The Secret Of Life Through Screenwriting: How To Use The Law Of Attraction To Structure Your Screenplay, Create Characters, And Find Meaning In Your Script w4p13

The Secret of Life Through SCREENWRITING

How to Use the Law of Attraction to Structure Your Screenplay, Create Characters, and Find Meaning in Your Script

JOY CHERIEL BROWN

Copyright © 2019 Joy Cheriel Brown.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-3756-1 (sc) ISBN: 978-1-9822-3757-8 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/31/2019

CONTENTS

Prologue

-The secret of life is the law of attraction -Ask (Act I); Believe (Act II); Receive (Act III)

PART I—ASK

-What does asking entail?

Chapter 1 Make a Request to the Universe

-What does your script say about life—what do you as the writer want to communicate? -Premise Question -Three Act Structure Ask Believe Receive

-What request does your character make of the universe—outer goal -Inciting Incident

Chapter 2 A Reason, A Season, or A Lifetime

-Who are the other people who will accompany your protagonist on their journey? And what is their purpose in the story? -For a Season -For a Reason -For a Lifetime -Character Functions: Adversaries Mentors Confidants Love Interests -Relationships that Shape and Drive the Movie -Creating 3-Dimensional Characters -How does setting affect the story?

Chapter 3 Sacred Places

-Sacred Places within a Scene -Writing Scene Descriptions and Overwriting

PART II—BELIEVE

-What does believing entail? Creating a plan. Taking action. Overcoming obstacles.

Chapter 4 The Spiritual Journey

-How Limiting Beliefs Affect the Spiritual Journey -Positivity and Gratitude -Inner Wisdom

Chapter 5 Synchronicities

-Multiple storylines -Sequences -Scenes

-Synchronicities

PART III—RECEIVE

-How does your character receive what they asked for?

Chapter 6 Enlightenment—Coming to the End of Your Character’s Journey

-A Final Thought

PROLOGUE

Since the beginning of time when human beings gathered around the campfire, stories were told to make sense of life. But what if stories were about more than that? What if they are about more than capturing and reflecting back to us the day-to-day grind? What if stories told us the secret of life? I am here to tell you that that’s exactly what they do, and as human beings evolve, our knowledge and wisdom of how to have a successful, a.k.a. happy, life evolves, too. And I’m not talking about the messages that you usually get in fairy tales and comic book movies like “follow your heart” and “believe in yourself” and “good always triumphs over evil.” I’m talking about an actual formula that if you follow it, will give you a life that you love and will make all your dreams come true. Over the last decade, the popularity of the New Thought concept - the law of attraction - has grown by leaps and bounds. The basics of the law of attraction are that like attracts like and positive thoughts attract the right people, circumstances, and events to give you the life of your dreams—no matter who you are—as long as you understand how to master this law. To do that, you must first understand the three-step process of how the law of attraction works— you must first ask, then you believe, and finally you receive. This also happens to be how a movie is structured—Act I: Ask; Act II: Believe; and Act III: Receive. As the years , Hollywood movies become more and more formulaic. Instead of giving you a formula, I am going to share a process, or approach, that will help you tell a meaningful story. A story that will also help millions of people have happier more fulfilling lives and learn how to manifest their dreams by learning the secret of life from the movies they watch, which will come from the screenplays you write.

Collective Consciousness

Each of us has probably lived many lifetimes. In these lifetimes we are different sexes, different races, and we have different lives where we learn numerous skills and distinct occupations that vary with each incarnation. Wikipedia describes collective consciousness as the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society. As mankind continues to incarnate, the collective consciousness also evolves. For example: Women were expected to stay home and raise the children since the beginning of time. However, after several incarnations of women who did just that, the collective consciousness changed to reflect the idea that women wanted careers and a sense of their own identity, not just to raise children. As a screenwriter, you help shape the collective consciousness. The world continues to change, not only technologically, but how the very fibers of society and longstanding institutions, mores, and norms are woven together.

PART I ASK

The first step in making the law of attraction work for you is to ask. You make a request to the universe, or a higher power if you prefer, for what you want to manifest in your life.

CHAPTER 1

MAKE A REQUEST TO THE UNIVERSE

W hat if I told you that you could have anything in life that you want by using a simple three-step process of ask, believe, and receive? Hopefully, if you’re one of the millions of people who have adopted the belief of the law of attraction, and consciously use it in your life, you will immediately be able to see how stories, and especially movies, teach us how to use the law of attraction and manifest our dreams and desires. If you’re a person who doesn’t believe in the law of attraction, or is skeptical about it, that’s okay, too, because you don’t have to believe in it for it to work. But knowing the three-step process of ask, believe, and receive helps bring meaning to what could otherwise be random events that are showing up in your life. A screenplay is broken down into three parts—Act I, Act II, and Act III. There are certain things that need to happen in each act of a movie. In Act I, the world and life of the protagonist is established, the characters are introduced, and something happens to take your protagonist out of their comfort zone, or even completely out of their world altogether. But there are other things that need to be taken into consideration even before you establish the life of your protagonist, create any characters, or decide what it is that your character wants to accomplish within the story of the script. The first thing you must decide as the writer, before tackling any of the aforementioned, is what you want to communicate with your script. Legendary producer, Samuel Goldwyn, is usually credited with saying, “If you have a message, send Western Union.” Obviously, I don’t agree with that. All great movies have a message. From the message in Jurassic Park about the foolishness of tampering with life and science to The Cider House Rules, which says that sometimes abortion is necessary no matter where you stand on the issue personally. But the key is to entertain the audience so well that they don’t realize that they are getting a message or being taught something about life.

Premise Questions

One way to communicate a message while entertaining an audience, so that they don’t realize it, is by starting with a premise question. A premise question is one that you ask during the stage where you are developing your story and outlining. It is a question that can be answered with either a yes or no in each scene of your script. Each scene should bring a relevancy with it. If a particular scene does not answer the premise question with a yes or no, or connect two scenes that do answer your premise question, then the scene should be eliminated. An example of a possible premise question for the first Jurassic Park could have been—Do humans have the right to play God even though they have the power to do so? From the first scene to the last, the contents of each should answer that question with a yes or no. The beauty of this method is that when you use this approach, you do not necessarily know with the first draft what the answer is going to be. By writing the script this way, you have the freedom to be inventive and creative and can even surprise yourself by the ending. Then when you go back to write the second draft, you can fine tune the scenes and make whatever it is you are trying to communicate crystal clear, which will be made evident while writing the first draft with a premise question, but not writing in a way that is onthe-nose. Let’s look at an example by using Jurassic Park with that first premise question we came up with—Do humans have the right to play God even though they have the power to do so? In the first scene of Jurassic Park, a new dinosaur is being brought into the park. There are many armed employees standing around with guns and Tasers in case things go awry, which of course, they do. One of the workers is killed by the caged dinosaur. So, if we look at the scene in of the premise question—Do humans have the right to play God even though they have the power to do so?— the answer would be no.

