2

THE STORY
The Pulse of the Script

The Normal Pulse, or, “It’s Alive! IT’S ALIVE!”

As already acknowledged, there are literally thousands of books on screen­
writing and scriptwriting. There are even more thousands of books on story­
writing in general and media-making as a field. I own quite a few of them,
and I’ve read quite a few more. At the end of this book, I’ll even recommend
some for further reading. None of them have the precise focus of this book,
which is why I undertook the writing in the first place.
I will, though, hammer home the three essential points I have gained from
all of them.

• All good stories have a structure, like all living people have a pulse.
• That structure is as regular as a human pulse.
• Without that structure, your story is in the same shape as a person without
a pulse.

“That’s nice,” you may be thinking, “but, if this were a medical book,
you’d show us what normal human pulse looks like on an electrocardiogram.
So . . . what’s the ‘pulse’ of a story look like?”
That’s a valid and straightforward question. The answer is equally
straightforward:

All stories are about individual people, and all stories have a beginning, a
middle, and an end.

Simple, right? At this point I can say, “Go thou and do likewise,” and you’re
ready to rock and roll. Except – simple is not easy, or obvious. Walking to the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003410317-2
 The Story 11

North Pole is simple, after all: just walk north until every direction is south, and
you’re there. Unfortunately, there are more than a few complications along the
way. Further, you’re not going to know which way is north without a compass.
So, let’s unpack that statement a bit, by applying it to the simplest of stories.
Jack and Jill
Went up a hill
To fetch a pail of water
Jack fell down
And broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
Fortunately, for Jill, she’d recorded Jack’s fall on her smartphone first. She
then posted it to social media, where it went viral, and eventually got Jill (and
Jack, once he recovered) their own reality TV series.
You’ve probably heard this before, and from a very young age – minus
my own modern addition, of course. You probably never thought before that
this and all nursery rhymes are very, very short examples of the story pulse.

All stories are about individual people. . .

In this case, a person named Jack and another person named Jill. Given
the time and place of origin – the United Kingdom in the mid-1700s – we can
guess that Jack is male (the text confirms this later) and Jill is female, though
of course today that need not be the case. Beyond that, what do we know
about Jill and Jack?
Nothing. Except the only two facts that are essential: Jack and Jill are peo­
ple, and each is an individual. The nursery rhyme doesn’t say “A couple went
up a hill.” It doesn’t even say “Two humans went up a hill.” It gives them
names. Names are the signifiers of individuality and personhood, even in a
nursery rhyme. Thus, even the simplest of stories is about individual people.
I can’t stress this enough. Some of my favorite individual people in stories
include

• a blue-and-purple furred working-class monster

• an ambulatory tree who communicates eloquently with just three (well, a
fourth in one memorable line) words
• an innocent baby with an insatiable appetite, huge ears, and green skin
• a rabbit with a quick wit and a Brooklyn accent
• a happy-go-lucky cucumber with a goofy grin

The importance of names notwithstanding, I doubt I need to name or picture

those characters. (And I won’t, copyright and trademark permissions costing
what they do.) You are probably recalling your own favorites from the world
12 The Story

of animation. The scholarly term of anthropomorphism, the attribution of

human personality or characteristics to something nonhuman, does not quite
cover what happens in these stories. What the creators of all these characters
did was take it a step further: “What if we took whole human personalities
and put them inside animals, vegetables, monsters, cars, fish, or whatever?
Wouldn’t they really be people?” Joyously, these creative artists were correct.
The covering doesn’t matter; the personality is the personhood.
Of course, these people might have some abilities that you and I lack.
The alien baby might be able to move things with his mind. The tree might
be able to regrow itself from a single twig. The rabbit might be able to bur­
row around the world in a matter of minutes (if only he could ever make the
correct turn at Albuquerque). They are still people. The individual is more
important than the ability – a key point to keep in mind if you want to write
fantasy, science-fiction, or superhero scripts. Just listen to fans of those gen­
res talk. They talk about Harry and Ron and Hermione, or Luke and Han
and Leia, or Tony and Steve and Natasha. They talk, in short, about people.
We could spend a lot of time and pages describing these people, as in
fact their creators did. We could do the same for Jack and Jill, making note
of their physical characteristics, emotional life, intellectual makeup, quirks,
tastes, and so forth. In the video realm, that level of detail is only necessary
and possible in long-form entertainments – feature-length movies or series
television. Nonetheless, it is possible to create believable characters even
within the context of a television commercial. Insurance commercials have
provided plentiful examples of this in recent years. One company’s team of
white-coated heroes includes a preternaturally cheerful and product-obsessed
leader, her goofy sidekick with an impressive array of breathtaking talents,
and a snarky but effective “third banana.” Another attracts customers with a
bumbling parody-cop and his flightless bird partner. A third turns the eccen­
tricity approach on its head, showing the bemused interactions of an “aver­
age guy” agent with a roster of famous pro athletes who display ever more
offbeat behavior.
Whether for long-form features and series, brief tales like nursery rhymes,
and short scripts such as the primary subjects of this book, we need only ask
one basic question about our people, and then determine two fundamental
things about them, to turn them into Characters.

