5.
Your Hero's Challenge

Writing Act One

"The first fifteen pages are the most important part of any screenplay."
--William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

Tree people and forest people alike need to know certain things before they start writing, general things about writing a script that separate the amateurs from the screenwrights.

Before You Start Writing

All beginning screenwriters must learn some basic skills:

There are other things to know from the beginning that tree people and forest people will approach differently:

I call the process of understanding the hero-"villain"-story spine of your screenplay pre-writing.

Pre-writing for tree people.

Pre-writing for forest people.

Doing Research

Research is another kind of preparation, but one that often is misunderstood. There are two kinds of research: exterior and interior. "Exterior" research is what most people mean by research. For example, if you are writing a story with a policeman as a protagonist, you need to know something about the life of a policeman. How do you learn these things?

Recently a writer acquaintance was faced with this very problem. He called his local police department, stated his dilemma, and was invited to spend time on the beat with a policeman. That's doing exterior research.

You also can learn about the life of a policeman by reading books (particularly memoirs) written by policemen, by studying novels and movies about policemen, and so on.

But what about a policeman's emotional life? You can interview a cop about that but the information that may be most helpful to you probably comes from your own emotional life. Interior research is looking inward and revisiting the highs and lows of your own life's journey, particularly its emotional aspects. As I often tell my students, your life is your best material. How would you behave if you were a policeman? Answering that question may give you more gripping drama than the more intellectual and distant exterior research you do.

One note of caution about exterior research: don't put too much of it in your screenplay. Screenplays are efficient and compressed narratives. There's a tendency when doing a lot of exterior research to want to use information just because you found it. Resist this. The information can prove valuable to you even if it never appears in the screenplay.

But in the end, the emotional life of your characters will ring true or not based on your own emotional perceptions and depth of living. I believe interior research is more important than exterior research in the final analysis.

The Hook

"The first ten pages of your screenplay," writes Michael Hauge in Writing Screenplays That Sell [REF], "are the most important of the entire script. You must immediately grab your reader emotionally."

Most beginning writers start scenes too early - and nowhere with more damage than at the script's first words after FADE IN:

In his excellent book Screenwriting [REF], Richard Walter gives the writer a simple test:

"Writers are well advised constantly to ask themselves of the beginning of their tale: Is this the true beginning? Is this the point before which there is nothing? What would be lost if I started on page eight? Or eleven? Twenty-two? If nothing would be lost by starting on page eleven, start there."

Walter uses the example of Kramer v. Kramer, pointing out that a beginning screenwriter would start the story by focusing on the bad marriage, perhaps letting us see an argument or two, setting up (rather than starting with) the true beginning - which is the moment the wife leaves. And this is the true moment to begin because the story is not about the marriage but about the father's relationship to his son.

True beginnings don't need to be set up. That's why they are called beginnings!

So great care must be taken to make sure you are starting your story at the right place - which is as late as possible without losing anything essential.

And this done, it's time to think of the specific scenes that begin the script and satisfy the considerable burden of grabbing the reader/viewer's immediate attention. This is "the hook." Besides setting up your story, it must plant a question deep in the mind and gut of the audience: What happens next?

The hook can be very effective when it is purely visual. The movie The Boys from Brazil has a wonderful visual hook as we see one of the Nazis hunters tracking some bigshot Germans living in exile. We really don't know the details yet - we only know the guy (not even the hero but what Jarvis would call "the hero's helper") is spying on them and is excited about what he's seeing. Not until he calls up the hero to report what he's discovered does the dialogue begin, minutes into the film.

And yet this is more than enough to keep us engaged. We want to know what happens next!

Quiet stories can have quiet hooks. In The Graduate, the fact that Benjamin is "lost" without plans for the future, wanting only to have a "different" summer, is enough for us to want to know what is going to happen to him.

Other examples of hooks:

Sometimes big, sometimes small - each hook engages our interest and begins the process of moving into the spine of the story.

More for tree people.

More for forest people.

More examples of hooks (scripts):

The Complication

The hook doesn't necessarily have to "hook into" the spine of the story. It can have to do with a subplot or even with the atmosphere or backdrop of the story. The hook in The Graduate is about Benjamin's general situation - there is nothing relating to Mrs. Robinson or Elaine here, who soon come to the center of the story.

The hook is the general situation - we have a young man who has just graduated from college and has no idea what comes next. Many of us can identify with that, and even if we can't we have reason to want to know what is going to happen to him.

