One of the things I noticed when I first started writing my screenplay was that I was not exactly sure where I was going with it. I had a pretty decent idea of the story I wanted to tell, the locations and appearances of the settings that the scenes would take place in, and the characters that would drive the story forward. However, even with that all in mind, I still felt like I was a bit lost on where exactly to go. And from reading chapter six, “Endings and Beginnings”, of Syd Field’s The Foundations of Screenwriting, I think it was definitely because I did not know my ending.
To be entirely honest, when I started writing I hadn’t even decided if I wanted a happy ending. I was thinking about the ending, but I had not made a decision or established an ending. It wasn’t until after I finished Journal #10, the biographies and backstories for the protagonist and antagonist, that I understood where I wanted my story to go because that exercise gave me the opportunity to get to know my two main characters; to know their pasts, their lives, and what their personal futures will look like in relation to the resolution of the screenplay. Now, I know that my story will have a happy ending–at least for Dergek. The Trusted One, Evakdor Hafdin, will die, so it’s not super great for him. But he’s a pretty evil dude so the other characters, the audience, and I will be happy about it, I’d say.
Initially, I was struggling with my screenplay, and not just because I was still getting used to the Celtx software and the format of a screenplay overall. No, I was actually just struggling because I did not start out correctly. I tried to determine the opening of the screenplay before the ending which, as I now know, is incorrect because the ending determines the beginning. They are intertwined, connected, opposed forces and without knowing the resolution, a writer cannot possibly have a direction with their story and, subsequently, cannot come up with a beginning and a way to link that beginning with the rest of the story. Thus, this reading was absolutely crucial for me because it shed light on what I was doing wrong and provided tips for helping me succeed that will be unequivocally useful for me going forward.
One of the big things Syd Field focuses on in “Endings and Beginnings,” the sixth chapter of “Screenplay,” is how endings determine your beginning. This concept stuck out to me, as when I looked at what I wanted to do for my screenplay, I was already interested in playing around with a universe I’ve created for my book-in-progress (a first draft), as it is definitely my best worldbuilding work ever, and certainly open for a variety of stories, though my novel’s story feels like its centerpoint. There are characters in that story who I’m very intrigued by, but didn’t know a lot about them other than their fates as of that novel. Mariko, one of the main characters of my screenplay, is the mother my novel’s protagonist. She is long dead by the time it starts, her death the consequence of her interest in stopping the doomsday event that her daughter now seeks, and is destined to, prevent (or cause). With this ending for her character in mind, especially in relation to her daughter and Wynn (who mentors Mariko’s daughter throughout the novel), I came up with the idea of following her story before her death. It was after dwelling on her ending more that I came up with the idea to follow her destruction through the eyes of a character that loved her in a way she’d never been before, and it was then that I came up with the idea for Dolores and Mariko’s romance, with Dolores being the narrator and true protagonist, as she was another character who I’d wanted to explore. In this way, I actually bypassed some of the struggles of looking for an end result, as I started off with an ending in mind, but figuring out where to begin became my struggle. What sort of timescale did I want for my story? How obvious should I make that Dolores’ life will feel unfinished to her because of the isolation she, and by extension all other Hunters, face due to the constraints of their society? Should I tell the audience from the beginning that Mariko does not get to live, and in fact fails in establishing the connections she longed for due to her lack of support and her own misguided desire to ‘save the world?’ Should Dolores tell the story chronologically, like Mariko would’ve, or should she bring in elements of wisdom she’s learned throughout? And, the most difficult question for me: when do I start? Mariko dies in 2006, so that became the clear conclusion, but where does Dolores’ journey truly start? She doesn’t meet Mariko until January 29th, 2003, when Mariko joins the Council, but would it make sense for the story to start then, without the context of Dolores’ struggles thus far in love, the same struggles that cause her to make the self-sabotaging choices that ruins her chance at being with Mariko? Ultimately, I chose to hop around within the timeline, with Act 2 and part of Act 3 being in chronological order, as if part of one giant flashback, informed by both Dolores’ future and past alike, as it allows me to add in the desired context and foreshadowing I want to provide. Ultimately, this chapter made me reflect on my process, and that’s what stood out about it.
