Extraordinary Worlds
Movies take us to worlds and times we could never see on our own. It’s one of the hallmarks of performance drama: spectacle. But writers must also deal with another world to make their characters engaging: the extraordinary world. The two occasionally overlap and coincide, but it’s critical to know the difference.
Right now, you and I are living fairly ordinary lives. We get up, regret our life decisions while fighting rush hour, play on our phones at work, come home, procrastinate from writing or working out, and do it all over again. It’s not particularly interesting. In fact, from a screenplay perspective, we call this the “ordinary world.” Then something happens. You get a mysterious phone call. You meet that special someone. An asteroid is discovered hurtling toward earth. All of a sudden, your routine has changed.
This event — usually called the inciting incident — is what makes your story. Without it, your script is just another, ordinary day in the office. When you decide to take action, you have left the ordinary world and moved to your “extraordinary world.” This transition or turning point also moves the script into Act II.
But it’s important that you don’t mistake an extraordinary setting with an extraordinary world. What might seem extraordinary to us may be quite mundane to our characters. Luke Skywalker lives on a desert planet orbiting two stars. He’s a moisture farmer who works with droids and Jawas. He has a hovercraft. It’s all pretty incredible to us. But to him, it’s quite ordinary. If Luke never gets R2-D2’s message, there is no story. Two hours of moisture farming does not a good movie make.
On the other side of the coin, contemporary, realistic movies have much subtler extraordinary worlds. In Nebraska, David Grant takes his father on a road trip to Nebraska to claim his sweepstakes prize. It’s fairly mundane, and some people found the film boring. But Will and his father’s lives change significantly the moment they hit the road.
The extraordinary world often involves a change in venue. In Star Wars, it’s when Luke leaves his “backwater” planet. In Nebraska, it’s when David and his father get on the highway. In The Lord of the Rings, it’s everything outside of the Shire. But this isn’t always the case.
In Office Space, Peter Gibbons doesn’t change his venue, but rather his attitude. In Juno, Juno’s extraordinary world is the world of being a pregnant teenager. In Limitless, Eddie Morra changes his life with a pill. The important thing here is that the character’s normal routine has been interrupted, and rather than crawl under a rock, they’ve committed to living in this new world.
At the end of a movie, characters often return to their ordinary worlds as changed people. Their experience in the extraordinary world has taught them something. The return to the ordinary world also gives the writer an opportunity to show how much a character has changed over the course of their adventure.
In Star Wars (although it happens two films later), Luke returns to Tatooine as a Jedi. In Nebraska, David and his father return home without the sweepstakes winnings, but they have a new truck, a new compressor, and a better relationship. In Office Space, Peter Gibbons returns to work, but this time it’s not in an office. (Limitless has a bad ending.*)
This extraordinary world is really what drives your story. Your protagonist’s reaction to these extraordinary events and circumstances are what define their character. It’s part of the premise: battling an evil galactic empire, taking a road trip with your father, dealing with teen pregnancy. Without that extraordinary event, there is no story.
So remember when you craft your next great script — whether it’s about a Jedi master or a paper pusher — to your characters, the next ninety pages of their story need to be nothing short of extraordinary.
*The ending to Limitless was rewritten and reshot multiple times without any improvement. But if you look at the movie from the perspective of Eddie Morra’s extraordinary world, there’s an obvious, satisfying solution.
In the beginning of the movie, he’s a poor, struggling writer. The end of the movie should reflect that point. Ideally, the biggest thing he would have learned from taking NZT was that he shouldn’t be taking NZT. It makes sense. After all, at the midpoint Eddie says, “You know what, let’s not invade Russia in the winter. Let’s go home, let’s pop a beer, and let’s live off the interest.” The movie should end with Eddie working on the great American novel the hard way. Maybe with a bag of cash under his bed.
Instead, there’s this vague ending where Eddie doesn’t really learn anything or change as a person. He’s still on top, but only because of the drug. And the only takeaway for the audience is that apparently mind-enhancing drugs are amazing.
I’ve worked as a script analyst for Scriptapalooza, the BlueCat Screenplay Competition, and Abbot Management. Learn more about screenwriting and the film “biz” on my blog www.billvargo.com.
