The Spine Expansion Pack, Part II: The Path of Action, Revisited

At the beginning of this series of articles, I presented this diagram to represent the Story Spine:


Though it is designed to be clear and easy to understand, this diagram is not completely accurate. The Story Spine for a feature-length cinematic narrative not exactly this simple. The Spine of a feature-length film should look more like this:



The difference is that the first diagram shows the Path of Action to be a single, arcing arrow going straight from the protagonist's Problem to the protagonist's Goal. This representation is misleadingly simplified. A single long line seems to suggest that the protagonist needs only to take one broad action is order to pursue his or her goal, and that through persistence, that one action will be ultimately successful.

One single action from the protagonist might be enough to support short forms of storytelling, such as a folktale or an anecdote, but a cinematic narrative demands a storyline that takes up ninety minutes or more of screen time. Watching a character continue to plow forward in one direction, never changing or deviating from his or her original course, will quickly becomes a repetitive and even dull viewing experience. What audiences call the “movie experience” is created by watching the protagonist's Path of Action continue to DEVELOP and ESCALATE throughout the course of the story.

DEVELOPMENT

Here is how a cinematic narrative usually works: The protagonist encounters the Story Problem. The protagonist then proceeds to take the SMALLEST action they think will achieve the Goal. The protagonist honestly believes that this first small action will be enough to fix everything, or at least get the ball rolling to a simple solution.

But something gets in the way. Something blocks the path to the goal. In common screenwriting parlance, this is aptly called an OBSTACLE – something that literally creates a roadblock to cut off the protagonist's intended path. The obstacle can come from the actions of other characters, the introduction of a new element into the story, or perhaps the protagonist finds out that the situation is much more difficult than originally imagined, or any number of things. One thing, however, is certain about the obstacle – the protagonist cannot continue forward on their current course of action, or else they will fail. The protagonist must choose to take a NEW ACTION. The hero turns down a new path which they hope will circumnavigate the obstacle and still get them to the Goal.

The obstacle in the protagonist's path, combined with the decision to take a new action, creates a TURNING POINT in the story's narrative. These turning points are represented on the diagram by the white circles that connect each line segment. For more detail on story sequences and turning points, check out my November 2008 article.

Now our protagonist heads off in a new direction, taking a new set of actions -- on the second leg of the journey the protagonist hopes will get them to their Goal. The protagonist now believes that he or she is on the right track, THIS is what will achieve the Goal. But before too long, the protagonist runs in ANOTHER obstacle. Just like with the first obstacle, it once again becomes impossible for the protagonist to continue along the current path. In order to achieve the Goal, the protagonist must once again decide on a NEW ACTION. They must turn in another new direction and do whatever needs to be done to get around this new obstacle if they wish to continue. We have reached another turning point.

The story continues on like this, action after action, turning point after turning point, as the protagonist weaves a crooked path that the character desperately hopes will eventually get them to the ultimate Goal. The protagonist always has a plan in mind, but that plan is always being FORCED to change by whatever obstacles the Conflict puts in the protagonist's way.

One way to think about a character's path of action is to imagine you are taking a road trip. You're going to drive from Dallas to Denver. Your GOAL is to get to Denver. So, you take what seems to be the easiest route by hopping on the interstate highway. BUT, right across the Texas border you find a detour. You are forced to turn off onto a different highway to get to Denver. Okay, this road isn't as convenient, but it will still get you where you're going. BUT, after a few hundred miles you find that this second road has been closed off due to flooding. You must now find another road to bypass the flooding and get you to your destination. So, you double back and find a small winding road through the mountains. BUT, after a few hundred miles more, you find that the bridge over a canyon is out. You must once again find a new road, a little dirt road that's not even on the map in the hope that this road will somehow get you to your ultimate Goal. Your path may always be forced to change, but your GOAL always remains the same. You want to get to Denver.

