Film Courage: What is the spine of a story?
Andy Guerdat, Television Writer, Producer, Instructor, and Podcaster: I use the term spine
to describe what is actually the central conflict of the story. I kind of stole the
word spine from William Goldman who uses it a bit in his books. His books are more story just
telling stories about the business but he does use the term spine. I use it because I liked
it and it accurately describes what the spine is because it's just like an animal spine is a
vertebrae and the animal can't move and function without it and that's the same function it has in
a story everything emanates from the spine of the story but the spine the more accurate term is the
central conflict it is the this the conflict which must be resolved before this story is over and
likewise the second it is resolved the story is over and it's absolutely essential essential that
the screenwriter know what the spine of the story is before he or she begins writing even before you
begin structuring the story in its three acts and so on you can't do that unless what the story is
about it's about this central conflict I used to use when I was teaching as an example Lawrence of
Arabia which is four hours long one of the great films ever made four hours long but the spine is
a young British officer in World War I goes to Arabia and tries to become a god that's it that's
the spine one sentence you should be able to say your spine in one sentence this is the central
conflict and that this story cannot be resolved until that is resolved what happens to a guy who
tries to become a God and when it is resolved the story is over and the screenwriters wisely stopped
the story at that point even though TE Lawrence went on and had another interesting life separate
from that this is the story they chose to tell when Lawrence Olivier shot hamlet in 1948 as a
film that he directed and started he started by saying you see a tableau of characters on top of
the castle Elenor at night and Olivier's voice over says this is the story of a man who could
not make up his mind boom now that's Hamlet now if you can boil Hamlet down to a sentence you can
absolutely do it with your story and you have to do it what is the central conflict of the story
what is it about and if you can't say it in one sentence it's already wrong it means you're going
to what you're going to wind up doing when you try to structure it is you're going to go off writing
yourself into corners following trails that lead nowhere and then having to undo it throw out
those oh that's three weeks of work down the drain let's go back and try again and then eventually if
you hanging there long enough maybe you'll find the spine that's a very sloppy and ineffective
way to go about screenwriting you want to Fig figure that out earlier in the process so that
your story is structured to tell that spine That central conflict every scene in the story every
line in the story every shot in the story in a properly structured screenplay is telling that
central conflict not always directly sometimes tangentially in Lawrence of Arabia obviously not
every single sentence is is directly about that but they're all about that moving that central
conflict forward and that's how the screenwriters know with this wealth of material what is it we're
we're going to shrink it down to the stuff that tells That central conflict if I'm understanding
correctly then it sounds like when we talked about earlier in the video interview rules
and by this page this has to happen and you were saying that some of that is just Hoy or whatever
but it sounds like with the the party pitch or the spine that that's something people need to
know oh absolutely right off the bat almost well here's might the distinction in my process and
again I call it organic screenwriting is that once you have that spark that her moment that
thing that seems exciting don't go don't try and jump to a spine don't try and jump to structuring
your story that's what the screenwriting books will tell you okay now take this template we
created for you and we're going to start filling it in no the next step in that process is to start
imagining anything take that follow that through wherever it might go if you have an here's a funny
scene write it down here's a character write it down here's a snippet of dialogue write it down
just keep writing down anything that comes to you and following those roads and what will
happen What happens in my head and I think it probably is true of most professional writers
what happens is out of that free associating process of thinking of stuff that of where this
story might go you'll start to feel the spine coalesce, beats will start start to connect up
and somebody used this analogy I thought it was a good one "you're looking for stuff, that beats
little stuff you've thought of that connects with the conjunctions SO and BUT, but not the
connects with the conjunction AND. SO and BUT mean it's causality - this happened, so this happened,
this happened but this happened but is a plot twist. SO is probably not but they're connected.
