I am the 2013 eQuinoxe Europe workshop in Zurich. We’ve got nine script from seven countries. In working on all these projects one set of questions keeps coming up.
The answer to this these questions provides a critical overview of the story. If they aren’t answered clearly then it doesn’t matter how good the individual scenes might be. The story won’t add up to much or hold together properly.
The following is an excerpt from my book How to Evaluate Stories available on Amazon
What Does the Character Want?
What the main character wants is a clear and simple ego-driven goal. It is something that directly benefits the main character that he or she can physically have or obtain. It is concrete. It is specific. It is the finite object of the character’s personal desire. For example: Win the championship trophy, get the promotion, pay the rent, solve the crime, buy the fancy car, steal the jewel, get the girl (or guy), etc. To obtain the want, the character must abandon the need.
What Does the Character Need?
What the character needs is an inner ache or yearning that the character is unaware of, denies, suppresses, or ignores. It is a deeper, more abstract or intangible human longing. It is not physical or concrete. It is an emotional or spiritual urge or inner call to live up to one’s higher nature. For example: To become a better parent, to forgive another, to act with integrity, to find one’s faith, to become more altruistic, to be a more reliable friend, to face the truth, to love unselfishly, etc.
To embrace the need, the character must abandon the specific self-centered goal (or object of desire) and address more fundamental and far-reaching human concerns.
What is the Conflict Between the Want and the Need?
One of the most common problems with stories that don’t work is the lack of a clear and specific want vs. a deep and powerful inner longing.
The want pulls us through the story. The need draws us deeper into or inside the character. If this bedrock conflict isn’t clear the story won’t add up to very much.
Does the Story Clearly Distinguish the Want and the Need?
Does the main character have a specific physical or concrete object of personal desire? What does he or she want? What is the concrete physical goal or specific objective? Does the main character actively pursue this objective through the story?
Does the main character have a clearly delineated deeper human longing? What is missing deep inside the character?
What is the main character willing to sacrifice or surrender to obtain the want or to embrace the need? Is there a high cost for each choice?
Does that mean that no character ever gets what he or she wants? We know that’s not true. Characters get what they want all the time. But this happens in a one of two ways.
1) The character gets what he or she wants and finds that it is hollow:
For example, in Jerry Maguire, Jerry (Tom Cruise) gets what he wants, to get back in the game by representing a major NFL player. He finds his victory is hollow when he realizes he has no one to call or with whom to celebrate after a big win. This is when he returns to his wife and family.
In Dangerous Liaisons, Vicomte Valmont (John Malkovich) gets what he wants: To seduce the un-seducible woman. He finds his victory is hollow when he realizes he has destroyed the only woman he has ever loved and who truly loves him. The story ends tragically with his death and hers.
2) The character lets go of the want and embraces the need and then, in the classic comedic turnaround, he or she finds something even better or finds that the want comes around on the other side:
In life, this is the experience of a young couple that tries to start a family. What they want is a biological child. They try and try to no avail. They realize what they need is to start a family with a child who needs them. They adopt and are deliriously happy. What happens one year later? The wife gets pregnant. This happy turnaround happens enough in life that we believe it in fiction.
Or for example, in Pretty Woman, Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) wants to pay the rent. That’s why she picks up Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) in the first place. It’s why she stays with him over the course of the story. When he offers to meet that want by buying her a condo (and pay her rent in perpetuity) she turns him down. What she needs is to live a life of honesty and integrity. If she accepts his deal she will always be a whore. She rejects his offer and it is that act of integrity that brings him back to her as a real suitor and a true partner (rather than as a man who is simply “buying” her).
The tougher the choice is, the better the story. Does the main character pay dearly for whatever he or she pursues and chooses? The price is the end of the long road where the character comes face-to-face with the ultimate truth. Who is the character really? This supreme price is what the audience is waiting to see. If the price is not high enough, the story suffers.
The following was an excerpt from my book How to Evaluate Stories available on Amazon
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We’ve finished up with all the writer’s meeting. Each writer met with five advisors over three days. They each had a session in the morning and one in the afternoon. One session was free time to think, wander and explore.
One of the writers who had a free afternoon accompanied me on an alpine hike to a small lake in the mountains. On the way back we somehow took a wrong turn and the 45 minute hike back turned into two and a half hours of an upward climb on trails not so clearly marked.
We finally made our way on switch back trails that often seemed to lead in the wrong direction. But followed to the end the trails reversed themselves and got us exactly where we needed to go.
It’s not a bad metaphor for a workshop process like eQuinoxe. Working on a script with a group of advisors is never a linear process. You have to be willing to endure the reversals and switch-backs that eventually bring you where you need to go. Even a suggestion that takes you in a seemingly wrong direction can be crucial to finding the key to making the script work.
