Story Design: Creating Popular Hollywood Movies
Copyright © 2013 Richard Michaels Stefanik
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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
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Second Edition: 20130215
Seventh Printing: 20130908
ISBN-13: 978-1482373417
ISBN-10: 1482373416
Richard Michaels Stefanik
RMS Productions Company
www.TheMegahitMovies.com
rms@TheMegahitMovies.com
$1Billion Worldwide Grosses
www.BoxOfficeMojo.com
(December 31, 2013)
Rank
Title
Studio
Worldwide
1
Avatar
Fox
$2,782.3
2
Titanic
Par.
$2,186.8
3
Marvel's The Avengers
BV
$1,518.6
4
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
WB
$1,341.5
5
Iron Man 3
BV
$1,215.4
6
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
P/DW
$1,123.8
7
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
NL
$1,119.9
8
Skyfall
Sony
$1,108.6
9
The Dark Knight Rises
WB
$1,084.4
10
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
BV
$1,066.2
11
Toy Story 3
BV
$1,063.2
12
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
BV
$1,045.7
13
Jurassic Park
Uni.
$1,029.2
14
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Fox
$1,027.0
15
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
BV
$1,025.5
16
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
WB
$1,017.0
17
The Dark Knight
WB
$1,004.6
The analysis of the films in Story Design: Creating Popular Hollywood Movies is based on the versions of the movies distributed on videocassettes and DVDs.
The primary purpose of this book is to serve as an educational research resource for students of popular films, for teaching, and scholarship. These commentaries are published in compliance with the "fair use" doctrine, Section 107, U.S. Copyright Law.
THE WIZARD OF OZ: Copyright 1939 Turner Entertainment
STAR WARS: Copyright 1977 Twentieth-Century Fox, 1995 Lucasfilm.
E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL: Copyright 1982 Universal.
SPIDER-MAN: Copyright 2002 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING: Copyright 2004 New Line
JURASSIC PARK: Copyright 1994 MCA Home Video.
LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS: Copyright 2003 New Line
FINDING NEMO: Copyright 2003 Disney Pixar
LION KING: Copyright The Walt Disney Company.
HARRY POTTER: THE SORCERER'S STONE: Copyright 2001 Warner Bros.
LORD OF THE RINGS: FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING: Copyright 2001 New Line
INDEPENDENCE DAY: Copyright 1996 Twentieth-Century Fox.
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: Copyright 2003 Disney
THE MATRIX RELOADED: Copyright 2003 Warner Home Video
SHREK: Copyright 200 1 Drearnworks LLC
MONSTERS, INC.: Copyright 2001 DisneylPixar
BATMAN: Copyright 1989 Warner Brothers, Inc.
MEN IN BLACK: Copyright 1997 Columbia Pictures.
GHOSTBUSTERS: Copyright 1984 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: Copyright 1981 Lucasfilm, Ltd.
AVATAR: Copyright 2010 Twentieth Century Fox, Inc.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Story Design: Creating Popular Hollywood Movies 9
High Concepts and Loglines 15
Hooking the Reader with One Sentence
The Unique Object and the Main Characters 19
Unique Object – Protagonist – Antagonist - Love Interest
The Climax Scene of the movie: the final battle between 29
the Protagonist and the Antagonist for possession of both
the Unique Object and the Love Interest
Plotting for the Audience Emotional Response 31
The psychology of the audience: empathy and enmity
Character Development: Identification & Empathy 39
Personal Objectives: What Characters Want!
Character Motivation: Why They Want It!
Decisions: Making Hard Choices
Relationships: Between Lovers and Friends
Codes of Behavior: Is it the Right Thing to Do?
