A world with its own laws, and two kinds of nature

The notes take up a screenwriting presentation they title The World of the Story, and stay with remarks they record from Bill Wittliff, Walter Bernstein, and Tom Rickman. A story’s world, they write, is a variation on the actual world we live in. Between characters and their surroundings there is bound to be some kind of interaction. Inside the world that has been made, a story has its own laws, its limits, and its important events.

Originality, they add, comes from two elements: the nature of the protagonist — the character — and the nature of the writer, a worldview. Wittliff, in a line they keep, says he does not try to force characters into a situation he already wants. If the characters are drawn truly enough, they themselves will teach what situation they want.

Who the story is about, and a necessary clash

Bernstein, as they record him, says he never plots apart from the characters. To write a screenplay one must know clearly whom the story is about, and who the protagonist is. If he is writing a screenplay about a villain, what he stresses most is that the villain use their powers to the full, and become a frightening but interesting figure — persuasive, even attractive.

The notes then set down a few craft rules of their own heading. The protagonist and the antagonist necessarily conflict. Conflict, whether physical or inner, cannot drop out of a film. The writer has to know clearly who is the protagonist and who the antagonist; only then can a conflict with a real body be made. A film without inner conflict, they write, is like a bun without its filling: inner conflict is the state inside a protagonist that keeps them from doing what they mean to do, and a film without it has no depth. Character, they say, changes markedly once that inner conflict is there.

Showing an inner life, subtext, and a stop

The best film, in their wording, is inner conflict plus outer conflict. A film made of inner conflict alone, with no bond to an outer clash, is dull. A good screenplay mixes the two in due measure, and the solving of an outer conflict can also ease the inner one. The relation of protagonist and antagonist, they add, must be resolved.

Under “externalizing the interior,” they record Tom Rickman: what matters is not how something is written on the page, but how it is seen on the screen. A feeling of inner conflict written into a direction is as good as absent if it is not shown. The notes also keep a heading on subtext: it is the gap between what is happening outwardly and what is happening inside a character, and that gap can turn the audience into a participant in the story. Means they list for showing an inner life include avoiding speech for an inner thought, a mismatch of word and deed, ordinary talk for ordinary life, and narration when expression is otherwise hard. The notes leave the subject there, before a later recap table. The same Korean report, written out more fully, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Student notes on a screenwriting presentation, The World of the Story, with remarks recorded from Wittliff, Bernstein, and Rickman.

Last updated 15 November 2026