In a screenplay, the stories tend to focus on three main things: a protagonist, a goal/objective that the protagonist wants to achieve and obstacles between the protagonist and the goal/objective.
For example, a film about an astronaut who wants to go to Mars but maybe he finds in the way to achieve his goal a rival astronaut who wants the same than him.
Or a guy who doesn’t know who their parents are and he wants to find them but he doesn’t have a clue about where to start.
Usually, the protagonist will grow or change during the film in pursuit of their goal. Maybe the astronaut who wants to go to Mars learns about friendship and partnership and help the other astronaut to achieve their goal too.
Or the guy changes a little bit his personality after knowing all the truth about their parents.
All of these situations have to be written visually. The most famous way to do that (but not at all the only one) is the Hero’s Journey.
This is like a template for character development popularized by the American writer and mythologist, Joseph Campbell.
Campbell identified 12 steps that the protagonist has to take in order to grow during the story. His journey. These 12 steps are:
1. Ordinary world
In this step, the story begins. The main character is showed to us in his normal life. He or she is just a normal people as all of us.
2. Call to adventure
The hero receives a call to action. He has a problem now. Maybe there is a threat to his family or he has to save his community.
3. Refusal of the call
In this step, the hero doesn’t want to take action about the problem. Maybe he is afraid or he is not prepared to the challenge he has to take.
4. Meeting the mentor
The hero needs guidance to solve the problem. So, this mentor arrives and gives something that he needs to start his journey. Maybe a magic power, money, training or just an advice.
5. Crossing the threshold
The hero now is up to cross his comfort zone. Now, he is prepared to go to foreign lands and solve the problem or achieve his goal.
6. Tests, allies, enemies
Now, the hero is out of his comfort zone and he finds a lot more of problems on his way that will test him a lot.
7. Approach to the inmost cave
The inmost cave represents the danger that he needs to defeat to achieve his goal. As the main character approaches to this cave, he needs to take some final preparation to pursuit it. In this step the hero usually has new doubts and fears about his final test.
8. Ordeal
This is the crucial part of the hero’s journey. Here, the main character will test all the things he has learned during the story.
9. Reward
After defeating his enemy or maybe even survived to death, he achieves his personal goal and he is at the best moment of the story. Now, he has a lot of new knowledge than at the step number one.
10. The road back
Now, he has to come back home as a hero. It’s the time where everybody loves him and he is not the ordinary people he was at step number one. But the hero’s journey hasn’t ended yet. He now must face the biggest threat.
11. Resurrection
At this step, we have the biggest danger. Now the threat is at their ordinary world (step one) and he has to defeat it in order to finally bring the peace back to his world. Usually, this threat is something so much bigger than the hero. This is the final battle.
12. Return with the elixir
Now he finally comes back to his ordinary world as a new man. He grew up, learned a lot of new things, faced terrible danger, and he’s prepared to start a new life.
These steps have been used in a lot of films such as: The Star Wars saga, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Pixar films, etc.
It’s not the only way to create a story, of course, but it’s a good way to start writing your screenplay.
