vogler applied it to screenwriting in the book The Writer’s Journey. You find a brief outline of the steps of the journey towards the end of the article ‘Three Acts or What?’ The Hero’s Journey can be seen as a template for a story that is complete. Everything is in it. The characters and their situations are properly introduced, the story develops in a straight forward way while being rich in meaning and action. There are sufficient climaxes, keeping the audience involved in a meaningful way. The story has a proper, satisfying ending. When I say template, I mean that the Hero’s Journey is not a story in itself. It is a sequence of recurring patterns that Campbell found in his life-long study of myths and legends of numerous cultures. Using it to fix story/plot problems sounds great, but how do you go about it? The explain I first thought of taking an existing movie, exposing some flaws and then fixing them. However, the movie is not going to be filmed a second time because of that and that would be quite dissatisfying. To demonstrate the approach I finally decided to use one of my own works, an early draft of an unproduced script. You don’t really need to read the script, but if you want you can download it here. It’s copyright protected and registered with the Writer’s Guild of America, West. It’s the first draft I was willing to release for peer review and it’s flaws are numerous. I did not have the Hero’s Journey in mind when I wrote it, but someone said that it follows the Journey and I finally used it to enrich the story and fix it’s flaws. Feel free to download it. However, I’ll tell the story here and that should be sufficient to follow the approach. The script’s title is ‘The Sphere’. It’s a preliminary working title. The names of the characters are changed. I will only tell what happens in the script, not backstory. A scripts 100 (+/- 10) pages have to speak for themselves and I won’t break that rule here. Should you ever review a later version of the script, your judgment won’t be compromised by information that’s not written into it. The Story of The Sphere In present time, KATE, the main character, sits in her private lab and works on a device that detects spirits. She talks with her sister Mary. Her partner PHILIP comes and talks about their imminent research trip to Siberia where they will study a similar device owned by a rich business man. Ron also mentions the legend of a sphere that he would like to look into once they’re in the area. He does not see Mary. Mary actually is a spirit. Kate is less than enthusiastic because she focuses on science. Religion makes her itchy and Ron needs to push to even get a ‘may be’ out of Kate. Mary disappears. Kate used to be able to talk with her, but she’s nowhere to be found. Kate dreams of her and finds her in trouble. Mary tells her that Kate has to find the sphere to help her. Kate wakes up utterly confused. NIKOLAI drives through Siberian mountains, arrives at a cave and enters. He is confronted by VADIM and DUNKHA who just stole the sphere which apparently belongs to him. Vadim is Nikolai’s cousin. Nikolai is beaten unconscious. Behind this plot is SEMYAZA, another demon king, who also briefly appears in the cave. Kate has a motorcycle accident on the way to karate class which leaves her temporarily blind. Philip suggests to postpone the research trip until she’s okay again, but Kate refuses. They leave to Siberia as planned. In London Heathrow Kate sends Philip shopping and stays alone in the transit lounge where she meets Konstantin who also happens to travel to Siberia. Yes, she’s still blind, but all she has to do was sit around, listen to music and maybe sleep. Konstantin is attracted to her. Surprise - they happen to be on the same plane. In Siberia, Konstantin leaves them to be picked up by their contact Sergeyin. A reaction of Konstantin shows that he him, but Kate and Ron don’t notice. End of act one. In the hotel Kate is attacked by a demon who almost kills her. Though Kate is still blind to the physical work she can see spirits and thus the demon. She fights back. Nikolai and Eleana break into the hotel room. Nikolai attacks the demon. The demon finally gives up an disappears. Nikolai then abducts Kate while Elena holds back Philip. After Nikolai and Kate leave, Elena fights off two intruders and convinces Philip go to to her place. Nikolai and Kate drive through the countryside and finally cross the frozen Lake Baikal. They are again attacked by demons. Kate is still blind but she can see the demons and fights with them. Leader of the demons is AZAZEL and Kate is no match for him, not now. However, Semyaza also shows up, struggles with Azazel and rescues Kate. For now. Nikolai and Kate arrive at Nikolai’s house across the lake. Here SETSEG shows up and Nikolai introduces her as his grandmother. Setseg calls Kate the ‘girl that will bring the sphere to the palace mountain.’ Nikolai is surprised but Setseg is in a hurry and says that they quickly have to enter spirit world because evil is coming after Kate. They now help Kate to leave her body and they all enter the spiritual realms. Here Kate can see without any problem. However, other problems are waiting for her. She hears a voice calling her name. Kate follows the voice and meets a mysterious woman who leads her to a large city. They enter a library type building where the woman shows Kate recordings from her past. She sees the event of her mother’s death. People say that her mother committed suicide and the recording confirms this. Kate is shocked. Nikolai appears and tries to appease her but she’s too upset. Soon another Nikolai appears and in that moment the first one drops his disguise and turns into Vadim. The woman turns out to be Dunkha. A struggle ensues and Kate gets reeled back into her body and wakes up at Nikolai’s home - blind again. Nikolai soon follows. Setseg is gone. They talk about the situation and come to the conclusion that they must preempt Vadim who will find Kate sooner or later. They drive to the cave where Janet - still physically blind - sees stirrings in the dark. Setseg suddenly appears and helps her to enter the spirit world again. This time they go to a different building that looks rather messy but it also contains recordings of the past. They play back again the incident of the mother’s death, but this time the true events transpire: a demon was involved and the mother’s death was no suicide. Kate now uses a trick to enter hell