Show What Makes Several Storylines One Film

Explain the relationship among the stories before trying to give every character a fair share of the pitch. The connection might be a shared event, a chain in which one person's action changes another's options, or a deliberate comparison between people who never meet. Equal biography space does not establish any of those relationships.

The opening you choose should expose that design. Starting with an event can make the connection clear while keeping individual experience at a distance. Starting with one character can give the reader an immediate point of entry while falsely suggesting that everyone else exists to help or obstruct that person.

Neither route is automatically more faithful. Test them against the same film, including what each route makes easy to overlook.

Find the connection before the lead sentence

For each strand, identify the pressure on the person, the consequential action they take, and where that action leaves them by the end. Then look between the strands. Does one choice cause another problem? Do different people have authority over different parts of a common event? Or does the film place unlike experiences beside each other without making them causally connected?

Those questions ask for more than a shared location. Three people who happen to be in one building may still have stories whose relationship the pitch has not explained. Conversely, two people can affect each other without ever occupying the same scene.

Asghar Farhadi describes one particular starting point in his Letterboxd interview: finding a crisis, developing different perspectives on it, and following how it produces further crises. That is useful as a creator's account of connection through consequences, not a universal formula or proof that an ensemble pitch must begin with an incident.[^farhadi]

For a pitch, the test is concrete: after reading the connection sentence, can someone explain why the account moves from one strand to another? “Their lives become intertwined” postpones the answer. “Her refusal closes his first route, so he turns to the only person who can reopen it” begins to supply one—provided those are the film's actual events.

Hold one fictional film fixed

The following feature premise is original teaching material. It is not a synopsis of an existing film, a client project, or a tested pitch.

A small cinema is holding its final screening. Nessa, a young filmmaker, arrives to show her work. Rafi, the projectionist, discovers that the indoor setup is unsafe and cancels the indoor presentation. Nessa proposes using the courtyard instead. Salma, the caretaker, has arranged to leave before that alternative screening can happen; she must choose whether to stay and open the courtyard. She stays, missing her arranged departure. Rafi operates a separate courtyard presentation, and Nessa's film is shown there. The unsafe indoor setup is not reopened.

That is the fixed fact sheet. It does not say that Rafi overreacted, that Nessa repaired the fault, or that Salma's missed departure was inconsequential. Nor does it establish what happens to any of them after that evening.

Each strand changes the conditions of the event. Rafi removes the original route. Nessa proposes another. Salma's decision makes access to it possible, at a cost the other two do not share. The closing screening therefore means different things to the three people, even though it is one event.

The two summaries below must retain that distribution. A stronger-sounding version is not allowed to acquire a more convenient caretaker or a foolish projectionist.

Route one: open with the threatened event

Event-led summary — original fictional example

A cinema's final screening loses its venue from the inside: the projectionist, Rafi, finds the indoor setup unsafe and cancels the presentation. The young filmmaker whose work is due to play, Nessa, proposes the courtyard. Moving outside requires more than a change of location. Salma, the caretaker, must choose between her arranged departure and staying to open it. She stays and misses her departure; Rafi operates the separate courtyard presentation without reopening the unsafe indoor setup. Nessa's film reaches its audience, but the final screening comes at a cost to Salma that the shared event does not erase.

This route makes the threatened screening the reason to introduce each person. The names enter when their decisions change its possibilities. The paragraph does not begin with three miniature biographies and hope that a closing sentence will tie them together.

Its causal spine is visible: cancellation, proposal, access decision, altered event. Salma is necessary to the account before the screening occurs, not thanked afterward as someone who made Nessa's triumph possible. Rafi's judgment remains intact: the courtyard route does not prove that his indoor cancellation was wrong.

But this version postpones our experience of arriving with Nessa. We understand what her proposal does before we know much about what the screening means to her. That can be appropriate on a page explaining the film's structure. It may be less appropriate if the opening needs to establish the particular experience through which the film first takes us into the cinema.

The repair is not automatically another paragraph of backstory. First ask what the screenplay actually grants us at the start. Does Nessa discover the problem alongside the audience? Have we already followed Salma making her departure arrangements? If so, the film may distribute knowledge in a way the event-led account needs to acknowledge elsewhere in the pitch.

Route two: enter through the filmmaker

Anchor-character summary — same fictional facts

Nessa arrives at a cinema's final screening to show her film, only to learn that projectionist Rafi has canceled the indoor presentation because its setup is unsafe. She proposes the courtyard. Her attempt to keep the screening alive brings another person's decision into view: caretaker Salma has arranged to leave and must decide whether to stay to open it. Salma stays, missing her departure, and Rafi operates a separate presentation outside. Nessa gets to show her work, but the evening is not solely her rescued screening. Its other strands retain Rafi's refusal to use the unsafe setup and the cost of Salma's choice to make the alternative possible.