The complication, in contrast, should involve the hero - either indirectly or directly. In The Graduate, Mrs. Robinson makes her first move on Benjamin, starting the first thrust of the story. In Jurassic Park, a lawyer threatens to close down the park, requiring its owner to hire the hero (and his girlfriend) to establish the park's safety.

By the time we reach the complication, in other words, we need to be moving toward the central issue of the story, i.e. on the hero-goal-obstacle track that will make up our dramatic spine.

Other examples:

Notice again the variety (not a formula!), but in each case the complication moves us still closer to the spine of the story. This is most obliquely done in Atlantic City, where our protagonist Lou is not yet involved. But we expect him to enter the story squarely at the Call to Action, as indeed he does (see below).

More for tree people.

More for forest people.

The Hero's Call to Action

At the hero's call to action, which often comes just before the first plot point, our main character commits to the story, so to speak.

We know what the dramatic issue is by now - and the hero accepts the challenge.

Other examples:

Each call to action involves the protagonist - indeed, this is what a call to action is about, a decision by the main character to do something (or not) that will thrust him/her into the "extra-ordinary" world of the story, the out-of-ordinary environment or circumstances in which the rest of the story will now develop.

More for tree people.

More for forest people.

The Plot Point

Plot points drive suspense. When an action in our story turns things around, moving us in a new direction; or when something reveals itself that surprises us, putting everything in a new light - these are the moments to which we respond, "aha!" or "wow!" or even better "oh my God, now what?"

The hero has moved into action and now is going to be hit smack in the face with our first major plot point, ending Act One. If there were an intermission here, we'd hang around to see what happens next.

Notice what all these plot points, in very different movies, share:

More for tree people.

More for forest people.

My Turn: Writing Act One

Now it's time for you to look over my shoulder as I continue to work on our sample concept, wearing the hat of each of our two writing dispositions:

Writing Act One as a tree person.

Writing Act One as a forest person.

Your Project's Act One

And now it's your turn. Are you ready to write?

It's time for you to start writing your own script's Act One. If you have a busy life, arranging how to do this can be a problem.

I suggest the following:

Writing tips for tree people.

Writing tips for forest people.

As you are writing Act One, you can continue with the course or not, as you please. Some students do better if they move through this course slowly, waiting to finish Act One, for example, before reading the modules for Act Two.

Others like to do a "first dry run" of all 12 modules, coming back later to do the actual writing.

In fact, tree people and forest people are going to treat this self-guided course very differently!

Review: Focusing on Action

When you have 25 or 30 pages of script, when you have Act One, give it a quick review before moving on, and feel free to fix what needs to be fixed. However, it is not a good idea to do a major rewrite at this stage, unless you are considering major changes in your concept. Part of the process of writing (even for tree people) is learning along the way.

First, look at your script's action. Imagine that this is a silent movie that you are writing. Would it work? The more it works as a silent movie, the more your visual action is pulling its weight.

Look for white space in your action descriptions.

Look for rhetorical economy, letting the verbs do more work than the adjectives.

Look for places where you can replace dialogue with action.

Review: Focusing on Character

Next look at your script pages a second time, concentrating on character and dialogue. Does each of your major characters have a unique voice - or do they all sound alike?

How do you make characters speak "uniquely"?

Look at the length of your speeches. Cut wherever possible.

Remember that most people speak in sentence fragments, not complete sentences. Look for ways for characters to make quick verbal exchanges, rather than pontificating in long rambling verbosity.

But do all of the above within the constraints of making verbal imprints to individualize your characters.

Nobody ever said this was going to be easy.

Clay is not Cement

Above all else, at this stage of the game, don't get discouraged.

You get that? Do not get discouraged.

Tree and forest people alike are writing a first draft - and whatever goes wrong (and believe me, many things will), it is not the end of the world.

You are playing God in your first draft - but you are creating a world that is made of clay, not of cement. Nothing you are now writing has to be permanent - and much of it shouldn't be.

This is a process. You will keep learning as you go along, no matter how much planning tree people have done.

The creative act is wondrous and full of surprises - even for tree people.

Not all surprises will help the script. But some will.

Writing is putting one foot after the other, one sentence after the other. Keep going. Think of Act One as a separate entity, an individual module, the first part of a larger structure. You only have to write 25 or 30 pages of script.

That's not a lot. If you squished out all the white space and pushed the language into prose, that's less than ten pages! Come on, you can write ten pages easily - probably in a week, at least in two.

Just keep writing. Even if what you are writing is bad - you know it is bad - keep writing. Nobody is ever going to see this draft except yourself.

Keep writing.

And then, finally, congratulate yourself.

Onward.

(Cyber Film School column, The Rhythms of Act One.)

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MODULE 5: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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