Transformations: Character Arcs and Changes
Personalities: Idiosyncrasies and Style
Supporting Characters: Friends and Enemies
Subgoals and Plot Twists: Creating Unpredictability 59
Story Objective
Concrete Objects
Personal Values
Subgoals and Subtasks
Strategies and Plans
Conflicts: Creating Excitement 67
Obstacles
Jeopardy
Self-Conflicts
Enemies
Relatives
Friends
Lovers
Physical Objects
Natural World
Supernatural World
Plots: Designing the Emotional Roller-Coaster Ride 83
Plot and Story
Events and Actions
The Inciting Event
Subplots and Subgoals
Plot Twists
Plot Organization
Plot Outline Worksheet
Plotting for Audience Emotional Response
The Emotional Plot Graph
Story: What's It All About? 105
Human Values
Virtues and Vices
Community Ideals
Basic Story Design
A-Story and B-Story
Story Climax and Plot Climax
Scenes: Creating those Special Moments 117
Point of Attack
Crisis
Confrontation
Climax
Resolution
A Model Scene
Opening Scenes
Introduction of Protagonist and Antagonist
Climax Scenes
Resolution Scenes
Scene Construction Questions
Sequences: A Series of Scenes 131
Entertaining the Audience
Excitement
Surprise
Suspense
The Chase
Ticking Clocks
Emotions: Making the Audience Feel 139
Emotion and Story
Emotion Words
The Cognitive Theory
Intensity of Emotions
Reactions to Events
Reactions to Actions
Reactions to Objects
Humor: Release the Tension & Make Them Laugh 155
Emotion and Humor
Humorous Dialogue
Humorous Situations
Humorous Characters
Categories of Humor
Megahit Movie Themes: Creating Universal Appeal 175
Analysis of Popular Hollywood Movies 183
Wizard of Oz and Avatar
Story Design Research Resources 257
STORY DESIGN
Creating Popular Hollywood Movies
This book is designed to show a screenwriter how to create an original story that has the potential of becoming a popular Hollywood movie. Screenwriters reading these discussions should want to create commercially successful movies. This book is written as a workbook, with assignments at the end of each section.
The first thing that a writer should create is the concept of the story. Will it be a high concept story? Next, the writer should create a logline for the movie: a single sentence description of the main character and the goal that the character is trying to achieve. Examples of high concepts and loglines illustrate these notions.
Most popular movies are designed around three main characters: the protagonist, the love interest, and the antagonist, as well as a unique object that they are trying to possess. Since only one character can eventually posses the unique object, this structure guarantees conflict throughout the story. The climax scene is a life-and-death struggle between the protagonist and the antagonist for possession
of the unique object.
A writer should try to imagine the movie poster that will be used to market the film to a global audience. Study the poster designs of the current popular movies. Within these images are the core elements of the story: the protagonist, antagonist, love interest, and an image which defines the genre of the movie. A movie that hopes to become popular will need to have such a poster that will be used in marketing and advertising campaigns.
Given these core elements, we then go on to discuss the psychology of the audience. The writer must understand the importance of creating empathy in the audience for the protagonist and love interest, while simultaneously creating enmity (fear and hatred) for the antagonist.
This is essential for creating mass-market popular Hollywood movies. The classic Hollywood Three-Act Structure is used for this purpose. We explicate this structure in terms of the plotting of the story that will create an emotionally satisfying experience for the audience.
The key to creating commercially successful Hollywood movies is to learn how to elicit specific emotional reactions from the audience. The writing assignment for this stage of the story development process consists of creating an empathy scene for the protagonist and love interest, and an enmity scene for the antagonist. The writer should also cast the three primary characters (protagonist, antagonist, and love interest) with currently popular Hollywood actors. This will make the characters easier to write and also will eventually help in marketing the finished screenplay to Hollywood producers.
We next focus on creating three-dimensional characters by analyzing character personality types, motivation, personal objectives, emotional decisions, character relationships, ethical values and codes of behavior, character arcs and transformations, and supporting characters.
As an assignment, the screenwriter will write a description for the protagonist supporter, who should be humorous and likeable, and the antagonist supporter, who should be vicious and hateful. They will also be asked to describe the motivation, personal objective, and transformation for each of the five primary characters of their story: the protagonist, antagonist, love interest, the protagonist supporter, and the antagonist supporter. Hollywood recognizes the importance of supporting roles by giving Academy Awards each year to the Best Supporting Actor and Actress.
Now that we have created the basic elements of our story, a unique object that is desired by the protagonist, antagonist, and the key supporting characters, we will then show how to make the story unpredictable. This is done by creating subgoals to the protagonist's primary objective which conclude as plot twists. Plot twists result when the expected consequence of completing a subgoal does not happen once that subgoal is achieved. An example of this can be found in the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy believes that the Wizard will get her back home (her primary objective). Her first major subgoal is to get to the Emerald City to see the Wizard. She overcomes many obstacles to achieve this subgoal. When she meets the Wizard, he does not help her go home, but instead assigns her the task of getting him the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. This is a plot twist. Examples of many other plot twists from popular Hollywood movies will be discussed in this book. Creating expectations in the audience with the intention of having these expectations not be fulfilled is the key to creating surprise and unpredictability.
