How to Generate Great Story Ideas for Your Screenplay/Play Part 4: Character Objectives from CASABLA

"Character Objectives from Casablanca to Wonder Woman to Moonlight"

(Part of "Best Tips for Script Writing" series)

So in the last posts in this series, we talked about Character and Relationships as two key concepts for a great story idea. If we want to get a little metaphorical with this idea, if your story is a race, think of these concepts as the driver and the car of your story. So now, that you have a car and driver, you need an engine to make the car go. The engine of your story is Objective.

A character objective is what the character wants. It could be a physical object like in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones wants the ark of the covenant. It could be a person, like in most Romantic Comedies like When Harry Met Sally, Sally wants a meaningful romantic relationship with Harry. Or it could be a decision that the main character wants like in The Pursuit of Happyness, Christopher Gardner wants a prestigious brokerage firm to hire him. In all of these cases, these objectives drive the story forward. Nearly every scene in the movie is about the main character pursuing these objectives or about forces pushes against the main character's quest.

Let's talk about four different examples of Objective.

I want to look at another classic film to help show that Character Objective has been around a long time. Casablanca is another great American classic film that uses objective as a way to push the story forward. In this film, we establish Casablanca as an early World War II French outpost in North Africa, where refugees, desperately fleeing the Nazis, try to obtain transit papers so they can leave Casablanca and escape to freedom. The transit papers are the main objective that drives the story forward. Ilsa is one of the main characters and she and her husband are trying to get these transit papers to escape Casablanca. But the major complication is her ex-boyfriend, Rick who runs a popular cafe that secretly deals in these transit papers. Rick unfortunately is very cynical and resents Ilsa for leaving him and does not want to give the papers to Ilsa. This is the heart of the movie and the conflict around these transit papers leads to some of the most famous cinematic moments in history.

It's interesting to note that Alfred Hitchcock, probably the most famous Hollywood director ever, popularized a term to describe this kind of objective: the MacGuffin. He believed that it really didn't matter what the objective or MacGuffin was as long as it existed to push the story forward. George Lucas disagreed and felt that the audience should really care about the MacGuffin. Either way, they and most filmmakers agree you should have some sort of character objective to make your story complete.

Moving on to the twenty first century, we come to one of the biggest blockbusters of this summer: Wonder Woman. Like most action and super hero films, our heroine, Wonder Woman is trying to save the world from a villain. In this case, the villain, Ares, God of War, is the objective. This is not complicated but what makes Wonder Women interesting is how she pursues her objective. She is highly idealistic and believes that it is the duty of Amazons (her people) to fight Ares and all forces of evil to protect the planet. Her side kick, Steve Trevor also wants to stop war (in the story, he doesn't really believe in Ares but they are sort of the same thing) and so Steve and Wonder Woman work together to pursue this same goal. Although conflict arises throughout the story because they have very different approaches to this same objective. The film uses the conflict between Steve's and Wonder Women's approaches skillfully to explore the themes of the story.

Let's look at one more famous modern example, the Oscar winning indie hit, Moonlight. I picked this one because sometimes objectives are not as obvious as stop the villain or get the transit papers. Sometimes, especially in independent films, the objectives are more subtle and complex.

In Moonlight, we follow the same character in three different stories from three different time periods of his life. (early childhood, teenager and young adult) What's interesting is that these three stories appear to have no driving objective but with further reflection, each story is driven by the main character's, Chiron's objective which is not a physical object, a single person but more of a decision or feeling. Chiron is searching for acceptance in the three stories. As a young gay African American male growing up in a tough neighborhood with a mother who neglects and abuses him, he basically feels alone and unaccepted. But in each story, he actively seeks out people who will accept him and help him find his place in the world.

In the first story, he finds Juan, a kindly drug dealer who becomes a surrogate father figure. In the second story, he becomes romantically connected to Kevin despite a tragic twist. In the third story, Chiron reconnects with his mother and Kevin in hopes to find acceptance in these two central relationships.

What's beautiful and emotionally powerful about Moonlight is that while we may or may not have much in common with Chiron's external circumstances, we all seek acceptance for who we are and we are all rooting for the success of his journey. I think Barry Jenkin's (the cowriter and director of Moonlight) use of character, relationship and objective led to Moonlight becoming a modern classic and earning a well deserved Oscar.

Finally, I want to explore how objective is not just important for your main character but all of the characters in your story. A great story relies not just on the main character pursing their objective but all of the characters who both support and oppose that objective. If they have compelling objectives as well, your story should really be strong.

In my film, Paranormal Inc, I talked about the main character objective, Diego's desire to prove a ghost hunting club as a fraud. So in order to create conflict, he has several antagonistic forces against him. He has his ex-girlfriend who believes in ghosts and wants him to stop his quest. The leader of the ghost hunting group who suspects Diego is a traitor to his cause. And there is the ghost that the group is pursuing who has his own objective to make people pay for the pain he experienced in the past. All of these forces push against Diego's efforts to prove ghosts as fake and create the bulk of the tension and interest in the story. In addition, the conflict also helps illuminate the theme of the story which tries to answer the questions: why do people have faith in what they can't prove? Is this a good thing?

So that was a long post but I hope it was helpful and illuminating. Now here are two exercises to help you with your own script and story:

1. Think of a favorite film and who the main character or characters are. What is their objective? Is it a decision? An actual physical object? A person? Or a combination? How do these objectives strengthen the story?

2. Now I want you to think about your main character and their flaw and main relationships in the story. What objective is she/he pursuing? Is it an physical object? A person? A decision/feeling? Try to look at a lot of options and then figure out what makes for the most compelling one.

Write down what you discover in the comment section. I would love to see what you're working on.

Happy creating!