ESCALATION

As I said before, when your main character first begins his or her path, they take the smallest action they think necessary to reach the ultimate Goal. But when they encounter an obstacle, the character is forced to ESCALATE. The smallest action isn't enough. They must take a somewhat bigger action to get what they want. But when they encounter the next obstacle, the slightly bigger action proves to be insufficient. They must again go bigger, and bigger, and bigger. This escalation continues to the point of the climax, when the protagonist, after all previous actions have failed, must take the BIGGEST action possible. One enormous effort, all or nothing, with everything on the line. When your character takes this ultimate action, only one of two things can happen. Either the protagonist finally defeats the conflict and achieves the Goal, or they are completely and irrevocably defeated with no further chance of recovery.

It is not only the character's level of action which escalates at each turning point, but also the character's level of DEDICATION to the Goal, and the amount of RISK the character is willing to take. When your protagonist takes that first small course of action, their level of dedication is not very strong and the risk is quite low. When they run into the first obstacle, your protagonist has a choice: quit or escalate. With the decision to take a new, bigger action, the character also decides to become more dedicated to the Goal. As each action become bigger, so does the level of risk your protagonist must take. Dedication and risk continue to escalate with each turning point until the climax, where the protagonist has become so dedicated that he or she is willing to risk everything (quite often their lives and everything they care about) to finally conquer the Conflict and seize the Goal.

Take a look at Star Wars. When Luke Skywalker is first presented with the idea of leaving home to join Obi-Wan Kenobi, he isn't too keen on the idea. His dedication is low. He would rather stay at home with his family. But, he then returns home to find his family murdered by Imperial Troopers. He now has no choice. He must dedicate himself to a new cause and take the risk of leaving home. In Chinatown, Jake Gittes shows about as little personal dedication to his cases as a detective could have. Until someone plays him for a sap. Gittes decides to find a little dedication and take a little risk to find out why. This ends up getting him roughed up by hired goons. At this point he could quit, but instead he decides to up his level of dedication and take on more risk to continue onward.

There's another thing: Notice on the updated Story Spine diagram how, as the Path of Action advances, not only the line segments grow bigger and bigger (representing the protagonist's actions), but so do the green arrows representing the force of Conflict opposing the hero. As the actions escalate, so does the level of Conflict.

Obstacles don't just pop up in front of your hero randomly. These obstacles are the work of your source of Conflict (usually an antagonist). The antagonist does not WANT your hero to achieve his or her goal. So the antagonist does things to STOP this. The antagonist hopes the obstacles it creates will be enough to make the protagonist quit for good. When the protagonist chooses to escalate in order to get around those obstacles, the antagonist must escalate as well. Whatever level of effort the protagonist makes to get to their goal, the antagonist must continually bring more to stop it. A great conflict is a test of wills. Both sides are willing to push things to the very edge. In the end, the side who is most dedicated will win and the other will be destroyed in the effort. This model works just as well for stories without an antagonist character. In these cases, the conflict created by the situation or dramatic circumstance must also continue to escalate and continue to force the main character into bigger and bigger actions.

Next Article: Things I Learned from Die Hard

The SPINE Expansion Pack: Part I

In my last article, I laid out what the Story Spine is, and the importance of its five components in the creation of a story capable of engaging an audience. Before moving on to another topic, I feel it is necessary to go a little deeper in order to address a few potential misconceptions that I have found to have a crippling effect on scripts I have analyzed in the past.

1. The Story Spine is SINGULAR

Every cinematic narrative has only ONE Story Spine. The main plot must revolve around the protagonist facing ONE problem and pursuing ONE goal. This is how you make a story strong, clear, and easy for an audience to follow. Your body works because it has only one spine. If you had more, you would be a disjointed mess. One of the best pieces of advice I have ever received is that key to a great script is “a simple story with complex characters.” Having a strong, singular spine allows one to achieves this.

