How To Write A Good Story For A Movie
This article will discuss how to write a good story for a movie. Movies are usually predicated on the fundamental premise that the plot of a movie should be exciting and interesting.
With that in mind, it makes sense that stories need to have strong protagonists and a couple of antagonists.
As I said, this is much easier said than done, though, so I will attempt to explain the process I use in writing a story in which the primary plot is both exciting and fascinating to the reader.
The hero:
The protagonist of a story is usually the character that the audience will identify with. The protagonist is the person or group of characters that the story focuses on.
A good protagonist is the type of person you would want to be friends with. A great protagonist is someone who people like and admire because of his or her personality.
If a protagonist doesn’t have a distinctive personality and is uninteresting, the reader or viewer will have a hard time getting involved with the story. The hero of your story should be someone who a reader is drawn to and identifies with.
But, on the other hand, the hero of your story should also be a sufficiently complex person, so that the reader isn’t so easily able to identify with the hero. In other words, the hero shouldn’t be too easy to relate to because the reader might feel like the reader is just doing what the hero does.
An example of a hero that works in the setting of a historical fiction novel would be Jason, a Roman Centurion in Ulysses.
Although Jason is no longer alive in the time period in which Ulysses is set, his struggles with love and loss have a lot in common with those of other Roman men of his time. By having an interesting and complex character, the reader is more likely to feel the pressure of taking action.
Good stories in my opinion have a good mix of action and narration. This is because a good story needs a protagonist who will actually do something, rather than merely telling you what they’re going to do.
Action is a good way to tell a good story. There is a fine line between action and narration, though, and it is the job of the writer to walk that line.
If your protagonist is just boring you to death, it is the job of the writer to inject some excitement into them. This can come in many forms.
Sometimes you can have a character do something stupid, sometimes you can have a character do something helpful. This kind of behavior is not hard to come up with, but it does need to be believable.
A good example of the kind of behavior that needs to be believable is in the movie Gladiator. You have to remember that this movie was released over 30 years ago, so there are probably lots of readers and viewers who didn’t see it when it first came out.
So for them, that kind of behavior seems unbelievable. However, it works because the setting is set in the 1st century, during a time when there was a lot of brutality, bloodthirst, and mercilessness.
The primary point of the narration in a novel is to carry the reader through the story. The reason the protagonist is interesting to the reader is because the reader wants to know what will happen to him or her.
This is why there needs to be a good balance of narration and action in a novel. In other words, you need to put some amount of narration in to not only keep the reader interested but also keep them focused on the story.
As we have established, the audience is very easily distracted from a story that is boring them to death.
So, how do you write an interesting and compelling narrative without losing sight of the action?
I have a few tips for you.
The primary focus of your story is the protagonist. I don’t care if the protagonist is female, male, a child, or a celebrity, if your character is interesting, I will find him or her interesting.
So the way that you keep your protagonist interesting is to keep the reader interested in your protagonist.
Give the reader plenty of action to choose from.
I know this may sound counter-intuitive, but give the reader a variety of characters and situations. Let them experience a wide variety of different things in the story.
Give the reader a sense of personal stake in the story.
As an example, if the main character is the son of a king, the reader will be invested in the character because of the power that this gives the reader.
If the main character is a soldier, the reader will be invested because of the power that it gives the reader.
Introduce conflict and conflict resolution to move the story along.
I can’t stress this enough. All good stories have some sort of conflict and resolution.
This can be done in a number of ways. For example, let’s say you have a great story where a young boy has to deal with the fact that his parents are fighting for their lives.
If your conflict resolution is focused on these two characters, but the story doesn’t also have a conflict between other characters, then there is no conflict resolution at all. You’ve only told the reader that this is a problem, but not why it is a problem.
In other words, the reader knows this young boy has to deal with the fact that his parents are fighting for their lives, but what happens to him is up to you to figure out.
Either way, conflict and resolution is something that needs to be in there.
Conflicts and resolution should take place in a natural progression.
Things don’t have to progress in a linear way. Take for example the movie Red.
The scene where he goes to the mountains was one of the best movie scenes of all time. It was natural progression.
Sure, the mountains are nice, but it’s not until you’ve seen the mountain that you realize you need to get out of the mountains, or else you won’t be able to see the mountain. If you tried to make it a linear path, then it wouldn’t be natural.
If you take the time to write a great story, I guarantee you’ll be able to create conflict and resolution in your novel and not feel like you’re working your way through a set of steps to bring about a solution to a problem that already exists. The journey is where the real magic happens.