The Basic Question: Protagonist or Antagonist?

The essential question about every Character is, “Are they a protagonist, or
an antagonist?” Tomes have been written about those two terms. For our
purposes, it’s simple: do you want your audience to cheer for that person or
against them?
 The Story 13

That’s it. If, watching your finished project, the audience cheers when a
character succeeds, they’re a Protagonist; if they cheer when they don’t, an
Antagonist.
“Fair enough,” you are probably thinking, “but how do I make sure
my viewers cheer for and against the people I want them to cheer for and
against?” Again, we’re at a point where simplicity does not equal ease. How­
ever, we’re also at a point where simplicity points toward further simplicity.
In my experience:

Both memorable Protagonists and memorable Antagonists are mixtures of

virtue and vice; the difference is which does each embrace.

Growing up, one of my favorite novels was Mark Twain’s The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. Even then, much of the language, though time-and-place
accurate, grated on my ears. In the 21st century, I understand and respect
that many people simply cannot bear certain words. If you can, though, I ask
you to think for a moment about Huck. In the novel, Huck smokes like the
proverbial chimney at an age when his worst habit should be bubble gum.
He regards almost all the manners and mores of “society” – even the humble
society in which he lives – as a house of horrors. Worst of all, Huck is a self­
confessed casual thief and almost incessant liar.
On the other hand, Huck also repeatedly shows himself to be clever and
resourceful, for example in faking his own death to escape his abusive father.
He also shows himself to be oddly humble, in that very episode comparing
how he did it to how his best friend Tom Sawyer would have and think­
ing Tom would’ve done better. Most important, Huck consistently shows
himself overflowing with the vital human virtue of empathy. In his brief and
tragic friendship with Buck Grangerford, in his longer and equally poignant
relationship with Mary Jane Wilks, even in his dealings with the deplorable
“Duke” and “King,” when the chips are down Huck’s heart goes out to oth­
ers and especially to the underdog. Ultimately, this is demonstrated with Jim,
where Huck’s empathy moves him to an act of almost incalculable courage.
Now consider the world’s most famous vampire, Count Dracula. Set aside
the relationship to the historical figure Vlad the Impaler (no angel himself).
The very idea of a mysterious, titled, wealthy aristocrat, with all the privi­
lege that that implies, who preys on innocent young women under the cover
of night is both horrifying and too close to some modern headlines. Add
that this paragon of “the elite” is “undead,” unageing, with a cornucopia of
supernatural abilities, and can only be destroyed by a specific and very lim­
ited set of attacks, and you have the stuff of literal nightmares.
And yet . . . and yet . . . the Count is undeniably charismatic, even with­
out using magic or psychic powers. His charm is matched by his unfailing
courtesy, except when he’s interrupted while sucking someone’s blood. (After
14 The Story

all, who among us really enjoys being interrupted at a meal?) He is both

highly intelligent and very well learned, not necessarily the same thing. He is
also a man of impeccable if dated taste. Finally, even in his very first literary
account, there is a hint of sadness in his demeanor; the undead may live for­
ever, but only by never seeing the sun. Small wonder that the Count has been
portrayed as the outright hero in some media. Even as the villain, his blend
of vice and virtue makes Dracula a fascinating antagonist because Dracula is
a fascinating person.
Working in short-form video does not change this principle. Whether you
personally prefer Flo or Jamie or Doug or Jake, you can easily recognize
their strengths and weaknesses. Using the anthropomorphism approach, one
company has personified “Mayhem” to create an antiheroic Protagonist. His
infuriating ability to appear in an endless stream of guises is offset by his
obvious glee in wreaking havoc on the unfortunate holders of cut-rate insur­
ance policies.
This brings up an important point; if you choose an antihero protagonist,
you must work doubly hard to ensure your protagonist is likable. Likability
is a key component of persuasion, which is a primary goal of Applied Screen­
writing. In his best-selling text, Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion, Dr.
Robert Cialdini enumerated the following factors to create liking:

