ScriptFaze

Page 17

 

A couple years ago, my friends at scriptfrenzy.org asked me to write an article on screenplay structure, and to break down five “key points” that writers should consider in the development of a well-honed script (see “Article: Screenplay Structure” in the Writer’s Resources section of this website). Well—there are many key points in a screenplay: the midpoint, both act breaks, the inciting incident, the nadir, the climax, page 10, the ending, and so on and so forth--all of which I've discussed in previous posts. Choosing the most crucial FIVE was tricky, but at one key-point immediately rose to the very top of my list: 

 

PAGE 17.

 

Yep—PAGE 17.

 

Page 17 is so important that I would have named this website page17.com if some forward-thinking domain-name broker hadn’t already snapped it up, then offered to resale it for hundreds of dollars… 

Here’s what I said about page 17 on scriptfrenzy.com:

 

Page 17. Next time you watch a DVD, pause it 17 minutes into the film. Trust me—any film. What’s happening at that point in the story? Most likely, the essential character conflict has just been laid out. A teenage Indiana Jones runs to his father for help, but is shushed instead. Shaun convinces his girlfriend to trust him in Shaun of the Dead. Captain Renault asks Rick why he came to Casablanca. On page 17, your audience should realize what the film is really about. It’s not about finding the Holy Grail, Indy—it’s about learning to forgive dad!

 

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

The End: How to Wrap It Up

Structure, structure, structure. Page 17, midpoint, climax.

You’ve climbed walls and beaten down doors on your path from idea to completed first-draft—and woven the proverbial needle through every structural check-point along the way. Your hero lost it all at the end of Act 2B, rose from the ashes in Act 3, and rode triumphantly through the climax to land—where exactly?

Well—at THE END. Every great adventure must one day draw to a close, and your script is no exception. Somewhere around page 100 for comedies, or page 115 for actions and dramas, your screenplay must wind down—and ultimately FINISH.

So how do you end a screenplay? What are the right ways and wrong ways to say goodbye to your cast of characters?

Turns out—there is no “right way” to finish a script. Unlike so many other parts of screenplay structure, how you end your script will be one of the most personal and idiosyncratic choices you will make. These days, the convention in America is for scripts to end with a twist—even dramas will pull the rug out in the final pages. But of course, sometimes the best twist is no twist at all—which leaves us back where we started…

Good endings, however, tend to provide definitive answers to the following three questions. What those answers are, however, is totally up you:

1) Was the inherent conflict of the inciting incident resolved? (E.T. is on the space ship!)

2) Was the essential character conflict defined on page 17 resolved? (Indy and Indy Senior ride into the sunset together!)

3) How is the protagonist different now than from the beginning of the film? (Zoolander’s all grown up: “there’s more important things than male modeling—like love, and helping kids who can’t read good.”)

NOTE: Portions of this article first appeared in the article "Screenplay Structure," penned by this author for the website www.scriptfrenzy.org.

The Act One Break

The Act One Break is a huge moment in any script. This is the point in which your hero is forced to leave the world he’s known behind, and strike out (usually alone) into a NEW and DIFFERENT phase of his life. Once he’s stepped foot into the murky world of Act Two, he can never go back to the way things were in Act One...

You’ll know right away that your Act One has problems if you aren’t reaching your first act break between pages 25-35. If you Act One is less than 25 pages, it’s too thin and needs more punch. If your Act One is more than 35 pages, it’s too fat and needs to be thinned down or rewritten altogether.

See the posts The First Ten Pages and Page 17 to review the beats that should shape the opening pages of a good Act One. By page 25, you should be at or close to a point in which your hero is FORCED to venture into the unknown. They must leave the relative comfort zone of their Act One lives, and actively move into a new world, and/or strike a new and dangerous course. At the Act One Break, the time has come for your hero to REACT against the pressures that have started your screenplay moving, and your hero should do so in a HANDS-ON, extremely-active fashion. They don’t need to be running down the street with a MK-47, but your audience should KNOW that your hero has left something behind, and is now engaged in a new game, with new rules.