In the second scene, a lawyer has come to the Dominican Republic, where Isla Nubla is located, to meet with John Hammond, the creator of Jurassic Park, because of a lawsuit that has been filed by the family of the killed worker from the first scene. The lawyer is told that John Hammond is going to be with his daughter who is going through a divorce. The lawyer then explains that the insurance company raises some very serious safety issues about the park and he is there to do a very thorough onsite inspection. Many times the premise question is in the subtext of the scene. In this second scene of Jurassic Park, the answer to the premise question— Do humans have the right to play God even though they have the power to do so?—would also be no because the lawyer points out how dangerous the park is. The key is always to embed the premise question into the subtext of the scene—the characters should never ask the premise question outright. Let’s look at an example from the other movie mentioned earlier—The Cider House Rules—and what could have been a premise question for that movie—Is it okay to abort a child if the alternative is to have an unwanted orphan, an unhealthy baby, or a woman who has hurt herself trying to perform an abortion on herself? In the first scene, there is a train pulling into a station. We know right away that this isn’t present day because of that train. The film takes place around World War II. Then the voiceover, done by Michael Caine’s character, Dr. Wilbur Larch, talks about how the decision to even get off the train is not an easy one to make because it requires an earlier more difficult decision to make— add a child to your life or leave one behind, because the only reason people journey there is for the orphanage. Then the next scene is a couple going to the orphanage and being welcomed by one of the caregivers as Dr. Larch’s voiceover explains that he came to be a physician to the abandoned children and unhappy pregnant women. The answer to the premise question for those first two scenes may not be immediately recognizable, but once all of the scenes are put together in the first sequence, the answer to the premise question is yes.

Three Act Structure: Ask, Believe, and Receive

When I first started to write screenplays at the age of ten, I was most excited about creating characters and the relationships between those characters. But

when I finally met a screenwriter, who had sold a script and graciously read three of my screenplays, I learned that I hadn’t been writing screenplays correctly because I hadn’t been paying enough attention to structure. At the time, structure seemed like a necessary evil and a true appreciation for it didn’t develop until I was a senior in college and my Film Directing professor taught us a technique that actually, finally made everything click for me. After that, structuring the screenplay became my favorite and most important part of writing the script. It never made sense to me when English teachers would state what I thought was obvious—that a story has to have a beginning, middle, and end. I didn’t understand why they would say that until I became an English teacher myself and realized that not everyone understood the concept of beginning, middle, and end because there would be essays from my students that missed one or more of these three important components. Children learn how to write essays around the time they are in the 5th grade and are taught to write an introduction, the body of the essay, and the conclusion. This is essentially the same way a screenplay is structured. In an essay, the introduction introduces your topic; in the body, you talk about the main points or facts that your thesis statement (premise question for a screenplay); and in the conclusion, you sum it all up. In a screenplay, the introduction—Act I—introduces all the major characters, the world in which the protagonist lives, sets up the story, and establishes the protagonist’s outer goal. The body of the screenplay—Act II—presents complications and obstacles that prevent the protagonist from accomplishing their goal. The conclusion of the screenplay—Act III—resolves all the conflict and shows us whether or not the protagonist accomplishes their outer goal. It also gives us a yes or no answer to the premise question you created to structure your screenplay. When using the three-step process of the law of attraction, Act I does all of the aforementioned things, but what becomes most important is what the protagonist is asking from the universe. In the movie Love, Simon about a closeted high school senior named Simon who doesn’t want his school, friends, or family to know that he’s gay, it appears that his goal throughout the movie is to keep his classmate, Martin, from revealing his secret. But actually, Simon’s “ask” to the universe is for someone to love. In order to get the object of his desire, which is

a fellow classmate who hides his identity from Simon by calling himself Blue in the emails they exchange, Simon must do all that he can to keep their emails secret. Act II, which corresponds with the second step of the three-step process of the law of attraction - to believe - involves complications and obstacles just as it would in any movie, but believing also involves taking inspired action and conquering limiting beliefs. Using the example of Simon in Love, Simon, his misplaced inspired action is to go along with Martin’s plan to blackmail him. Inspired action in real life comes from your intuition and spirit guides giving you gentle nudges of what step to take next. But when you take action from a place of fear, which is what Simon does, it only causes complications, mayhem, and disaster, and leads to the low point that comes at the end of Act II that propels the character into Act III. Act III in the three-step law of attraction process is to receive. This is the Act where the protagonist will either get what they requested from the universe or not. In real life, when you make a request to the universe, what you want is already on its way to you. But if it doesn’t show up in your experience, it is because you haven’t allowed it. In the example of Simon, fear was preventing him from getting what he wants. Fear stops you from allowing, and so do limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs that your character holds will stop them from getting what they want. I will discuss each section of the screenplay that uses the law of attraction process in more detail in subsequent chapters, but I want to talk about the outer goal next.

What Request Does Your Protagonist Make To The Universe?

When I started writing screenplays as a kid, the concept of an outer goal was kind of confusing. The way that it was explained to me was that it had to be something tangible—something that the protagonist could possess by the end of the movie. This was interesting to me because even as a young child I knew that the real gift at the end of the movie is the transformation that the character goes through. When you watch certain foreign films, the protagonist doesn’t always have a tangible outer goal, and I hate to it that when this is the case, I

personally lose focus as an audience member. I find myself asking, “What are they trying to accomplish again? Why am I watching this?” Without a tangible outer goal, I can’t justify sitting around for two hours while the protagonist has esoteric musings. No wonder that myth got started that we only use 10 percent of our brains. One day we will evolve to the point where we won’t have to use a tangible outer goal, but we are not there, yet. With the law of attraction, when a person makes a request to the universe, they are simply saying, or even thinking, what it is that they want. Like in a movie, this needs to be specific, and also like in a movie, if this is not something tangible—like a boyfriend or girlfriend, a prize or reward, a house, a business, a street named after the protagonist, a job, a baby, a family— anything tangible— how will the audience know that the protagonist got what they wanted? Now, listen, I know that it’s not possible to possess a person in real life—people who don’t know this usually experience very painful relationships—but for the sake of the script you’re writing, let’s pretend that it is possible to obtain another person. Making a request to the universe in a screenplay is simply establishing an outer goal. What does your character want? This is what their “ask” is. Of course, your character doesn’t literally ask the universe this. They’re not praying for it or going to a religious person, shaman, or genie. No, no, no. It’s more sophisticated than that. It’s all in the subtext. For example, in Love, Simon, it isn’t till the movie is almost over that he says that he has a pretty great life and wants someone to share it with, but we know that’s what he wants from the beginning. When your character makes a request to the universe—they do so through subtext and actions.

Inciting Incident

There is one more thing that I want to say about Act I before we move on to talk about characters. During the process of your protagonist making a request to the universe, the inciting incident needs to happen halfway through Act I. Now, I am not a fan of using a formula to write a screenplay because if the formula works

then everybody uses it and movies become stale, predictable, and boring. But there are certain things that need to happen at certain places in the story—the inciting incident, Plot Point #1, the midway point, and Plot Point #2. Outside of that, you have complete freedom. The inciting incident is that event that happens halfway through Act I that foreshadows that the protagonist is going to have to go outside their comfort zone. In Love, Simon, Simon Spier is just minding his business going about life and enjoying his senior year. When he finds out that there is a closeted guy who goes to his high school by the name of Blue on the school’s gossip blog, it is hinted that Simon’s life is going to change when he sends Blue an email. This is the inciting incident—NOT Plot Point #1. Plot Point #1 takes the protagonist out of their comfort zone; the inciting incident only hints that this will happen to the protagonist. Plot Point #1 in this movie is when Martin blackmails Simon into helping Martin get close to Simon’s friend, Abby, who he has a crush on, or else he will expose the fact that Simon is gay to the entire school. Act I is dedicated to the “ask,” which is establishing the outer goal. But to do this, you have to establish the world that the protagonist lives in, setup the story, choose the inciting incident, and create the first Plot Point, which all takes 20-30 minutes in a 90-120 minute movie (typically a page equals a minute of screen time). But that’s not the only thing that happens in Act I. Act I also establishes the characters and relationships that will populate the entire movie, and we will talk about that in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 2 A REASON, A SEASON, OR A LIFETIME

T here are two ways to look at life: One way is that life is chaotic and everything that happens is random and meaningless. Another way is that everything happens for a reason. When writing a screenplay, you want to adopt the second outlook if you want your script to have meaning. Just like every piece of dialogue has to serve a purpose within the framework of the story, the same goes for your characters. With the law of attraction, the only way someone ends up in your experience is if you’re on the same frequency. The universe is made up of energy and every person and thing in it has a frequency at which they vibrate. Like attracts like so if two characters end up in the same space, something about them has attracted them to each other. They are either from the same family or town, currently have the same need or desire, or possess some other similarity that puts them on the same frequency. If you have a character in your story, that character’s presence has to serve some type of purpose. Just like in life, people may be in your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When creating characters, one of the first things you want to determine is what role that character plays in the life of your protagonist.