This isnt gonna be long now they delted it after I was done … But anyways from the chapter I took away the idea of captivating my auiden e early. He used shapspere as an example and I love how shakespere opens with an action visual to grab the attention of his auindence. Its like that trail of breadcrumbs we spoke pn in class and giving the auidence something to think on early and guess really helps to keep their attention. This chapter was really good for me as I was really thinking on ways to do this in my screen-play. I loved the examples I was given and also another take away I had was the idea of ending and beggining parralles, how I relate them to eachother and that fed more into my breadcrumb thing. Leaving hints for the auidence early and bringing it all together at the end. I think if I can do it really well the hindsight bias that will ensue will be lovely. Other than that it kind of reinforced what I already knew about starting with my ending wich I did, I understand that my inside, the body of my script may change to get a more dramatic story, but my ending where im going is very concrete.
I find it interesting that Field says the best way to start your screenplay is to know your ending, and make decisions based off of that. I find it fascinating how different this can be from novel or short story writing. You already need to know the direction of your screenplay so that you’re not wasting anybody’s time, and you can make very intentional decisions with plot and setting to further the story. I really like the quote from page 100 about endings and beginnings, “they exist in the relationship between the parts and the whole.” It’s sort of like writing an essay—your introduction and your conclusion should relate to each other, but in a way that creates an understanding of everything in between them. I really like this idea of maybe not even writing the screenplay chronologically, and making the ending as you begin to write so that it dictates the choices that you make for your characters and their actions and you ensure that everything wraps up nicely and satisfies your audience.
Through this chapter, one thing that I was really hooked with was this idea of knowing your ending before you even start writing. In literature forms such as writing and publishing a book per say, one could say that you don’t need to know your ending right away, and that as the character’s develop through your story and travel around, the ending will become more clear as everything is tied up together in a metaphorical nice little knot. But when it comes to a screenplay, you need to captivate your audience right away within at least the first 10 pages, and to do that, you need to know your ending. With the idea of what your ending is before you start writing, you now know where you’re going, what everything is building up to. This allows you to make a beginning that is concrete and can grab the attention of the audience because it ties so closely with your ending, captivating whoever is reading it or watching your full product. When I was doing my first few pages and first few exercises with my screenplay, I had the ending all worked out in my head, with everything being concluded in one big final fight. But something I didn’t do was connect my beginning to the end at all. It made no sense to have the beginning I had and it felt fat, useless and un-engaging, which is why I decided to scrap my first draft and move onto a second, more grounded start. Now, with this chapter and this idea in my head, I feel more confident about the direction in which my screenplay is moving and the new and better ideas that I am currently now thinking about because of this chapter.
5 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 11”
One of the things I noticed when I first started writing my screenplay was that I was not exactly sure where I was going with it. I had a pretty decent idea of the story I wanted to tell, the locations and appearances of the settings that the scenes would take place in, and the characters that would drive the story forward. However, even with that all in mind, I still felt like I was a bit lost on where exactly to go. And from reading chapter six, “Endings and Beginnings”, of Syd Field’s The Foundations of Screenwriting, I think it was definitely because I did not know my ending.
To be entirely honest, when I started writing I hadn’t even decided if I wanted a happy ending. I was thinking about the ending, but I had not made a decision or established an ending. It wasn’t until after I finished Journal #10, the biographies and backstories for the protagonist and antagonist, that I understood where I wanted my story to go because that exercise gave me the opportunity to get to know my two main characters; to know their pasts, their lives, and what their personal futures will look like in relation to the resolution of the screenplay. Now, I know that my story will have a happy ending–at least for Dergek. The Trusted One, Evakdor Hafdin, will die, so it’s not super great for him. But he’s a pretty evil dude so the other characters, the audience, and I will be happy about it, I’d say.
Initially, I was struggling with my screenplay, and not just because I was still getting used to the Celtx software and the format of a screenplay overall. No, I was actually just struggling because I did not start out correctly. I tried to determine the opening of the screenplay before the ending which, as I now know, is incorrect because the ending determines the beginning. They are intertwined, connected, opposed forces and without knowing the resolution, a writer cannot possibly have a direction with their story and, subsequently, cannot come up with a beginning and a way to link that beginning with the rest of the story. Thus, this reading was absolutely crucial for me because it shed light on what I was doing wrong and provided tips for helping me succeed that will be unequivocally useful for me going forward.