One of the surest ways to turn a story into a dense, complicated, hard-to-follow mess is to force the protagonist to engage in multiple, competing lines of action at the same time. You can't do two things at once. Don't try to give your protagonist two separate plot problems or two simultaneous goals. Don't have your hard-boiled cop try to take down the mafia and catch a serial killer. You can't have your medieval warrior struggle to both kill the dragon threatening his town and fight off an invading army. One might think that adding a second set of problems and goals would increase audience excitement just by the fact that there is more going on. In truth, the result is the opposite. Instead of increasing the excitement, it spreads the excitement thin. Story #1 winds up gets sapped of its energy and momentum every time it gets put on the shelf to switch over to Story #2, and vice versa. Meanwhile, both stories will suffer from underdevelopment since they are forced to share their screen time with one or more other stories. With only half a movie to cover, they become only half-stories. Focus your main plot on a single problem, a single goal, and a single path of action. Save Story #2 for your next script.

This singularity also applies to each of the Spine's five components. There should only be one Main Story Conflict. Remember those two Joel Schumacher Batman movies, Batman Forever & Batman & Robin? Terrible, weren't they? The story was all over the place. The conflict was weak. This is because, instead of creating a strong, singular villain for Batman to face off with, each movie contained two. Two villains, both given equal weight. The story was split. Two villains also gave Batman two different goals-- and the entire story suffered for it. Had the writers chosen to make one villain the main antagonist and the other a subservient henchman, the stories might have been saved since there would be only ONE collective source of main conflict and one goal for Batman to pursue (as seen in many action movies where there is a strong villain and a loyal henchman).

As for Stakes, there is some flexibility in the singularity rule. Multiple things can contribute to the Stakes, but it is always best if these things are in some way related. And, like I mentioned with the villains, there should be ONE element of the Stakes which stands out as biggest and most important.

2. For every plot, a Spine must be

Okay, you might be saying right now, 'Wait a minute. I've seen lots of movies where the protagonist has more than one goal. I've seen warriors who are both trying to kill the dragon and marry the princess. I've seen detectives who are not only trying to find the killer, but fix their family problems. I've seen movies where the hero fights aliens AND tries to overcome his alcoholism.'

With this we've come upon the distinction between main plot and subplot. What I said before was that every PLOTLINE can have only one spine. Subplots are separate plotlines. And, in order for subplots to be strong and effective, they need to have their own spines as well. Your hero's main story goal may have to do with slaying the dragon, but there also needs to be a problem, goal, path of action, conflict, and stakes involved in his romantic subplot involving the princess.

Subplots do a lot to help a story in general. They add depth and dimension to a story that would be too thin with the main plot alone. They give opportunities to develop characters and theme in ways that might not be possible within the swiftly-moving action of the main plot. What is important, however, is the ability to tell whether you have a singular main plot and subplot that supports it, or if you have two main plots that steal attention from each other (two main Story Spines instead of one).

Subplots are often described as “smaller” stories. However, subplots are more like interior stories. They most often deal with personal struggles and relationships, while the main plot is an exterior story (the main story on the surface), involving physical conflict and direct action. Nothing can have two exteriors. That just wouldn't work. But an exterior and an interior can co-exist in harmony.

 
The key to a good subplot is that it be separate yet at the same time connected to the main plot. The subplot does not take away from the main plot, but adds to it. There is a symbiotic relationship between the Story Spine and subplot spine. The actions which take place in one work to influence the other, thus working together to help bring about mutual resolutions. Here is a link to a good article that uses the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to explain this separate yet connected interaction.

http://www.storyispromise.com/whoney.htm

3. “STORY SPINE” means “PROTAGONIST SPINE”

Alright. I don't want to confuse you. Or seem like I'm contradicting myself. So, I'll try to express this the best way I can. First, I said that the Story Spine had to be singular. Then, I said that each subplot had its own spine. But guess what? There are more spines. The protagonist has his/her spine to follow. But the other characters have spines too!