For a Reason

Characters that are in your protagonist’s life for a reason are there simply for your character to learn a lesson. This character may or may not be a part of your protagonist’s life when the movie starts, but they definitely won’t be a part of your protagonist’s life when the movie is over. A perfect example of this is in My Best Friend’s Wedding when Julianne is sitting on the floor in the hotel

hallway outside her room, at her wit’s end, and the bellman tells her, “In time, this too shall .” A character that is in the story for a reason can be there for the duration of the story or for a few minutes, but the character’s purpose is to teach a lesson to the protagonist so that they grow and change and transform by the end of the movie. In Mr. Holland’s Opus, Glenn Holland teaches each of the students that he has a major impact on during the duration of the movie—Gertrude Lang, Louis Russ, and Rowena Morgan—a life lesson, which essentially is to believe in themselves through music. Even though the movie covers 500 days of Tom’s relationship with Summer in the movie (500) Days of Summer, he is in her life for one reason and one reason only—so that Summer learns to believe in love. Once those 500 days are over, they go their separate ways, unlikely to ever see each other again. The reason for them being in each other’s lives is over. Before I Fall is a teen movie that is structured exactly like the classic movie, Groundhog’s Day. Sam lives the last day of her life over and over again until she gets it right. Even though each of these characters—from her boyfriend, Rob, to her best friends Lindsay, Ally, and Elody, to her childhood friends Kent and Anna, and especially Juliet—have been in her life since she was a child. On the last day of her life, they are there to teach her who she really is and not to behave like the bitch she has become. Nothing is going to change this from being her last day, but the cycle won’t stop till the reason for these people being in her life becomes apparent to her. This is similar to the movie Mean Girls. The Plastics—Regina, Gretchen, and Karen—are in Cady’s life to teach her that popularity isn’t everything. And her friends, Janice and Damian, are in her life to teach her about loyalty and how to be a true friend. In Five Feet Apart, the protagonist, Stella, and her love interest, Will, are in each other’s short lives so that they can experience what it feels like to be in love. Every character in your script doesn’t have to be a “reason” person. In Definitely, Maybe, only Summer Hartley is a “reason” character because her character provides contrast. It shows Will that he doesn’t want to be with

someone who puts her career above her relationship.

For a Season

People who are in your character’s life for a season are there to help your character grow in some way as a person, not necessarily to be taught one specific life lesson as the characters do when they are in your character’s life for a reason. Some of the scripts that include “reason” characters can also include “season” characters. For example, even though Glenn Holland is in each of his student’s lives in Mr. Holland’s Opus for a reason, they are also collectively in his life for a season because during the 30 years that he teaches high school music, he grows as a person and learns that there is more than one way to show a love and appreciation for music other than creating it. Likewise, in (500) Days of Summer, Tom is in Summer’s life for a reason—to teach her that love is real—but Summer is in Tom’s life for a season, where he grows and learns not to look at love, or infatuation, through rose-colored glasses. Oftentimes, the protagonist can be the character that is there for a season. Typically, the goal is for the protagonist to grow and change, but if they don’t, then everyone else around them should. In that case, your protagonist becomes the “season” character like John Keating in Dead Poets Society or Coach Boone in the Titans or Erin Gruwell in Freedom Writers. Unlike Glenn Holland who does change after a “season” in Mr. Holland’s Opus, in these other films, the student’s lives are changed. Sometimes one person can come into your life and turn your whole world upside down as Jamie does to Landon in A Walk to . At the end of that movie, Landon is a completely different person. The same can be said of Evelyn Couch after she meets Ninny Threadgoode in Fried Green Tomatoes. After hearing Ninny’s stories about Idgie and Ruth, Evelyn takes her life into her own hands and is no longer the victim.

In another example, the season in which the characters are in each other’s lives can take up the whole expanse of the movie. This is what happens in the movies Big Eyes and Seabiscuit. In Big Eyes, Margaret Keane is married to Walter Keane for 10 years and the movie covers this time. He is a “season” character because his presence in her life ultimately teaches her to stand up for herself despite the many years he took credit for her work. Similarly, in Seabiscuit, the Howards, Tom Smith, and Red Pollard come together to race the horse, Seabiscuit, but end up fixing each other in the process and inspire the nation during the Great Depression.

For a Lifetime

Lifetime characters are those that are a part of the protagonist’s life for their whole lives, or they come into the protagonist’s life during childhood, or later, and stay for the remainder of their life. If this is the case, then they are lifetime characters even if the protagonist goes years without seeing them. Usually those characters are family like in This Is Where I Leave You; The Family Stone; and The Farewell. But a lifetime character can even be a mate who the protagonist divorces during the course of the movie who will still be around because the couple has children together—as is the case with Dean and Cindy in Blue Valentine and Will and Emily in Definitely, Maybe. Or the protagonist and this lifetime person may be divorced and have children together but would stay a part of each other’s lives anyway to run a business together like in the movie, Joy. Or they have known each other since childhood and may be divorced with no children but would be there for each other during hard times regardless because they are lifetime people like in Celeste & Jesse Forever. Lifetime characters often represent stability for the protagonist or moral . When it comes to the law of attraction, everything happens for a reason, and your characters all play a specific role, or function, in the protagonist’s life.

Character Functions

Once you determine if your character is in the life of the protagonist for a reason, season, or a lifetime, then you must determine what function your character plays in relation to your protagonist. In real life, we all often have past life or karmic connections to the people who show up in our day-to-day lives. We might have a debt to repay to someone who might have saved our lives or shown us an act of kindness in a past life. Or with a person who plays an adversarial role in our lives, we might have issues that still need to be worked on in this lifetime from a past life. Or there are some souls who we just love and want to be with over and over again in multiple lifetimes. We play the functions in each other’s lives on a daily basis as adversaries, mentors, confidants, and/or love interests. So when you’re writing your script, you want to ask yourself for each character what function they play. Are they an adversary, mentor, confidant, or love interest?