One of the big things Syd Field focuses on in “Endings and Beginnings,” the sixth chapter of “Screenplay,” is how endings determine your beginning. This concept stuck out to me, as when I looked at what I wanted to do for my screenplay, I was already interested in playing around with a universe I’ve created for my book-in-progress (a first draft), as it is definitely my best worldbuilding work ever, and certainly open for a variety of stories, though my novel’s story feels like its centerpoint. There are characters in that story who I’m very intrigued by, but didn’t know a lot about them other than their fates as of that novel. Mariko, one of the main characters of my screenplay, is the mother my novel’s protagonist. She is long dead by the time it starts, her death the consequence of her interest in stopping the doomsday event that her daughter now seeks, and is destined to, prevent (or cause). With this ending for her character in mind, especially in relation to her daughter and Wynn (who mentors Mariko’s daughter throughout the novel), I came up with the idea of following her story before her death. It was after dwelling on her ending more that I came up with the idea to follow her destruction through the eyes of a character that loved her in a way she’d never been before, and it was then that I came up with the idea for Dolores and Mariko’s romance, with Dolores being the narrator and true protagonist, as she was another character who I’d wanted to explore. In this way, I actually bypassed some of the struggles of looking for an end result, as I started off with an ending in mind, but figuring out where to begin became my struggle. What sort of timescale did I want for my story? How obvious should I make that Dolores’ life will feel unfinished to her because of the isolation she, and by extension all other Hunters, face due to the constraints of their society? Should I tell the audience from the beginning that Mariko does not get to live, and in fact fails in establishing the connections she longed for due to her lack of support and her own misguided desire to ‘save the world?’ Should Dolores tell the story chronologically, like Mariko would’ve, or should she bring in elements of wisdom she’s learned throughout? And, the most difficult question for me: when do I start? Mariko dies in 2006, so that became the clear conclusion, but where does Dolores’ journey truly start? She doesn’t meet Mariko until January 29th, 2003, when Mariko joins the Council, but would it make sense for the story to start then, without the context of Dolores’ struggles thus far in love, the same struggles that cause her to make the self-sabotaging choices that ruins her chance at being with Mariko? Ultimately, I chose to hop around within the timeline, with Act 2 and part of Act 3 being in chronological order, as if part of one giant flashback, informed by both Dolores’ future and past alike, as it allows me to add in the desired context and foreshadowing I want to provide. Ultimately, this chapter made me reflect on my process, and that’s what stood out about it.
This isnt gonna be long now they delted it after I was done … But anyways from the chapter I took away the idea of captivating my auiden e early. He used shapspere as an example and I love how shakespere opens with an action visual to grab the attention of his auindence. Its like that trail of breadcrumbs we spoke pn in class and giving the auidence something to think on early and guess really helps to keep their attention. This chapter was really good for me as I was really thinking on ways to do this in my screen-play. I loved the examples I was given and also another take away I had was the idea of ending and beggining parralles, how I relate them to eachother and that fed more into my breadcrumb thing. Leaving hints for the auidence early and bringing it all together at the end. I think if I can do it really well the hindsight bias that will ensue will be lovely. Other than that it kind of reinforced what I already knew about starting with my ending wich I did, I understand that my inside, the body of my script may change to get a more dramatic story, but my ending where im going is very concrete.
I find it interesting that Field says the best way to start your screenplay is to know your ending, and make decisions based off of that. I find it fascinating how different this can be from novel or short story writing. You already need to know the direction of your screenplay so that you’re not wasting anybody’s time, and you can make very intentional decisions with plot and setting to further the story. I really like the quote from page 100 about endings and beginnings, “they exist in the relationship between the parts and the whole.” It’s sort of like writing an essay—your introduction and your conclusion should relate to each other, but in a way that creates an understanding of everything in between them. I really like this idea of maybe not even writing the screenplay chronologically, and making the ending as you begin to write so that it dictates the choices that you make for your characters and their actions and you ensure that everything wraps up nicely and satisfies your audience.
Through this chapter, one thing that I was really hooked with was this idea of knowing your ending before you even start writing. In literature forms such as writing and publishing a book per say, one could say that you don’t need to know your ending right away, and that as the character’s develop through your story and travel around, the ending will become more clear as everything is tied up together in a metaphorical nice little knot. But when it comes to a screenplay, you need to captivate your audience right away within at least the first 10 pages, and to do that, you need to know your ending. With the idea of what your ending is before you start writing, you now know where you’re going, what everything is building up to. This allows you to make a beginning that is concrete and can grab the attention of the audience because it ties so closely with your ending, captivating whoever is reading it or watching your full product. When I was doing my first few pages and first few exercises with my screenplay, I had the ending all worked out in my head, with everything being concluded in one big final fight. But something I didn’t do was connect my beginning to the end at all. It made no sense to have the beginning I had and it felt fat, useless and un-engaging, which is why I decided to scrap my first draft and move onto a second, more grounded start. Now, with this chapter and this idea in my head, I feel more confident about the direction in which my screenplay is moving and the new and better ideas that I am currently now thinking about because of this chapter.