There are certain fundamental qualities that stories for the screen seem to need, which all writers struggle to master. I see problems related to these qualities in virtually every idea or script — including my own!
I have blogged about all of these over the years, and when I do written analyses for clients, I will often link to particular blog articles I’ve written that go deeper into a specific issue.
Over time, I’ve noticed that certain articles get linked to over and over again.
So I thought I’d share a “top ten list” of these issues — and the articles about them — as a kind of curated “best of my blog” post, which points out the most important common issues in scripts.
You’ll see hyperlinks to the relevant blog article in the headline. (And sometimes some bonus articles in the description below.)
1. The main problem/ goal is something the audience can really care about and get behind.
Great stories are, to an audience, just like watching great sporting events. Their team is overmatched — a serious underdog. They’re losing and the stakes are ultra high. The contest is very much in question, it means everything, and victory is only possible in the final moments.
All the other top ten issues are related to this first, all-important one — presenting different aspects to why an audience does or doesn’t emotionally engage and stay engaged.
2. There is one main character and the story is told through their subjective perspective.
This means we are constantly focused on and clear about what the main character is thinking, feeling, wanting and trying to do — and the scenes are all about them battling against whatever they’re trying to solve in the story. It’s not told objectively from above, and it’s not moving around between characters the audience doesn’t have a strong emotional bond with.
Ideally, the audience connects so strongly to the main character that they begin to see the world as them, and even “become” them — feeling what they’re feeling as if it were happening to them.
(Note, some rare movies and most TV episodes have multiple stories going on, each with their own separate main character — each of whom need to meet this criteria.)
3. The main character is easy to identify with — because their situation is relatable on a primal human level.
And if the main characters has an arc of significant change over the course of the story (which not every main character in every kind of story has), it’s not from an unlikable selfish person to a nicer one. Rather, it’s from someone with a limited view of themselves, who is getting in their own way, to someone who is more self-actualized. (Or, in a negative arc, the other way around.) Starting with the main character purposefully unlikable can almost guarantee that the audience won’t want to stay with the story — with extremely rare exceptions.
4. The stakes are big enough.
There’s enough at risk if the main character fails to reach their goal. Even in comedies and on television, any given story needs to put something at risk that really hugely matters to the person who is trying to resolve it. And that’s really what a story is — someone trying to resolve something that’s important to them. A common thing I also see (in both scripts and loglines) is a main character who might have something internal at stake, but not a big enough external challenge to grab and hold an audience, and entertain them.
5. Solving the problem and reaching the goal is incredibly difficult.
Ideally, the main character is active and a bit obsessed in trying to solve their situation, in virtually every scene of a script. But somehow they can’t get what they want, until the very end. Why? Because it’s a really complicated and difficult situation!
In a feature film, they should be working on it and losing even in the first half of Act Two, the section that Save the Cat calls “Fun and Games” (a name that can seem misleading).
6. The main character is losing in the middle.
The second act or middle of a story is generally about the problem getting worse, more difficult, and yet more important, with the main character unable to get what they want. Only in the end can there be resolution. Audience enjoy watching people struggle, fail, improvise, and feeling something about all of it — not watching people succeed. Stories are usually about things falling apart, and defying being put back together.
7. The scenes continually change the game of the main story problem, and push things in intriguing new directions.
Ideally, each scene is a microcosm of the larger narrative — the main character is grappling with some aspect or segment of their overall problem/goal, and they get unexpected results that usually complicate their situation, which leads to dramatic build throughout the story.
8. Everything that happens is believable.
Even if it’s a fantastical world of some kind — which is hopefully established very clearly in the opening pages, so the audience understands and can buy in — the characters behave like real people might do, in their situation. Otherwise the audience tends to check out, and feel that it’s all contrived and not “real” enough. Stories might be about outrageous, larger-than-life situations, but they’re also about human beings we can all connect with experiencing them — and saying and doing things that make sense and feel like real life.
9. The first ten pages focus on the main character and their regular world — seducing the audience into understanding and caring about them.
Contrary to popular belief, big action that grabs people’s attention is not the most important thing to open a script with. While it’s nice to have, if it fits the story, that action is less important than setting up who the main character is and what their normal life is, including its conflicts and frustrations, what they want and can’t have, and a clear sense of their place in the world. And it tends to take ten pages focused completely on this to have a chance at making millions of strangers start to connect with this person.
