WRITING THE SECOND ACT: BUILDING CONFLICT AND TENSION IN YOUR FILM
SCRIPT
by Michael Halperin
Michael Wise Productions, 2000
$19.95, 161pp
ISBN 0-941188-29-9
Reviewed by Charles Deemer
Lew Hunter has called
writing the second act "the blue collar work" of screenwriting. Most
writers would agree with him. The long "middle" of a screenplay,
which fills about half the total length, is where most of my students get lost
and abandon ship. It's much easier to set up a story in Act One than to develop
it in a driving, focused narrative full of increasing conflict, which is one of
the tasks of Act Two.
A book focusing
especially on the problems of writing Act Two is long overdue. Unfortunately,
this book only partially fills that gap. Not that this slim book says anything
wrong; it just doesn't say much more about writing act two than a classic
screenwriting book, such as Lew Hunter's SCREENWRITING 434 or Michael Hauge's
WRITING SCREENPLAYS THAT SELL, does.
What Halperin does say
about writing act two cannot be argued with: "...the
second act has the principal purpose of holding the audience's interest."
"
"Act 2 raises the
stakes between protagonists and antagonists."
"The second act
permits our protagonists to enter the arena where conflict takes place."
As true as these
observations are, they are only marginally helpful to a screenwriting student
who finds himself lost and confused while trying to write Act Two. What is
needed is not so much a prescription for what to do in a screenplay's middle
but a problem-solving workbook that shows the typical errors that develop in
Act Two -- loss of focus, insufficient narrative tension and build, weak
protagonist -- and that presents ways to fix them. What is needed is a book
with a hands-on, workshop feel about it, a manual for rewriting.
This is not that book.
Although this slim volume reminds us of what the middle of a screenplay should
be doing, it goes over old ground in the same old way, and in this sense the
book is a disappointment because it betrays the promise of its title.
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Charles Deemer teaches screenwriting at Portland State University and is the webmaster of The Screenwriters and Playwrights Home Page at www.screenwright.com. He is the author of the electronic screenwriting tutorial, SCREENWRIGHT: THE CRAFT OF SCREENWRITING.