When an advisor (or a producer) makes a suggestion, get to the bottom of what is missing that prompted the suggestion. Ask, “What would adding (or subtracting or changing) this address?”
Don’t fixate on the literal detail the advisor is questioning. A literal suggestion is a symptom of a larger underlying problem. It’s your job to discover what is really at issue and fix that.
Be open. Listen. Try to follow problem to the heart of what is causing the emotional disconnect. Solve the underlying problem in the way that is most authentic to you. Don’t fight the specific suggestion. Follow it up and around to the real problem.
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This post is inspired by a “blogette” sent out by Dr. Howard Suber, founder of the UCLA Producers Program, to his UCLA class on film structure. I’ve been fortunate to receive these posts as his former teaching assistant and long time admirer.
Dr. Suber is the man from whom I have learned nearly everything I know about film. His recent post also considers a topic of discussion that has been on-going at the workshop in Schloss Elmau. Here is a very brief excerpt.
In Monday’s discussion of Citizen Kane, I’ll be talking about what I call “The Reality Fallacy.” Those of you who have had Film Structure before know that one of my foundation principles is that, for most people, the function of film and television is not to provide a reflection of the world, but to provide a compensation for it.
Life is chaotic, messy, confusing and confounding. Audiences don’t go to movies to see the difficult, harsh and often terrible tribulations of life. They get enough of that in their own day-to-day existence.
Audiences go to movies to help make sense of life. They go to movies looking for what it all means. The most successful movies provide some kind of deeper meaning, lesson or glimpse of the triumph of the human spirit. This doesn’t mean audiences want a “Hollywood happy ending,” It means that they want an ending that has consequence and is transformative on some level. They want an ending that is emotionally satisfying because it has been earned.
The best movies do this by creating rich, deep relationships between the characters. Dr. Suber also teaches that there are no interesting characters per se– there are only interesting character relationships. It is in their relationships that characters truly come alive, are forced to make hard choices and discover where their values truly lie.
Dr. Suber has written a wonderful book, The Power of Film, that should be required reading for any one who is serious about pursuing a career in television or movies.
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I met with my first two writers today. Both had very interesting scripts. A general lesson to be drawn from these projects and the others I am working on has to do with the story’s antagonist–
Your antagonist is your protagonist’s main adversary. This person is not necessarily evil or bad, but he or she is a significant obstacle to your main character’s goal. The antagonist actively stands in your main character’s way.
The antagonist must provide a formidable challenge. His or her actions force your character to change or grow in some significant way.
In life and in film we choose our enemies as surely as we choose our friends. We choose the antagonist who will teach us the most.
Create an antagonist who will test and push your protagonist to the limit of his or her character. Force your character to make a defining choice about his or her most important values.
Create an antagonist who is smart enough to use and play upon your character’s fears. Who is your worst enemy? Yourself. A truly formidable antagonist attacks the character from within.
Create an antagonist who uses the weapon of fear to tempt, push, prod or entice your character into making bad choices and falling into the traps of self-defeat, insecurity or self-destruction.
The best antagonists aren’t evil. They are deeply afraid. They live in a state of constant heart-stopping dread. They feel they simply can’t afford to allow themselves to have empathy or concern for others. Or they may be deeply afraid for the protagonist. They try to manipulate and control out of obsessive or crushing concern. These antagonists also limit or destroy the character out of fear, perhaps not consciously but destructively all the same.
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Today we had our first advisors’ meeting. The scripts selected for the workshop are submitted from a variety of international writers. Austria, Germany, Croatia, Denmark, Canada, Hungary and Norway are all represented by projects here.
In discussing the work to be done on the scripts, the advisors kept going back to the basics. No matter how accomplished the writer is, it is always necessary to go back to fundaments when a script isn’t working well. Primarily we discussed issues of want, need and price. Here is what I mean by those terms.
The Want
In the story the character should immediately identify something he or she desires or wants. The character begins to put all of his or her effort into obtaining some very particular concrete, and often, selfish or self-centered goal.
This goal must be something real, graspable and very tangible. It is something the character can obtain or acheive physically: for example, seduce the woman, sell the stock, solve the crime, win the tournament, reveal the mystery, get the promotion etc. The Want is NOT an abstract or amorphous general desire.
The want is always an actual “thing.” It is something specific that could be obtained with a bit of concerted effort.
The Character’s Need is:
– Some deeper human longing (to be a better father, to appropriately separate from family, to love more generously, to act with integrity, to grow up and assume responsibility etc.)
– A true longing the character isn’t aware of, ignores, denies or tries to suppress
– At the heart of the character’s truest, highest most authentic self
– Something that must be embraced instead of obtaining the Want
The Need is a more abstract intangible set of internal qualities. It is is a deeper desire for what is good, true and authentically right for the character as an individual of quality, dignity and worth.