• Physical attractiveness of persuader (171)

• Similarity of persuader to audience (173)
• Compliments from persuader to audience (174)
• Contact or familiarity of persuader to audience (176–77), as long as it is
accompanied by cooperation between persuader and audience (181–82)
• Association between persuader and conditions desirable to audience (188),
even if that association is produced through deliberate conditioning
(193)

These factors present different levels of challenge for the screenwriter. We

can specify that our Protagonist is both physically attractive and within our
Audience’s demographics. As examples such as Loki in the MCU demon­
strate, the personal charisma of the actor goes a long way as well – especially
in connecting the audience to an antiheroic Protagonist. Unless we are doing
the casting ourselves, though, we must trust the Director and the Producer to
accomplish the feat of finding the perfect actor. On the other hand, we can
write dialogue that our Audience finds agreeable or even flattering. As the
example of Mayhem suggests, humor goes a long way toward making a char­
acter likeable. Still, give your audience a person with name, vice, and virtue
in thirty seconds or less, and you create character; add one or more of these
likability factors, and that character becomes highly persuasive.
 The Story 15

These factors can also be reinforced at the script stage with descriptions
that provide culturally appropriate visual clues to which of our Charac­
ters are Protagonists and Antagonists. For example, in Western culture,
light clothing and bright illumination are associated with positive charac­
ters. Dark costumes and shadowy lighting connote more negative ones, at
least traditionally – Batman and Chuck “Good Guys Wear Black” Norris
notwithstanding. We will discuss visual description in much more detail
shortly. For now, take comfort that your audience readily draws on its
years of viewing to rapidly pick up such clues about the nature of your
Characters.
Speaking of which, let’s get back to the two Characters we started dis­
cussing. Jack and Jill, after all, are still waiting to begin their epic adven­
ture. The unknown originator of the rhyme, popularly known as “Mother
Goose,” has given us the foundation to build on; to turn the nursery rhyme
into a five-minute online video or a multi-installment feature franchise, give
J & J a meaningful virtue, a significant vice, and a choice to make between
the two . . . and then send them up the hill.

All stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. . .

And . . . so what? Everything in the physical universe has a beginning,

middle, and end. As humorist P.J. O’Rourke observed, though, reality usu­
ally lacks plot and organization (233). That’s the thing that sets good stories
apart from everything else – an organized plot. In fact, most of the other
screenwriting books on the market spend hundreds of pages on organizing
your plot. This is mostly because those books deal with theatrical features
or television series. The different demands of movies and TV lead to differ­
ent and more detailed approaches to breaking down the plot. Nevertheless,
virtually everyone acknowledges the primary organization of plot in English­
language media: the three-act structure.

The Beginning: Act I – The Setup

As Rogers and Hammerstein famously noted, the beginning is a very good
place to start. Of course, this implies that you have a very good beginning.
So, what makes a good beginning, a good Act I? Once again, simple-not­
easy; just set up the entire rest of your story. That setup answers three basic
questions:

1. Who are the Protagonists?

2. What is the Setting?
3. What starts the Conflict?
16 The Story

Who Are the Protagonists?

In act I of your story, you introduce the audience to the people you want
them to cheer for, and you give them a reason to do so. New screenwriters
with experience in other creative writing may be moved to create detailed
character descriptions and histories for these people, laying out their entire
lives before page 1 of the script. In screenwriting these are called “backsto­
ries.” Having created great backstories, we are tempted to share them in Act
I. By all means, develop your characters’ backstories; but at all costs, do not
share them in Act I.
Your audience neither wants nor needs to know the complete psychosocial
history of your protagonist in the first pages of your script. What they want
to know is the person they should focus on; what they need to know is why
they should do so. For that reason, I emphasize “introduce” and “a reason.”
When you introduce one friend to another in real life, you don’t give them
every life detail of each other. Usually what’s said is “Jack, this is Jill; Jill,
Jack,” and then you mention one thing they may find interesting about each
other. Of course, in real life you have the advantage of personally know­
ing both persons you’re introducing. That’s why you say things like “Jill’s
a fellow [whatever their school mascot], Jack”; or “Jill’s planning a vaca­
tion to [wherever she’s going] – Jack just got back from there”; or “Jack’s
a big fan of [whoever] too, Jill.” What that thing is doesn’t matter much if
it establishes a connection between the two of them. You also have another
advantage; two people, once introduced, will generally converse with each
other, thus sharing details about themselves that they want the other to know.
Sometimes, these details will reveal things in common; Jill’s looking forward
to trying restaurants on vacation, and Jack’s a big foodie too. Sometimes,
differences that nevertheless can be explored; at their mutual alma mater, Jill
studied nuclear physics while Jack learned Romance languages. At any rate,
you can leave further discussion to the introduced persons.
Neither of these advantages applies in screenwriting. You’re introducing
characters to an audience. We can predict you will not know every audience
member personally – at least, we hope your audiences are big enough that
you won’t – and those viewers have only two responses to your character;
keep watching or stop. Therefore, your introduction of the character must be
more than just a name, and your connection must matter very much. In Act
I, you must quickly, very quickly, show your audience the essentials of your
character, and an equally essential connection with them.
By “essentials of character,” I mean that the first act – we’re still there,
remember – of the story will not make sense unless we know this thing about
that character. To follow the tale, is it essential that the audience know your
protagonist’s profession? Show it. To understand the plot, is it essential that
they know your main character’s family? Show it. To grasp the story, is it
 The Story 17

