With the impending release of Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third installment in the series, I wanted to revisit what made the first film so successful, and how you can use the same principles and elements in your own stories, whether your using them on the stage, page or screen
I know Avatar cost 237 million dollars to make, and dazzled audiences with incredible technology that transported us to a new (blue) world. But without an emotionally resonant story at its core, it would never have grossed over 2 billion dollars, worldwide.
In addition to the overall plot structure of your business stories, novels or screenplays – the six stages and character transformation the heroes must experience as they pursue their visible goals – you must employ as many of the following twelve structural principles, tools and devices as you can.
James Cameron’s original screenplay for Avatar is an outstanding example of how these techniques can be used in every scene of your story to maximize the emotional experience:
1. Every scene, event and character must contribute to the hero’s outer motivations. Pick any scene in Avatar and you’ll see that it either moves Jake closer to his goal of protecting the Na’vi and winning the love of Neytiri, or it creates more obstacles to achieving those desires.
2. Make each hurdle and obstacle your hero faces greater than the previous ones. The conflict in your story must build, becoming greater and greater as you drive readers and audiences toward the climax of the story. Obviously, the conflict involved in learning to become his avatar is not as difficult for Jake as his later attempts to survive in the jungles of Pandora. And those aren’t as difficult as becoming a Na’vi warrior, and then leading the Na’vi in battle against Quaritch’s powerful army.
3. Accelerate the pace of the story. Act 1 of Avatar contains a lot of narration and exposition as Jake arrives, learns about Pandora and his avatar, and talks to Grace and Quaritch.
Act 2 has a lot more action, as Jake is taken through Na’vi “boot camp” by Neytiri, captures and tames a banshee, makes love with Neytiri, and escapes the attack on Hometree. And Act 3 is pretty much one big battle sequence, with moments of conflict coming at our hero and the Na’vi in rapid succession.
Because of the futuristic, faraway setting, Avatar requires a lot of exposition. But Cameron skillfully presents all this information in the first act of the film, before the pace needs to be accelerated and the conflict shifted into high gear. He also amplifies the emotion by creating some conflict (and the anticipation of conflict) in each scene.
Instead of dry lectures about Pandora and avatars, we hear what a hostile place it is from the nemesis Quaritch, who then secretly recruits Jake as they prepare for battle with the Na’vi. And as Jake is given his introduction to avatars, Grace gives him a hard time for being a marine and not knowing anything about science or what they are doing there.
4. Create peaks and valleys to the emotion. The big action sequences in Avatar are interspersed with quieter scenes of Jake recording his video-log, talking to others at the base camp, getting language lessons or learning about Pandora from Neytiri. These moments allow the audience to catch its breath and to begin anticipating the next big conflict. They also prevent the movie from becoming one monotonous action sequence.
5. Create anticipation…
More on this in my next installment! (See what I did there?)
See you then –
Michael