When All Is Lost (or: How to End ACT TWO)

In life, we never know when we might suddenly feel LOST or misdirected. Our moments of deepest sorrow or greatest humility usually arrive unannounced, when we least expect them—and sometimes JUST when everything seemed to be going so well. You might be clicking along, happy in love, and pretty much have life all figured out, when—BAM! You’re dumped, fired, or hit by bus. And that’s life! It’s a total mystery, and for most people most of the time, our paths forward are fully unpredictable experiences.

Not so in the movies! In screenplays, we know EXACTLY when the lowest, most miserable point in our protagonist’s life is going to happen: THE END OF ACT 2. (Or the end of ACT 2B for those of you who have read The Four-Act Screenplay.)

After MIDPOINT, a movie hero should take charge of his situation, and for 15-20 pages everything should be going WONDERFULLY—perhaps for the first time in the film. As he races toward the end of Act 2, your protagonist should be getting very, very close to his goal, and everything should be falling in to place. He’s almost found the treasure, won back the woman of his dreams, or defeated the aliens—life is good! And what’s more—the hero REALLY DESERVES the good fortune he is now experiencing. He’s WORKED for it, connected the dots, taken charge—and now the glory will certainly be his!

And that’s when it happens: the ALL IS LOST MOMENT. Oh, does it hurt. Just when he’s come within arm’s reach of his ultimate goal—everything is taken away from him. And it’s not just bad—it’s literally the WORST thing that could possibly happen. This is the moment when Liam Neeson finally discovers his kidnapped daughter in Taken—then gets smashed on the head and wakes up chained to a pipe. It’s the moment when Indiana Jones arrives at the final resting place of the Holy Grail, only to have his father shot in the chest by the Nazis who’ve arrived there first. It’s the sequence in Cool Hand Luke when Paul Newman is finally beaten into submission and becomes a whipping boy for Boss Godfrey. ALL IS LOST means just that: The hero has NO WAY OUT. He is stuck. The adventure is ALL OVER.

But, oh—what is this? Apparently, the show must go on. After the ALL IS LOST MOMENT, Act 3 begins when the hero DISCOVERS NEW INFORMATION, or in some cases REVEALS new information to the audience. E.T.’s heart starts glowing and Elliott realizes that he is alive! Specters have invaded New York City, and the Ghostbusters are sprung from jail by the Mayor! Cool Hand Luke has been FAKING IT—and he’s not the Boss’ lackey after all! Suddenly, what seemed so DIRE and FINAL just a moment ago is brushed aside as the hero charges forth into Act 3—on a clean trajectory to the film’s CLIMAX.

The First Ten Pages

 

The most important part of any screenplay is the FIRST PAGE, and beyond that, the FIRST TEN PAGES. Here is where you will either HOOK your reader—or loose him or her for good. Your goal may be to get your script sold, shot, and screened in front of enormous audiences, but your first bottle-neck will be a lone READER, most often an assistant or an intern at a production company or a talent agency. Your first ten pages, then, must successfully embody these FOUR ELEMENTS:

1) INCITING INCIDENT

That’s film-speak for the THING THAT MAKES THE MOVIE HAPPEN. It’s an example I've used before, but if E.T. hadn’t been left behind on earth—if he’d made it back to that ship and sailed away with his glowing-heart friends—there would be no movie. No Elliott. No flying bicycles. Nothing. The first five minutes of E.T. sets up the film’s HERO (E.T.) and INCITES a story to unfold. There are some movies in which the inciting incident remains a mystery, or even takes place before page 1 of the script. These are the exception—most movies clearly lay out an inciting incident, and use this setup as a way to hook the reader and introduce central characters. But if you do choose to leave your inciting incident shrouded in secrecy, you must at least provide a FALSE START—a situation that readers will THINK is the inciting incident, even if you ultimately pull the rug out later.

