katelovespirate
Senior Member
one more bit that might be helpful:
The Big Finish
Screenwriting Column 13
by Terry Rossio
Here's my iron-clad rule for how a movie should end. (How's that for taking a stance?) A good ending must be decisive, set-up, and inevitable -- but nonetheless unexpected.
This is, of course, not easy to do. Some writers feel that a good, strong opening, the hook, is the toughest thing to come up with. I disagree. A great opening is perhaps the most important section of the screenplay -- it's the part that's actually going to get read! But it's not the hardest. My writing partner, Ted Elliott, can come up with a great set-up in seconds -- but give him a month or so before asking him what comes next!
Act II is a renowned quagmire of story problems. You could argue that it's the toughest Act to plot. But the subject matter itself at least provides material to shape, and gives some direction how to proceed. Act II problems are more often organization problems, not blank-page problems, and they'll ultimately succumb to proper execution of craft.
No, for myself, Act III -- and coming up with that great ending -- is definitely the toughest plotting on a script. It's an Act where you can't get by on just craftsmanship, you really do need to have something that's inspired. It's the payoff Act.
So let's go back to the rule: 'Decisive, set-up, and inevitable -- but nonetheless unexpected.'
1. Decisive.
The most satisfying endings resolve the issues at hand clearly and decisively, one way or the other. Effective endings that are ambiguous are rare -- and a bit of a contradiction in terms.
2. Set-up.
The ending can't come completely out of left-field. It should be one of several known possibilities, or referenced as a possible solution sometime earlier in the film. The ending must appear to evolve naturally out of the elements that are known. You don't want to change the rules at the end of the game -- that's not fair.
3. Inevitable.
Another word for this might be 'appropriate.' You want an ending that is so 'right,' it seems as if it could have turned out no other way -- but only after it's happened! Because it's also got to be --
4. Unexpected.
This is the real trick. The unexpectedness of the ending is the true payoff, the reward for watching the film. It's the element the audience will weigh most heavily when judging the outcome of the story -- whether or not it was 'worth waiting for.'
Let's look at the most famous, and perhaps the most effective, ending in film history -- the ending of CASABLANCA. It was certainly decisive: Rick and Ilsa do not end up together -- she leaves on the plane with Victor Lazlo. It was certainly set up: Rick helping the young man win at roulette was just one scene that showed Rick's idealism. And the ending could be said to be inevitable. As the story of the filming goes, several endings to the film were considered -- but when the first one was shot, they knew they had it, and that the story could not end any other way.
And finally, the ending was, indeed, unexpected -- a quality that evolved out of its genre and structure. A romance where the hero doesn't get the girl? And it turns out to be the most romantic movie of all time!
I think of endings as the fulfillment of the promise, the covenant the storyteller makes with the audience. Violate that covenant at your peril.
Put simply, if it's an action picture, you've set up the expectation of an action finish. A courtroom scene probably won't do.
Now it's true that often when you enter Act III, it does work to shake the picture up by changing the essential nature of the story (the hunter becomes the hunted; the murderer is brought to trial, etc.). This is good drama. Still, though, the story must be brought back around to an arena that is appropriate for the characters. Too often the characters get thrown aside, in that search for the big finish. But note that 'spectacle' is not one of the requirements for an ending. You don't necessarily need a big finish -- what you need is a satisfying conclusion to the situation.
A film that shows this beautifully is MOONSTRUCK. Who would have thought that you could have a brilliant ending to a movie take place with a bunch of people talking at a family breakfast table? It's unique, it's unexpected, and it's completely satisfying.
Unexpectedness is one of the hardest elements to design into an ending. I find it useful to consider which type of question or questions is truly unknown to the audience. In a whodunit, the element that is not known is, well, WHO, and quite often the motive, or WHY. In an action film, you pretty much know WHAT is going to happen -- the hero is going to win -- but you don't know HOW. The HOW, then, is where you get your surprise. Occasionally, answering the WHERE questions can be a surprise -- remember where Hannibal Lector ended up in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS? WHEN questions are tough for endings, as they usually must be set up making the audience superior, which destroys the surprise.
So if you know which answer you're holding back -- the WHO, WHY, WHAT, HOW, or WHERE -- it can be easier to create that all-important unexpected ending. The best to go for is the WHAT question -- as in, truly not knowing 'what will happen' until it happens.
Ideally, the ending of a film is what the whole film has built to, in some fashion or other, all the way from page one. Ted and I still laugh at a screenplay that was submitted to us, where the writer included 'optional up ending' and 'optional down ending.' If the writer wasn't writing to one or the other of those endings throughout the screenplay, how effective could either of those endings be?
And a final note, on those 'down' endings. Writers just starting out often succumb to the temptation of choosing a tragic ending. After all, tragic endings are rare in films, and therefore unexpected. And unexpected is good, right?
Problem is, tragic endings really not all that rare -- there are lots of unproduced spec scripts around with typical bad-script unhappy endings. The result is, usually, an unhappy ending for the writer.