essential that they know your hero has a recurring rash in an uncomfort­
able area? Within the limits of your rating system and your audience’s tastes,
show it.
These essential qualities engage a viewer’s mind with your character. The
essential connection, on the other hand, engages the viewer’s heart. For
example, showing the protagonist unlocking and entering an office that says
“Joan Doe, Private Investigator” tells your audience a key fact about who
they are and what they do. But, unless you are creating your video for a pri­
vate eye convention, your audience may or not be heart-connected. After all,
the history of media chronicles countless detectives on big and small screens.
If, however, you show Ms. Doe stopping short inside and reacting in shock to
that office in shambles, obviously having been ransacked, now your audience
is engaged because anyone can relate to the invasion of their personal space.
I should emphasize, even at this early stage, the essential, crucial, vital
word in the previous two paragraphs: Show. If I have one indispensable con­
cept to pass on, it’s that idea. Show, show, show – and tell only as a last
resort. I should also emphasize that the mind connection and the heart con­
nection are not mutually exclusive; they’re both/and, not either/or. In Ameri­
can culture particularly, the private investigator has been a heroic icon at
least since the days of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, thus giving
Ms. Doe at least a chance to engage the audience without further effort. On
the flip side, the outrage we all share with Ms. Doe is followed immediately
by two intellectual questions: who ransacked her office, and why?
We will return to those mysteries shortly, but before we do, Ms. Doe’s
office provides an excellent opportunity to illustrate the second major ques­
tion of Act I:

What Is the Setting?

Every story takes place in a place and a time. That is the setting. Once again,
what we show the viewer must be essential to the plot. In the previous illus­
tration, Ms. Doe’s office may be on the second floor of a run-down urban ten­
ement. It may be on the twentieth floor of a gleaming new skyscraper. It may
be on the ground floor of a quiet suburban professional center. Whichever
we choose, it will make a great difference to the audience’s understanding of
the character. It will also make a difference if, through her office window, the
viewer glimpses the Empire State Building, or the Tower of Big Ben, or the
Sydney Opera House.
So much is straightforward. What is less obvious is the equal importance
of time, and of showing that to the audience as well. Consider New York
City, or London, or Sydney, a hundred years ago (that’s only the 1920s, after
all); then mentally advance decade by decade to the present. This mental
exercise is made easier since many historical eras of the major cities of the
18 The Story

world have become familiar to us, thanks to more than a century of movies
and three-quarters of a century of TV. Small towns and rural areas of the
globe have also been onscreen, though to a lesser extent. Fortunately, once
we remind ourselves of that, we realize there are virtually as many visual
indicators of time as of space. For example, Ms. Doe may pull up in front of
her office in a Stutz Bearcat, a Tesla, or a Spinner hover-car; the country fields
around her city may be plowed with oxen, or mules, or steam tractors, or
the newest diesel model. Whichever you choose, you have just told the audi­
ence the general era of the story they are going to see. Times more specific
than this may also be shown without referring to clock or calendar, even in
short form. In the United States, jack-o-lanterns, fireworks, and snowflakes
in advertising send the message of the seasons as surely as the calendar; in the
United Kingdom, Boxing Day and Guy Fawkes Night send the same message.
On the other hand, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with a more on-the­
nose tactic if you need it. A headline or breaking news story seen by your
characters, for example, will establish a precise time for them and the audi­
ence. If set in the past, historical references work too. The classic film Casa­
blanca, written by Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch and directed
by Michael Curtiz, contains the following exchange:

Rick (Humphrey Bogart): Sam, if it’s December 1941 in Casablanca, what

time is it in New York?
Sam (Dooley Wilson): Uh, my watch stopped.
Rick: I bet they’re asleep in New York. I bet they’re
asleep all over America.
(109)

In that moment, we know that the characters are working out their destinies
between December 1 and 6, 1941. And we know that every American of the
time is about to get a particularly vivid answer to the third question. . .

