Writer/Instructor and Script Consultant Shannan E. Johnson (The Professional Pen): Now that
they've gone through this journey and they've changed and they've reached
their goal or they've failed to reach their goal now what are they doing?
Film Courage: Do you believe the writer should know the ending before starting a story?
Shannan: I do. Not everyone would agree with me some people believe in free writing right
so some people believe hey just get on the page and just start writing the only reason
I don't believe in that is because I believe that it can discourage you if you don't know
where you're going and especially if you're new at this like if you've been doing this forever
you might not mind going to the page writing and ended up being nowhere it's not going to
discourage you and you're going to be able to go back and start again but for people who are new at
this for people who have to work on deadlines for people who are work for hire so they're
doing they're working on someone else's stuff and not their own having a plan is helpful and
just like Google Maps if I can't put in my end location then it can't tell me where to go so I
think it's very important to know where you're going that doesn't mean it won't change right
I might decide I'm on my way to Target in the middle of that decide I want to go to Walmart
right and that's okay but I knew I was going to Target so I'm headed in that direction and if
I need to make a change I can make a change I can always detour but I think if the end goal
and how that's the work that's the pre-work that's what you're doing and we we offer workshops at the
work workbooks at the professional pen that can help you through your pre-work right that pre-work
before you even get to your outline is asking you how right so you might know even if it's a Marvel
film that they're going to beat the bad guy if you don't know how what are you writing to right like
how do you get them there if you don't know how they're going to beat the bad guy so in my opinion
it's very important to know where you're going so when you look at a first draft from someone
who's come to you for script consultation can you kind of always intuitively know or maybe not even
just it's just very glaringly obvious who had the ending planned out in the beginning and who
it the the voices told them the characters told them yeah yeah I think some people if structure
you don't have to have it planned out I can tell that you don't know where this screenplay is going
if you do know where it's going I might not know if you always knew I might not see that
in writing that you always knew where it was going because that doesn't matter it doesn't
matter if you always knew if the script is here and it's structured well and we get to the end
and everything that they were supposed to achieve or not achieve is there and it's
clear great what happens more so more often is we go round and round and round and then it finishes
right because they didn't know how they were going to get there so even if they know the end
they didn't know the middle right and so you can see that very easily that sometimes all they knew
was then and they had no idea how they were going to get to the end right so it's all the stuff in
the middle or sometimes it is that everything is going pretty well and then we get to the end and
they realize they didn't know how they didn't know what to do once they got there and so then it just
ends and so then now it's anticlimactic or the resolution wasn't earned what I mean because you
gave me all this stuff and then all of a sudden you just stopped and it's probably because just
got lost because you didn't have a plan you didn't know where you were going and now you
got to Target and you don't have a list and now you're just wondering the halls of Target and we
already know that's bad because now you're going to end up with more stuff in your basket than you
came there for and the same thing kind of happens in the screenplay how does the ending reflect the
story's central theme so if you want to look at theme as the dramatic question that the writer
is posing the audience then one of the ways that you can show us that is through your characters
so if your main character is on one side of the theme and your antagonist or one of your
sub characters is on the other side of the theme then the way it ends can tell us who was right
or if no one was right and there and it's supposed to be a gray area so one of my favorite examples
is Black Panther right the first one so King t'challa has been taught by his ancestors that
they should be saving vibranium for just Wakanda and that their job is to only keep
the people of wakanda safe and then killmonger the antagonist comes in and says you have all
of these resources and you should be sharing them you're selfish that you're not sharing
them both of those ideas make sense right and our job as an audience is to choose a side and as we
see them fighting throughout what's happening is the themes are fighting I should only keep my own
people safe I'm responsible for everybody that's what we're watching throughout so in the end when
t'challa kills killmonger that means the idea that it's my job to keep my people safe one
however we see in the resolution that he decides to open up a little bit and it's because of his
journey of hearing killmonger's point of view learning his backstory and having his fight with
him that he was able to move his needle a little bit one way or the other and say yes it's my job
