With the recent press making the rounds, I've put some thought into what I actually contributed to XII, and it revealed a thing or two to me about drama and screenwriting in general.

With my first four drafts on XII, I was chasing a tone and feel for the film, which in hindsight was completely inappropriate for our production team or creative goals.  What survived my drafts were the structure and the characters, and as a result I more or less became the narc for structure and motivation.

At first glance, this strikes me as kind of an odd pair of things to be nitpicky about.  When writers talk about listening to your characters and getting in the zone, aren't they talking about ignoring structure?  Aren't they telling you to let your characters be themselves, and not to impose any kind of external order on them?  From a purely creative standpoint, isn't the motivation of your characters kind of the essence of where the story comes from?  Isn't structure just a byproduct of good storytelling?

Sort of.  If structure is artificial, then yes.  If your character is "supposed" to graduate the space academy at the beginning of act III so he can save the galaxy, and he keeps graduating at the end of act I, then just sticking all these filler scenes in there to stretch it out is crappy storytelling.

At the same time, structure isn't about how much filler is in your screenplay, it's about how hard it is for your characters to do stuff, which is a force in equal opposition to their motivation.  Structure is about obstacles.  If your character is graduating from the space academy that quick, it doesn't mean your story can't be mostly about the space academy.  All it means is that you're making it way, way too easy for him or her.  You need bigger reasons for your character NOT to graduate, and as your character overcomes those reasons, you'll find yourself using up the extra pages.  What's more, they'll only overcome those obstacles if their motivation is extreme enough.  Your character motivation has to be strong enough to stand up to your structure.  Your structure is the wringer you put your character through, and their motivations fuel their creativity and resolve.

For that reason, structure and character are actually the two halves of a story.  For me, I need a solid structure to make sure my characters are worth telling a story about in the first place.  If I don't challenge them enough to really call their motivations into question, how will they grow?