I think the "Why does this story have to happen to this character now?" question is awesome because it ultimately contains within it an enormous coincidence. This is of course in the context of the entire life of the fictional character, but it really is a coincidence. We just happened upon this character at the exact moment something completely life-changing is occurring.

But that's what a story is. To borrow from Scott's penultimate analogy, a story in the context of screenwriting occurs at the exact moment the animals appear to our protagonist. We don't see his childhood or parents or senior thesis defense. We don't care about that. What we're interested in is the moment he sets his sights on that prize lion in the middle of East Africa. That's what we care about and here we are right there with him. What a coincidence.

I usually think I know where my character is coming from and where they are going, but it's always over the course of the story that I really get to know them. I don't go back and rework each piece to get it to a state that I'd call perfect (some people do, but I find that bogs me down too much and can too easily turn into a way to avoid moving forward). Instead, I work pretty quickly, pushing through to get a first draft done in about three weeks. That draft gets put away for a few weeks. When I come back to it, after having spent ninety or more pages with these people, I know them better than I ever did at page 1, 2, or 10 the first time around. All these things jump out during that first read thru and I find myself marking all over the copy with a red pen and thinking, "Jeff would NEVER do that!" And that, for me, is one the most satisfying things about writing. The time when you finally know your characters so well that the things you first wrote jump out at you as implausible. It also makes the rewrite a lot of fun and not as much work as you might think because you now have this treasure-trove of knowledge you didn't the first time around.

"Why does this story have to happen to this character now?" Does that question apply to comedy writing?

@Gary

I think it does apply to comedy writing. Think about how comedy depends on the context and if the context isn't right, jokes and gags fall flat, have no meaning. Take Hangover for example. If the wedding wasn't happening right after the bachelor party, the situation wouldn't produce the same comedic results.

@Gary Cottontail: Obviously some comedies don't require much in the way of character depth -- slapstick, farce, satire. But any story where a primary character goes through a metamorphosis, no matter how small, will necessitate the writer sorting out where that character starts (psychologically) and where they end up.

Although Blake Snyder's Save the Cat series can be rather simplistic, there is a good starting point in what Blake (sadly no longer with us) called "stasis = death". In other words, the protagonist's life is going nowhere. When presented with the opportunity to change (inciting incident/catalyst/whatever) they have to accept or risk stagnating.

It's there in a literal sense for the sort of rom-coms and family movies that STC is aimed at creating, but also true for most movies, if not literally. For example:

Literal - Jake in Avatar is going nowhere. He can't move, the life he thrived in (the marines) is over, and when he is propositioned he has nothing going for him.

Not-so-literal - Indy, at the beginning of Lost Ark, has just been defeated. He has returned, a loser, to the stale university job that actually pays his wages. It's an alien environment to him - look how uncomfortable he is in the classroom, how he can't handle chalk or how he's flustered when a pretty girl makes eyes at him. Then the govt comes a-calling...

Like I said, I find STC quite remedial at times, more of a starter-book, but it still contains a lot of good advice, and I find "stasis = death" to be one such nugget.

re: the "why now" question, I think Lajos Egri calls it the "point of attack", the place in the extended story where OUR story begins. It should be a crisis. I think Egri uses A Doll's House as an example, starting where Nora has to face her past.

IMO, it's important to start your story with a crisis or two, the more the better. A good example is Little Miss Sunshine, which starts with a suicide, a business & marriage on the brink, and Grandpa snorting heroin.

Writers need to create story situations and characters that are "crisis-able." Take Thelma and Louise: if Louise hadn't been a victim in Texas, she wouldn't have shot Harlan and the whole story wouldn't have happened.

I like your concept of disunity. It's the psychological component of crisis-able.

One of my favorite details in Red are the rosebushes (despite effort, Frank fails with roses, others succeed, they exchange intel accordingly). Unexpected, fun, character-revealing, and becomes part of the story structure, propelling things forth. Jon and Erich Hoeber might well have seen the detail at the outset (brilliant writers), but more likely it came about during a later stage of prep-writing.

I love when things start coalescing as you're building out the story, and those fabulous character details you imagined as essential at outset become obsolete because new details emerge that even better reveal character and distill story.

Does "Why does this story have to happen to this character now?" apply to The Big Lebowski?

@Gary Cottontail: I would argue that the Dude is one of those Protagonist characters who does not undergo any significant metamorphosis, therefore it's more of an arbitrary choice on the part of the Coens why now. Fatalistically in terms of the Lebowski story universe, one could make the case that the Dude goes through all of the stuff he does in the story in order to do one thing: impregnate Maude.

good point. thanks!

Whatever stage a character is in, it has to serve the story you're trying to tell. Different stage means a different story.

Example: Jake Gittes from Chinatown. His "disunity", as Scott uses the term (and one I really like) at the opening of the film is that he's a smart private eye who has no idea how utterly clueless he is about the mystery he's about to confront.

That is very different from the overall conception of the character; at one point we are told he was an investigator for the DA's office, and probably quite good at his job. Something happened in Jake's past that screwed up his idealism and his moral compass.

However intriguing or compelling that may be, we don't see that dramatized, because that's a different story from what is depicted in Chinatown.

My current leading man is on the down side of his rather colorful career as a TV reality show star. How he got there I kind of have an idea, but it's not fully developed. Because it ultimately isn't germane to the story I'm trying to tell, which is about the loss of his former, phony self and his heroic redemption.