Very often the roadblocks you face while writing your script are due to the slackening of tension in your story. Because the suspense has faded, you are not compelled to move forward. One way to heighten the tension is to add complications.
Writers often confuse the terms "twist" and "complication." Both are important elements of dramatic storytelling, but they usually perform different functions. A complication is a form of a twist, but a twist is not always a complication.
Pure twists can provide some good moments of shock and surprise in a script. Twists may end a movie on a startling and unexpected note, as was the case with THE USUAL SUSPECTS and MEMENTO. In DIABOLIQUE, as with its imitators such as SLEUTH and CLUE, twists are the essence of the action, as characters whom we thought were dead suddenly turn up alive. While these twists do advance the plot, they do not complicate it. The main tension remains essentially the same.
Complications, however, are more complex. Complications raise the stakes and/or take the plot in an entirely new direction. While a twist can often be seen coming or may be obvious in retrospect, a complication is a richer development in the story. The audience's response to a twist is: "Oh!" but the response to a complication is: "Oh, no."
The main complications in a script usually come at the end of the first and second acts, and are what propel the action into the following act. Genre movies offer familiar, often predictable complications. For instance, in a romantic comedy, the two bickering leads are forced together in some way at the end of the first act. After they inevitably fall in love, they are separated at the end of the second act. A thriller may find the protagonist wrongly accused of murder at the end of the first act. At the end of the second, the hero discovers the true killer, who just happens to be the hero’s wife, or boss, or best friend.
However, any type of story can have several smaller, subtler complications throughout the script. What all complications have in common is that they always make the protagonist's life more difficult.
TOOTSIE is a movie filled with clever complications. Dustin Hoffman's character poses as an actress in order to earn enough money to produce his friend's play. However, his hope of keeping his identity a secret is complicated not only by his crush on Jessica Lange's character, but also by the crushes two male characters develop on his female persona. When his best friend, played by Teri Garr, catches him trying on her clothes, he distracts her by seducing her and complicates his life further. His success as "Dorothy" leads to his acting contract being renewed, thereby trapping him in a dress seemingly forever. In response to each of these complications, Hoffman's character has to continually revise his plan of attack, and this makes the action increasingly involving, tense, funny and unpredictable.
In CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, the actions carried out by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character are instigated by the complications in his life. First, his parents destabilize his home life, prompting him to go on the run. When the checks he writes on his own account start to bounce, he begins forging checks. He poses as a pilot in order to cash forged payroll checks, but when the FBI closes in, he assumes a new persona -- as a surgeon. As in TOOTSIE, the complications force DiCaprio to become smarter and more wily in order to get away with his scheme, and this pushes the story to new levels. It makes the movie more than a mere linear chase cartoon between a felon and a cop, and it also draws us into DiCaprio’s world, as we wonder how he will deal with the roadblocks thrown in his path.
Complications will prevent your story from being one-note and predictable. Complications add dimension not only to your plot, but to your characters as well, since your characters will be forced to react and change in order to tackle these unexpected obstacles to their goals.