Here, Nessa supplies the initial expectation and disappointment. The account then has to widen. “Brings another person's decision into view” is doing important work: Salma's life does not begin when Nessa needs a courtyard.

The danger is a subtle change in ownership. Compare “Salma chooses to stay” with “Nessa persuades Salma to stay.” The fixed fact sheet supplies the first, not the second. Persuasion could be part of a developed screenplay, but adding it here would transfer some agency from Salma to Nessa and make this a different comparison.

Similarly, “Nessa overcomes the projectionist's objections” would turn Rafi's safety judgment into a hurdle she defeats. The original route stays closed. The screening happens differently, not because someone proves that the canceled setup should have been used after all.

An anchor can be the reader's entrance without becoming the cause of everyone else's choices. State when another strand has its own decision, information, or cost. Otherwise the pitch may make a genuinely distributed film sound like one protagonist collecting helpers.

Compare omissions, not adjectives

The event-led version foregrounds how the final screening becomes possible. The anchor-led version foregrounds what interrupts Nessa's expectation. Both preserve the same outcome. The choice between them should turn on the page's job and the film's actual distribution of experience, not on which one can be decorated with a more urgent adjective.

For a structure page, the event-led route would let this fictional pitch explain the dependencies quickly. For an opening that follows Nessa's arrival, the anchor route would preserve that entry more directly. Neither choice authorizes presenting the whole film as something it is not.

Notice also what the two versions do not prove. They do not establish that recipients will prefer one, remember more names, or request the screenplay. Those would be claims about responses, and no such test has been performed. The comparison establishes what each paragraph contains and what it risks obscuring.

A useful editorial question is therefore: “What would this reader have no reason to know from the current account?” In the anchor route, Salma's departure arrangements could vanish unless they are stated. In the event route, Nessa's experience of arriving to show her work could become merely an operational fact. Those are specific omissions you can fix or deliberately defer.

Remove a strand from the account and watch what breaks

Temporarily remove Rafi. The pitch becomes a story in which a screening simply moves outside. The reason the original plan must stop disappears, as does the person whose refusal makes continuing indoors unavailable. If you describe him only as “the projectionist,” you have named his job without conveying his contribution to this design.

Remove Salma. Nessa proposes the courtyard, and the screening happens. Access now appears automatic. More importantly, no one seems to give up a separate plan to make the ending possible. An unequal cost has been replaced by convenient logistics.

Remove Nessa. The cancellation and departure decision remain, but the person who proposes the alternative and has work at stake is absent. The account no longer explains why this other form of screening is pursued.

This exercise tests the pitch's explanation. It is not an automatic instruction to cut a screenplay whenever a compressed paragraph survives without one character. The script may contain a necessary perspective that your summary never represented. Return to the material before concluding that the strand itself is redundant.

For this fictional film, a compact connection map would read:

The rows need not receive equal space in the prose. Each needs enough space for its relationship to the ending to be understood.

Some stories belong together without meeting

A causal map would misrepresent a film whose strands are connected by deliberate contrast. Do not manufacture an intersection to make the pitch easier to summarize.

Consider a second, separate fictional feature. It follows one morning in two places. Nina, a bakery worker finishing a night shift, needs to leave for her child's school event but is waiting for the owner to relieve her. Amal, a hotel guest, can leave immediately but delays checking out because she does not want to return to her empty apartment. The women never meet, do not influence each other's choices, and do not learn about one another.

At the beginning, both are shown watching the time. As the morning continues, Nina repeatedly prepares to leave and resumes work when relief does not arrive. Amal repeatedly packs and then takes something back out. Near the end, the owner arrives; Nina hands over the keys and boards her bus. Amal finally checks out but walks past the taxis toward a park. The film ends with these different departures, not with either woman resolving the other's situation.

“Two lonely women discover the importance of connection” would flatten and embellish this design. Nina's immediate problem is not established as loneliness. Neither woman discovers the other, and the ending does not establish a shared lesson.

A more accurate account of the connection would say:

Across one morning, a bakery worker waits for the chance to leave while a hotel guest postpones a departure she is free to make. Repeated preparations and withdrawals initially make their waiting look alike. As one woman's lack of relief and the other's reluctance become clear, the film separates those experiences. Their final departures complete the comparison without bringing their lives together.

The relationship develops: apparent similarity gives way to a difference in available choice. The ending returns to the same action—leaving—but refuses to make it mean the same thing for both people. That is more specific than a theme word such as “time,” “freedom,” or “belonging.”