The Price
The Price is the terrible personal cost of obtaining the Want and abandoning the Need. OR The terrible personal cost of abandoning the ego-driven goal or Want and embracing the Need.
If the character chooses the Want he or she inevitably surrenders to the fear and falls to the Dark Side. The story ends in tragedy. If the character embraces the Need, he or she finds personal completion. This may or may not be a happy ending but it is one of emotional satisfaction and wholeness.
Which price is the character willing to pay? The character must ultimately pay one price or the other. The more expensive the price is for the character the more compelling and urgent your story will be for the audience.
When a script isn’t working well, isn’t as compelling a read as it should be or has some kind of emotional disconnect in the story, the problem is usually the lack of a clear, urgent and well-developed Want, Need or Price.
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Snow began to fall at about midnight last night and continued through the day. Slow, lovely and steady. There’s maybe three + feet all around. It’s was quite magical and just the day to read a script in front of the fire! Looks like an early Christmas card.
The advisors all arrived today. We attended a wonderful jazz concert at Schloss Elmau, which is renown for its music, literature and art programs. That’s why the place is such a great fit for the eQuinoxe workshops. It’s a great atmosphere of culture and creativity.
We had a lovely get-to-know you dinner with all the advisors. I’ll be working with Kit Carson (Paris, Texas), Claire Dobbin (Australian Film Commission), David Keating (Last of the High Kings, Into the West), Anthony McCarten (Death of a Super Hero), Susanne Schneider (The Day Will Come), Martin Sherman (Mrs. Henderson Presents) and Time Squyers (Ang Lee’s long-time editor).
It’s a wonderful group and we will meet tomorrow to begin discussion of the scripts in the workshop. Let the passionate debates begin!
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I just returned from the fabulous eQuinoxe Germany International Workshop at Schloss Elmau near Munich. The next workshop will be held in Ireland in April. Here is the official information
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]]>SPRING 2010
Sixth Intl. Screenwriters´ Workshop & Master Class
Dear Writers and Producers,
The Call for Projects for our 6th. International Screenwriters´ Workshop & Master Class is beginning. Our new online application is available now on our website.
Deadline for applications is 12. November 2009.
The International Screenwriters´ Workshops are geared towards writers with experience with at least one feature script produced. The workshops only deal with screenplays for the cinema. Scripts should be at an advanced stage (recommended is at least 3rd. Draft) of development in order to get the full advantage out of the one-on-one meetings with the advisors.
• EU/EEC Writers who have had at least one script produced are eligible to apply
• Screenplays for cinema may be submitted beginning immediately (1st. Drafts are not accepted)
• There are no fees for the selection process.
• Scripts may be submitted in German or English in industry standard format and pagination
• If project is pre-selected, an English translation for the international jury must be provided in 14 days.
• If your project is invited, the workshop assumes travel, food and lodging for the writers.
• If your project is accepted, producers should plan to attend the end of the workshop.
Travel costs are not covered for producers, however, food and lodging costs are assumed
• The workshop is held in the English language.
New Application Process:
The application will be available on our website.
To apply: 1) please send an email to: [email protected] requesting a password for an application with project name, 2) a password will be sent to you per email, and 3) upon receiving a password, one can revise and save the application online before completing (printing out, signing and submitting per post).
Timeline:
Projects pre-selected for the international jury will be informed early February 2010.
The international jury selection will be the beginning of March.
Workshop scheduled for late April 2010
Our website is helpful to browse, should you require additional information,
please don´t hesitate to contact us by email or phone.
Best wishes,
Your éQuinoxe Germany Team
NEWS:
HELEN written and directed by Sandra Nettelbeck received THE VOICE AWARD 2009 with “The Soloist”, “Michael Clayton” and “Lars and the Real Girl”
FOR A MOMENT, FREEDOM written and directed by Arash T. Riahi is the Austrian candidate for Best Foreign Language Film and is the recipient of 22 international awards
www.ForAMomentFreedom.com
éQuinoxe Germany e.V.
Feilitzschstrasse 1
D-80802 München
+49 89 38 47 60 27
I’ve been at beautiful Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian Alps. http://www.schloss-elmau.de/ It was a fabulous setting for the recent Equinoxe Germany workshop.
Here is a description from the Equinoxe workshop website http://www.equinoxegermany.org/:
“An international jury selects 10 talented screenwriters to participate in the workshop. These ten screenwriters come to the one-week workshops and meet on the basis of one-to-one discussions with ten advisors from all over the world – internationally known and experienced writers, directors and producers– who without remuneration share their knowledge and experiences with the most promising talent the European and international film scene has to offer.”
“Twice a year scripts can be submitted for selection. Mid-May is the deadline for the autumn workshop. Beginning of November is the deadline for submission for the spring workshop.”
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