Screenwriting using force field analysis.
Screenwriting using force field analysis
Using this tool will make sure that your goals and a correct obstacle. It is easy to put obstacles preventing your protagonist from reaching their goal, but are they appropriate.
Inappropriate obstacles.
If you have a person wanting to reconcile with their spouse but a war break out. People will not care about her wanting to get to her wife. Because there is a war. Their relationship is unimportant.
But if a woman wanting to reconcile with her wife, but she has a career opportunity that will require her to move across the country. Suddenly the obstacle and goal are of equal size and would line up in force field analysis.
More and one on one
It is great to have more obstacles than goals. So as your character moves through the story there seems to be no end to their trouble.
Using force field analysis also lets you see where the obstacles are stacking up. If a minor goal has all the obstacles, perhaps that goal is the main goal. Focusing on a goal will less obstacles feels like you are forcing the story in a direction, rather than the story following a natural path.
We encourage you to go and look at the other videos as the topics and concepts work together to build a Library of resources for screenwriters.
The concept of Force Field Analysis is looked at in detail in Writing Screenplays with Intelligence.
Here is a link if you want to watch it in YouTube
