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.