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One of the first things I had to do, in plotting out the
storyline, was to set aside trap doors for *every single character*,
because you never know when or how the real world is going to impinge
upon you. An actor can quit, or get hit by a car, or slammed by a
meteor...there's no way to control the characters the way you do in a
novel. That's a given. But you can't bring X-million viewers along to
a certain point, then say, "Well, all the stuff we were going to do we
can't because X isn't here."

So in a way, the structure of the story is kind of like a
computer game tree...pull out a piece along the way, and it goes down a
different path, but ends up at exactly the same point at the end. It's
the difference between different *results* and different ways of
*getting* there.

You can do a story about a platoon in WW II, for instance, and
some of the platoon may live, die, be injured, whatever...but the story
of WWII is the story of WWII.

Beyond that, a challenge is just that: a call to see just how
good you *really* are, kid. If you've ever seen GLORY, there's the
scene in which one of the Massachusetts 54th is being taught to shoot.
He does just fine, hits the target, reloads fine...when nobody's
shooting at him. At which point the colonel starts firing a revolver
right next to his head, teling him to try and do it NOW, and do it
FAST, with ten thousand guns firing at him.

That's when the art comes in, that's when the skill comes
in...in dealing with what you *don't* expect.

jms