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The first act sets up a script. It needs to be entertaining, efficient, and most of all focused. If a first act forces me to learn something, there'd better be a damn good reason for it. If there isn't, the useless information crowds out the useful stuff. It punishes the audience for paying attention and... Continue Reading →
A first act creates the context: the facts a reader needs to understand the story going forward. It contextualizes a lot of things including: Character Who are we following and what's their deal? What’s their archetype? what are their distinct traits? What do they want? Take a movie like THE VERDICT. At no point does... Continue Reading →
Three act structure falls into a category I call “useful bullshit.” Typically arguments over three act structure become a tedious fight about whether it’s always the best or whether it even exists. It’s a mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without necessarily holding it to be true. Therefore, I... Continue Reading →
Three act structure. Just by using that term, I have guaranteed that a sizable percentage of the people who read this will have stopped listening. Those people are busy composing angry replies about how stupid and/or malevolent I am. I look forward to reading those. I get that people hate three act structure, but the... Continue Reading →
Conceptual specificity: The fun of the second act should come from the elements set up by the first act. The fun of the second act needs to come from the hook, otherwise the draft isn't exercising the idea it purports to embody. I know that’s a long and boring mouthful, so to drive this home... Continue Reading →
This is the exercise: Pick a situation that would happen in life. Identify five typical things thats would ordinarily happen in that situation. Pick an unusual thing. Apply that unusual thing to the list you generated in step 2. Example: A lady goes to a gym to see a trainer. Unusual thing: the trainer is... Continue Reading →
This has been floating around the internet for years, but you might find it useful. http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-version.html Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
People occasionally cite Film Critic Hulk's indictment of the three act structure to me. I've always hated it. Film Critic Hulk's original post. My version with more standard and readable grammar. I translated it into plain English because I've always suspected that Film Critic Hulk uses his style to obfuscate poorly thought-out ideas and an extremely tenuous... Continue Reading →
DISCLAIMER: I take script confidentiality incredibly seriously. I will never talk about the specifics of someone else's script to anyone else because I'm being asked for discretion as much as my opinion. The one exception is if someone posts a screenplay in a public forum like Reddit to solicit free opinions. In that case, I'm... Continue Reading →
