Thread by @JimmyRGeorge

A Thread About the Importance of Audience Orientation of Goals and Acquisitions in Screenplays:

In Arch Plot, Mini-Plot, and Classical Design stories if your primary POV character learns or gains something, the audience should be oriented about what they’ve acquired.

3rd script in a row where our main character goes into a room. The camera or a supporting character lingers outside. We don’t see what’s in the room, what conversation happens, or what discovery is made, but our hero experiences it nonetheless.

Instead of informing us about what happened inside, the writer keeps it a secret until the end for the sake of a lasting mystery.

This mystery acquisition is similar to the protagonists with mystery goals problem I encounter often.

Our lead character acquires important knowledge on how to succeed, or obtains an important object, but the audience doesn’t get to hear that knowledge or see that object.

In The Matrix, Trinity is told a secret by the Oracle and we are left in the dark about it until the climax.

Keeping that knowledge a mystery works because Trinity isn’t our main perspective character in the story, Neo is.

If Neo was the one who talked to the Oracle and the writers chose to show us a closed door instead of the actual conversation Neo and the Oracle had, it wouldn’t work.

Imagine if Obi-Wan never mentioned the Force to Luke in Star Wars, then Luke wielded it to succeed in the end. The victory achieved would be emotionally weightless.

I read amateur scripts like this all the time.

It’s beyond just a payoff without a setup. It’s a misunderstanding of the importance of the audience’s alignment with your primary perspective character’s goals, actions, and acquisitions.

Study successful Unreliable Narrator and Duplicitous Hero stories and you’ll find the audience is able to follow along with their perceived goals until their true goal is revealed. #screenwriting

In the Usual Suspects, Verbal Kent’s perceived goal is that he’s cooperating with Agent Kujan’s murder investigation to stay out of jail.

The actual goal is to convince Kujan he’s innocent in order to escape police custody and ensure freedom because he IS the murderer.

We're aligned with PERCEIVED goals of Unreliable Narrators and Duplicitous Heros and the choices being made to achieve them, until the story reveals the goal is actually something different and these actions are being taken to achieve their TRUE goal.

The perceived goals of our Heroes and Villains and protagonist knowledge gained/objects acquired/actions taken to achieve their goals are never a mystery.

The reality of what their goal is, the reality of their motivation… is the twist.

Most amateur writers misunderstand this and choose to leave goals and motivations of heroes/villains a complete mystery to preserve that twist.

They don't understand that we have to understand a goal and motivation in order to feel something when they're revealed to be a lie.

Without introducing a perceived goal by aligning us with the character’s perspective, the reveal of the actual/true goal will be emotionally weightless.

Was this #screenwriting thread helpful? Should I do more of these on a consistent basis? Because I love doing them.

I have a ton of no-budget filmmaking advice to share after 7 feature films.
But when people DM me it's never about producing no-budget movies. It's always #screenwriting questions. So I figure this is the value and insight people are looking for from me given my experience.

I used to think using popular film examples to illustrate a point was a cheap way out. After three and a half years as a full time script consultant, I've learned that clients absorb lessons faster when I compare popular examples that succeeded in areas where their story failed.