ScripTips 10: Avengers Assemble!

If I could only teach novel plotting using two examples from cinema, I’d pick Casablanca and The Avengers. Everything I need is contained in those two films. One creates the structure, and the other uses it beautifully. Having already examined Casablanca, we’re going to look at The Avengers now. We’ll start with the All Important Triangle, and we’ll look at the “Do you know what your problem is?” scene, and then, we’re going to examine the way this film in particular shows how you can layer your plots for more complexity (and more pages) in a novel’s outline structure.

Let me begin by saying that the 2012 film is one of the very few movies that I consider to be “perfect.” Note that I’m not saying it’s my favorite film—I haven’t even listed it in my top five, and I’m not saying it’s the best film. I’m saying that’s its structure is a diamond that was cut perfectly out of the rock it came from. The lessons it can teach us are applicable even if you have no interest in Marvel or superheroes or the entire action genre.

So let’s shine a light on that diamond now.

To begin with, we’ll start with our protagonist. Wait, you say? Isn’t it a team movie? Isn’t it an ensemble cast? Isn’t everyone in it a hero? Yes, all that is true. But it’s still a movie, and in order to resonate with audiences to maximum effect, it’s going to use a movie structure, and that means there’s one protagonist we are going to hang our plot scaffolding on.

If you can’t spot the protagonist, the let’s identify the villain first and work backwards.

And we all know who that is.