Before things get too complicated, back up and take another look at my previous article. Notice that all five of the Spine's elements are described in terms of their relationship to the PROTAGONIST. The protagonist's problem, the goal the protagonist sets, the path of action the protagonist takes, the conflict that stands in the way of the protagonist's goal, the protagonist's stakes. The “Story Spine” is in fact the “protagonist's spine”. The two terms are synonymous. Because the traditional Western film narrative focuses its entire attention on the actions of a central protagonist, the protagonist's character spine and the spine of the story arc are one and the same.

But, you may notice that in films with well-crafted characters, the protagonist is not the only individual with a problem, goal, path, conflict, and stakes. Though the narrative pays them less attention, all important characters have these elements informing their roles as well. When writers on screencraft say that every character should have their own wants, needs, and things they are after, what they mean is every character must possess their own, separate (and singular) CHARACTER SPINE. A character spine turns supporting characters into dimensionalized, active, true-to-life human beings with their own lives and reasons to exist. A character spines forms the difference between an antagonist who is a clichéd cardboard cut-out and one who is an active, flesh and blood individual.  Character spines create the difference between a cast of supporting characters who are little more than living props existing for the convenience to the protagonist's actions, and a story world populated by motivated individuals who do what they do for strong, understandable reasons.

Let's look at one of the most famous of antagonists, Darth Vader. What is his character spine? 1. Vader's Problem: A Rebel army threatens the Empire's dominance in the galaxy. 2. Vader's Goal: To locate the Rebel base and destroy their forces for good. 3. Vader's Path of Action: Among other things, capture Princess Leia and force her to give the location. 4. Vader's Conflict: Members of the Rebel Alliance are doing all they can to stop that from happening. 5. Vader's Stakes: If he succeeds, his power in the Universe will be solidified. If he fails, it might mean the Empire's destruction.

Like subplots, character spines should be both separate yet connected in some way to the spine of the protagonist. The spines of all supporting characters must in some way work to either assist or conflict with the protagonist's spine. Otherwise, if their wants, needs, or personal actions have nothing directly to do with the protagonist's wants, needs, or personal actions (read: the MAIN STORY SPINE) for what reason have these characters been included in the story?

Character spines can apply even to the smallest of characters -- though this spine does not need to be developed to a large degree. Say you have created a one-scene bit part of a surly file clerk whom your protagonist is trying to get an important file from. If you give the file clerk a full character spine, an otherwise dull scene could potentially turn into something dramatic. Observe:

1. File Clerk's Problem: The protagonist is making him do something he does not want to. 2. Goal: Get the protagonist to go away. 3. Path of Action: Whatever strategies the file clerk chooses to get the protagonist to leave. 4. Conflict: The protagonist refuses to go away. 5. Stakes: If he fails, it means a whole mess of work he does not want to do, or possibly get trouble with his supervisors. The ensuing battle between the two conflicting character spines is what will make this scene entertaining.

(Next Article: The Spine Expansion Pack, Part II – The Path of Action, Revisited)

It's the SPINE, STUPID!

I'm going to share with you a magic key to the craft of screenwriting.

The sad thing is that it should not be considered a "magic key." Or a big secret. It is a concept that has been at the heart of the art of storytelling since the days of the caveman. Yet, in nearly every book on screenwriting I have read, the authors either seem to be completely ignorant of this concept, or they dedicate only a few vague, mumbling paragraphs to it, suggesting that they do not understand it themselves.

It is called THE STORY SPINE

The central importance of the Story Spine to any form of storytelling, and especially screenwriting, cannot be understated. It is what unites every element in a story, what focuses and gives meaning to events, and what creates the forward momentum which advances the story to its conclusion. More importantly, the Story Spine orientates the audience to understand where the story is going, why things are important, and why they should invest their time and emotions into finding the story's outcome.

In my experience as a script analyst, I can honestly say that over 90% of the poorly-written scripts I have read could have been vastly improved if only the writer understood the Story Spine.

Let me repeat that:

Over 90% of the poorly-written scripts out there could be vastly improved if only the writer understood the Story Spine!

