Writing the Classic Movie Ending (How to Finish your Screenplay!)

By Gordy Hoffman

I've only finished so many screenplays in my life. Writing a script all the way to the very last page is always an extremely significant, personal achievement for me. A large part of its significance is the reality that I actually wrote an ending, or, at the very least, typed "THE END." Trying to finish a screenplay and effectively pay something off-----this is arguably the hardest part of great screenwriting and often a major breaker of screenplays. Devising a true, organic climax is so daunting and dangerous to screenwriters that they often convince themselves they have come up with a worthy ending merely to pry themselves from the vise of their own standards. They delude themselves into believing that what they have created is good and stands shoulder to shoulder with the rest of their screenplay. Faced with the challenge of a superior ending can be horrifying, and it is very tempting to jump suddenly into a slipshod ending simply to get out and say I'm done. I'm finished.
But you're not finished, are you? Inside you know its garbage. If what you have written prior to arriving at the end of your screenplay is special, then you know, if you quiet yourself down, whether your ending is not enough.
How does a screenwriter deal with this? How can I use the difficulty of coming up with a classic ending, a true, triumphant climax, help me write my screenplay? If I accept that I am at the mercy of my standards to have something transcendent at my movie's conclusion, and if I can surrender to the fact that there is no way I will see the true ending to my movie in the first draft of my screenplay, I can let go of the pressure and write without expectation. For me, sometimes its nearly impossible for me to feel comfortable starting without knowing how it will end. And this anxiety over how it will end will hurt your entire story.
But your screenplay is a living thing, and that living thing is going to grow, and your ending will change well beyond your first draft. This knowledge can give you great freedom, freedom to be more creative and let the pulse of what makes you an imaginative spirit be heard in your writing.
One reason I have had problems finishing scripts in the past is I don't want to be responsible for the work once it's done. If I finish a screenplay, someone is eventually going to read it, and that person will undoubtedly have something to say, and it might be painful. Is this why I won't finish? Is this why I can't come up with ending, because I may open myself to criticism? Answer these questions for yourself, reminding yourself it's natural for people to hate your work. Our world would be very different from what we know if everyone loved your screenplay. I received over a hundred reviews on a movie I wrote. Some called it a masterpiece. Some said it was worthless. Who's right? Nobody. It's art. There's no right. So if this fear is keeping you from finishing, you're not alone.
Sometimes I have not wanted to finish because finishing your screenplay is saying goodbye. Are you good at goodbyes? Most of us have problems with saying farewell to someone or something we care about. It's natural. When I started screenwriting, I realized a major reason I had problems finishing my screenplay was attachment. I had grown so intimate with my characters, story, and process, I found it heartbreaking to let go. I had created something that meant the world to me. The work had given me a real sense of purpose and worth. I didn't want the experience to end. This is not uncommon. I found out it does end, but something of it never does. It sucks to finish something you love, and know it's over. But after acknowledging I really cared, I could cut it loose.
Let's say you have no problem with farewells, or fear of criticism. Let's say you have no crazy anxiety at all and you simply can't figure out how to end your movie. What now?
Take your script back a few pages and see where it might've started breaking up. Go back before it sucked. Get back to where it was excellent. Pick it up there. Write straight into the blank page, straight out of whole cloth, and keep your mind open. Let go and even delete what you had in front of you. Trash it, and hammer something brand new. The good makes way for the best.
Doesn't work? Take your lead characters, pull them out of your script and have them talk in a void. If that's too abstract for you, put them on the porch of a house, or in a diner having coffee. Have them scream about what they care about. Tweak the combinations. Have your characters talk to God. Have them talk to you. This process will give you pause over your movie, and then you might find where this is supposed to live.
Another way to a great ending is write out the most hysterical ending you can think of. Submerge yourself in the ridiculous. Shoot for the absurd. Chances are you have limited yourself and believe there are only a few places you can land. Bullshit. Your wondrous, mind-blowing ending is found in the impossible places in your mind. To really floor people, you have to go off the grid. Start with all the stupid stuff you can think of. Your ideas will flow from this crazy place, and you will find something, a seed, that will sign you off.
Whatever you do, these suggestions have nothing to do with sitting around thinking or talking with your screenwriter friends. They have everything to do with screenwriting. Coming up with an unforgettable finish has to come from the act of creation, the action of screenwriting. Get your hands moving, let go of your baby and shout into the nothing, and there, something will arrive. This lays the art of writing.
Now go and write to finish.

Gordy Hoffman

About the Author
Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival for LOVE LIZA , Gordy Hoffman has written and directed three digital shorts for Fox Searchlight. He made his feature directorial debut with his script, A COAT OF SNOW, which world premiered at the 2005 Locarno International Film Festival. He is also the founder of the BlueCat Screenplay Competition. Dedicated to develop and celebrate the undiscovered screenwriter, BlueCat provides written screenplay analysis on every script entered. In addition, Gordy offers screenwriters personalized feedback on their scripts through his consultation service, www.screenplaynotes.com .