2) PAGE-ONE HOOK

The page-one hook comes down to one thing: If you haven’t “hooked” your reader by the end of page 1—if you haven’t wet their palette and made them ask “what’s next?”—then they might not flip to page 2. Again—page 1 of any script is the most important page you’ll write. My general rule of thumb is to keep the descriptions witty but sparse, and to save as much of the page as possible for dialogue that exposes the personality of your main character (your HERO). Keep the dialogue punchy, but make his or her point-of-view very clear. And if possible, SUGGEST what your inciting incident might be, even if you don't delve into it completely until page 2 or 3.

3) INTRODUCTION OF THE PROTAGONIST AND ANTAGONIST

Your PROTAGONIST is your hero—you good guy—your main character. Your ANTAGONIST is your bad guy—your source of conflict—the shmuck who gets in the way. If it works for your story, try to introduce BOTH of these characters in the first ten pages, and better yet, PUT THEM TOGETHER IN A SCENE. The sooner readers get to know and understand your protagonist, the sooner they’ll start to care about his or her story. And the sooner they get a glimpse into the psyche of your antagonist, the sooner they’ll understand the roadblocks that will SHAPE this story.

4) THE NORMAL WORLD

It doesn’t matter what genre you are writing—the first ten pages of any screenplay must be all about the “normal world” that your characters inhabit BEFORE their lives change, on or about page 10. This is Indiana Jones delivering a boring lecture, Marty McFly interacting with his loser family, or Will Smith in I Am Legend doing the rounds before night-fall. Your hero’s journey will only make sense to audiences IN CONTRAST with where he or she began, so make sure you use these ten pages to paint a CLEAR PORTRAIT of your character’s day-to-day life BEFORE the shitake hits the fan.

 

The bottom-line is that any screenplay must quickly display the writer’s competency and grasp of screenwriting in a very short period of time, or your script won’t make it past a first-round read. And while your BFF or girlfriend might take the time to read a sloppy first-draft, professional readers won’t. Other than correct formatting, nailing these four points in the first ten pages of your screenplay is the best way to put that nineteen-year-old assistant at ease, and to fill them with confidence that the NEXT 110-pages is absolutely worth the read.

Something I Wish I'd Known As A New Writer: Structure is Your Friend

 

You can always tell a new writer, or someone who hasn’t yet written a feature script, when meet them at a party or film festival mixer, and are treated to tirade on the worn-out, tired-old-Hollywood-script-format, that, they argue, has enslaved the film industry and turned countless creative folk into mindless button-pushing hacks. ‘Where is the originality?’ they’ll ask. ‘Hollywood just isn’t what it used to be!” These folks will tell you that when it comes to screenplay structure, ‘they just don’t buy it,’ and that they—personally—have chosen to take the creative high-ground, forging a new and shiny path toward writing-independence and bonified FREE THOUGHT. And they really believe it. Hell--they FEEL it. And they should! Why?

Because they’re NEWBIES. They’re very, very green, and they haven’t yet learned what it took THIS writer at least two mediocre early-screenplays to fully digest: Screenplay structure is your friend. It doesn’t exist to cuckold writers—it exists to make our jobs easier. And our scripts better. And our lives just a little bit more enjoyable.

Structure wasn’t created by producers then heaved upon us—it was crafted by veteran screenwriters as a means of sharing with new writers what they WERE ALREADY DOING and what WAS ALREADY WORKING. There’s a misconception out there that learning screenplay structure will turn us all into producers of the SAME KINDS OF FILMS—namely, Hollywood blockbusters like Twister or Armageddon. Well, guess what? Woody Allen, Charlie Kaufman, Todd Solondz and Diablo Cody all use standard screenplay format—just like J.J. Abrams and Aaron Sorkin. You can argue that some do it better than others, and we all have different tastes. But that’s where the creativity comes in—in HOW use the structural guidelines while avoiding predictability and cliché. Screenplay structure is not an obstacle, it’s a shortcut. And the sooner you internalize that fact, the sooner you will be off and running. 