What Starts the Conflict?

Rick has been involved in the conflict long before a sleeping America got
its wake-up call. This is the reason we care about him before Pearl Harbor.
Without conflict, there is no story. With conflict, there is. In fact, the conflicts
in Casablanca’s seventy-two-hour time frame fill a movie as well as stories set
over much longer periods. There are two reasons for this.
First, there is a mix of both external and internal conflicts: opposition to
our hero from outside, and opposition to our hero from within himself. In
Rick’s case, his external conflict comes from the Nazis. His internal conflict
in great measure stems from his personal mix of vice and virtue we’ve estab­
lished as necessary to all memorable characters.
 The Story 19

Second, all the conflicts – and at one time or another Rick is in greater
or lesser conflict with every character except his own employees – favor the
antagonist. The hero should ideally always start at a disadvantage. This is
the reason that the term “David and Goliath story,” though originating in
Jewish and Christian scripture, is familiar worldwide to people of all faiths
and no faith at all. In Casablanca’s primary external conflict, the imbalance
of power between a lone and retired freedom fighter in “Vichy French” ter­
ritory and the aristocratic but thoroughly Nazi Major Strasser is obvious.
Less obvious is the imbalance between Rick and his friendlier rivals. Frenemy
Captain Renault is the chief of police, who can and does shut down Rick’s
business on a pretext; Rick cannot return the favor. His rival saloon operator,
Signor Ferrari, is the respected and influential head of all illegal activities in
Casablanca; Rick holds no such lofty position. Even his romantic rival, Vic­
tor Laszlo, has the not-inconsiderable advantage of already being married to
the lady they both love. The imbalance in Rick’s internal conflict takes the
whole film to convey, but – at the risk of spoilers – the natural human desire
for self-preservation, the pain of a lost love, and the hope that the love might
be regained all line up on one side of the question. Only Rick’s conscience
and principles stand on the other side of the scales.
“Of course, that’s a feature film,” you are probably thinking. “And you’ve
already said that’s not the focus of this book. How does a conflict work
in the world we work in?” Again, our friendly neighborhood insurers – at
any rate, their ad agencies – provide useful examples. As of this writing, his
would-be customers are trying to get a special “personal” rate by overshar­
ing personal info with the stalwart Jake. Jake stands also as an example of
basic internal conflict. His desire to serve his customers notwithstanding, he
is clearly uncomfortable with the awkward situation they put him in. Mean­
while, Mayhem tells the viewer exactly what havoc he will unleash, and then
does so hilariously. Conflict need not take long to create; as these examples
show, it can even be funny.
Now let’s return to Jane Doe, Private Eye. She parks her vehicle in front
of her office; she unlocks and walks into her office; and she sees it has been
turned upside down. Now we add an internal conflict; the searchers left a
note saying only, “Let this go or your dad gets it.” All four points could eas­
ily be done in thirty seconds of screen time. In those thirty seconds, we’ve
presented our protagonist, sketched our setting, and created both external
and internal conflicts – and launched the story.
That launch is better known as the inciting incident, the key to which is

Everything was as it had always been . . . AND THEN ONE DAY. . . .

Though I wish it were, that catchphrase is not original to me. I heard it at one
of the many great seminars I’ve attended through the years, but I cannot for
20 The Story