So many books on screenwriting spend a bulk of their pages on Three-Act Structure. But, Three-Act Structure is merely a method of organizing plot. It has nothing to do with what a story truly needs to be well told. I have seen several attempts at screenwriting that followed the Three-Act model to a tee, yet were still unbearable to read because the writer did not know how to construct a functional story thanks to the lack of a Story Spine.

A Story Spine marks the difference between a script that contains a STORY, and one that is just a collection of arbitrary events. The Story Spine is what turns events into a STORY. Without a Story Spine, a story does not exist.

Let me repeat that:

Without a Story Spine, a story does not exist.

Let me repeat it again:

WITHOUT A STORY SPINE, A STORY DOES NOT EXIST!!!

Am I making myself clear on how important this concept is?

A complete Story Spine is made up of five equally-important components:

1. The protagonist's main STORY PROBLEM;
2. The protagonist's STORY GOAL that, once achieved, will overcome the problem;
3. The protagonist's PATH OF ACTIONS taken to get to that goal;
4. The MAIN CONFLICT that stands in the way of the protagonist's goal; and
5. The STAKES that constantly push the protagonist forward in order to reach the goal.

All five components must be present for a complete Story Spine. If one part is missing, your Spine is broken, and a real story will not exist. The five parts of the Spine are like the parts of an engine. If you remove one, it stops working altogether. It doesn't matter how strong the other four parts are. They can never overcome the absence of the missing piece.

The Story Spine can be visualized with this diagram:


1. THE STORY PROBLEM

At their heart, stories are all about problems. At the beginning of every well-told story, something disrupts a character's life in such a way that they cannot go on functioning the way they are accustomed until they do something about that problem. Without a Problem, the character has no good reason to do anything. Everything in life would stay the same and there would be no story. It is this Problem, constantly looming over the character's head and threatening to ruin their life that, firstly, motivates a story to begin, and then afterwards provides the force that prompts every narrative action taken from that point onward.

I've read a number of scripts where the writer neglects to give the protagonist a Story Problem. Of all bad scripts, these feel the most pointless and dull. I call them “Zombie Narratives” or “Wandering Protagonist Scripts.” They basically amount to a character wandering arbitrarily from place to place, situation to situation --for no real story reason-- accomplishing nothing of importance because there is no REASON to accomplish anything.

Whether the problem be something big and physical (alien spacecraft attack the Whitehouse), or something small and abstract (a character feels unhappy about life and wants to know why), the Problem must be something that the character believes they MUST do something about, NOW.


2. THE STORY GOAL

Once a character recognizes that there is a problem, and feels compelled to do something about it, they must decide on some sort of end goal that, once achieved, will overcome the problem and make life better again. Everything in the story from that point on will be about the character's attempts to achieve that goal. Whether the goal be some specific action involving a physical journey (“to travel to Mordor and destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mt. Doom”), or something less physical which the character wishes to achieve but may not know how (“to find happiness,” or “to find a place in the world”) the goal must create a question in the audience's mind as to whether or not the character will achieve it and overcome the problem. (We can call this the "Main Dramatic Question," or MDQ.) This question CANNOT be answered until the story's final climax. Once this question is answered -- either by the character achieving the goal or failing irrevocably -- the story is over. A story starts when there is a Problem, and it ends when the character reaches the Goal. These two components comprise the beginning and end points of the Story Spine.

I like to call bad scripts that fail to create a Story Goal “Whiner Narratives.” These scripts involve characters who have a problem, who recognize the significance of this problem, but never take any decisive action to do something ABOUT the problem. Instead they just whine, and complain, and talk endlessly about their troubled lives. This gets tiresome very quickly, and furthermore, the plot never manages to develop or move forward simply because the character never gets out of the first stage of their Story.