Adversaries

I love all my characters, and if for some reason I can’t love them, then I at least need to understand them. This should be doable because there are no bad characters. Just like you should never tell a child they are bad, you should never label a character as bad either. They just perform actions and have ways and viewpoints that we don’t agree with, but they are not bad. When you take this approach to creating a character, then that character becomes more alive and more 3-dimensional, not 1-dimensional and flat with no depth. Does every script have an adversary? Not necessarily. If you look at The Cider House Rules, I would consider Dr. Larch to be Homer’s mentor, but he is actually the adversary as well because he wants Homer to perform abortions and Homer doesn’t agree. Whenever you have a protagonist trying to accomplish an outer goal (which should be always), there is going to be some opposition getting in your

protagonist’s way. When the opposition is something that is not specific like “society” or “government,” then you need to create a character that represents this “society” or “government.” In the movie, Corrina, Corrina, the issue of interracial relationships comes up because something is developing between Corrina, a Black woman, and the White single dad whose daughter she is nanny to. The movie takes place in 1959, so of course society is against this, but in the movie this is represented by actual people—Corrina’s sister, Manny’s mother, and the next door neighbor. A similar film, I Am Sam, where society is also the opposition, the main representation of this is a social worker, Margaret Calgrove, and the state appointed lawyer, Turner, in Sam’s custody case where he, a mentally disabled man, is fighting to retain custody of his daughter. The government is after John Anderton in Minority Report. John works for the government but is accused of a crime that he will commit in the future. He goes on the run, and the character that goes after him, Danny Witwer, is an FBI agent —the character that represents the government as John’s adversary. Louise Banks, in the film Arrival, is given the task by the government to learn the language of the newly arrived alien beings, but soon those who seem to be on her side, army colonel Weber and CIA agent Halper, become not necessarily adversaries, but believe that things should be done a slightly different way than Louise. Thus, this provides conflict. Although they are from the military and CIA, they are operating from a place of fear. In Spotlight, the Catholic Church is the adversary to the group of journalists that are writing an expose of the systematic abuse of children by priests. But the Catholic Church is represented in human form by Cardinal Law and the various of the Boston community where their newspaper is located. When you make your protagonist’s adversary a specific rather than general threat, the stakes are immediately raised. An actual person is always scarier to an audience than a vague institution and will also prove to be more menacing to your protagonist. As I mentioned earlier, unless you are writing a script that has a fairy tale or comic book hero, your adversary doesn’t have to be a 1-dimensional bad guy (I do exempt Thanos from being a 1-dimensional comic book villain because I’ve

always found him to be quite complex in the movie portrayals of him; I would also like to exempt the villains in the Batman franchise directed by Christopher Nolan). The adversary in your script should have a backstory and needs to be just as complex as your protagonist. Always that your villain doesn’t think of themselves as a bad person, and most likely their family and friends don’t either. Your villain should wholeheartedly believe they are doing the best thing for the higher good of all, or at least the higher good for their friends and family. However, when looking at the concept of the law of attraction, that most likely means that your adversary’s motivation comes from a place of fear— even if the adversary themselves think it’s from a place of love. You, as the writer, know that the primary motivator is fear.

Mentors

When we look at our lives and the roles we play in each other’s lives, there are times when we are the teacher, and there are times when others are our teachers. It is my belief that whenever we go through great change in our lives, or any kind of transformation or catharsis, there is a teacher there. I believe wholeheartedly that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Therefore, I believe that most movies have a mentor character, even if they are only there for one scene or a few minutes of screen time. The mentor character in movies like Dead Poets Society, the Titans, and Mr. Holland’s Opus are glaringly obvious, but the mentor character can be any character that offers guidance or advice to the protagonist. In (500) Days of Summer, Tom’s younger sister (she is literally a child), Rachel, is the mentor character. Every time Tom is extremely befuddled about Summer, which is often, Rachel is there to offer advice and guidance and a bit of a reality check. It is extremely intriguing to me when the mentor character is also the adversary. This is the case in The Cider House Rules—Dr. Larch has taught Homer everything he knows, but he is also the character that stands in the way of Homer’s independence the most. And my favorite adversarial mentor of all time is Alonzo in Training Day, who is training Jake how to be a cop, but is an extremely crooked one himself.

Confidants

I taking a screenwriting class where the instructor said that using voiceover, or more specifically, a narrator, that doesn’t offer any insight that is not already being shown on the screen, means that you are a bad writer. Of course, that was his opinion, but I have never used a narrator in any of my screenplays because I enjoy the challenge of finding other ways to display the information that the narrator would give. I do allow that a narrator might be a good idea in a book adaptation because often so much of the character was created to be in their own head. However, one way around needing a narrator is creating a confidant character. The function of the confidant character has less to do with the law of attraction and more to do with telling the audience the inner workings of the protagonist. Of course, you want to show versus tell, but even that is easier when you have a character that fills the role of confidant. In (500) Days of Summer, Tom has two characters that fill the confidant role. McKenzie is his confidant for the scenes where he is at work, which is also where Summer works. And Paul is Tom’s married friend who has already found “the one,” and can give Tom practical advice. Paul is also the complete opposite from McKenzie who doesn’t have a lot of relationship experience, just like Tom. Charlie Jaffey, Molly’s lawyer in Molly’s Game, is her confidant, even though the story is told in voiceover with Molly’s narration. Often the confidant can also hold another role besides confidant such as love interest or mentor. In Love, Simon, Blue is not only Simon’s love interest but the audience’s way to know what Simon is thinking and feeling. W.F. Gerald in The Only Living Boy in New York is both Thomas’ mentor and confidant. Joel’s confidants in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are Carrie and Rob when he needs to talk about Clementine, but any other time, Clementine, who is also Joel’s love interest, is his confidant.

In Interstellar, before Coop goes to space, his father-in-law, Donald, is his confidant, but once he goes to space, the confidant role switches to fellow astronaut, Amelia Brand. For ensemble pieces like This Is Where I Leave You, various characters may serve as confidants to different characters. For example, in this movie, Wendy is Judd’s confidant, and in turn, Judd is Phillip’s confidant. Not every movie has a confidant character. In Arrival, Ian would probably be Louise’s confidant, as well as her love interest, but because keeping this as inconspicuous as possible makes the big reveal at the end work, Louise doesn’t actually divulge much of her inner life to him.

Love Interests

Not every protagonist has a love interest, but when they do, this character is the person that the protagonist wants to have a relationship with by the end of the movie like Maddy and Ollie in Everything, Everything. This is usually the case in a romance or romantic comedy—the relationship is the tangible goal that the protagonist wants by the end of the movie, like Barry who wants a relationship with Lena by the end of Punch-Drunk Love. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was so original because the protagonist, Joel, wanted to forget his love interest, Clementine, but by the midway point, he changed his mind completely and wants to hold on to her memory. But the relationship turned out to be the end goal anyway. When the love interest is not the tangible goal, then the relationship is simply a storyline in the overall story. For example, in The Cider House Rules, Homer wants to see the world. He plans to be of use. A relationship with Candy is not the outer goal, but it does serve as a subplot that goes along with experiencing the world. In Before I Fall, it seems that the love interest character for Sam is Rob, but it is actually Kent. For your protagonist to experience character growth, everything at

the end of the movie has to be in the opposite state than it was at the beginning of the movie. At the beginning of Before I Fall, Sam thinks she’s in love with Rob, but by the end, she knows she’s in love with Kent. However, a relationship with either of them is not the main goal of the movie so it only serves as a subplot.

Relationships That Drive and Shape the Movie

As I have mentioned before, not every character function shows up in every movie. Your script may not have an adversary, mentor, confidant, or love interest. That is fine, but if your script doesn’t have a designated adversary, then the relationships need to drive the story and shape the movie. What that means, in short, is that the conflict that comes from the relationships between the characters is what moves the story forward. One of my favorite movies where the relationships drive and shape the story is 3 Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. In this movie, Mildred is a mother who lives in Missouri and her daughter was raped while dying and nobody has been arrested for her murder. In an effort to keep her daughter a priority for the police department in her town, she rents three billboards that point the finger at Police Chief Willoughby for not having made any arrests. But Chief Willoughby is not the enemy. We see from his responses and actions towards Mildred that he’s on Mildred’s side, more than even Mildred herself can know, which she comes to understand after Chief Willoughby commits suicide. And even though the character, Dixon, has an antagonizing personality, he is not the antagonist. The conflict in the script comes from how the characters respond and interact with each other—a resolution of the conflict between characters is what moves this story forward. Movies made up of family portrayed by an ensemble cast are also stories where the conflict is provided through the relationships of the characters (although one character will stick out from the others— this will be the protagonist’s perspective for the audience). Movies that fit this mold are family dramedies like The Family Stone; This Is Where I Leave You; and The Farewell. In these movies, the conflict between siblings is often at the center of the story.

