How to Structure a Character Drama

J

JonathanLB

Carbonite Member
How do you structure a script that has not one main character, but let's say four main characters and four storylines? Whether or not they come together at the end, I'm not even sure, maybe they have to, I don't know the rules about that.

The point is, this one screenplay I want to write, it would make a lousy story if it was focused on just one character. It basically ruins the point of bothering at all. It's simply more ambitious than that, and needs to tell the stories of four different people in different jobs, different economic and political circumstances, etc.

I had thought, would it work to write 4 stories, each of 30 pages, with a beginning, middle, and an ending, like the typical three act structure, and then weave these stories together in a meaningful way so that they actually make sense together, aren't just stuck there, but seem to be tackling much the same issues at the same times, only in different circumstances, etc.?

I'm not sure really how that type of structure is supposed to work. Do screenplay classes and books teach that you MUST have only one clear protagonist? I know there are some films that do what I'm looking to do with this, and I also know it's out of the ordinary and more ambitious than the regular format, which I'm following on other work because it makes the most sense and makes for a clear dramatic drive.

In this case, though, I can only see my story working if I can make it about multiple people. I don't really think one person should get preference over the other characters...

Oh I should say that I think it's important it's not just four unrelated stories somehow turned into a feature. That's not the idea at all. What one character does will have an effect on the other characters, let's say one is a politician and these issues concern the other characters, or one is a sports star who the other characters watch, etc. They are absolutely intertwined, but mainly they are all dealing with the same issue in different ways. It's like, to use an example that is nothing like my film but works, if there was a major disaster, and you showed how 4 very different characters dealt with it, each with varying degrees of money, power, influence, etc.
 
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Definitely doable, since it sounds like there are a lot of parallels / connections between these stories. Often, the multiple stories will be intertwined throughout the course of the 120 pages. By no means is that the only way it can be done.

Also, although it can be difficult, some aspects are actually easier. Since you have multiple plot lines, your plots have to sustain interest over a shorter period of time. So, instead of needing one great idea (plot) and one good idea (subplot), you need a few pretty good ideas (but hopefully they're all great). You might want to check out these threads:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=172899

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=176841
 
ELOQUENT GRAFFITI, my own film, is like this. I had to be careful not to tell the same story in multiple threads. Instead, I've imagined a full journey based on the same theme, but placed the characters' mini-arcs along different sections of that journey. a super simple description would be that I'm showing one pair of characters going from A to B, while showing another pair going from B to C.
 
Oh that's really neat Zak, I mean that sounds like a good concept as well. Ok Eloquent Graffiti, well I need to check that out then - how can I do that?! hehe. Any other recommendations like this would be absolutely fantastic, because I really should see as many examples as I can before I ever start even outlining my idea.

My idea has been something in my mind for some time now, so it's something I get really excited about, but I'm working on more practical scripts that I can actually afford to finance myself, so I know they could get made. This particular film, no shot, it's a passion project and I have to be ok with writing a script I love that doesn't get made for a very long time. And I am ok with that, I just want to have the script so I can at least think, well, this is a neat story.

I'm trying to think of a good way to describe what I'm doing. I guess where you said Zak that you almost have characters in different stages of this journey, I have characters who have a different level of influence on the world around them and this changing situation. So while they are all dealing with exactly the same "brave new world" so to speak, that has a totally different effect on each character. For the politician it's a mess of how to deal with the social and economic ramifications of this new world, but for the sports star it's basically like a dream come true, and for the poor person let's say it's a depressing new reality where he/she realizes that more than ever before, class warfare may reach a new height of tension as the poor is more or less left out from this "new world." Something along those lines. It can't be done from one person's perspective because no matter who you could pick, their view is too limiting, it doesn't really showcase the magnitude of what has happened, but if you can show it from four people's viewpoints you are going to get a much less biased view of what is happening, seeing it for the good and the bad, etc.

And Eximious, that is what I was thinking too, that it could actually be easier to write in some senses because writing let's say 25-30 pages for a character's arc and what happens to them, etc., seems fairly easy compared to one long story. I think it would keep it more dramatically interesting.

I also should note despite not outlining this or writing a page, I have probably poured at least 50-100 hours of research into the subject area and just found it so fascinating and something really worthy of a great film about it that I feel passionate it has to be written.
 
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Luis_ said:
this made me think of "CRASH" right away
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Sure that came to mind as well!

You don't think it's too ambitious do you? I mean it isn't too strange of a way to work a script / film?

I kind of thought of a TV show like Heroes with this, actually. That's what comes to mind immediately.
 
I've been giving this particular idea some more thought...

Maybe I shouldn't, because I'm actively writing another script, but my mind wanders.

