DESIGN NOTES

Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee, is generally regarded by entertainment industry folks as the scriptwriting bible.

McKee writes:

"Once the [story's] Climax is in hand...we must work back from the ending to make certain that by Idea and Counter-Idea every image, beat, action or line of dialogue sets up this grand payoff."

"The Inciting Incident projects an image of the Obligatory Scene into the audience's imagination. The Obligatory Scene (a.k.a. Crisis) is an event the audience knows it must see before the story can end."

"The Crisis Decision and climactic action usually take place in continuous time within the same location at the very end of the telling."

• step one is fixing on the episode's climax

• step two is "backing out" to Boy Meets Girl

By the way, you might be interested to know that the best of the pros put this kind of emphasis on design. From an article in the May 1998 issue of Written By, the magazine of the Writer's Guild of America:

"The ideas [on Seinfeld] may be simple, but the execution is considerably more complicated. [Staff writer] Shaffer continues: "it is an intricately plotted show. The dialogue itself, that's fun and doesn't really take a long time to get into shape, especially when someone's on the [rehearsal] floor. The part that can expand 'til however long you need to do it is the outline. It looks like we don't have one--but that's always been the hardest part. It's like this sort of comic algebra, this comic math puzzle."

'It is,' agrees [fellow staff writer] Berg, 'but if you do it right, it's a huge, huge payoff. There are shows where, when you get the outline right, you know it, and it makes the writing of it really, really easy, and makes the shooting really easy because everything just makes sense. So if you have a month to write a show, a lot of times you'll spend all but three days on the outline, and then you'll write the dialogue on top of that, and if the structure is there and everything is solid, it's really easy to write.'"

"A story can be told in two acts: two major reversals and its over. But again it must be relatively brief: the sitcom [is one example]."

"An ACT is a series of sequences that peaks in a climactic scene which causes a major reversal of values."

"STORY VALUES are the universal qualities of human experience that may shift from positive to negative, or negative to positive [e.g. love/hate, loyalty/betrayal], from one moment to the next."

For details, see this article about a then-University of Chicago student who performed an extensive structural analysis of sitcom episodes.

An excerpt:

"As I was thinking about story formats for Hammond's course -- and watching a little TV -- I kept thinking about the predictability and structure of sitcoms. They follow very specific rules: They're always 30 minutes long, they always include commercials at precise plot points, and they always conclude with a nice, neat resolution. I decided to make a sitcom plot engine that would generate, analyze and predict the outcomes of sitcom plots. I watched and took notes on hundreds of sitcoms and read the plot summaries of even more. I ended up with a representational language for characterizing sitcom plots and used it as the backbone for my computer program, which I named 'Structuralist Gilligan.'

..."Basically, there are four elements to any given plot and only about 15 types of plots in all," Goldstein said. "In every sitcom the status quo is upset, the characters try to re-establish it, and in the end they always do. Perhaps it's this swing back from a tangled situation to harmony that keeps people around the world watching sitcoms day after day."

Of course, the pilot differs from subsequent episodes in that the couple must first be established -- along with their comic plight.

Working backward, the pilot episode's second reversal (i.e., negative-to-positive) must establish that the couple remains committed despite what they have learned about their comic plight.

And the first reversal (i.e., positive-to-negative) must derive from the undoing of the couple's initial optimism, as the result of their comic plight becoming known to them.

Importantly, this necessitates that, before the onset of the problems, the couple -- and the audience -- has come to understand that the relationship is worth fighting for. (Otherwise, their comic plight would prove their undoing.)

The Inciting Incident, then, must be their shared realization that they are a great match.

McKee writes (on page 223 of Story):

The only reason to delay the entrance of the Central Plot is the audience's need to know the protagonist at length so it can fully react to the Inciting Incident. If this is necessary, then a setup subplot must open the telling."

In Story, McKee writes:

"The second most difficult scene to write is the central Plot's Inciting Incident...So here are some questions to ask that should help bring it to mind: What is the worst possible thing that could happen to my protagonist? How could that turn out to be the best possible thing that could happen?"

How can the relationship with the President turn out to be the worst possible thing for the CEO?

If the President wants to fix up the CEO with a particular lady, and the President makes it plain that he will be disappointed if the couple doesn't work out.

Why is this the worst thing that could happen?

The CEO knows his comic plight. He also knows himself. In particular, he believes that growing OSG is the best way he can work toward the kind of world he wants for his as-yet-unconceived children.

Of course, he never wants to choose between his girlfriend/wife and his children.

So he believes he can only be a great partner for a lady with whom he can truly share the adventure of growing OSG.

Which means the CEO has good reason to fear that the President will be unhappy with the outcome of the attempted "fix-up".

The CEO's ideal, of course, is a lady who can best complement his efforts at OSG.

The worst thing -- being fixed up by the President -- can turn into the best thing, then, if the final scene of the first act shows that the lady and the CEO are perfect complements (i.e., both are better off with the other than they can be apart).