As the story progresses, the conflict (relationships) intensifies until the relationships are resolved—at least for the time being—at the end of the movie in Act III. When you have a script where the plot is driven by the relationships, it is a good idea to designate whether the characters in the protagonist’s life are there for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.

Creating 3-Dimensional Characters

I have spent a lot of time discussing just about every character other than the protagonist. It should go without saying that your protagonist has to carry the whole story so they should be 3- dimensional and interesting. There are many techniques that I use when creating characters, not just the protagonist, which include creating a list of 30 or more questions that explore every aspect of a character, including backstory, past relationships with other characters in the script or from their childhood, political party affiliation, religious views— everything that makes them who they are. I also use birth order and the 16 Personality Types developed by Carl Jung, Katherine C. Briggs, and Isabel Briggs Myers. I either use a combination of all three techniques, or at least one, but I usually use all three. However, when you look at a screenplay from the perspective of the three-step process of ask, believe, and receive, it is important to pay attention to what would stop a character from receiving, and the answer to that is limiting beliefs. A limiting belief is a belief that stops us from manifesting our desires. Our reality reflects what we believe, from as deeply as our subconscious mind. An example from a movie would be Homer’s belief in The Cider House Rules that he’s not qualified to be a doctor even though he has been trained by Dr. Larch. Also, in Punch-Drunk Love, Barry believes that he is single because he is weird and doesn’t like himself. Often the plot will include situations that help your protagonist overcome their limiting beliefs. Of course, your characters’ limiting beliefs do not need to be obvious to the

audience as long as they are obvious to you. Your characters’ limiting beliefs are directly related to their inner goals and inner growth, which we will discuss in more detail in a later chapter.

CHAPTER 3 SACRED PLACES

E verything is made of energy, and there are places in the world where the energy field is stronger than in other places. I point this out to remind you of how important setting can be to your story. It can be so important that it is almost like another character itself. There are some movies that could take place anywhere. For example, the movie, Love, Simon, could have taken place in any suburb other than where the story is actually located in Suburban Georgia. But even with Love, Simon, you could take the same story and set it in the Middle East, for example, and the story would drastically change. When you are planning your screenplay, think about where your story takes place. This will affect how your characters think and act and what story beats would actually be plausible for your setting. An example of this is the story of Lars and the Real Girl. It doesn’t seem like the setting of this movie would be very relevant. It is about a man named Lars who is in his late 20s. He orders a sex doll from the Internet and delusionally believes that she is his girlfriend. The movie takes place in a small Minnesotan town where it snows a lot in the winter. The setting is important because they live in a town with a close knit community, and they decide that instead of ostracizing Lars, they will go along with his delusion. Other story beats that go with that particular setting include the fact that the town general practitioner is also a psychiatrist; that Lars is extremely proud of his ability to cut wood; and when the girl who has a crush on Lars wants to shake hands after they bowl together, she has to remove her glove to do so (a good portion of the movie the town is covered in snow), and Lars doesn’t like to be touched. Another movie that takes place in Minnesota is The Mighty Ducks. The setting is important in this movie because it has to take place in a state where people are very ionate about Pee Wee Hockey. In a place like Minnesota, it would be plausible that you would find many hockey rinks and that the lakes freeze over

during the winter—at least they did in the ‘90s, which is when this movie was made. Setting was also important in the movie Friday Night Lights for a similar reason as The Mighty Ducks. Nobody does high school football like they do in Texas. Everything in the town of Odessa, Texas, was centered around its high school football team. Without this setting, which was based on the actual town of Odessa, this story wouldn’t have been as poignant as it was. The Cider House Rules was unique because of its setting in Maine—being near the beach; apple orchards, where the migrant workers had to come help with the harvest; and lobster fishing were all pertinent to the story of Homer going into the real world outside the orphanage where he was raised so that he could be of use. I having the realization as a child that Chicago was the perfect setting for Home Alone, basically because some of Kevin’s hijinks required it to be cold and icy, and Chicago is a snowy, icy city during the wintertime. October Sky is another movie where the setting affects the story and the characters’ actions. Homer Hickam dreams of going to college and getting out of his small town of Coalwood, West Virginia, but when he starts to build rockets with his friends in order to win a science fair and get a scholarship, his dad reminds him that everyone in their town works at the coal mine and he better get used to that idea instead of shooting off rockets. The city of Boston was the perfect location for the movie Spotlight. In any other city, it may have been easier for a group of journalists to write an expose on the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Catholic Church, but in Boston, where most of the inhabitants are Catholic and the Church has so much power, it was nearly impossible. When looking at setting in of the law of attraction, where Act I includes the ask, which is the outer goal that establishes what your protagonist wants to accomplish, we should look at our own lives for inspiration as well. Many of us chose to incarnate to this planet to accomplish very specific goals, and in doing so, being born in a certain country or part of the world, would make it easier for us to accomplish the purpose for which we came to this planet. The same goes for your story—where is the best, or most sacred, place where this story needs to

be told?

Sacred Places Within a Scene

When constructing a scene, you will often want to take into consideration how a specific setting contributes to the subtext of what you’re trying to communicate within that scene alone. For example, in This Is Where I Leave You, Judd and his siblings have gathered at their childhood home to sit shiva and mourn the death of their father. Judd and his younger brother, Phillip, go to smoke a t during the service at the synagogue, and it is apropos that they are in one of the children’s classrooms because they are reminiscing about their father from when they were children, and Judd can’t think of any memories of their father. Setting doesn’t just include location, but also the time period in which the movie takes place. In Blue Valentine, the present day part of the movie takes place around the Fourth of July holiday. This is interesting because the couple—Dean and Cindy—are having problems in their marriage and it looks like they are going to get independence from one another if they get a divorce. Moreover, when they go to a motel to work on their relationship, it is ironic because the only room left is the future room, and they don’t seem to have a future together.

Writing Scene Descriptions and Overwriting

Before I had ever seen an actual screenplay, I used to imagine what they looked like. I wondered if by reading the script, I would get extra details like character motivations or what the characters were thinking. That is not what a screenplay is like at all. What I was picturing was a novel, and a screenplay is not written anything like a novel. And it is not a play either. The only thing in the script is what we see or hear on screen. If you are not the director, you shouldn’t even put camera angles in the script.

Your screenplay needs to be formatted correctly. To accomplish this, you will want to invest in screenwriting software. The best known and most widely used screenwriting software is Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter. I prefer Movie Magic Screenwriter because I’m also a producer, and Movie Magic has a program for you to breakdown the script and schedule it and to create a budget for it. Don’t try to format your script in a Word Document. It won’t come out right, and anyone in the industry would be able to take one glance at your script and see that you are a novice. This is the part of the book where I tell you to read screenplays. You can often find many of the screenplays I have mentioned in this book online, such as at The Daily Script and Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDB). As I mentioned earlier, a screenplay is no place for the inner thoughts of characters. But you also don’t want to give too much detail about what the characters are wearing—that is the wardrobe person or costumer’s job. In fact, you would only mention what a character is specifically wearing if it pertains to the storyline in some way, or if perhaps it gives you some pertinent insight into the character when they are first introduced. But basically you want to when you write a screenplay that you are using an economy of words to tell a story. Writing with an economy of words means that you are only writing what is absolutely necessary to get your point across. This pertains to scene description as well as dialogue, and with dialogue, you only write it if it advances the story. I am going to give you an example of overwriting when it comes to describing the room of a teenager who is still living in her childhood bedroom:

Overwritten:

Charlotte is 15, but this is a room of a little girl’s dreams—there is a gigantic dollhouse in the corner that is painted white and looks like a miniature prop from Gone with the Wind. Everything in the room is pink—from the walls to the carpet on the floor to the bedspreads to the canopy. There are childhood dolls

everywhere, and the rocking chair makes you think of her mother rocking her to sleep as a baby.

