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What if the real engine of your screenplay isn’t plot—but the pressure that forces your character to choose?
For spoiler-safe listening: this episode touches on major story turns throughout. If you haven’t seen No Other Choice and want to go in completely cold, watch first—then come back.
In this episode of the podcast, Jake takes a deep dive into Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice to break down one of the most misunderstood concepts in screenwriting: the difference between plot and structure. Plot, he argues, is often interchangeable—”the crap that happens to happen.” Structure is what makes a script gripping: the choices a character makes in response to those events, and the escalating moral pressure that drives them toward transformation.
Using the film’s central premise as a dark, comic crucible, Jake shows how No Other Choice earns audience investment not by what happens, but by how a character responds to events—moment by moment, choice by choice—revealing a character driven by love, identity, and a desperate attachment to what he finds valuable. Along the way, Jake explores how theme isn’t something you declare—it’s something you construct, by repeatedly forcing your characters to deal with their changing reality in increasingly revealing ways.
As the episode builds, Jake connects the film’s intimate character tragedy to a larger thematic question about modern life—how we rationalise, compromise, and cling to identity no matter the cost—believing there is no other choice. The result is a craft breakdown that turns a provocative story into a clear structural lesson: plot is the surface—structure is the soul.
🎧 LISTEN NOW to learn how structure—not plot—creates empathy, suspense, and meaning.
Early in the film, the wife of one of the murder victims delivers an incredible thematic line about her laid-off husband: “Losing your job isn’t the problem. The way you deal with it is the problem.”
This line isn’t just about her husband. It is the theme of the entire film, and it perfectly illustrates the difference between plot and structure.
The plot of your movie is not the problem, and it’s also not the solution. Whether your character loses their job, wins the lottery, or gets caught in a thriller—that’s just plot. Plots are interchangeable. Structure is watching the deeply problematic ways your characters deal with the crap that happens to them.
In No Other Choice, the male characters have tied their entire identity and meaning to their jobs at the paper factory. When the plot strips that away, we watch them make the same toxic mistakes again and again, trying to hold onto a reality that no longer exists.
Need help figuring out how your characters deal with their problems?
Join us for Thursday Night Writes, our completely free weekly writing class. It’s the perfect place to bring your raw pages, test your concepts, and start building undeniable structure.
Most of your audience is never going to become a serial killer. They aren’t going to rob a bank or go to war. Which means what they are actually connecting to is not the plot—it’s the universal feeling of a character’s struggle.
When your protagonist is doing terrible things, the fastest shortcut to making the audience care is looking for the love. You have to find what the character is so desperately attached to that it drives them to make the wrong choice.
We can look at two classic examples of how to get underneath a dark character:
The main character in No Other Choice, Yu Monsu, is a Hamlet. He isn’t a sociopath. He’s a loving father who desperately wants to protect his home, his wife, and his daughter’s cello lessons. It’s his love that drives him toward murder, and his hesitation that makes us see ourselves up on that screen.
Writing a complex, morally gray protagonist?
If you are struggling to get underneath your character and find the “love” driving their dark choices, our One-on-One Mentorship program pairs you with a professional writer to help you crack your character’s psychology at a fraction of the cost of grad school.
As writers, we often think the job of a scene is to move the plot forward. Does he kill the guy or not? What plan does he come up with next?
The job of a scene is not to move the plot forward. The job of the scene is to be the scene. What makes us fall in love with a script is the specificity of the moment—watching it closely in your mind’s eye and letting each moment really matter.
When Yu Monsu stalks his first victim, he plans to drop a heavy potted plant on his head. But he hesitates. He loves gardening. We watch him lift a pot, put it down, and lift a bigger one, until disgusting, filthy water drips all over his face. The object he loves has been twisted into an object of violence. He is literally covered in the filth of what he is about to do. That level of specificity is what elevates you as a writer.
Almost every great movie could be called No Other Choice.
Your job as a writer is to build a vice. You want to push your character to the place where their belief systems are shattered, and they are forced to make a decision that will change them forever. You drive them to the point where they make a terrible choice, but that choice feels inevitable because, to them, there is no other way out.
Ready to build an unstoppable engine for your script?
If your script feels like it’s just a sequence of events without an emotional anchor, our Write Your Screenplay Foundation Class will teach you how to build this exact kind of structural pressure, moving your protagonist from their starting point into a true crucible of choice.
No Other Choice operates brilliantly as a dark comedy about a paper factory. But Park Chan-wook is holding his real theme in his back pocket until the very end.
When Yu Monsu finally gets his job back, we realize the factory has gone 100% automated. The company doesn’t need managers anymore; they just need one guy to turn the lights out.
This movie isn’t just about a man looking for a job. It’s a terrifying, modern exploration of AI and automation. The automated machines chopping up trees are a metaphor for the forces entirely beyond our control that are chopping up our livelihoods.
Theme isn’t a message you declare to the audience. It is the inevitable realization that emerges when you force your characters to deal with their changing reality. And like the characters in the film, the question for us isn’t whether the plot is happening—the question is how we are going to deal with it.
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Last Updated: May 13, 2025 2:00 PM EST
By registering for the course, you are agreeing to the following terms, which form a legal contract between you and Jacob Krueger Studio, LLC (“Company”) and govern your attendance at and/or participation in Company’s course (the “Course”).
Prevention of “Zoom-Bomber” Disruptions; Unauthorized Publication of Class Videos. Company will record each class session, including your participation in the session, entitled “The Videos”. To prevent disruptions by “zoom-bombers” and provide Company and
participants the legal standing to remove unauthorized content from platforms such as YouTube and social media sites, you agree that
(1) you are prohibited from recording any portion of the Course;
(2) in exchange for the opportunity to participate in the Course, you assign to Company your verbal contributions to the session discussions.
To be clear, you assign to Company only your oral statements during recorded Course sessions. You retain all copyright to any and all written materials you submit to the class and the right to use them in any way you choose without permission from or compensation to the Company.
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