3. THE PATH OF ACTION

If the Story Problem is Point A on the left end of the Story Spine, and the Story Goal is Point B on the right, the Path of Action is the line which connects them. Once your character recognizes that there is a problem, and decides on a goal which will hopefully overcome the problem, the character must then proceed to TAKE ACTIONS in pursuit of that goal. A bulk of any given movie's screen time is made up of characters following their Paths of Action (this includes everything that occurs between the plot's inciting incident and the climax).

Success must not be easy for the protagonist. It must be earned. The Path of Action contains all the trials and hurdles the character must fight and overcome in order to get what they want.

The most important thing about the Path of Action is that it NEVER STOPS MOVING FORWARD towards the Story Goal. The Path of Action is a journey to an ultimate destination. Your character must at all times, in every scene, be involved in something somehow related to achieving the story goal. A story is like a shark. If it stops moving, it dies. The moment you pause your story, stop pursuing the Goal, or go off on tangential material unrelated to the spine, the story tension dies and the audience becomes bored or distracted.

This is where most poorly-written scripts falter. It usually happens in one of two ways. The first are “Lazy Narratives.” In a Lazy Narrative, the protagonist has a problem, and a goal, but never bothers to take much strong action towards achieving that goal. They are usually passive characters, reacting to situations thrust upon them rather than taking action to become the story's agent of change. These scripts are often slow-moving and dull, with only a few scenes which advance the plot and develop the situation in a substantial way. The rest of the script is often filled with unimportant material unrelated to the Story Spine.

Other times, writers will included lines of action that skew off the Path of Action -- tangential material that has nothing to do with the Story Goal. Doing so makes the story confused, unfocused. It weakens the Spine and the story experience for the audience. Some writers go so far off the Path that they create a “Fractured Spine.” The story seems to be going in a clear, focused direction, but then suddenly (usually in the Second Act) splits off along a completely different path. The story abandons the Goal established at the story's beginning for an altogether new and unrelated goal. This is the point where these writers lose their audience. The audience has been orientated to understand that the story was about one thing, then suddenly it is changed to be about something else. Keep your story train on its tracks. Once you establish your Path of Action, stay on that path!


4. THE CONFLICT

The character's journey down the Path of Action cannot be easy. What is dramatically intriguing about watching someone complete a task without any problems? Nothing is less exciting than when things go exactly as planned. Let's say I told you this story: “Early this morning I noticed that my dog Rex was missing. I was worried because Rex is very old and could easily get hurt or lost. I had to find him. So I left my house – and there he was sitting on the front step.” Now, you would probably be staring at me with a look on your face that says Why did you just waste my time with that? How was that in any way interesting? This is because the story had no conflict. I achieved my goal with no problem at all.

We should all know by now that CONFLICT is the lifeblood of drama. Drama cannot exist without it. We should have been hit over the head with the concept by now. (If you don't know this yet, PLEASE hit yourself over the head with it so you do know.) NOTHING is less dramatic than watching things go exactly as people want them to.

When protagonists pursue their goals, there must be some force of conflict opposing them. Someone or something must be dead set against your character and his or her efforts. The conflict can't be some pushover, either. The source of conflict must be just as dedicated to blocking the protagonist from his or her goal as the protagonist is to achieving that goal. The main source of conflict may be the cause of the Story Problem, or it may not, but what is required is a force which directly opposes the main character every step of the way along the Path of Action – from the inciting incident to the climax at the end.

In general, a single, strong source of conflict (such as an antagonist character) tends to be far more dramatic than a collection of smaller sources of conflict. (There's an old Hollywood phrase: “One shark is better than ten barracudas.”) But this is all relative to the needs of the particular story. There are types of stories where the protagonist must fight against a situation rather than a person or a thing. For instance, a story about survival in the wilderness will find conflict from various elements of nature: lack of food and water, dangerous animals, weather. Or, a story where the protagonist fights against the unjust or bigoted views of an entire society may find conflict from a variety of sources in a variety of ways. However, even in these situations, building one conflict up to be the most threatening will strengthen the Spine to a more audience-satisfying level.

