Students spend so much time analyzing films and learning rules that their scripts are often unoriginal and formulaic. Originality comes from what is unique about our lives and our imaginations. The difficulty comes when one tries to convert life experience, memory, fantasy and dreams into very structured drama. We see the story from OUR point of view instead of orchestrating characters who can fight equally and fairly to resolve the conflicts. If we try to live in the mirage, it often becomes a delusion.
Memory picks the best of the past and constructs an impossible future with our imaginations.
Whenever we try to live a dream, we find something wrong with it. But audiences come to the theatre to pretend their dreams are real and valid, that there is substance to the rainbow. The minute the audience feels that the dream is mundane, tawdry, too small, pathetic, they lose their sympathy for the journey. Most love affairs eventually end with the realization that the loved one's shit smells as bad as one's own. Human imperfection is necessary to drama but the climax can't be anticlimactic or the audience will just stay home and deal with their personal misery.