For this design, a removal test asks what comparison disappears, not whose action stops causing the next event. Taking out Amal would leave Nina's practical story intact, but remove the sustained contrast between wanting an opportunity to leave and resisting an available one. Whether that contrast warrants the whole film is an artistic question. The pitch's job is to make the proposed contrast legible rather than falsely claiming causation.

End with the connection the film actually makes

For the cinema example, the event-led opening is a useful choice for a page devoted to structure: it exposes the chain and unequal costs. Retain a note that it postpones Nessa's personal entry. Use the anchor route where the page needs that entry, while keeping Salma's decision and Rafi's judgment independent of it.

For the parallel-morning example, neither a shared crisis nor a hidden meeting is required. The organizing sentence should name the changing comparison and the ending that completes it.

The final check is not whether every name has appeared the same number of times. It is whether the pitch explains what would be lost if these stories were no longer placed together. In one film, the screening would seem to happen by itself. In the other, waiting would have only one meaning.

Sources

[^farhadi]: Mitchell Beaupre, Crisis Magnet: Asghar Farhadi's Moral Dilemmas, interview with Asghar Farhadi, with translator Rayan Farzad. Relevant passage: the question about a simple incident gathering further consequences and Farhadi's account of finding a crisis, considering different perspectives, and developing subsequent crises. Inspected September 19, 2026. The same interview supports a different bounded point in a separate piece; it is not independent corroboration. Both feature examples and all pitch comparisons here are original fictional material, not analyses of a real screenplay or evidence of recipient preference.

Frequently asked questions

What should a multi-strand film pitch establish before giving each character equal space?

It should explain the relationship among the stories. The connection might be a shared event, a chain in which one person's action changes another's options, or a deliberate comparison between people who never meet. Equal biography space does not establish any of those relationships. For each strand, identify the pressure on the person, the consequential action they take, and where that action leaves them by the end; then look between the strands. A shared location alone is not enough.

How do the event-led and anchor-character routes differ in the cinema example?

The event-led summary opens with the threatened final screening: projectionist Rafi finds the indoor setup unsafe and cancels it; filmmaker Nessa proposes the courtyard; caretaker Salma must choose between her arranged departure and staying to open the courtyard; she stays and misses her departure; Rafi operates the separate courtyard presentation without reopening the unsafe indoor setup. It exposes the causal spine and unequal costs but postpones the experience of arriving with Nessa. The anchor-character route starts with Nessa arriving to show her film and learning that Rafi canceled the indoor presentation; it then widens to Salma's decision and retains Rafi's refusal and Salma's cost. It preserves Nessa's entry but risks making other strands seem like helpers. Neither is automatically more faithful; test both against the same film and the page's job.

What agency mistakes can the anchor-character route introduce?

The fixed fact sheet says Salma chooses to stay; it does not say Nessa persuades her to stay. Adding persuasion would transfer some agency from Salma to Nessa and make a different comparison. Similarly, Nessa does not overcome Rafi's objections; the unsafe indoor setup is not reopened, and the screening happens differently rather than proving the canceled setup should have been used. An anchor can be the reader's entrance without becoming the cause of everyone else's choices. State when another strand has its own decision, information, or cost.

How can removing a strand test whether the pitch explains the film's design?

Remove Rafi and the pitch becomes a story in which a screening simply moves outside; the reason the original plan must stop and the person whose refusal makes continuing indoors unavailable both disappear. Remove Salma and the courtyard appears automatically accessible, with no one giving up a separate plan and the unequal cost replaced by convenient logistics. Remove Nessa and the cancellation and departure decision remain, but the person who proposes the alternative and has work at stake is absent, so the account no longer explains why another form of screening is pursued. This tests the pitch's explanation, not an automatic instruction to cut a screenplay; return to the material before concluding a strand is redundant.

What about storylines connected by contrast rather than causation?

Do not manufacture an intersection to make the pitch easier to summarize. In the separate fictional parallel-morning example, Nina, a bakery worker finishing a night shift, waits for the owner to relieve her so she can leave for her child's school event, while Amal, a hotel guest, can leave immediately but delays checking out because she does not want to return to her empty apartment. The women never meet, do not influence each other's choices, and do not learn about one another. Their repeated preparations initially make their waiting look alike; as one woman's lack of relief and the other's reluctance become clear, the film separates those experiences. Their final departures complete the comparison without bringing their lives together. A removal test asks what comparison disappears, not whose action stops causing the next event.

Further reading

• Show the Choice That Makes Your Film’s Main Character Worth Following — Read this first if a strand still reads as biography: it shows how to name the choice each person faces and keep only the history that changes its cost.
• Write a Film Synopsis That Explains the Story, Not Just the Events — Take this next when the connections are settled and you are drafting: it builds a source chain from choices and consequences, then compresses between the turns that matter.