With an Economy of Words:

This is a teenager’s room, but everything is bubble gum pink and includes many relics of a much younger child. , your job is to evoke a particular image in the reader’s mind, but you must do it with as few words as possible while ing not do someone else’s job in the process. With the above example, the second one that uses an economy of words, allows the production designer or art director to use her own creativity with the image you evoked by only using one sentence. You did your job by creating an image, and then you allow the other professionals to do their jobs.

PART II BELIEVE

The second step in making the law of attraction work for you is to believe. Believing entails more than just thinking about what you want and simply waiting for it to show up in your life. Believing involves taking inspired action, which in a nutshell means to make a plan, take action on that plan, and overcome whatever obstacles that may come your way.

CHAPTER 4 THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

B efore we come here, each one of us makes a decision to whether or not we want to incarnate to Earth on the physical plane. We come here as spiritual beings to have a physical experience. And while we are enjoying physicality, our higher self wants us to grow spiritually. All of us have a reason, or reasons, as to why we wanted to come here—our purpose—and our purpose can be as simple as to make baked goods for friends and family or as complicated as making a scientific breakthrough. Often during the course of our screenplay, our protagonist is discovering their life purpose, and if it is not their overall life purpose, it is at least the character’s purpose throughout the course of the script. The character’s purpose is different from the outer goal because the purpose deals with the inner workings of the character, and ultimately spiritual growth and transformation. When we incarnate to Earth, we understand that we will not have any memory of our prehuman existence or any of our past lives. We start with a clean slate, so to speak. And the fun comes in ing who we truly are. But that is also the challenge. We see this over and over again in movies as we do in life. Here are a few examples: In This Is Where I Leave You, Judd’s sister, Wendy, reminds him that he doesn’t do complicated. During the rest of the movie, it’s as if Judd has to push past his limitations and prove to himself that going outside his comfort zone and embracing complicated would be good for him. As human beings, we are a spark of the divine and we are more powerful than we . Judd has forgotten that he has the ability to handle whatever comes his way, including but not limited to a cheating wife, job loss, and the death of his father. As mentioned in chapter 2, we always have people in our lives to help us, whether they are there for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. In Judd’s case, his people are lifetime people—his siblings and his mother. By the end of the movie, Judd is confident that he can embrace complicated.

While the outer goal refers to what the protagonist will tangibly possess, the purpose of the character relates to how the character will feel fulfilled. In This Is Where I Leave You, Judd’s purpose for the space of the script is to have a memory of him and his father so that he can find closure. The character’s purpose, whether only for this script or for the life of the character, refers to the character’s inner life. An example of the character’s life purpose, which pertains to their entire life not just what the script is about, can be found in movies like Joy and October Sky. In the movie, Joy, Joy Mangano is a struggling single mother who is also holding her parents’ lives together, but she knows she is meant for more. She knows she is meant to be an inventor. Being an inventor is related to her life purpose, not just her purpose in the movie. The other example can be found in October Sky. As mentioned earlier, Homer Hickam lives in the coal mining town of Coalwood, West Virginia. Everyone who lives in the town basically works in the mine and that is what Homer is expected to do, too. But Homer’s purpose is to make rockets or be somehow involved in space exploration, though his outer goal in the film is to win a scholarship. Joy Mangano and Homer Hickam are movie characters based on real people but fictional characters can also have a purpose. In The Cider House Rules, Homer Wells has lived in the orphanage ever since he was born and has been groomed by Dr. Larch to replace him—not only by delivering unwanted babies but to also perform abortions for women seeking his help. But Homer balks at this life purpose that seems to have been chosen for him. When a young couple, Candy and Wally, arrive at the orphanage for Candy to get an abortion, Homer decides that he’s going to go with them when they leave so he can see more of the outside world since all he knows is the orphanage. Dr. Larch onishes Homer that if he is going to go out into the world, then he should plan to be of use. Homer plans to do so by picking apples at Wally’s family’s orchard and working as a lobsterman during the off season. However, when Homer learns that the migrant supervisor has impregnated his own daughter, Rose, Homer decides to help her by giving her an abortion. Homer does eventually replace Dr. Larch. The outer goal would be assuming Dr. Larch’s position at the orphanage. But the purpose here relates more to the intrinsic value of Homer being of use and learning how to see outside of what may be considered his limited worldview.

The movie Interstellar also has a fictional character with an outer goal and an inner purpose. Cooper is tasked with finding a viable planet for humans to transfer to as the Earth is becoming more and more uninhabitable and various crops are starting to disappear. Coop’s purpose seems to be to save the world. It would be understandable to think this because Coop is trained for space exploration but he has to give it up to become a farmer. Coop’s outer goal is to save the world (by finding a viable alternate planet for humans to transfer to or finding a viable planet on which a human colony can be started), but his inner goal/purpose has to do with keeping his promise to his kids, especially his daughter, Murphy, to come back from outer space. What motivates him the whole movie is his desire to be a good father and keep his promise to return to Earth for his kids. Not every protagonist has an inner purpose, or more commonly known as an inner goal, but when the protagonist does, the story is more meaningful. Inner purpose or inner goal relates more to character growth and catharsis and not just whether they accomplish their outer goal. Character purpose is what contributes to character growth.

How Limiting Beliefs Affect The Spiritual Journey

We briefly discussed limiting beliefs in chapter 2. If in real life we are not manifesting what we want despite thinking positively and taking inspired action, then we have to look at our subconscious beliefs. Our reality always reflects what we believe. However, we may not be aware of what we believe on a subconscious level. Limiting beliefs stop us from manifesting— from accomplishing our outer goals. In a movie, as in life, to overcome this requires inner work. In the movie Runaway Bride, Maggie Carpenter cannot make it through a wedding ceremony to get married. She runs away every time. By the end of the movie, she discovers that it is because she has never been herself in any of her relationships. She always becomes what she thinks her boyfriend wants her to be. Her limiting belief would be: I can’t find a husband if I am myself.

As I mentioned before, your character’s limiting belief does not have to be mentioned aloud as long as you, the writer, know it. As long as you know it, then their limiting belief would be revealed through subtext. Subtext is what lies below the surface and is not stated directly. Subtext is used through dialogue and situations found throughout the script. For example, you could have a scene where a married couple is arguing about the dishes not being done to the wife’s liking, but the husband thinks everything’s okay. The subtext of the scene could be that the wife feels like the husband doesn’t pull his weight around the house and leaves everything to her. However, this would not be said directly. The argument is still only about the dishes on the surface, but as the script progresses, it would be revealed through character interactions how the wife really feels. At the end of the movie, it might be okay at that point for her to finally verbalize directly what has been bothering her by telling her husband that he doesn’t pull his weight. By this point, you have allowed your audience to participate and figure it out for themselves, so they are still able to be engaged and active participants instead of just bored observers. For a character to experience inner growth, they must change their limiting beliefs. In The Cider House Rules, Homer didn’t believe that he was actually qualified to be a doctor, but he had to overcome that in order to experience inner growth, which in this case is his self-worth. Maggie Carpenter in Runaway Bride had to discover who she was as a person before she could find love. She had to overcome her limiting belief that being herself was not enough. A character overcoming their limiting beliefs would be shown through action ( the old adage from your middle school teacher to show not tell). Or maybe a better way to explain it would be through situations, circumstances, and character interactions. In A Walk to , Landon’s limiting belief would be that he is not good enough. However, through his actions and deeds and his interactions with his love interest, Jamie, we see his limiting belief gradually change as he becomes a better person. Of course, some of these interactions are forced upon him—such as tutoring kids and g up for the school play—but gradually he begins to embrace these new activities and experiences inner growth. A character’s spiritual journey is not just about them vanquishing their opposition but about becoming a better person. Not every character or

protagonist has a spiritual journey, just as every character doesn’t have an inner goal, or purpose, or inner growth. But if you are using the law of attraction to structure your story, then it is highly likely that your protagonist will experience a spiritual journey. There are two points that are often ignored in storytelling that go against how the law of attraction actually works in real life that you might want to pay attention to when writing your script, and that is positivity and gratitude.