to keep these people safe but I can also probably be offering more resources to other people so I
think that resolution should be showing us some answers or purposefully not so that we can then
go home and have a discussion about it right because that's what you want people to do you
want people to be talking about was killmonger right or was the child right how much thought
should a writer put into the tone they want the ending to have yeah I think they I think tone is
going to matter period right especially when it comes to which genre you're considering if you're
writing a comedy and then you decide your the the tone of your resolution is going to be really low
then this is probably not a comedy what I mean you have to figure out how you can have a dramatic
moment that's still light enough that it works in the tone of the entire screenplay so you have
to ask yourself and this is why in Hollywood we use comps what is this like right whether
what other movie what other TV show and if you're really artistic you can say what other what song
right what songs does this make me feel like then you kind of know what that tone is and then your
job is to kind of live in that tone throughout the entire throughout the entire script right to
kind of stay in this is a light story so even if something really traumatic happens the way they
deal with it the way that it happens the way they heal from it is light right we're not going to go
dark because then that changes the tone so I think it's very important to know the tone before you
start writing you should know the tone before you start writing you should know what kind of script
this is going to be so that you can make sure that every scene every line of dialogue every
situation is going to stay in that area of tone is that something that you advise the screenwriters
that you work with to do is to pick a song whatever because tone is about feeling so if
I know like there's A Butterfly by Mariah Carey I can't explain to you what it makes me feel I know
how it makes me feel and since I'm an artist I can probably write that feeling even if I can't talk
to you about it it's the same thing if somebody reads a lot of books or someone likes food
what cotton candy makes you feel like versus what spinach makes you feel like what a nice warm soup
on a cold day makes you feel like versus ice cream on a cold day right doesn't mean you don't like
ice cream but it might mean it's cold outside I don't want something cold in me right so I say for
people now if you go into a pitch what makes it unique is if you're able to use other references
other than just films and TV if you go in and say that it's this movie meets this song and it's a
song that everybody knows and it's a movie that everybody knows now you've got people going ah
because we know how that song makes us feel right we're all going back to the societal thing we're
all kind of living in the same space and time we know how those things make us feel so any kind of
thing that gives you a feeling I say you can use for tone you just need to be able to communicate
that when you're well in your writing and when you're pitching how does the ending connect to
the story's beginning yeah so some people will specifically like bookend right and how it starts
they will literally finish it that way some people look at it as mirror images are opposites and how
it starts it's going to be the exact opposite at the end in my opinion doesn't have to be that
I often tell people that they can do a new normal at their end because all films and stories should
start with a normal would I be my normal is what were these people doing whether the camera showed
up or not because they're supposed to be people right they're not just your characters they're
people they're living in the world the cameras weren't showing up what would they be doing and
so during that setup in your act one if we're talking about a feature then you're showing me
every day they would be going to school every day they'd be fighting with their mom every day like
whether we came here or not whether there was an exciting incident or not that's what they would be
doing and so then what you showed me at the end of your script is now that they've gone through this
journey and they've changed and they've reached their goal or they've failed to reach their goal
now what are they doing what's their new normal and so that gives you an opportunity to show me
what their arc was and how they grew now not everything has a new normal if you're watching
a a suspense thriller then it might end when the police sirens are in the background right we don't
get to see what happens after that but I think writing a new normal is a great opportunity to
show how your beginning was affected by your end and I think it should be affected but I
don't think you always have to show us sometimes like again in the suspense thriller if the bad
guy was caught or is dead now I don't necessarily need to know what else is going on like I'm good
right but if this was a drama or a comedy that started off showing me that this person lacked
confidence then maybe it's always easy to use like a singing competition if they weren't able
to even stand on the stage at the top of the movie but by the end of the movie they're on the stage
rocking out then I'm able to put those two things together and it kind of really brings things back
home and shows you that the reason they needed to go on this journey was to affect their normal.