So this concept, I always thought well basically it should be about 15 to 20 years in the future, to be "believable" in the sense of this particular scientific advance, but I was giving it some thought today and the budget could be reduced to indie level, something I could potentially shoot without studio involvement, if I just made it somewhat of an "alternate universe" type of story instead. Can that be done believably? Something like Watchmen almost, where the world is the same essentially but with one big difference -- superheroes live among us, or something like that. In my case, it's basically like we are going to have to believe this scientific advance either just came to pass, or that essentially you're seeing a different reality where this has happened (how do you even communicate that? Just having a different president or something doesn't really necessarily get that across, etc.).

I'm almost toying with saying screw believability, the scientific advance has just arisen. I think a lot of movies, even great films I love, do this. Whether it's Jurassic Park or Simone, we can't clone dinosaur DNA (but it'd be cool if we could, so it's a "what if...") and there's no way, especially back in 2002, that someone could create a totally believable CG actress like Simone. It simply wasn't possible, but the story is fantastic in my opinion (and I think Andrew Niccol is a freakin' genius -- Gattaca, Lord of War, Simone, seriously among my favorite films) because it basically says forget it, this guy appears out of nowhere, he hands our protagonist a hard drive with this advanced technology, voila. Anyway, it's the type of thing where in reality, I strongly believe this will come to pass (more like Simone, less like Jurassic Park), but if it were to happen (I understand the science behind it somewhat), it would actually not occur at once anyway, it'd be a slow process and be followed by a series of breakthroughs that would eventually change the way humans live. For dramatic purposes, is it wrong to fudge the facts and just go with one big discovery event that does it all at once?

The Day After Tomorrow (an arguably fairly stupid film, lol) did that, essentially, making things that would take many decades happen all at once. I guess what i'm wondering is how much can you cheat reality to serve your dramatic ends?

My issue is if I write this script as a sci-fi script set even only 15 years in the future, the budget suddenly becomes ridiculous. You can't have regular cars, you need every car to look futuristic, or at least most of them. You can't have computers that everyone knows are 2008 computers or whatever, it's hokey, and it distracts from what you're trying to accomplish with the plot. The production designer would need a serious budget and creativity to accomplish that "future look" that makes it work. Yet if it just could take place more or less in the present day, you go from needing at least $20 million to make it work well to maybe being able to pull it off for $500K to $1 million. I suppose you could always write it big budget, then if you can't get it made that way, re-write it for a lower budget no? I think they do things like that, but I'm really not sure...
 
I think Steven Spielberg once suggested that in comedy you must keep one foot planted firmly on the ground, no matter what color sock the other foot is wearing.

Which applies pretty well to science or technology in your story, too: when I worked in gaming the assumption was sort of that you could have one big 'gimme' - FTL travel, aliens, telepathy, whatever - that you could be excused from explaining, and just assume as a story element. What's important is how your critical scientific advance affects people, specifically your characters. Tell a compelling character story hinging upon woo-woo out-there technology, and I think most viewers will be willing to accept the technology for the value it brings to telling that story about the character who draws them in.

Anyway, with the utterly craptacular level of basic science education at present (at least in the USA) and the generally sub-basement-level technical awareness of your audience you ought to be able to get away with quite a bit.

Max Headroom actually achieved quite a lot in terms of presenting a vision of the future, without recourse to super-expensive custom vehicles, etc because that look dovetailed very well with their stories. Although of course that was low-budget by studio and network standards, which is a little different from your personal idea of 'low budget,' or mine.
 
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I think Sad Max is right on money. I'd also add that once you establish the rules of your world, you should strive to abide by them. For example, if faster-than-light travel is possible, the audience needs to know some of the basic rules, like can an entire galaxy be crossed instantly (wormhole) or do you still travel "linearly." Things like that, especially if the "gimme" plays an intricate role in the plot.
 
The shortcomings of a particular bit of technology can contribute to story as well, although there's the risk of falling into the old Star Trek 'malfunction of the week' device...
 
haha, nice. Well thank you very much for the advice! This has been extremely helpful just sorting some of this out in my mind.

When I think about it, whether I set this story 6 months from now or 15 years from now hardly matters in one sense -- scientifically, it wouldn't be an "aha!" type of breakthrough anyway, it really would be something where a series of developments would continue to, umm, solidify this advance, rather than "Ok we just discovered how to make a ship go warp speed, done and done!" Sort of like cancer research, think of it that way, it's very unlikely that you just "cure cancer" all at once. There are literally thousands of types of cancer, and thousands of research approaches to them all, some of which have already yielded fantastic results, others have had limited success. But it's not very likely that on some certain exact day in the future, WAM, an antidote is invented and you just inject yourself, and you're cured. haha. Yet that's pretty much exactly the plot device I'm going to be forced to adopt for the purposes of my story. I have a friend in medical school, he's actually top of his class, absolutely brilliant guy, and I might ask him at least what would be the "most feasible" explanation for my scientific breakthrough to come about, but at the same time I'd like to incorporate a little bit of the real-world approach without it being boring, because a large point of my story is sort of shedding light on an issue that I think has a lot of importance.

