5. Got A Team? Give Them Conflicting Views
Here's something that, once again, might seem completely obvious if you're familiar with screenwriting principles, but I've read a seriously high number of unproduced screenplays that fail on this basic front: if you've got a movie about a team of people who share a common goal, give them all conflicting views. Conflict creates drama, after all, and that's precisely what a movie is all about. In
Prometheus, we see a great realization of this. And the more characters you have, the more interesting dynamics you'll conjure up when writing. Setting up these "conflicting views" is important in the early stages. In the first act of your script, it might be a small gesture or comment that implants the idea of a potential conflict emerging between two characters in an audiences' subconscious. Later on, the pay off of said conflict will be greatly increased, because the tension has been building up slowly, as if natured from a tiny seed... Even if you've got two characters within a team that respect one another, give them conflicting views on something. Anything. Maybe one character wants to let a prisoner go, whilst the other one thinks that they should kill the prisoner to avoid trouble later. If these people are at odds with one another anyway, you've still got the potential for good drama. But what if they respect one another and are friends? Even better. The tension is ramped up because we hate to see friends bickering. We put ourselves in that position.