[BACK]
If you've written your script, done a few revisions and you show it to your friends and there's confusion as to whose story it is, another way to figure it out is to decide who has the longest journey.
Using the athlete/coach example: if it's an athlete who has great potential, but because of one reason or another, isn't using his talent so the coach is tough on him and as a result of the coach's toughness the athlete rises to the occasion and goes on to play well and win a scholarship that changes his life. That's a pretty big journey.
But if the coach is a tortured man, a guy who had potential as a young man, but blew his opportunity to play pro football, so he's bitter. And when he sees this athlete who is truly gifted and who happens to be the son of a girl who dumped him twenty years ago or the son of a guy who bested him on the football field 20 years ago, this coach may be doing all he can to thwart the future of this athlete. But if, in the course of the story, the coach faces his demons and decides that he's been wrong to hurt this kid, so he goes on to help him, then that's a pretty big journey too.
Which one is bigger? To me, it's the coach's. So, it's the coach's story.
The bigger journey always trumps the smaller one. |