A couple of years ago, I subscribed to a Masterclass taught by Aaron Sorkin (writer of A Few Good Men, The American President, SportsNight, The West Wing, Money Ball, The Social Network, The Newsroom, Charlie Wilson’s War, and many more…) The class was structured like a Hollywood writers’ room, in which Sorkin and the students on screen practiced “breaking” stories; that is, beating out plots to make sure there’s enough going on to make an interesting story.
The Number One thing I took away from that Masterclass was Sorkin’s understanding of story as a series of escalating Intentions and Obstacles. Simply put, the intention is the character’s need or desire, and the obstacle is the thing standing in her way. Intentions and obstacles can be internal and external, and great stories have both. Perhaps a character wants to be in the school play (intention) but has to overcome crippling self-doubt (obstacle) in order to audition. Then when she gets the part, the self-doubt morphs into intractable stage fright (another obstacle). Stories with happy endings conclude with the characters overcoming all of their obstacles. Stories with unhappy or ambivalent endings conclude with obstacles remaining or a terrible price being paid to overcome them.
Let’s take Jurassic Park (1993) as an example of a story built on a succession of intentions and obstacles. Once the story gets going, the overarching intention is to get off the island safely, and the overarching obstacle is hungry dinosaurs. But the story is really built on smaller intentions and obstacles that add up to the big one. (We’ll use the movie instead of the book because the book is pretty enamored with a corporate espionage subplot that the movie mostly jettisons.)
Intention: John Hammond wants Grant and Sattler to come to the park to sign off on it.
Obstacle: The two paleontologists are knee-deep in digging up a new raptor fossil.
Outcome: Hammond throws a lot of money at them and they decide to come.
Then we get lots of exposition, leading up to the tour. The tour flops (“Are there going to be dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour?”), and the storm rolls in. We’ll skip to after the first terrifying scene with the T-Rex. (“Where’s the goat? What happened to the goat?”)
Intention: Tim and Grant need to get out of the tree.
Obstacle: The climb down the tree, especially once the car starts chasing them.
Outcome: They make it to the ground. (“We’re back in the car again.”)
Intention: Grant, Tim, and Lex need to cross the park safely.
Obstacle: A herd of gallimimus are “flocking this way.”
Outcome: They take shelter beneath a fallen tree.
Intention: They need to scale a fence to make it back to the lodge.
Obstacle: The fence…also, Sattler is about to turn the power back on, so there’s a ticking clock.
Outcome: They make it over, but Tim gets electrocuted.
Intention: They need to reunite with the others.
Obstacle: A couple of velociraptors are hunting them.
Outcome: The T-Rex saves them from the raptors!
In the meantime, other intentions and obstacles are happening to the other characters.
Intention: Nedry needs to get to the boat.
Obstacle: The storm washes away the signage and he gets lost.
Outcome: He gets eaten by a bunch of Dilophosaurus. (Obstacle not overcome.)
Intention: Arnold needs to reset the system that Nedry sabotaged.
Obstacle: The main circuit breakers are on the other side of the compound.
Outcome: He gets eaten by the raptors. (Also obstacle not overcome.)
Intention: Sattler needs to do the same thing as Arnold.
Obstacle: Same thing.
Outcome: She turns the power back on, but Muldoon dies in the process. (Outcome achieved at a terrible price.)
One more:
Intention: Sattler wants Grant to want to have kids.
Obstacle: Grant doesn’t want kids (“Some of them smell. Babies smell!”)
Outcome: Protecting Lex and Tim makes Grant open to the idea.
There are plenty more intentions and obstacles in Jurassic Park, but you get the idea. Breaking down stories into their intentions and obstacles can make storytelling seem a bit mechanical, but that’s what the actual writing addresses – adorning the bones of a story with some lovely organs, muscles, skin, and clothes. If you’re writing a story and a scene does not have some sort of intention and obstacle in it, you need to ask yourself either (1) why the scene is there and/or (2) how do I inject some tension into it.
For several years, I popped in to a friend’s sixth grade class to teach the basics of storytelling. One of the exercises I did with the kids was making up obstacles for our intentions. One year, we started with a very boring report: “I went to the grocery store for milk, got milk, and came home.” By the time we were done adding obstacles, there was a wrong turn, a bridge going up, a flat tire, a car crash, and zombies!
Now that’s a story.*
* I did this exercise years before I read Fortunately the Milk by Neil Gaiman. If you want a short and hilarious story built on very blatant intentions and obstacles, check it out.
Adam Thomas, Author 