The Screenplay CLIMAX

 

By the time we get to Act III, every screenwriter is ready for a little ACTION. If the hero’s journey through the end of Act II has been an ordeal—then chances are the WRITER’S journey up until this point has been just as stressful. You’ve been through Act I, weaving your story through the first ten pages, page 17, and the point of no return—then jumped off into the no-man’s-land of Act II, and found a way to keep your story lithe and interesting by turning your lead character ACTIVE at the midpoint. Then, after some smooth sailing, your hero seemed to have it all figured out, when WHAM—you took it all away from him and sent him CRASHING DOWN into the all-is-lost moment. What a strange, strange trip it’s been...

So what’s next? At the start of Act III, your hero will have discovered some new information that will allow him to pick himself up, dust off his knees, and keep marching forward—and this means the first ten pages of Act III are gonna move pretty quickly! Armed with a new point-of-view, your hero should be connecting dots and RACING towards a MOMENT OF TRUTH in which everything will finally come to a head. After the disaster at the end of Act II, the rules of the game may have changed for your hero—but that doesn’t mean that the ultimate confrontation he’s headed into 15-20 pages into Act III should not address the ORIGINAL conflict your character faced—just that he might have to address this conflict in a different fashion than he once intended.

Indeed, this final CLIMAX should be a thing of beauty. A stressful, anxious, awful—but totally fulfilling moment in which your PROTAGONIST finally faces off with your ANTAGONIST, and will ultimately WIN or LOSE. Whether your climax is a larger than life experience—such as when James McAvoy backs a garbage truck full of bomb-toting rats through the front gates of Morgan Freeman’s “Fraternity” and faces off with Angelina Jolie in Wanted—or a more grounded moment, such as Sophie and Stingo’s double-suicide at the end of Sophie’s Choice—ALL climaxes must accomplish TWO THINGS: They must RESOLVE the conflict between your hero and your bad-guy, and they must give CLOSURE to the hero’s emotional journey established on page 17.

Climaxes can be long or short. They can be FULL SEQUENCES, such as when Elliott springs E.T. from the back of a government van, meets his friends in the park, flies over San Fernando Valley on a BMX, and returns E.T. to his spaceship—or they can be simple scenes, like the dual-marriage at the end of Guys & Dolls. There is a lot of flexibility in how you choose to build to your climax and how you plan to pay-off your hero’s adventure—but above all else, the climax should not be ill-defined or VAGUE. This is not the time for innuendo or hints—even if you choose to pull the rug out from beneath your audience in the final moment, such as in The Usual Suspects, your audience needs to BELIEVE the story has ended in the climax, and needs to KNOW how your main characters have fared.  The climax is not about raising questions—it is about answering them.

The Four-Act Screenplay

Long before we ever pick up a pen or flip open our very first laptops, the golden rule of storytelling has been beaten into us: 

Beginning. Middle. End.

The three-act structure is INGRAINED into the fabric of nearly ever culture, and exists in nearly every form of writing. Hansel and Gretel go into the woods, get caught, then kill the witch and escape. Achilles is dishonored by his king, lets the Greeks fail in wartime, then steps in to save the day once his best friend is butchered in battle. Even JOKES are framed in a beginning-middle-end structure, with the punchline serving as the third act:

“A man walks into a bar…. And says ‘ouch!’”

Okay, okay—it’s a terrible joke, but it’s easy to see that “a man” sets up the story, “walks into a bar” tells us the ACTION of the joke, and “says ‘ouch!”’ wraps it up. Three acts. Just like a movie!

All of that said, I’m here to tell you that the BEST MOVIES don’t have three acts at all. That’s right—I said it. The BEST movies have FOUR.

Four acts? How you figure?

Well, I’ll tell you:

We’ve all been to movies that start great, but wipe out terribly in the second act. Movies that slump and wander, and seem directionless and unmotivated by the actions of the central characters. The International is a recent big-budgeted example. These movies suck in part because they have been structured in the traditional three-act format, and for many movies, a sixty-page act is just too long a span of time to keep interesting and grounded. Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine screenplays like a giant circus tent. If each act break were a tent-pole, your three act script might look something like this:

That’s one crappy looking big top!

