An essay in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch highlights the challenges viewers faced as they chose what to watch from the cable and TV shows that were broadcast Sunday night. The author, TV critic Gail Pennington, suggests that to consume the top 19 shows would've required placing a DVR in every room and it would've taken a week to watch them all.
During screenplay analysis class, I remember the large auditorium-style classroom at USC filled with directing and screenwriting students. Every week we watched an award-winning movie and studied its structure. When students signed in at the beginning of class and didn't return after break, the instructor asked us to sign in after we returned from break; he eventually required sign-ins at the end of the class, too.
It was a master's level course and at first I admired the students for the knowledge they must possess about structure of feature length films that allowed them to skip class.
Though I'd completed the master of professional writing at USC and had studied screenwriting and storytelling with incredible mentors, I kept taking courses. I wanted to feel confident writing screenplays and fiction outside of USC's safe cocoon.
The final test for the advanced screenplay analysis course was open book/open note, and it took me over eight hours to complete.
While at the beginning of the semester I'd been convinced many in the class knew much more than I did after completing the final I wondered -- if those students had stayed in class listening to each lecture would they have become paralyzed when they realized how much there is to know?
I was recently inspired by an article, "Is 'Conflict' a New Marketing Tool" that was published Feb. 23 at Knowledge@Wharton. The article contains examples about how the structure of conflict in feature films has been used as a tool in news, politics, sports and marketing to create content that breaks through immense mountains of content, defeating competitors and being discovered by overworked, over scheduled and exhausted potential audiences.
I've used one of the tools I use I learned about in advanced screenplay analysis class -- Want vs. Need -- in many writing projects. Want vs. Need was also included on the Advanced Screenwriting final test.
Because want is a universally understood concept, including it in a story, ad or marketing message is intriguing and compelling. Many know what it's like to want a dream job, to be accepted or to escape from debt.
What the protagonist wants is often different from what they need to become fulfilled -- what they truly need. During their journey to get what they want they become more and more self-aware and when they eventually get what they need they are ready to accept and appreciate it.
I used this storytelling device as I wrote an annual report feature story a few years ago. A husband and father wanted to divorce his wife. She had become hooked on prescription pain medication and was unable to care for herself or her children. I interviewed the couple and I remember him telling me how he had dropped her off at a mental health facility so she would become well enough that he could divorce her. It was his goal -- the thing he wanted.
However, he was asked to participate in therapy too. Then the powerful part of the story began to develop. As her treatment progressed and as she healed he also began to change, slowly understanding and loving her again. At the end of the story he received what he needed -- falling in love with his wife and choosing to stay married -- instead of what he had wanted -- for his wife to become well enough so that he could leave her.
Instead of a product or service fulfilling a want, showing the importance of a service or product using "Want vs. need" is a powerful screenwriting/storytelling device that can be used to develop memorable content.
