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This week's Answer:
Ending
the Problem of Beginning The
best place to begin is at the end.
"What!?" you exclaim. "I thought you
were going to be clever and tell me to begin at the
beginning." You can always do that, but, if you
don't know your ending, you'll never get there, at your
beginning. Or at least, recognize it even if you
do. Try it this way: What do you want your
audience to really "get." Really feel and
understand deeply? What do you want to give
them? I know that may seem a bit odd, but that's
actually what screenwriting (or any writing, or any art
form) is; it's a gift from the artist. What emotions
do you want to stir for your viewer? How do you want
your viewer to feel? To think? Once you truly
know those answers, you'll know your ending, the
accumulation of a series of events that lead to those
answers. And when you truly know your ending, then
you start asking questions about what led to your
ending. In a way, you'll retrace your steps (steps
that you haven't taken yet) along the path of those
questions that lead to your end and you'll be trying to
find your way to your beginning. Your questions will
be connected by causality. Dots you connect, so to
speak. If you ask the right questions at the right
time, questions connected to questions. You'll move along
that Questions Path and find yourself eventually at your
beginning. Or
you'll be completely lost and you'll have to start at the
beginning again. Which is starting at the
ending. Do you see why do many screenwriters go
mad? Or give up on screenwriting and just open a
kiosk at the mall? Next time you're at the mall,
just take a look at all those screenwriters. And buy
something from them, okay? They probably have a tough
life. Just don't
ask them how to begin a screenplay.
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