The Three Important Questions Your Story Should Answer

(Spoilers: Gravity, Little Miss Sunshine)

In my book, The Three Stages of Screenwriting, I describe what I refer to as the “Dramatic Question” of the story. This is the question that is asked by the Catalyst (also known as the Inciting Incident) and answered in the Resolution. At its most basic, the question is some form of: “Will the main character achieve their goal?” This question defines the scope of your story. On an unconscious level, the Catalyst lets the audience know what the plot is about by posing this question. The audience knows the story will be over when they get the answer.

The Dramatic Question relates to plot. When I ask my students to define the Dramatic Question of their screenplays, they sometimes give me an answer along the lines of: “Will Keisha overcome her fear of intimacy?” Now, this could possibly be the Dramatic Question of a story, but usually this kind of internal question relates to the character arc, not the plot.

Other times a student will give me an answer like: “Is humanity worth saving?” This is also not really a Dramatic Question. It’s a thematic question.

I demand the students form their Dramatic Questions in relation to the plot because they will be using this question to structure their story. The act breaks and other structural beats will be related to this question. Since this is film, it’s important to make it external and measurable. And I encourage questions with a yes or no answer because it’s easier to figure out what should be happening at each structural beat.

But I’ve been thinking lately that the other types of questions the students provide are also important, just perhaps not to structuring the plot. After all, the best stories typically have strong character arcs and deal with powerful thematic ideas. So maybe we should really be looking at defining three different questions in our stories:

The Dramatic Question

The Character Question

The Thematic Question

One of the films I use as an example in The Three Stages of Screenwriting is Gravity (written by Alfonso & Jonas Cuaron). The Dramatic Question in that movie is “Can Ryan make it back to Earth?” This is a good dramatic question that drives the plot, and the movie ends when we get the answer. So let’s consider what the other questions would be and try to determine how they work in the story.

The Character Question in Gravity would probably be: “Can Ryan find the will to survive?” This question is set up when Ryan tells Matt about the death of her daughter. We see that she has lost her reason for living. This happens in the beginning of act two. It comes to a head near the Second Act Turning Point when Ryan decides to give up and turns off the oxygen in her capsule. It is resolved when she has her vision of Matt and he asks if she wants to live or die. She chooses life, and figures out how to solve her problem. This coincides with the Epiphany stage of the structure.

Building from this, I would say the Thematic Question of Gravity is: “What keeps us going in the face of death and danger?” Though there is an answer to this question in the story, I will note that this is not a yes or no question. Perhaps that is what makes a thematic question different than the other types of questions. Maybe good Thematic Questions have more complicated answers.

Let’s consider another film I use as an example in the book: Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt). The Dramatic Question of Little Miss Sunshine is: “Will Richard enable his daughter to win the beauty pageant?” (Richard is the main character of Little Miss Sunshine. If you want to know my justification for this statement, read the book!)

The Thematic Question of Little Miss Sunshine has to do with winning and losing. Richard’s first words are, “There are two kinds of people in the world, winners and losers.” And when deciding whether to take Olive to the pageant, Richard asks her if she thinks she can win, because, “there’s no point in entering a contest unless you think you can win.” The themes of winning and losing are set up early in the script. And near the Midpoint, Olive confides in her grandfather that she fears Richard won’t love her if she doesn’t win. Of course, in the end she doesn’t win… but Richard has realized it’s more important to support his daughter no matter what.

And that reveals the Character Question of Little Miss Sunshine: “Will Richard support his daughter even if she doesn’t win?” And of course the answer there is “Yes.” Here that character question is established at the Catalyst and again answered at the Epiphany when Richard jumps up on stage to join Olive in her crazy dance.

I realize I never proposed an actual Thematic Question for Little Miss Sunshine. Let’s go with: “What is more important – being a winner or having people who love you?” You might notice that all of the subplots about the supporting characters involve that question in some way. Exploring the theme is a common use for subplots.

So from these two examples, the Character Question seems to be important to the Epiphany of the film. This makes sense. We want the character arc to affect the plot, and the plot to cause the character to change. And the Thematic Question seems to be the result of what it means to place this specific character in this specific plot.

As you may gather, I don’t yet have a fully formed theory about these three questions. But I will be watching for them in movies I study in the future, trying to figure out how they work. Stay tuned… there will be future posts on this topic!

Writing Web Video Content: Interview with Laura Holliday

It used to be that there were two types of screenwriters: film and television. But these days those divisions are blurring. And to make matters more complex, there are scripted web series, web shorts, and streaming product from places like Netflix and Amazon. The screenwriter today is best served by being a jack-of-all-formats. And writing web series can be a great way to break in.