Copyright © 2006 BlueCat Screenplay Competition

Gordy Hoffman

Rewriting your Screenplay: The Road to your Audience

By Gordy Hoffman

The promise of the rewrite is very sweet. I have collected evidence that the more authentic the labor put into rewriting your screenplay, the greater the reward, and the reward is high, for whatever lovely, wonderful moments you might have discovered in the frightening process of plowing through the first draft, those moments, those seeds, are only seeds, and they only fulfill their destiny as giant, involving scenes in the movie that screens before people. So if I shortcut my revision, I will miss the prize, pure and simple.
The process of rewriting is recreating. I need to make a contract with myself to make room in every moment of my writing for the imaginative magic of inspiration, that flash of brilliance which some call talent, the muse, God, or desperation, to deliver something that did not exist just a second before, but now lives forever, like a huge white rabbit suddenly from a hat. This usually happens when my fingers are on the keyboard and there's white below from where I'm typing, and I have no idea where I'm going. Or if I have some idea, I don't have the answer, but I trust and that's it.
Rewriting is technically every change you make to your draft. There, I said it, so now you can't come back and argue with me about what you think a rewrite is. But now I will tell you what rewriting really is, or what it really is not. Rewriting is not cutting and pasting. It's not reading through your draft on your computer screen and changing words. It's not pushing your cursor down the page, highlighting text and deleting it. I think this is called editing or deleting or garbage time or easy on the damn brain, but it's not called rewriting over in the bust your ass capital of screenplay planet.
Rewriting is almost starting completely over. It's almost accepting that you have nothing after celebrating like you won your tenth super bowl simply by typing the end and poking two brass fasteners through a pile of paper. Rewriting is taking that pile of paper, plopping it beside you where you can see it without a lot of movement of the head, and copying it over with an industrious attitude.
Okay, basically if you open a new file and name it second draft, or seventh, or whatever, lie all you want, but if you simply copy it over and the only thing that gets changed is the things that make you physically jerk in your chair, then you are not rewriting with an industrious attitude. An industrious attitude can mean a lot of things, I will probably call it something else next week, but it simply means you are open to work, and with a rewrite, the premise to work is the belief your script needs work. If you can't see much wrong, how can it need a lot of work, and how is the rewrite going to work? It won't. So make sure you have an open bent, and start typing it over.
What happens? Well, if you've never done it, I'm not gonna tell you. A lot of screenwriters won't even admit it they've never done it, because it breaks your neck. If you have done it, it's almost time we did it again. Either way, go.
Now, how do I find out what's broken? It's not all on one page, and it's hard to see the big picture of the awful thing. Well, this isn't a book, this is just a short essay, so here's a short list of tools to get yourself into and ready for your rewrite.
First, you got ask yourself, what's the story, or more specifically, what are the stories? I usually make up a list of sentences that start with "The story of..." and fill in the blanks. What are the stories that are emerging from your current draft? What does your spirit want to tell versus what your poor brain thought you were going to do back in the coffee shop? You might find the list is long, and that's a problem, too. There's usually a main one, maybe one close behind, then a few tiny sweet ones. There is your family of stories. There they are. Now. How are you treating them?
This is where you can make some kind of a chart. Like a spreadsheet or something. Or the back of a dry cleaning receipt will do. Divide up your script into the beginning, act one, act two, act three, and the finish. By the way, I know there's all sorts of act divisions. Modify my directions at your will. It's fine. So within this chart you will pencil in the beats that exist within the current layout of your script. When you're done charting the arcs of your family of stories, you will undoubtedly find HOLES. Wow. Nothing's there. Didn't see that before. Okay, you better put something in there.
Let's say you got your chart pretty full, in fact, it looks like the stories of your movie have something resembling a beginning, middle and end. Now what you need is to make every scene as good as your best scene. Yeah, terrible news. How do you determine this? Grade your scenes. Some scenes might get an A. Others maybe a B. Give your work an F or two. Once you do this, you will know what scenes are functioning as placeholders and what are moneymakers. In the end, rewriting is making everything the most special ever. Anything short, and you have more rewriting to do. Unless you can live with an uneven ride. But this is a rewriting article, not a give up article.
Finally, a reminder. Screenwriting becomes artful when compression arrives. Shorten your everything. All dialogue and description is representative of this life traveled through a living soul. Uh, that's you. A screenplay is just another poem, it's just another small bit resembling something we recognize as human beings. Seven Samurai is a very short movie compared to what happens in a life, even shorter stacked against forever. But it lives beyond forever, doesn't it?