I just came home from the Rayday, a little event where you can watch a movie before it launches in cinema (initiated from the Austrian magazine Ray).

Tonight the movie Free Rainer from Hans Weingartner was shown, a German / Austrian co-production. The movie is about the ongoing stupidification (don´t really know if that word exists, but i think you get the meaning) of the audience of television.

It´s an excellent portrait of the current tv landscape, dozens of reality and casting shows, pseudo reportages and other nonsense. This movie is a must-see, excellent characters, very funny and profound plot, awesome actors.

I hope the movie will be translated into english, but if you understand german you should definately watch it.

For almost the last two weeks i´ve been stuck in the middle of the story development progress of my current screenplay.

As i already posted before i´m a very organized and structured person, i won´t begin to write scenes or even dialoge before i´ve got a reasonable story outline or at least have figured out the rough structure of the plot (meaning act-structure, inciting incident, plot points and climax).

Desperation

Well, back to topic, i´m working on my screenplay, had clearly figured out the characters (this is amongst the first things i do) and had a rough idea of the story. I loved the characters, had neat plantings and payoffs, knew the very bones of the story and already structured the plot in three acts (including inciting incident and the different plot points).
But i was stuck in act two, as always this is the worst part, but my very problems have been that i really didn´t have any idea on how to go on with that story. It wasn´t like “ok, he could do this and that and then it could work”, i didn´t even see any way on how this could develop any further.

It really was frustrating, i became desperate and angry, i needed a way to figure it out, and it was exactly that pressure i was putting on my shoulders that kept me from getting it right. It was really strange for me, i exactly knew how the movie should begin, how it should end and what should be between, but it didn´t work out.

Any solutions?

I thought about “let yourself write badly”, but i could only do that if i´m a step ahead, i just couldn´t allow myself to mess up the story structure or the scene outline, because the result would be crap. The permission to write badly just to start writing is a good idea when actually working on scenes or dialogue, but if you start with a corrupt outline there wouldn´t be any way to get it right.

So what did i do? In my desperation i decided to take a walk, it was a cold evening and during the middle of the day it began to snow, so by now the snow was lying on the ground and hasn´t been removed yet - wonderful. During that walk i began to realize where the problem resides - i was stuck because i just thought into one direction, a little twist in the inciting incident and the story could take a very positive turn, i didn´t have to change a thing in one of the characters, they all worked out fine.

The real problem

While i thought the new ideas would end my suffering i didn´t really eleminate the roots of the problems. The ideas have been a great way to improve my story, but a day later i was stuck at the same point - the story just didn´t work out. My desperation rose again and this time i really didn´t know what to do.

I tried to push aside the problems for a while, finished some non-screenwriting stuff and forced myself not to think about the story problems, but it didn´t work. I couldn´t really focus on the other stuff and always had in mind that i just didn´t have any clue on how to fix the problem.

Any solution?

A little talk with my girlfriend about the plot gave me some new hints, i wrote them down but didn´t want to develop them any further yet, it just wasn´t the right time.

So yesterday i finally managed to focus on the non-screenwriting stuff, and after i finished it i didn´t really know what to do. I just didn´t want to work on the plot again since i knew i wouldn´t fix the problem i haven´t been capable of before. But i decided to do work on the script, and it worked out.

I started at the very beginning - the characters. So i just tried to focus and asked one question: “Based on the history of the character - what would he do next?”. Every other person would have done anything else, but this unique character is different.

In previous drafts of the story two friends of the character have been present in this decision-situation, and that was one of the problems, they made a different decision.

So just this little step this particular character decides to make - i wrote it down and suddenly the next step was apparent, the story nearly developed out of itself.

Locating the problem

So what has been the problem?
One of the first things i do when i´m stuck is the start with the characters and what they would do next, so why did it work out now and not before? I knew that my characters are strong, they got their history and everything was fine - with them, not with the plot.

The first problem indeed was solved by the modification i made some days before - the adjustment of the inciting incident so that just one of the protagonists is present, not all the three of them.

Another thing was my narrow thinking, again i just thought into one direction. I didn´t give myself the permission to turn the story upside down, but why not?
Sure, i liked the overall plot, but if it isn´t working out you just have to allow yourself to think in different directions. It was like beeing lost in a labyrinth and standing in front of a dead-end, but instead of turning around and trying another route i just stood in front of the wall and tried to get past.

Conclusion

1. Don´t take anything in your structure for granted, while it provides safety during story development it aint written in stone.

2. Don´t just think into one direction. The good thing of writing is that there are always thousands of different ways the story can develop, don´t think that your brilliant ideas couldn´t be topped.

3. If you think you´re stuck do something else, stand up, jump, take a walk, just do something else. There is no way of forcing creativity, lift some pressure and try to relax.

4. Talk to someone you trust about the problem, even if the person doesn´t have anything to do with screenwriting he/she can give you another opinion (at least the person isn´t stuck within the plot and doesn´t hesitate to come up with a complete different approach).

5. Trust your characters. If they are strong and well developed they will know what to do if you don´t.

6. Don´t force yourself to be creative, if you put too much pressure on your shoulders you´ll just keep yourself from locating the problem.

But most important:

In general i´m not a big “fiction-reader”, most of the stuff i´m reading is technical literature on screenwriting, directing or moviemaking in general.

My regular “must-reads” are screenwriting magazines i really enjoy: Script Magazine and Creative Screenwriting. Another magazine i really like is the Austrian film-magazine Ray.

Besides this regular literature i´m currently reading The Film Director’s Intuition: Script Analysis and Rehearsal Techniques from the great author Judith Weston (which by the way also wrote Directing Actors, in my opinion one of the most valuable books on directing).

This book is not a “become a director in 21 days” like reading, it works on a completely different level. Judith Weston provides a great “behind the scenes” view of working as actor as well as director, she sheds light on working below the surface of a script.

In my opinion this book (and Directing Actors as well) is a must-read for directors, actors and screenplay writers, it is crucial to have a clue of the different approaches.