Essential to creating excitement is conflict that produces jeopardy for the protagonist and his supporters. These conflicts are generated by the obstacles and problems that the protagonist must solve in order to achieve the subgoals and primary objective. Jeopardy producing obstacles can be the result of self-conflicts, enemies, relatives, friends, lovers, physical objects, the natural world, and the supernatural world. We review examples of each type of obstacle found in popular movies. The writer will also come to understand that in each scene of the script, there should be an obstacle or problem that the characters must overcome. This ensures that there will be conflict and excitement in each scene.
Before we start writing the actual scenes, we discuss the difference between a plot and a story, events and actions, the inciting event, subplots, and different ways that a writer can organize a plot. At this stage, the writer will be prepared to design a Prelude, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, and Resolution structure for their story. The assignment will be to write a plot outline that contains forty (40) major obstacles; one for each scene.
A story is different from a plot. While a plot is a series of events that constitute the movie, the story is the series of actions and decisions the protagonist takes in the movie. Story is the sphere in which human values, virtues, vices, and community ideals interact and come into the foreground of the movie. As an assignment, the screenwriter will be asked to choose virtues for their protagonist and vices for their antagonist. They will then write a scene showing the protagonist exhibiting this virtue when confronting an obstacle and a scene showing the antagonist displaying a vice when dealing with a different obstacle or problem. An example of this is the way that Bruce Wayne and Jack Napier court Vickie Vale in Batman or the way that Indiana Jones and the sadistic Nazi negotiate with Marion for the headpiece of the staff of Ra in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
We next discuss the design of scenes, concentrating on scene actions, point-of-attack, crisis, confrontation, climax, resolution, exposition scenes, transition scenes, opening scenes, protagonist introduction, antagonist introduction, climax scenes, and resolution scenes. As an assignment, the writer will be asked to create a 3x5 index card (40 cards in total) for each scene that includes the major obstacle (or problem), crisis, confrontation, climax, and the emotional reactions of the characters in the scene. These elements constitute the essential moments or beats of the scene. From these index cards the writer will create a detailed plot outline. A full length screenplay can have between 40 and 60 scenes each between 3 to 2 minutes in length.
We then discuss connecting scenes together into sequences. Each sequence should be designed to have a specific emotional effect on the audience. We will analyze ways of entertaining the audience and conveying information during exposition scenes. We will also discuss how "Chase" sequences and "Ticking Clocks" sequences can generate suspense. These types of sequences are especially important in the third act of the story because they are used to drive the audience into an emotional frenzy before the final climax scene.
Since the key to creating a popular Hollywood m
ovie is to create an emotionally satisfying experience for the audience, it is critical for a writer to understand how to create situations that will elicit specific emotions in the audience.
We discuss the relationship of emotion to story design, the Cognitive Theory of Emotions, techniques to heighten the intensity of emotional reactions, and ways to elicit specific emotional reactions to events, actions, and objects. Emotions also form the subtext underlying powerful dialogue. As an assignment, the writer will be asked to write a scene in which a character is having an emotional reaction to an event, an emotional reaction to an action, and an emotional reaction to an object. They also will write a one-page scene that includes dialogue that expresses the emotions of characters.
To entertain the audience is to make them laugh while vicariously experiencing situations of jeopardy. Eliciting emotions in the audience is very important when creating humorous scenes. We discuss the techniques used in creating humorous dialogue, humorous situations, and humorous characters. As an assignment, the writer is asked to create
a humorous piece of dialogue, a humorous situation, and a humorous bit of character behavior for their story.
Ultimately, the writer must be clear on the theme of the story. What is the movie really about? What does it have to say about the human condition? What will the members of the audience learn about life and human relationships? Does the story have universal appeal? How does the theme of this movie compare with the themes found in many of the Megahit Movies? As an assignment, the writer is asked to explicitly state the theme of his story.
Included in the book are analyses of the Wizard of Oz and Avatar, two of the most popular Hollywood movies.
Story Design: Creating Popular Hollywood Movies is designed for those screenwriters, directors, and producers who want to create commercially successful movies. We hope that the reader will find this book to be a useful tool in achieving that objective.