Today we analyzed "The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation" (available for a mere $2 on iTunes).
We saw this story working in three parts:
Part I starts with John, the son, telling his deceased father about a dream he had where his father was the Man on the Moon. But as John was feeding him, his father turned into a snapping turtle and bit his finger.
"This is what is was like to live with you," John tells his father. "You were always angry.
The rest of part one is John listing his grievances against his father.
Part II is John's father telling his side of the story. We see that John's father had a difficult life as well, and that some of the difficulties John was complaining about, like his father going to jail for five yeras, resulted from his father making ill-fated attempts to provide a good life for his family and keep a promise he had made long ago.
This is an excellent way of setting up a story: to bring two conflicting points of view together, both of which are correct. John indeed had a difficult life with his father. But his father was trying to do a good job.
In Part III of the story John reinterprets his dream about his father being the Man in the Moon to make room for his father's side of the story. "I made you the Man in the Moon so that you would be too far away to hurt me," he says, "But I made you bright enough so that I would never forget you."
This kind of story structure is called the Hegelian Structure. The philosopher GWF Hegel once argued that history is made up of competing forces. But when these forces come into conflict, the conflict does not end with the total destruction of one or the other force, rather it results in the creation of something new between them.
This can be a way you put together the story for your screenplay. Find an incident where you have been in conflict with someone. Tell the story yourself and then let the other person tell his or her side of the story. Then, instead of saying one or the other is right, find a way to make something new between them. Try to find a way to make room for both stories.