the life of me recall which or who said it. Still the statement itself has stayed
with me to this day.
“Everything was as it had always been” – that’s protagonist and setting,
both of which might have remained as they had always been, unchanged
more or less, even-keeled more or less, and audience interest very much less.
“AND THEN ONE DAY . . .” something happened to force change, to dis­
rupt the protagonist or the setting or both, in short to start the conflict. And
when the conflict starts, the story starts.
Speaking of which, our friends from the land of nursery rhymes are ready
to launch their story. “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.”
“Mother Goose” compressed all of Act I (and Act II, but we will get there in
a moment) into one short sentence. We are introduced to our Protagonists,
Mr. Jack and Ms. Jill; our Setting, the Hill; and the Conflict, a lack of water.
Further, we learn something about each.
First, the Conflict is essential. Water is one of the three basic human needs,
after air and before food. Further, water can be used for many things besides
drinking. Perhaps Jack and Jill need to wash something, even themselves.
Perhaps Jack and Jill need water as an ingredient for something else: a recipe
for soup, a mixture of paint, a formula for the elixir of unending youth.
Perhaps they need the water to refill the boiler on their steampunk dirigible.
We are not told the specifics, but part of the genius of the poem is that even
the most basic assumption is a need, not a want. The stakes, in other words,
are high.
Second, the Setting is challenging. Jack and Jill must go up the hill to get
their water. Water, on its own, flows downhill. That being the case, why
didn’t our Protagonists simply wait for the water to get to them? If the water
is flowing down another side of the hill from the side where they currently
stand, why not walk around the hill instead of up it? Something about the
setting apparently either prevents water from obeying the law of gravity,
prevents our protagonists from taking the easiest route to the water, or pos­
sibly both. Regardless, the setting seems to be part of the problem, not the
solution.
Third, our Protagonists certainly possess a virtue and possibly have a vice.
Jack and Jill need the water; they have none; they know where the water is;
they start to climb the hill to get it. Our Jill and Jack are no slackers; a strong
work ethic is their key characteristic – possibly also a sense of adventure,
since we’ve established that the setting is part of the problem. On the other
hand, it is just possible that the setting is only slowing the natural progress
of the water, and it would have reached our intrepid hillclimbers eventually.
Impatience may be a part of their natures as well; they simply may not have
wanted to take the time to wait.
Talking of time, the question of how much time to spend on each Act often
comes up at this point. Some writers recommend a formula in which a certain
 The Story 21

percentage of the screen time is reserved for each act. The most common is
25% for Act I, 50% for Act II, 25% for Act III. Those percentages, in their
views, should not change much, regardless of the finished production time. In
other words, a 120-minute movie gets about thirty minutes for Act I, a sixty­
second commercial gets fifteen seconds.
My recommendation is: As long as you need and as short as you can
as required by the medium and the story. If you are introducing your Pro­
tagonist and your Setting to an audience that is unfamiliar with either, you
will need more screen time to create that familiarity. On the other hand, the
opposite is also true. Another Humphrey Bogart classic, The Maltese Fal­
con (written and directed by John Huston), was set in then-present-day San
Francisco. Its private eye protagonist, Sam Spade, was already known to the
audience from Dashiell Hammett’s novel and from various short stories, not
to mention two previous (and much less remembered today) motion pictures.
With a feature-length runtime of approximately an hour and forty minutes,
the Huston/Bogart movie goes from first frame to Inciting Incident in just
under ten. Our commercial stories move exponentially faster. Jake is told
immediately, “I want the personal rate, and so I’ll share [insert laughably
awkward personal quirk].” Mayhem introduces his current persona in the
first line he delivers. The same principle applies in our runtimes; as noted
above, we could easily knock out the first Act of Jane Doe’s adventures in half
a minute. And, again, “Mother Goose” did it in a sentence for Jack and Jill.
For another perspective on building Act I, we can consult the wisdom of J.
Michael Straczynski. Mr. Straczinsky has written for virtually every medium –
newspapers, animation, live-action television, features, graphic novels, “reg­
ular” novels – and has won awards for most of them. In his text The Com­
plete Book of Screenwriting, he created an “equation” (his term), the first
half of which is Characterization + Desire = Goal (25). Characterization
we’ve discussed; Desire is what that character wants; Goal is what they’ll do
to get what they want. This concept confirms what we’ve already said about
the centrality of character. Lots of people might want exactly the same thing
in the same situation, and in fact many do; there are a limitless number of
stories because each of those identical desires is sought by a different and
unique (in the true sense of that word) person.
But this is only the first half of the equation. The second half is part of the
second act.

The Middle: Act II – The Follow-Through

I typed “second act hardest act to write screenplay” into my search engine
and hit enter. It generated more than a hundred and fifty million results.
I changed screenplay to script and drew similar numbers. Clearly, a lot of
us writers know where we want our stories to start, and probably where we
22 The Story

