“First, Write the Ending”

by
Donald L. Vasicek

If you want to write screenplays that you can sell and
get produced, you might want to consider writing your
ending first. What? Yeah, well, check movies out that get
produced. You know, those you pay $8 to $10 to see in the
theater depending upon where you live and what time of the
day and week you go to see them, and then read about the
millions of dollars they made at the box office each weekend.

In almost every one of these movies, inevitably, the
end is the defining moment in top box office movies. It is
where the main character experiences an epiphany. The main
character is challenged to confront and conquer his fatal
flaw or go down to defeat. If you want to write
screenplays that you can sell and get produced, you must
build your screenplay to this moment in the movie. The
tension must be wound so tightly that it feels as though
everything is going to pop, like the drawn string racing
from the fingers of an archer. SNAP!

How can you create this kind of tension that is so
necessary in great drama unless you know where you are
going in your screenplay? The villain (in fiction, the
villain represents evil) or the antagonist (in fiction, the
antagonist can represent someone or something that is not
evil, but who or what is competing with your main character
or protagonist for the golden ring) must represent your
main character’s fatal flaw. In other words, what your
villain or antagonist seeks or has is what your main
character has been seeking to overcome (your main
character’s goal)throughout your screenplay. So, you must
have your main character defeat the villain or antagonist
in order to overcome his fatal flaw and win.

The movie, “Ransom”, starring Mel Gibson, is one of
many examples. Mel Gibson plays a good person. His son is
kidnapped by an evil man. Through a series of events,
Mel’s character has to become less and less nice with
others if he is to save his son until he is confronted with
defeating the kidnapper or losing his son forever. He is
forced to kill the kidnapper, and in true Hollywood
fashion, not only kill him, but obliterate him. Not that I
condone this kind of violence in movies, because I don’t,
but the example is there. When Mel’s character finally
overcomes his “niceness”, it is only then that he saves his
son.

Another example, in “Warriors of Virtue”, a $56
million MGM movie for which I was a writer/consultant,
Ryan, the main character seeks to conquer his disability,
he wears a brace on one leg. In order to accomplish this,
he has to overcome his fear of being too weak to succeed in
physically achieving. It all happens in the climax when he
is confronted by evil itself, Komodo. Will Ryan win, or
will Komodo win? It all circulates around Ryan’s
disability which is really in his mind even though he has a
disabled leg. Komodo wants to destroy Ryan. How will Ryan
escape? Or can Ryan stand his ground and defeat Komodo?

How did nine writers and four producers arrive at this
ending/climax? By determining beforehand how we wanted the
movie to end. We spent days and weeks obsessing over this.
The question was, what was Ryan’s goal and how does he
achieve it? How could we attract an audience and
incorporate this story idea? A teen boy. Did he smoke?
Shoplift? Beat up other kids? Or run away from fights?
Was he physically strong or physically weak? What kind of
boy was Ryan?

With his disability, we knew we had to come
up with something that gave him no possible way to achieve
his goal because that’s what high concept movies are all
about, to have the main character overcome all odds and
win. One of the producers came up with the suggestion that
Ryan is afraid of life because of his physical disability.

How could we write a story where he could learn how to
overcome his fear of life because he is physically
disabled, and thus, inept with respect to physical
activities of most all teen boys? Well, I suggested, let’s
first look at how he will be after he wins at the end of
the movie. I suggested we create a character
transformation arc. In order to this, I suggested that we
take Ryan from a fearful boy to a confident young man.
Between that kind of beginning and that kind of ending, I
suggested we build the arc. So, I asked, how will Ryan
defeat his fatal flaw and Komodo?

The producers told us to each write the ending/climax.
A combination of endings appeared. It wasn’t easy.
Actually, writing the ending first felt like trying to
empty the Pacific Ocean with a coffee cup. After several
hours of musing over the endings which the writers wrote,
the producers sent off two writers to write the screenplay
with a couple of endings they selected. Eight months
later, they called me to rewrite their draft. The first
thing I looked at was the ending. The first thing I did
was rewrite was the ending.

Three years later, “Warriors of Virtue”, was released
in over 2,000 theaters in the United States. On a Sunday
afternoon I slipped into the theater with my wife to see
the movie, the theater was packed with kids and parents. I
watched the audience more than I watched the movie that
Sunday afternoon, particularly when the ending/climax
appeared. Guess what, I felt a special thrill when I
noticed the audience sliding closer and closer to the edge
of their seats as Ryan’s transformation evolved. At the
end/climax, many of them crouched from their seats to cheer
Ryan on as he defeated his fear and Komodo in a most
unusual way. It was at that point I was convinced that
writing endings first in my screenplays is one way to write
screenplays that sell and get produced.

Donald L. Vasicek
Olympus Films+, LLC
“Commitment to Professionalism”
http://michaelc.nextmp.net/wordpress
dvasicek@earthlink.net

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