and find the demons behind the sinister plot. Nikolai follows. In hell they meet again Azazel who tries to imprison her so that she never sees the world again. But Kate confronts Azazel and gets him to tell them the way to the hiding place of the sphere. Azazel resents that and threatens her that he will wait and finally get her there. Kate and Nikolai go and find the sphere. It’s in a castle on the hill. This is a spiritual representation of Vadim’s estate. The castle and the estate are two aspects of the same thing. They find the sphere there, but as they are both spirits they have to go back and bring their bodies to the location of the physical estate and carry the sphere away. Kate realizes that in her body she will be blind again and convinces Nikolai to go alone while she waits at the estate gate for his return. Nikolai agrees and leaves. Suddenly Kate sees a bright flashes which seem to come from the estate. She goes to check it out. In the meantime - not described here - Philip has convinced Elena to visit a shaman who allegedly has a piece of cloth which was once wrapped around the sphere. Indeed the shaman has it and it has some magical properties: when photographed it occasionally shows events from the past. Philip takes a photo and on his digital camera viewer he sees Kate. The flash is the one that Kate saw in the sky. Kate reaches the estate, seeing more and more flashes. She enters the estate and sees the sphere, emitting flash after flash. The demons in the room are mystified. Philip is firing flash after flash until the battery is empty. The shaman gets a strobe system from a nearby discotheque as a replacement. Kate checks the place out and finds a way how Nikolai can sneak in. She goes to the gate to guide him in. With him is - surprise, surprise - Setseg. They climb up a wall to enter the main building, but guards discover them and Nikolai is shot. Kate jumps down the wall and is reeled back into her body. End of act 2. Through some spiritual tricks - described in the script but not so important here, I think - Dunkha has located Kate’s body in the cave. As Kate returns into her body she is blind again. Vadim and Dunkha come and take her to the estate. Here Vadim reveals to her his evil plot: she is to become his bride so that he can assume the position of guardian of the sphere and release all its powers. Kate resists and is thrown into a prison chamber, tortured through sleep deprivation and incessant cold showers. Semyaza visits her and tells her that he is behind the plot. She should become Vadim’s bride but in truth he will rule and Kate will belong to him. Kate spits him in the face, Semyaza is furious and leaves her. Konstantin suddenly appears to free her. (Konstantin has appeared a few times until now, growing increasingly uneasy about the treatment that Vadim inflicts on her.) He guides her out of the chamber and the building. Outside they are discovered by Dunkha. Kate and Dunkha fight. A hit on her head partly restores Kate’s vision. Still, Dunkha is stronger and throws her off a bridge into a torrent. In the water Kate’s vision fully returns, but she is swept away by the river. The shaman has assembled a group of his people and started a ceremony. Philip is still firing flashes at the cloth, now using the shaman’s strobe. Somebody comes and drags him outside to join the ceremony. Soon everybody begins to dance, drums are beaten, the party really takes off soon. Janet wakes hanging by a chain in a waterfall. She frees herself and walks back to the estate. With Setseg help - surprise again - she enters the estate and they sneak up on a balcony above the sphere. Everything is prepared for the ceremony. After Kate’s alleged death Dunkha became Vadim’s bride. Demons in the hall below discover Kate and Setseg on the balcony and Kate jumps down and grabs the sphere. A bright light erupts that penetrates her body. Vadim and Dunkha are burnt to death by the light. Kate enters a different dimension and finds herself in a desert with a mountain in the distance. A giant moon looms above the desert and seems to almost touch the top of the hill. She walks to the mountain and up finding an altar. Demons are crawling out of caves and reach for her. She jumps on the altar. In that moment Semyaza appears and tries to get the sphere from her. He holds her mother and sister hostage and says he will release them when she surrenders the sphere to him. She doesn’t believe him, reaches up and touches the moon with the sphere. Light again explodes and penetrates her body. The shaman and his people dance in ecstasy, pointing at the sky where suddenly a massive explosion occurs. For a moment Kate travels through space and then finds herself in a beautiful landscape. In the distance on a small hill stands a palace. She walks toward it but in spite of her efforts she doesn’t seem to get any closer. She finally sits down to rest. Setseg appears again and tells her to put the sphere on the ground. She has fulfilled her task of bringing the sphere to safety. Janet hesitates, knowing that the sphere is the only means to find her mother and sister, but finally she agrees. In that moment her mother and sister show up, also Nikolai. They all have a talk together, Kate is consoled to know her mother is safe Setseg sends her back to the physical world. Kate wakes up in a pile of rubble - the remains of the estate. Setseg shows up and tells Kate to search in a certain place and there she finds Nikolai - unconscious but alive. Nikolai tells her that Setseg is actually his great-grandmother and that she passed away some time ago. Thus Setseg is actually a spirit and that’s the reason behind her arbitrary appearances and disappearances. The movie ends by Setseg disappearing for a last time and two birds gliding in the sky. End of the movie. To be continued. I hate to leave things unfinished, but things come up occasionally. Having this online creates healthy, creative pressure and guarantees that the rest will be here within a short time. Still to come:
I will also mention other changes that have been applied to the first draft to create the second. Using the Hero’s Journey in no way excludes other means of a script project like character development, character arcs, inciting incidents, three act structure etc. etc. I won’t go into excessive detail, though because the point her is just the application of the Hero’s Journey. Thanks for reading.
Write to: Ashton Zach at azach@trilane.com
|
|
|
|
|