Positivity and Gratitude

The whole point of using the law of attraction to structure your script is to illustrate to millions of people who watch your movies how to use the law of attraction in their real lives in order to manifest their dreams. However, I’m sure you’ve noticed in movies how things seem to start to turn around for negative characters without them changing their thought process or attitude. In real life, negative thoughts attract more negative people and negative situations. In order for a change to actually occur, the character would have to have a shift in their attitude—from being negative all the time to being more positive. It isn’t until a person actually starts to practice positivity that things really start to turn around. If you have examples of this happening in movies, please reach out to me on Twitter @joycheriel. I would love to hear about your examples. The other thing involved in manifesting with the law of attraction is gratitude. It isn’t until we are in a state of gratitude, where we appreciate what we already have in our lives, that we actually manifest our desires. It seems to me that in most stories, the point where the protagonist shows gratitude and appreciates what they already have in their lives is missing. In real life, we don’t manifest what we want until we learn to appreciate what we have. An example of this in my own life is when I left my high school teaching position. I was done with teaching high school English and I wanted to find another job. But a new job hadn’t manifested for me by the time the next school year began so I began to temp in property management, stayed at the part-time retail job at a bridal shop that I had been working at while I was teaching, sold

life insurance, and partly lived off of the refund I had gotten from grad school. Of course, I looked for a job for several months, but it wasn’t until I accepted that I would be temping, selling life insurance, working a part-time retail job— and got happy with that—till a new job manifested for me as an academic counselor at an online university. Just as with limiting beliefs, your protagonist’s positivity and gratitude doesn’t have to be on-the-nose, but can be shown through subtext in dialogue and actions.

Inner Wisdom

Although I spent a significant portion of this book discussing how other characters can help your protagonist, for them to realize or who they really are has to come from within. The answers to your problems and questions always can be found inside of you—not outside—and this is the key every protagonist, and every human being, needs to know. After all, we are all a spark of the divine, and whether we know it or not, each one of us is on a spiritual journey.

CHAPTER 5 SYNCHRONICITIES

A ct II is dedicated to the second step of the law of attraction, which is to believe. In order to demonstrate believing in a screenplay, your protagonist will make a plan to accomplish their goal. This plan doesn’t need to be known by the audience because it ruins the drama of watching the story unfold. Your protagonist’s plan is for you—the writer—to help you structure the second Act, which lasts for 50-60 minutes in a 90-120 minute movie. Once you have determined your character’s plan, you can set up the obstacles, and then your character will start taking inspired action (inspired action means specific, deliberate action, not just any action to see what works). The hardest part of writing a screenplay for most beginning screenwriters is filling up the second Act. Act II involves the obstacles that your character faces to prevent them from achieving their goal. The best way to approach Act II is to brainstorm and write a list, or mind map, of every possible obstacle that could block your protagonist from getting what they want. You can make this list regarding both the outer goal and inner purpose. Once you have identified these obstacles, you can then lay them out in the order that they would logically occur—for example, to accomplish most things, the first step is determining where the money will come from. Using the above example, the first sequence (series of scenes that are blocked together to communicate a specific point or to accomplish a certain task), would be how the character would get money to accomplish their goal. This is just an example. The first sequence of Act II can be anything that the character does to overcome their first obstacle, whatever that may be. As you continue to write Act II, each sequence addresses a new obstacle. Each obstacle should increase the conflict. For example, in the movie October Sky, the conflict arises naturally because there are many obstacles standing in Homer and his friends’ way to building rockets and eventually being able to enter the

science fair. As they build the rockets, they are faced with many challenges such as: finding a place to build the rockets, finding a new place when they are told they have to move, finding materials to make the rockets, learning the skills to make the rockets themselves, and learning the complicated math involved in building a rocket. Those are just some of the obstacles that make up Act II of that movie.

Multiple Storylines

As mentioned in chapter 4, your protagonist has a tangible outer goal and then they have an inner purpose. The way for you to have multiple storylines—at least two when you first start out, and then you can increase to more storylines as your skillset grows— is to dedicate one storyline to the outer goal and the other storyline to the inner goal/purpose. If you look at the character Homer Hickam in October Sky, one of his reasons for incarnating may have been to continue, or improve, his relationship with his father. We often incarnate in soul groups. So Homer’s father could have been his father in a past life, or he may have been his brother, and they might have had a rocky relationship. So while one of Homer’s reasons for incarnating could have been to make rockets, another could have been to improve his relationship with the soul that is his father in this lifetime. So, if you look at the movie October Sky, there is the storyline that relates to the outer goal of building the rockets, entering the science fair, and winning a scholarship, and the inner goal of Homer improving his relationship with his father. Each goal gets its own storyline and often the inner goal may be dealt with in a scene that appears to belong to the outer goal. For example, Homer could be asking his father for help getting material to build his rocket (outer goal), but in the scene Homer can also comment on how his father always shows up for his brother’s football games but never comes to Homer’s rocket launches (inner goal). Movies that often have more than two storylines are movies that have ensemble casts like This Is Where I Leave You, but not necessarily. The movie, Tootsie,

has multiple storylines and one main character, but Michael/Dorothy has a lot of problems so a storyline is dedicated to each one of them. In This Is Where I Leave You, four adult siblings meet at their childhood home to sit shiva at the insistence of their mother that this is their father’s dying wish. There are four siblings—Judd, his older brother, Paul, his sister, Wendy, and their youngest brother, Phillip. Each sibling has their own storyline. Or you could look at it as each sibling having their own problems that they’re dealing with. The following are the four major storylines found in This Is Where I Leave You:

Judd: His wife has cheated on him with his boss. He and his wife had a miscarriage in the past. He finds out that Penny, a girl that had a major crush on him growing up, still lives in town, and then he learns that his cheating wife is pregnant with his child.

Wendy: She and her husband haven’t been getting along. Her son is potty training and seems to take his potty everywhere and poops in all places. Wendy was in love with the boy next door, Horry, but he had a brain injury when they were teenagers, which derailed their relationship.

Paul: He and his wife, Annie, have been trying to have a baby for two years. Annie and Judd dated for nine months before she got with Paul.

Phillip: He is dating his much older former therapist, and he wants to help Paul run their dad’s sporting goods store by doing the marketing and advertising.

The best way to write a screenplay with multiple storylines is to create an outline to see where they fall in the story. They first would start out as sequences. Figure

out where they go, and then break the sequences down into scenes. When you do this, you will be able to see where any of the storylines overlap, if at all.

Sequences

As I said before, a sequence is a group of scenes that go together, one after another, to make a point. Let me give you an example of one. Let’s say that your character, Susie, wants to take a trip. In the first scene of the sequence, we see her at the salon flipping through a travel magazine. She sees an article about Argentina that piques her interest. In the next scene, we see her at dinner talking to her husband. She brings up the idea to take a trip. He says okay as long as it doesn’t cost too much. That night, in another scene, she goes online and checks out prices for a flight and hotel info. We will end the sequence here because the next scene will be about her husband and his storyline. A good way to understand sequence if you are still confused is to look at the menu on a DVD (if you can still find a DVD, or something to play it on) and go to the scene selection option. The movie isn’t actually broken down by scenes in the scene selections, it is broken down by sequences.