want them to end, but the journey from point alpha to point omega gives us
challenges.
Let’s go back to our rhyme. Here is Mother Goose’s Act II: “Jack and Jill
went up a hill.” That’s it. That’s not much help.
Or is it?
Recall the first half of Straczinsky’s equation. Characterization +
Desire = Goal (25). Somebody wants something and will take some action to
get it. Fair enough, but that won’t necessarily generate pulse-pounding sto­
ries. As I wrote this, I realized (like our hero and heroine) that I was thirsty.
I went to the refrigerator and got a drink. Those are facts, but a story they do
not make. Why not? Because nothing was stopping me.
Straczinsky’s equation has two halves. The second and equally important
half is Goal + Conflict = Story (25). Somebody wants something and will
take some action to get it; something or someone is stopping them. The Pro­
tagonist must be stopped in order for the story to start.
I can hardly emphasize this enough. As a college instructor, I have more
than once received two genres of this nonstory: the Road Trip Script and
the Young Love Script. In the Road Trip Script, two or more friends happily
pack up and leave campus for a fun break. They go to a fun place and do fun
things. They come back happy. The End. In the Young Love Script, boy meets
girl (note: these are not thoughtless concessions to the patriarchy – I have yet
to receive a version of this with other genders); boy and girl fall instantly,
madly, and passionately in love; boy and girl go on wonderful dates; boy
gives girl a ring worth as much as an economy car; boy and girl graduate on
Saturday and get married on Sunday. The End. Now, it is my sincere hope
for all my students, and all of you reading this, that your vacations and your
romances are as trouble-free and satisfying as the Road Trip and Young Love
put together. If they are, though, please don’t write about them. They may
look like scripts, but they’re not stories. I repeat: to have a story, something
must temporarily stop your protagonist.
What’s stopping Jack and Jill? They’re at the bottom of the hill, and the
water’s at the top. That may not seem much of an obstacle. Still, the course
that they must take to overcome the conflict literally illustrates the key to the
second act; the Protagonists move toward achieving their goal, in a pattern
of Rising Action.
Rising Action means that, following the inciting incident, the Protagonist
will face increasing Intensity and Complication as she moves toward her goal.
Intensity refers to the energy of the actions taken to move toward the goal,
and to the emotional intensity behind them. Generally, a hill gets steeper as
one approaches the top; Jack and Jill will have to expend more energy the
closer they get to their goal. Complication refers to the path toward the goal;
in most stories, that path is anything but a straight line. Here it seems that
Jack and Jill’s chronicler falls short. All we are told is, needing water, they
went up the hill.
 The Story 23

The anonymous author of this tale, however, was not ignoring the princi­
ple of Rising Action. Instead, she or he was obeying a practical rule of story­
telling: There is a direct relationship between the rising action of the story
and the time available to tell it. The more time you have in which to tell your
Story, the more complications you can and should bring in; conversely, less
time means less complication. By definition, nursery rhymes are short. Jack
and Jill do not have time to wander in the wilderness. They have got to get
up that hill fast. In short, the less time you have for your story, the faster your
intensity should increase.
On the flip side, more time means more gradual ramp-up of emotions and
energy. If we were doing “Jack and Jill: The Motion Picture,” all we now
have to do is throw more and more complications at our climbers. Is the hill
in fact a dormant volcano, which is showing signs of ending its dormancy?
Does the Hill Weather Service show an approaching hurricane, or blizzard,
or tsunami? Are there wolves on the hill? Or werewolves? This does not
mean that you should start a longer form script at “low energy,” incidentally.
If you are writing an action film, it’s fine to start with action. Just realize that
whatever energy you open with, the audience expects much more by the time
you hit the Crisis.
The Crisis is to the second act what the inciting incident is to the first;
the gateway to the next act. The action has risen to its peak of intensity, the
conflict has reached its height, and the audience is asking that crucial ques­
tion: “What happens next?” Applying this to the adventure of Jane Doe, we
would adjust the mystery to the time of our finished piece. If we are doing an
online video, with a time window measured in seconds, there might be very
little or none. “I recognize that handwriting!” Jane says, and with lightning
speed, we are at the Crisis. The Antagonist has a weapon pointed at Jane’s
dad, and Jane’s decision determines what happens next. We’ve got a good
model for this in our nursery rhyme; it too compensates for the lack of com­
plication by the speed with which it ramps up the intensity. “Jack fell down,
and broke his crown, and. . . .” “Crown,” in this case, is used as a synonym
for “head.” Ouch. Poor Jack. Mr. Mayhem was apparently at work here too.
But notice that one little three-letter word at the end. That word is the lead
into the final act.

