With the inciting incident done and our main character finding the body, it was time to get going with the story. So now the important question: what is our story?
We’ve established that it is the story of Clive Jackman and it all starts when he finds a body. But now I needed a reason for him to find the body.
My first idea was to make him some sort of a spy or secret agent. With James Bond and Jason Bourne and a plethora of other spy movies, I decided that was too cliche.
For that reason, I decided to make him a cop.
But not just any cop, a “detective.” A special kind of cop whose job it is to investigate crimes.
The revelations felt like the carving of a sculpture. I didn’t have a fully formed marble statue of David yet. However with each decision, I was getting closer and closer to a naked dude with average sized genitalia no matter what anyone else says.
Deciding what Clive’s story is is where the art of screenwriting comes in. After all, whose body does he find? Why is he searching the abattoir? When is he gonna bang the yet to be identified female lead?
These questions and more are what needed to be answered.
And the best way to do that is to start with the big picture and slowly zoom in. For this reason, the story will be divided into the three parts I mentioned earlier: Beginning, Middle, and End.
A fun exercise is to sum up each of these three parts in one sentence.
Beginning: Clive investigates the murder.
Middle: Clive is targeted by the killer.
End: Clive confronts the killer.
While this is a great start, it dawned on me that our short film is only going to be six or seven pages. For this reason, I tightened the plot up a bit:
Beginning: Clive learns of murder.
Middle: Clive ties his shoes.
End: Clive kills killer.
NEXT TIME: We discuss why the middle is sometimes referred to as “the muddle” and how to prevent other similar typos.
Aspiring Writer 