Scenes

The purpose of this book is not to discuss formatting. You can google scene formatting in a screenplay and you will see how it should be laid out. But I do want to discuss a few pointers about writing a good scene. A really good rule of thumb when constructing a scene is to get in as late as possible and get out as early as possible. What that means is that if you have a scene where two characters are meeting to discuss their company merger, you don’t want to start the scene when they first meet at the restaurant, greet each other, and order drinks. That wastes time and the interaction is irrelevant. So instead, just start the scene with them already at the restaurant seated and eating and in the middle of

the conversation. Likewise, don’t wait till the end of the meal to end the scene. Get out early by cutting the scene off as soon as they have relayed the pertinent information.

Synchronicities

The title of this chapter is called Synchronicities because when you know the law of attraction process of asking, believing, and receiving, you will begin to see synchronicities appear in your life. A synchronicity is almost the magicallike quality of the universe moving people, events, and circumstances to give you what you want. In real life, when the people, events, and circumstances seem to just show up, out of what seems to be from nowhere, to give us what we want, it literally feels like magic. But it isn’t. It is the law of attraction. There are things going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about, which is why when the synchronicities do show up, it feels like magic. A synchronicity in real life might feel or seem like magic, but that just doesn’t work in a screenplay. In a screenplay, synchronicity feels like deus ex machina, which is literally the Latin term for a god from a machine, which in ancient Greek and Roman drama was a god introduced by a crane into the drama. To explain it in modern , it’s a person, thing, or circumstance that comes from out of nowhere to solve the protagonist’s problem. To avoid a synchronicity that comes across as a deus ex machina, you have to reveal some of this “magic” that will end up as a synchronicity by the end of the movie. The way to do this is by foreshadowing. For example, in October Sky, there is a synchronous event that occurs when Homer’s teacher, Miss Riley, tells him that a book has just arrived that she wanted to give him that will help him solve the math problem that he needs to solve. This is a synchronicity, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere because we know that Homer’s teacher has been doing everything in her power to them since the movie began. Sometimes foreshadowing too much can ruin a synchronous event, so it really is a delicate balance between knowing how much to reveal of the “magic” of a synchronicity that is going to pop up, and how much should come as a

marvelous surprise. However, when your character is doing everything in their power to accomplish their goals, it makes sense that the universe will send a synchronicity or two their way to help them.

PART III RECEIVE

The last step in the law of attraction process is to receive. Receiving involves allowing what you want to come to you. This third step is often the hardest part of the three-step law of attraction process.

CHAPTER 6 ENLIGHTENMENT—COMING TO THE END OF YOUR CHARACTER’S JOURNEY

T his chapter is entitled Enlightenment because just as Merriam-Webster describes, being enlightened means to be free from ignorance and misinformation. So many people do not know how to manifest their dreams and desires, but hopefully, after seeing your movie, they will intuitively know how to use the law of attraction in their own lives by seeing your protagonist get what they want through their journey. At the point of the last step of the law of attraction, receiving, this is Act III, which lasts about 20-30 minutes in a 90-120 minute movie. At the end of Act II, your protagonist will experience an emotional low—of your choosing—just make sure it makes sense for your story. With this emotional low, it will look like all the odds are stacked against your protagonist and they will not achieve their outer goal. This directly relates to the receiving stage of the law of attraction. Many people in real life have trouble manifesting what they want because when your thoughts are focused on the fact that you haven’t manifested what you want, yet, your dominant vibration is of not having your desire, and that will be what you continue to attract. Receiving involves allowing. And to allow what you want to manifest, you have to let go. This is the case in real life, just as it is for the protagonist in your script. What does it mean to let go? Well, in the believing stage of Act II, your protagonist was consistently taking inspired action and doing everything in their power to manifest their outer goal. Letting go means that you, or your protagonist in this case, have done all you can to get what you want, but now it is time to let go and let the universe do its thing in a synchronous way. Basically, your protagonist has done so much in Act II that there are so many balls rolling that now it is just about allowing them to fall into place. At this point in a script that is structured according to the law of attraction, it will

look like your protagonist’s answer to their request will be no. This is Plot Point #2. Learning to let go would be to accept the situation they find themselves in and show gratitude for where they are and what they already have in their lives. You are the writer of your screenplay. You control this universe you have created, and the protagonist doesn’t always get what they want. Sometimes the answer is no. But if the answer is no, in order to satisfy your audience, who just sacrificed about two hours of their lives on average to watch your movie, then the lesson your protagonist has learned has to be just as valuable as if they had gotten what they wanted. In My Best Friend’s Wedding, Julianne’s outer goal is to break up her exboyfriend, Michael, and his fiancé, Kimmie, a few days before their wedding so Julianne can be with Michael herself— the one who got away. But at the end of Act II, Kimmie sees Julianne kiss Michael and she runs away from her own wedding. Michael gets into his car and chases after Kimmie. Julianne steals a truck and chases Michael. While this is going on, Julianne is on the phone with her editor, George, who has been her confidant throughout this story, and he says: “You’re chasing Michael. Michael’s chasing Kimmie. Who’s chasing you? Nobody. Get it? Jules, you are not the one.” Then he tells her to do what she came there to do, which is to say goodbye. It is painful for Julianne not to get what she wants in the end, but the more important lesson for Julianne to learn is that she cannot let fear get in the way of finding true love. Another movie where the protagonist doesn’t get what he wants, and the answer is no, is in (500) Days of Summer. In (500) Days of Summer, Tom’s goal is to make Summer his girlfriend, but ever since they met, Summer has been telling Tom that she doesn’t want to be in a relationship. But because they spend all their time together and even have a sexual relationship, this never quite hits home for Tom—until they stop seeing each other and bump into each other months later and Summer invites him to a party. Tom’s hope that he can be in a committed relationship with Summer is rekindled, and he is devastated to learn at the party that Summer is engaged. Tom does not accomplish his outer goal by the end of the movie, but the life lesson he learns—that if you like someone and want to be in a committed relationship with them but that is not what they want, don’t waste your time. Go find someone who wants to be with you, too.

But this probably won’t be the case in most of your screenplays. Most of you will likely give your protagonist what they want. Just a word of caution, though. Even when you get to Act III, your protagonist should still be driving the story. There should never be a time when your protagonist just sits in their house and does nothing. An example of this is (500) Days of Summer. In Act III, after Tom finds out that Summer is engaged, Tom does lay around his house for several days, but he eventually does take action that is unrelated to Summer. Tom hasn’t been crazy about his job since the beginning of the movie. He works at a greeting card company and is “an adequate greeting card writer,” but he studied to be an architect, and that is his true ion. He is extremely depressed about Summer being engaged, but this also gives him clarity. He quits his job at the greeting card company, brushes up on the field of architecture, and begins to interview at architectural firms. By letting go and focusing on himself, he eventually meets a new girl while waiting to be seen at a job he is interviewing for. Her name is Autumn.

A Final Thought

I hope you have enjoyed reading about how to structure your screenplay using the law of attraction. My intention is that you have learned how to structure stories and create characters for your screenplay that in turn help your audience practice the law of attraction and get what they want in their own lives. If you enjoyed reading this book, please leave a review on Amazon, and recommend it to a fellow writer or movie aficionado. I am deeply grateful that you chose to read my book out of the many options out there, and if you want to drop me a note, you can do so on Twitter @joycheriel.