The End: Act III – The Resolution

A peculiar point about the third act is its beginning. Some stylists argue that
Act III begins not only after the Crisis but also after the Climax – the ulti­
mate point of contention of the major conflict of the story. Others affirm that
the Crisis always ends Act II, and the Climax begins Act III. As I illustrated
above, I tend to agree with the Crisis-end side. However, I firmly believe that,
unlike the Inciting Incident, the transition between II and III can be much
smoother and less abrupt.
24 The Story

Jack and Jill’s adventure is an illustration of this point. “Jack fell down,
and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.” Is the crisis Jack’s fall,
and the climax his broken head? Or is Jack’s whole mishap the crisis, and
Jill’s tumble the climax? Critics could probably debate this endlessly. Jack is
down, badly injured; Jill has fallen also; and they never get their water.
Good as Straczynski’s Equation is, years of sharing it with students
prompted me to add a clarification. “Character + Desire = Goal, Goal + Con­
flict = Story”; Martin’s Clarification is, Story + Resolution = GOOD Story.
Whatever the Conflict is, for the Story to truly work, it must be resolved.
A resolution requires two things. First, whether the Protagonist achieves her
or his Goal – are they able to accomplish what they set out to do to obtain
their Desire? Second and equally important, does the Protagonist obtain their
Desire – do they get what they truly want or need? I emphasize the word
“truly” in that sentence. What the Protagonist wants at the beginning may
not be what she or he wants at the end, let alone what they need. Think of
the number of romantic comedies that have one of the characters committed
to another, only for the one – or both – to wind up in a clearly better relation­
ship with someone else.
I also want to emphasize that both questions to be resolved are YES or NO
questions. The Protagonists do not have to accomplish their goals; still less
do they have to achieve their desires. In modern terms, a resolution in which
the Protagonist gets what they truly need, as opposed to what they think they
want, is a comedy (even if the tone is serious), and one in which they do not
is a tragedy (even if the story has lots of laughs). You probably never realized
that the story of Jack and Jill is a tragedy. There’s no embarrassment in that;
the person who first recited it to you probably didn’t realize it either. Still, the
fact that the poem ends with Jack and Jill still waterless makes it such.
One more word about the Resolution – it need not answer every possible
question. Did Jack survive his injury? Did the relationship between Jack and
Jill (whatever it was) survive the accident? Was it an accident? And will Flo
or Doug or Jake show up to take care of the costs? Just a few of the questions
to which answers we will never know. Unless, of course, we decide to make
“Jack and Jill: The Series. . .”

An Allegory, and the Primary Question

An allegory that I’ve encountered repeatedly over the years helps me visual­
ize the process. Incidentally, the authorship has been attributed to practically
every famous writer, but as with Jack and Jill, the true creator has been lost
to the mists of time. Whoever it may have been, though, the word “picture”
is short and sweet:

Act I: Get your Protagonist(s) up a tree.

 The Story 25

Figure 2.1 shows just that.

FIGURE 2.1 The Protagonist Sitting in a Tree.

26 The Story

In fact, the “act” of the photo begins with our Protagonist already in the tree,
further demonstrating the point; get your Setup finished as quick as you can.

Act II: Throw rocks at them – or spears, grenades, laser blasts, as apropos.

FIGURE 2.2 The Antagonist Throwing Rocks at the Protagonist in the Tree.

FIGURE 2.3 The Protagonist Lying Underneath a Tree.

 The Story 27

“As apropos” is key here. As shown in Figure 2.2, our Protagonist is

so obvious, and our tree is so simple that an equally straightforward rock­
throwing Antagonist is sufficient.

Act III: Get them down, one way or another – dead or alive, in fact – but
get them down.

Granted, as shown in Figure 2.3, it looks like our Protagonist came down
in a most unfortunate fashion, there is some ambiguity to the pose. (To para­
phrase the ship’s doctor of the starship mentioned above, “She’s NOT dead,
Jim!”) Nevertheless, she is down. Whether there is room for a sequel to this
tragedy is the point of the ambiguity.

The Second Primary Question

Behind the allegory, behind all our discussion so far, in fact behind every
story ever told, is a question that was bestowed to me from my own men­
tor, Dr. Stuart Kaminsky. If you ever were blessed to take one of his writing
classes, you and I both heard this question until we were more than ready
never to hear it again. But he was right; it’s the primary, in fact the ultimate,
question for every storyteller:

Why Should I Care?

Why should I care? Why should I, the reader, care about your Setting, and
your Conflict, and especially about your Characters? Why. Should. I. Care?
Answering that question is both the hardest and the most satisfying task
for any writer. The guidelines in this chapter should prove most helpful to
doing so. In our case as scriptwriters, the question is doubled – for while the
viewers are our ultimate audience for our story, they are not our primary
audience. The primary audience is the subject of the next chapter.

Works Cited
Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Rev. ed., HarperCollins,
2007.
Koch, H. Casablanca: Script and Legend. The Overlook Press, 1992.
O’Rourke, P. J., The Funny Stuff. Edited by Terry McDonell, Atlantic Monthly Press,
2022.
Straczynski, J. M. The Complete Book of Scriptwriting. Rev. ed., Writers Digest
Books, 2002.