Aristotle called it causality there the one thing, one scene drives into the next scene. If
you're just connecting it with the word AND that could be anything right. You can connect any two
things with the word AND so that's probably not as helpful to you. Anyway you start to feel this
spine start to visualize to you and it becomes clear that this is where your excitement lies
this is the direction literally like a spine it's like this is the direction the story seems to want
to take it's organic it's where you're interest interest lies where your where your interest takes
you and therefore it's probably where the audience will be most interested and then that's not the
end of the process but that is where you start to see it and now you start to refine that into
a spine I literally one sentence that that you are comfortable with saying this is the story I wish
to tell this is the conflict I'm going to and then you do write that down you write that down stick
it on your computer because you you ever want to get away from that spine you got to stay on it
or the audience will start to fidget and squirm and on top of that your writing process will be
miserable because if you get away from your spine you're going to write a bunch of scenes that you
never going to use and that's that's the that's the steps that I use and I advise other people to
do it again as a working writer I can't afford to spend months writing pages that are never
going to be seen by anybody body so and it's not useful anyway there's no reason for it so yeah the
finding the spine identifying the spine writing down the spine especially with a screenplay is
absolutely critical as a writer for hire do you always find that spark is that ember always there
weirdly yes because even when I'm writing something that's as I often do a children's
story I go back to my childhood I go back to my children's childhoods and I find something that
triggers a memory that's in that's worthy of the of the audience's time spent following this little
conflict now with a children's show it's often 11 minutes sometimes 22 minutes so it doesn't
need to be as big as Lawrence of Arabia but it's still something that has some resonance some power
we had a conversation the show I I consult on at Disney a children's show and somebody was writing
a story where one of the characters lost their favorite toy and we had a conversation was that
enough to hold up an 11 minute story you lose your favorite toy and then we all thought about
it together said what when you're a kid you're 5 years old you lost your favorite toy that's
life and death man that is absolutely a powerful enough thing to hold up a story for at least for
11 minutes and and we could all identify with it and remember that and and feel passionate about
it now it isn't always something that's important sometimes it's just something kind of silly and
sometimes if it's if the show and sometimes I do write shows that are just kind of goofy then I'm
looking for a different kind of inspiration it may not be dramatic in in the tragic in that sense it
was maybe just more goofy and funny and weird but that too is a form of inspiration but I I
don't have any problem doing it I can't think of any shows that I've ever written on where I felt
absolutely nothing when I was writing it I think if I had ever experienced that I would have just
quit I would have said okay I'm not doing this you can always find something that's kind of
fun and Goofy and inspirational exciting about a given story and that's that's the task that's
part of the job and I I I enjoy that part of the job what if a writer cannot boil their story down
to one sentence my advice is and I have given this advice to many of my students and private clients
stop stop right there if you can't do it it means you're not focused on you haven't identified the
central conflict that's why I like using spine or central conflict as opposed to say log line
or premise which are the probably more common terms but when you say log line or premise that's
conjures up more of an image of of you're trying to boil down the plot I don't care about the plot
yet the plot is not what's important app plot is merely a device that we use to tell the story the
story being the emotional through line of the story that's the part that the audience engages
with well if you can't do it then the audience is probably not going to get engaged either there's
no reason to expect them to and the reason why people have trouble boiling it down is because
of that because they're trying to put the plot in the in the one sentence doesn't matter what
the plot is it it's it's what is the emotional conflict the through line that's going to hold up
this story one of my favorite movies of the past 20 years 15 whatever it's been is Michael Clayton
which is a beautifully written screenplay by Tony Gilroy and Michael Clayton goes through all kinds
of things I mean there's he's in debt to the Mob and his he's a bad marriage and his brother hates
him and he's he's a compulsive Gambler just one thing after another but the that's not the spine
of the story that's not the central conflict of the story the central conflict of the story
is some version of this Michael Clayton is this a sleazy attorney corporate attorney who has to
disco has to decide how immoral is he willing to be when he has a client who starts killing
people that's the central conflict and this the central conflict has ended at the climax of the
story when he's confronted the the villainous executive and she recorded her confession ing
to the murder in accidentally unwittingly rather and he's recorded it for the cops which means he's
going to lose a lot of money and probably be in trouble with a lot of people but he's done it
because he that's as far as he'll go he that's that's where he drew the line and the car one
of the the big corporate person says who are you and he says I'm Shiva the god of death which is a
call back to an earlier line but it just means that's it that's where I draw the line story's
over and the movie ends within 20 seconds of that 30 seconds of that the conflict is
over you never do figure out the the rest of his problems are still there but it doesn't
matter the central conflict has been resolved so if you're having trouble boiling it down to
one sentence it's usually because you haven't figured out what the central conflict is what
is the emotional through line of this story you're trying to put plot in there which is not relevant.