And in my story, really it's all about the characters, which is why I don't like the idea of even calling it a "sci-fi story" because the particular breakthrough is only so that we can explore these characters and how it affects them, and how they react, what it does to society economically, politically, etc., but through the experiences of the characters we are following. What's important is telling their stories, not dwelling too much on the technology aspect of it.
 
Well, the best science-fiction frequently revolves around human responses to situations only possible because of radical advances in technology or changes in location...
 
Explaining technology is almost always a mistake. Look at the original Star Wars. They didn't explain anything, but just allowed the technology to exist -- and audience just accepted it.

But later when they hamfistedly explained "midchlorians", you could hear the groans in the theatre.

Bladerunner is another great film where no technology is really explained in any detail.
 
lol, well Star Wars isn't sci-fi in any real sense, it's fantasy. Star Trek has always been the sci-fi franchise, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are fantasy. It so happens Star Wars occurs in space, but it could have been a Western or something too honestly.

As for midichlorians, I have no idea why anyone groaned at that, it was always pretty obvious that there was something along those lines that would determine your Force ability. It was completely necessary that we know about them since the plot had to explain why Anakin's abilities were seen to be "off the charts." And anyone who even gave it a half of a thought obviously knew it had something to do with your biology, which is why Han can't use the Force but Luke can -- one has lots of midichlorians, one does not. So that never bothered me at all, I think it only bothered some really nitpicky fans who were also ignorant enough to think "Oh well it was more special when the Force was mystical." haha, it is still mystical, but it's pretty obvious there is a genetic component just like anything else, there has to be some reason why most people can't use the Force, not just random chance. It wasn't a revelation to me when that was explained, it was just like yup, that makes sense. The only thing new was the name, the rest was obvious.

But yeah I wouldn't want to waste too much time explaining anything like that because it will basically bog down the plot and create a lot more potential plot holes. It makes more sense that this breakthrough has just occurred and we need only understand its ramifications not so much the exact science.
 
Ok... working on this outline now.

I badly need one piece of advice, your opinion is fine, I know there are plenty of ways it could be done.

So 4 characters, interlocking stories, assume each gets about 25 script pages. Need these characters' actual events in the film meet at some point, do their storylines have to converge or diverge, or is it enough that all 4 are dealing with the same general issue, thus their stories are tied together by theme rather than by plot? In other words, as the example used before, let's say a natural disaster occurred and you focused on 4 characters, one was a scientist, one was a politician, one was FEMA, and one was just a guy with a family, then you showed how their lives changed, what they did, etc., each one having a three-act structure basically to their arcs. Then would they all have to meet, like the FEMA guy rescues the guy with the family, and the politician and scientist meet about why this disaster happened, then somehow the scientist is led into the field, blah blah, you get the idea.

I feel that for me, I don't really want them all to have something to do with one another. I want their storylines to touch perhaps once, but not necessarily for each character. Is that alright?

Basically the story is such that if you watched all 4 parts (which will be interwoven but I'm going to write them separately to begin, then weave them, just as they'd be filmed separately as well, just logically speaking that makes sense schedule-wise), but separately, you would not get the larger point quite as well. So the point is any one of these stories is a narrow viewpoint for the most part about what is happening, it shows you some aspect of society, but together, they form a complete whole that I think is going to be a fantastic tapestry, like really showing you what I want as a filmmaker / writer, and driving home the point. You could not, in any way, rewrite this story to be told from the perspective of a single protagonist. It would simply not at all get to the point of the story. It would be perhaps more "high concept" but it would lack the drama and the intrigue that I can get with 4 character arcs.
 
Some of the connections between sub-stories in Babel were very tenuous, but still worked for the purposes of the overall film. Whether or not the characters have to directly intersect is pretty much up to your discretion.
 
Agreed.

Take Traffic as an example; some of the characters/plots do not intersect. The theme holds the parallel story plots together. (Linda Seger talks about this in her book on advanced screenwriting).

Sad Max said:
Some of the connections between sub-stories in Babel were very tenuous, but still worked for the purposes of the overall film. Whether or not the characters have to directly intersect is pretty much up to your discretion.
Click to expand...
 
Great

Great

Ok, great, that helps me for sure! Thank you for the advice.

I feel it's almost too Star Wars-like (hehe) for every character to meet or intersect somehow, like, "Oh man, you're my father? That's crazy because this chick I've been fighting with is my sister so... that makes her your daughter too! Ok this is getting weird. Wait until I tell Threepio. Oh man, no way, you BUILT him when you were a kid? If only Obi-Wan knew. He DOES know?! You two were best friends? This is getting strange..." haha, you get the idea. Don't get me wrong I love Star Wars in every way, I just don't want my characters to all coincidentally know one another or meet in contrived ways.

There is one kind of subtle coincidence where one character could see another (who is an athlete) at the end of the film that might make a great little connection just for fun, but it's unnecessary too really.
 
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