10. And finally, “screenwriting’s #1 rule” — Show, don’t tell.
While this might seem basic to experienced writers, you might be shocked at how often this issue surfaces in scripts — where characters share information in low-conflict dialogue exchanges designed to get the audience up to speed on something. Instead, we want to illustrate that “something” in dramatic, entertaining scenes that will make the audience understand it, without calling attention to the fact that they’re being fed information.
And the solution is not just to disregard the need to keep the audience “in the loop.” Scripts often confuse by erring in the opposite direction, with “ultra-natural” dialogue about things the audience doesn’t understand, where it’s impossible to follow what’s going on because care isn’t being taken to include them on all the important information.
Four additional common issues in TV scripts
And now… a bonus. The four more “most common issues” that I see which are unique to television scripts (i.e. original pilots):
1. The pilot should be an example of a typical episode, not a kind of prologue that sets up the situation that all the other episodes will explore.
This issue is so universal that I’m almost shocked when I read a pilot that doesn’t do this. And yet, successful produced pilots almost never do it. Instead, they get the situation that’s at the heart of the show up and running early in the pilot, so it can serve as a sample installment of the series, with all the key elements we can expect to see every week — rather than just being an “origin story” to a situation that really begins in Episode 2.
2. The series is focused on one big problem that affects everyone.
While individual characters have their own problems and goals, a viable series idea will have something at the heart of its premise and pitch that affects all the characters, and will lead to endless stories. It might even be in the title of the show.
3. The series is focused on an ensemble, not an individual.
Movies are usually about one person’s problem that gets resolved. Series are almost always about ongoing problems for a variety of characters, which never truly get resolved. And the typical episode of the typical show has three or more stories per episode, each focused on a different member of that ensemble who the audience can relate to, as they grapple with their problem and goal for that episode. And these characters are typically in a web of conflict that produces an endless stream of new story conflicts and problems.
4. Each episode has stories which resolve in some way.
In today’s world of serialized storytelling on TV, it’s easy to think that an episode is just one piece of a larger story, that takes a season or the whole series to play out. And it well may be that. But it also needs to have a beginning, middle and end, emotionally, for the audience and the characters, within a half hour or hour. Beginning TV writers often don’t realize this, so their episodes (including pilots) feel open-ended and don’t present a satisfying story experience when experienced individually.
This is great. Thank you for always referring to TV scripts too, as very few people seem to cover this.
“Show, don’t tell” is advice for one’s approach to the audience. The part that confused me for years was that some people try to apply it to the actors, directors, and the rest of the team, saying not tell them, either.
A script is supposed to tell the creative teams WHAT to show the audience, without telling them HOW to do it. “Don’t tell the director how to direct,” means you sometimes have to tell him what to direct. “Don’t tell the actor how to act,” means you sometimes have to tell the actor what to act.
If I write a line of dialogue, “Great.” I might write, “He hates the idea” in order to leave actor, director, and editor free to do their jobs of showing that to the audience.
I’ll sometimes get a comment that this is inappropriate because an actor can’t act “hating the idea.” What an insult to actors that is. Of course they can.
If I tried to put his reaction into action or dialogue it would be awkward, on-the-nose, and probably cut later as redundant.
The script is a blueprint. It has to tell what for the team to create in order to show the audience.
Having said that, minimize “telling what.” For an existing TV series, you don’t have to do much telling because they know the characters already.
I always leave it up to the team to decide how to convey/imagine the “showing,” which might range from a mustle-twitch to a close-up (instead of a line of dialogue telling the audience what, or a frown, which would be telling the actor how). As the writer, I don’t want to tell the director and actor which way to convey the information, which leaves telling them what it is–if necessary.
Once they have met the character, and have seen enough of his actions, then I do as little of that as possible. It shouldn’t take them long to “get” when a character is being sarcastic, but you might have to tell them the first time or risk them getting lost on the first reading.
As the story progresses or for well-established characters, you may only have to tell them when the “what” they need to show the audience is something out of character.
Just minimize it.
Hey Eric! Thanks so much for sharing your top 10 list! This is definitely something I will stick to the wall next to my script writing desk!