To illustrate this, let’s examine the film adaptation of The Godfather to see how the main characters give rise to the structure of the film.
The central characters are:
- VITO CORLEONE: Aging mafia don with three sons. A tough immigrant Sicilian, he now dreams of taking his business legit. He’s a moral man in an immoral world: he loves his family and worries about the sleazy business of drug dealing.
- SONNY: The eldest son, heir apparent, but a hothead.
- FREDO: The middle son, a weak fool.
- MICHAEL: The youngest son, a war hero, all-American (with a WASP girlfriend), very smart, loves his father but doesn’t want to work in the family business.
These four characters don’t really give you a film structure, but what if you add the following:
- SOLOZZO: A drug dealer who wants to build his own empire. He needs the leverage of a big player — Vito Corleone — but he’s too ambitious.
So here’s your plot:
- Solozzo (too ambitious) asks Vito to partner with him in the drug trade.
- Vito (the man of morals) politely refuses.
- Sonny (the hothead) speaks out of line.
- Solozzo (too ambitious) thinks he can make a deal with Sonny, and tries to kill Vito, placing Sonny in power.
- Fredo (the weak fool) can’t protect his father.
- Vito (the tough immigrant Sicilian) survives five bullets in the chest.
- Michael (who loves his father) goes to see Vito in the hospital.
- Solozzo (too ambitious) plans to kill Vito in the hospital.
- Michael (the smart one) outwits the assassins and saves his father.
- Michael (the smart one, who loves his father) plans to avenge Vito and restore order and power to the family business.
- Michael (the war hero) goes to kill Solozzo.
- Solozzo (too ambitious) falls for the trap and gets killed.
- Michael (the smart one) flees the country.
- Michael (the all-American) hides in Sicily, where he learns to embrace his heritage.
- Sonny (the hothead) flies into a rage over the abuse of his sister, falls into a trap, and gets killed.
And so on….
Structure is the natural outgrowth of characters in conflict.
Before structuring your story, make sure you have characters who will come into conflict in a meaningful and interesting way.
