Today's piece on ENCANTO is about two of the most rules of good writing. First, your protagonist has to make choices. I can't tell you how many scripts I read (okay, and write) where the protagonist doesn't ever really do anything. They react perhaps, but they don't make significant choices. Compelling stories are like ping pong; you cannot just volley. You have to take chances.
It's not just about keeping our attention either. We learn who a character really is and what they really want through their choices they make. If they don't make choices, we can't connect with them. We can't understand them.
Mirabel is constantly making choices. Some of them are small--I'm going to set up these little decorations outside all the doors. Some of them are large--I'm going to go into Bruno's Forbidden Tower of Scary. Every time, they tell us something about her. She needs to tell people she's fine with what happened. She wants to help her family. And every time, they make us invest in her again. The bigger the choice, the more we root for the character (assuming the choice makes sense for who they are).
But the other half is equally important: The choices need to have consequences (which lead to new choices). In the very best scripts, in my opinion, characters make choices which lead to new problems which lead to new choices. And ENCANTO really fits the bill here, too. Think of Mirabel's journey--her desire to figure out what's going on with the house leads to her interrogating her sister Luisa. And that conversation allows Luisa to share burdens she's told no one about, which is great. But it also shakes her up, such that she starts to lose the ability to access her physical strength, which gets Mirabel into further trouble. Similarly, going into Bruno's tower leads to her discover the prediction about her, which leads her to question her family about Bruno, which leads to more complications, including meeting Bruno himself.
When I'm writing a feature length piece I like to break down the script into roughly six or seven 15 minute units. I try to figure out what does my protagonist want at the start of each unit; what choice will they make to reach that goal; what complications will ensue, and then what new problem or goal do they have, which becomes the start of the next unit. It definitely helps me to think through a script in these terms of choice and consequence.
