The philosopher Blaise Pascal proposed that since God’s existence can neither be proved nor disproved, we should just wager that he does exist. Pascal sustains his position by arguing that there are more benefits from believing in God’s existence than from denying it and seeing as either proposition has an equal possibility of being true, we should just bet that he does.
Pascal’s wager can apply to the theory of the central organizing principle. When a writer works on a story, he must construct a character that will probe or live up to the central organizing principal of his story. The character’s actions or decisions at some point of the story will have to communicate the COP, otherwise the story has been badly crafted. This is why the writer must create first a history for his character, a background and a set of circumstances that will lead him or her to make a certain choice at some point in the story thus acting out the COP. But, even when a writer constructs the perfect background and psychological setting for his character in order to have him behave in a certain way, he is making a gamble. He is taking a chance believing that his construction will be felt as coherent in the audience’s mind.
In Lajos Egri’s book “ The Art of Dramatic Writing”, the author gives an example about a girl who comes from a conservative home and turns to prostitution. The girl wants to be a dancer, but her mother wants to make her marry. She runs away from home and turns to prostitution after she’s unable to fulfill her dreams. For this story, the author creates a psychological profile and composes a family environment where turning to prostitution seems like a realistic choice for the character. But, even under those circumstances where everything seems to come together one could always argue that the character might have made another decision. This is where I think scriptwriters can relate the COP to Pascal’s wager, because in the end every writer is making a bet with their characters. Plus, there’s also a benefit from believing that your character would act in a certain way, just like Pascal’s wager is based on the fact that one belief poses more benefits than the other. In this case, the benefit is the fact that believing that our character will act a certain way allows us to accomplish the central organizing principal of the story.
The central organizing principal of my film called “Decorruption” is: injustice breeds hate. I plan to create a world filled with corruption where a character that is affected by it, will turn against the corrupt and kill. It’s an extreme action, but I plan to create a world where it seems as the only action possible for the character. My character is unable to be corrupt which makes him envy those who benefit from corruption. This is what will motive him to kill them as a form of revenge.
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