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Spotlight & The Big Short: The Difference Between Plot & Structure

By Jacob Krueger

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This week we’re going to be looking at two Oscar Winners, Spotlight and The Big Short. And we’re going to be looking at them not only as good screenplays, but as examples of very different kinds of screenplays. We’re going to be looking at them in terms of the difference between plot and structure.

The concepts of plot and structure are ideas that get mixed up all the time.  They are words that are often used interchangeably, but that in my opinion actually mean very different things.

I like to think of plot as the crap that happens in your movie, or for that matter in your life.  And I like to think of structure as the choices a character makes in relation to that plot.  The choices that change their lives forever.  Plot is the stuff that happens, but structure is your character’s change.

And if you think about your own life, you’ll probably realize that the difference between plot and structure matters to you as well.  You’ve probably met the person who gets a hangnail and it destroys their whole day.  And you’ve probably also met the person who gets cancer and gets a whole new lease on life.

You have probably met the person who finds beauty in the most horrible situations and the person who creates horror into the most beautiful ones.

And this is the exciting thing about the difference between plot and structure.  Plot, as much as we obsess about it, is pretty much interchangeable.  We spend so much time as writers, and in our daily lives, thinking about plot, worrying about what happens next, what happens next, what happens next, that we forget to think about what it all really means.  We forget that what really matters is not just what happens, but what the we do in relationship to what happens.  And how we allow that to bring meaning and change to our lives.

Having said that, I want to start with a script that flies right in the face of all that.  A script that focuses mainly on plot rather than structure. And that script is Spotlight.  

The fact that Spotlight won best picture is kind of amazing, because in many ways Spotlight is just a procedural script.

It’s a very good script, but essentially it’s built like an episode of Law & Order.  It’s built like a procedural.  And what do I mean when I say procedural?  

I mean you’re essentially just watching a bunch of newspaper people do what they do to try to achieve their goal. The truth is the characterization is not very deep in the script. The actors are all such wonderful actors, that they make you feel like they are fully fledged, fully alive people that you care about. But that’s the actors. There is very little character development in the script itself.  

It’s primarily a procedural script: this happened, then this happened, then this happened.... Just like Law & Order: We interrogated this person and they lead us to this person and then we caught this person and then he was tried…

If you think about the emotional issues that any of these characters in Spotlight are dealing with, you’ll realize pretty quickly, we don’t really know. How does Michael Keaton’s character, or any of these characters, for that matter, change? We don’t really know.

So how does a procedural script win best-picture? Part of it is because Academy members have some very interesting nominating and judging preferences. But the other part is because the film is really compelling. The subject matter is interesting and engaging, and extraordinarily well crafted.