Act One usually clips along and rises steadily to a point of high-drama—the point of no return. Act Two will END with a bang as well—your character will realize that “all is lost,” then begin the ascent to the Act Three climax. But there lies the vast majority of Act Two—in the mud. Sixty pages of space to fill, and so much potential for sagging plotlines and waning momentum. Sure, cool things need to happen. Your characters will go, and do, and discover, and MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. But how should you organize all this good stuff into one colossal act in way that also stays interesting? In a way that doesn’t drag or go dull over time? After all—Act Two will make up 50% of your ENTIRE SCRIPT!

Well, here’s what I suggest: Break it up. That’s right. Take Act Two and split it in half. You can even give these new acts NEW NAMES. For the sake of clarity, let’s call them ACT 2A and ACT 2B. And now that you’ve got two acts, you also get a new tent-pole for your circus-tent-script-thingy. This new pole is your script’s MIDPOINT, and given its proper significance in your film, your screenplay-tent should now look like this:

Wow. Now THAT’S a circus I’d pay a buck to go see…

The MIDPOINT is a crucial turning point in a well-crafted script that is too often downplayed or ignored altogether. It’s not just the screenplay’s halfway mark—it is a genuine ACT BREAK, and should be treated as such.

The MIDPOINT is the moment on or around page 60 in which the screenplay's hero SEIZES CONTROL OF HIS OR HER DESTINY. For the first half of a script, the protagonist should be REACTING to events and circumstances in their lives. Ever since the inciting incident sent them on this adventure, and the point of no return landed them deep into Act Two, the hero should be dealing with the cards he is dealt, but stay primarily REACTIVE. At the midpoint, all this changes. The protagonist reaches a breaking point or sees a new way forward, and right then, ON OR AROUND PAGE 60, your hero suddenly TAKES CHARGE. They become ACTIVE, and this will define their journey for the second half of the film.

Act 2A and Act 2B, then, are clearly horses of a different color. In Act 2A, your hero should have crossed the point of no return, but still spend most of this act RUNNING AWAY from the negative forces in his or her life. This doesn’t mean he can’t form plans, think up good ideas or kick an occasional ass. It just means that his underlying motivation for these choices should come from a place of FEAR. Whether internalized, such as in a drama or a comedy, or externalized like you’d find in an action movie or a thriller, your protagonist should spend Act 2A on the ropes, afraid of his environment and/or nervous to rock the boat.

Act 2B follows the midpoint, and should in a large part be defined by the hero’s actions AT midpoint. Trust me—this turning point can be found in nearly every great movie. In American Beauty, it’s the scene in which Lester Burnham sits down for dinner and tells his family that he has quit his job. In The Goonies, it’s the moment the group of kids realize they’re at the bottom of a wishing well, and know they can climb out to safety—but decide instead to continue on their adventure. In Being John Malkovich, it’s the scene that Craig ties up his wife and takes her place in John Malkovich’s body so that he can have sex with Maxine. Different genres, same basic idea—at midpoint, the protagonist must take control!

Act 2B ends, of course, with the protagonist’s NADIR—the LOWEST POINT in his or her story. It’s the moment in which the rug has been pulled out from under him, and ALL IS LOST. After seizing control of his life at MIDPOINT, and actively PUSHING FORWARD through Act 2B, success seems close at hand—and then is yanked away from him, mercilessly. The movie might end right there if some NEW INFORMATION didn't suggest a path into Act Three.

So give it a shot! I've heard so many screenwriters complain about the pitfalls of drafting a compelling Act Two, and spent years trying to make sense of it myself. The Four-Act structure was my solution. By breaking Act Two into two digestible chunks, each with their own framework and character motivation, my scripts grew stronger and my enjoyment of writing Act Two increased dramatically.