Believe it or not, I have encountered many scripts where writers fail to included ANY conflict. Their characters breeze through actions with no problems at all, everyone getting along with everyone else just swell. If any script makes the reader want to slam their head into the wall, it is these. It's a boredom akin to watching eight hours of someone else's vacation videos. There is simply no drama. It is simply not a story.

Another frequent problem I see is writers who, instead of creating one strong main conflict to oppose the protagonist from beginning to end, create many small sources of conflict peppered throughout the script. They have chosen to create ten barracudas instead of one great white shark. These conflicts pop up in arbitrary places, fail to do much to advance the story, and then are easily defeated ten pages later to never be seen again. Approaching conflict this way does not develop your story. It makes it episodic. A feeling of dramatic tension never escalates because conflicts are constantly being thrown in and then killed off before they have a chance to develop. You should think of your source of conflict as your protagonist's shadow. It is always there, dogging his/her every move from the very beginning to the very end.

5. THE STAKES

Okay, now your main character has a problem, a goal, and a path to get to that goal. But with the conflict standing in the way, the journey has now become very hard for the main character; dangerous or even life-threatening. What is stopping the protagonist from deciding that the goal is no longer worth the risk and giving up? This question is the reason why a story must have STAKES. “Stakes” are defined as what is to be gained if the protagonist succeeds or lost if the protagonist fails. A good story demands that there be a very important reason for the character to continue his/her pursuit of the goal. There is either something of great value to be won, or dire, unthinkable consequences attached to the protagonist's failure. Often, the best stories contain both.

The stakes must be BIG. As shown in the diagram, the force of the Main Conflict is constantly pushing against the protagonist. The Stakes are the counter-force constantly pushing the protagonist forward in spite of this heavy resistance. Therefore, for a dramatic conflict to be plausible, the force of the Stakes pushing the protagonist forward must be as strong or even stronger than the power of the Conflict opposing the protagonist. No matter how much pain or misery the Conflict throws the protagonist's way, the Stakes must be large enough to keep him/her fighting on.

Great movies have big stakes. We constantly see movies where, if the main character should fail, they will lose their home, the people they love, or very often their lives. Even if the stakes may not seem very big to the outside world, they should still seem hugely important to the character: such as a story of a character fighting for self-respect, or of a young boy dying to kiss his schoolyard crush.

When a script lacks Stakes, character actions seem arbitrary and implausible. A character will seem to foolishly throw themselves into risky and dangerous situations for no good reason. With each escalating action, the script will turn off the audience more and more because they will continue to ask “Why are they doing this? It's not natural. What's in it for them?”

Stakes are also key when it comes to orientating the audience – the way we communicate why story events are important and why the audience should invest their emotional energy into the story's outcome. If, for instance, the audience is watching a scene and knows that the outcome will decide a character's fate, they will be far more emotionally invested in the events than one where they are unaware of any potential consequences. Without a knowledge of what is to be gained or lost, the audience remains emotionally detached. Many times I am reading a script and everything seems okay – the plot is okay, structure and characters are good – but despite all this I find that I don't give a damn about anything that happens. I couldn't care if the characters lived or died. Nine times out of ten, this is because the script's Spine is missing its Stakes.



Now why is this structure called the Spine? Sure, my diagram sort of looks like a spine, but let's look at a spine's biological counterpart to find out why. In vertebrate animals, (mammals, birds, fish, reptiles...) the spine runs the entire length of the animal, from head to tail. The spine is what unites every part of the animal, joins every limb and appendage, connects the brain to every muscle to control movement. It is the body's system of support, its nerve center through which it moves and functions. It allows the cheetah to run, the shark to swim, and the human being to walk upright. Without their spines, these animals could not function – and neither can your script. Without a Story Spine, your script is a dramatic invertebrate. It is a slug, a worm, an unevolved piece of slime existing at the bottom of the dramatic food chain.

Now which would you rather your script to be? A cheetah? Or a slug?

(Next article: The Spine Expansion Pack, Part 1)