Today I'm interviewing one of my students, Laura Holliday. Laura has written and directed commissioned digital content for Lifetime, Spinmaster, Full Screen Inc. and Funny or Die. She's also part of the sketch group and youtube channel "Practical Folks" (subscribe!) and a member of the Funny or Die Community. I asked Laura about how she got to the point of making commissioned content for Funny or Die.
Q: How did you first get a meeting with Funny or Die?

I uploaded a video I made on my own with some improv friends (Jessie Sherman, Katie Wilbert, Dylan Dugas) called "Sad Lonely Girl" to the site on my own and it ended up getting a lot more views than I expected.

Someone from the site reached out to me about joining the Funny or Die Community (a group of comedy filmmakers that Funny or Die supports, shares their work) and also suggested I enter the video in a contest they were having along with LA Film Festival called Make Em Laff Fest. I made the top three and screened at LA Film Fest but if I had won I would have gotten to produce a sketch legitimately with Funny or Die. I was super upset but then they called me in to talk about ideas anyway.

Q: What was that meeting like? What happened next?

I just had a really casual meeting there where they showed me around the office and kind of talked about what sorts of content fit best there and told me to email them when I had a viable idea I thought was up their alley!

Q: How did you create your pitch for your project?

I had recently sent log lines for a bunch of serial sketch concepts to a friend who worked at Awesomeness TV at the time. Nothing happened with that but he told me that one of them about a girl who is roommates with a 7 year old girl, really made him laugh and I should try to get it made elsewhere, so I basically sent on that logline and gave them a few quick examples of jokes and episode ideas. They asked to see scripts for three episodes.

Q: Once they bought the show, how did development go? Did you do drafts of scripts or did they let you just go make the series? How much input did they have?

With "Kid Roommate," they outsourced the job to me and it was pretty free. My friend who I wrote it with (Ellen Jacobs) and I did multiple drafts ourselves until we were happy and showed them but they gave basically just gave notes on the edit of the video. All the notes were great and very helpful.

Q: What is your plan for building off this experience?

I definitely met wonderful people from doing this first project and recently did an in-house video for them that I wrote and directed. Hopefully I can continue to work with them in that capacity. Hopefully we can also make more episodes of "Kid Roommate."

Q: Any advice for those wanting to do online shorts?

I've found that you just have to make a bunch of them on your own and keep uploading them. There is no way to predict what will stick or what the internet will like, so you just have to keep putting your ideas out there. The trick is finding ways to make the videos solid enough technically to sell you creatively without spending a bunch of money on them each time. I think that's totally possible with sketches which is part of why I love them.

Thanks Laura!




Catch all three episodes of "Kid Roommate" on Funny or Die.

And More videos here: http://www.funnyordie.com/lauraholliday

Facebook: facebook.com/laurahollidayfilm
Twitter: @lalalaholliday

The Three Stages of Screenwriting

Hello, dear LetsSchmooze readers. I alerted you it would be coming a few weeks ago, and now it’s here. My book on screenwriting, The Three Stages of Screenwriting is now available in print (from Amazon) and ebook (from Smashwords). More retailers should be carrying it shortly. I have spent more than two years working on this book, and I’m very proud of it.

If you’d like to read an excerpt of the book, one is available here. If you’d like to find out more about the book, please visit the ScreenMaster Books website.

I divided the book into three parts to reflect the three stages of the screenwriting process (hence the title). The sections cover the following topics:

Stage One – Developing the Story covers choosing a viable feature film idea, developing that idea into the best version, structuring the plot, developing the characters, crafting a step outline, and using various narrative devices.

Stage Two – Writing the First Draft covers scene construction, writing action and description, writing dialogue, the opening of the script, maintaining forward momentum, and using suspense, surprise, mystery.

Stage Three – Rewriting covers techniques for structural revisions, techniques for character revisions, troubleshooting tips for common problems, revising scenes, and polishing.

I hope you’ll consider giving it a look. And if you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to drop me a line here. I’ll likely cover some of them in a “Mailbag” post in a few weeks.

I need to thank several people who gave me feedback and suggestions on The Three Stages of Screenwriting: Cindy Davis, Paul Guay, Ken Aguado, Pavan Ojha, Bill Gladstone, Lisa Kors, Robert Watson, and Kat Smith. They helped me improve it immeasurably.

I also want to say thank you at this point for all of you who have offered kind words, questions, or suggestions about this blog. It’s very gratifying to hear how useful people find it.
I hope you'll forgive me that this week's post is a little short (and self-serving!) I've been rather busy with the book release, as you might imagine. Over the next few weeks, I plan to do two or three posts about how I broke into the industry, how I sold the Sweet Home Alabama spec screenplay, and maybe some of my experiences seeing the film made. I'm also considering doing a series of analyses of the WGA's top 10 screenplay list (two of which – The Godfather and Some Like It Hot I use as examples in the book).

Doug