7.
Aiming for the Stars

Writing Act Two (Part Two)

"There is no single more important commercial element in screenplay writing than the star part."
--William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

There's nothing quite as exhilarating as starting a new screenplay! You like your concept and hero, you have a great hook, you know how to set down the call to action and first act plot point - Act Ones can go so well.

And then comes Act Two. Once you've gotten through the first half of Act Two, you surely know the game has changed considerably. Lew Hunter is right, this is the blue-collar grunt work of screenwriting! This is where you give up - or you learn how to write a screenplay. If the first act is the honeymoon in the bridal suite, Act Two is the Honeymoon in Hell.

Your task of writing keeps getting harder. In the last half of Act Two, you have to move your hero into the jaws of defeat, so that Act Three introduces a ticking clock (if at all possible) and a final confrontation where victory is secured against great odds. In other words, the hero gets what s/he wants (in most cases).

So what we are leading to in this section of the screenplay is what David Trottier calls "the crisis," which leads directly to "the showdown".

Don't let the rhetoric above fool you: the energy of confrontation can be expressed psychologically as well as physically. We don't need a big noisy confrontation with blood being spilled everywhere. In character-driven stories, the confrontation can be in terms of increasing fear, uncertainty, grief. This is what happens in many contemporary indie movies, such as Chasing Amy.

At midpoint, something happened that opened the hero's eyes - the task at hand is harder or even different ("new goal") than the hero thought at first. So the hero must buckle down and focus even more - and the movement here brings the hero close to defeat and prepares us for the anxiety and tension in the final showdown. And of course I mean this in psychological as well as physical terms, whichever (or both) is appropriate to the story.

Keeping the Hero in Focus

Here, as throughout Act Two, focus drifting away from the hero is a frequent structural problem - so be aware of it and don't let it happen.

The temptation in the second act often is to let the antagonist take over the movie. "Villains", good ones, are so much fun! And memorable - what is The Silence of the Lambs without our wonderful villain/antagonist?

In bringing the antagonist forward in the first half of Act Two, which we need to do in order to raise the stakes of the conflict - what hero wants to go against a less-than-challenging opponent? - there's the danger of keeping the spotlight too much on the antagonist and not returning it to the hero, where it belongs. This becomes a matter of balance - but a very important balance it is. Producers often complain about the loss of focus on the hero, and this happens commonly in the middle of the script, in Act Two.

I have a little "trick" you can use to help you keep the hero in focus. I call it "casting yourself a superstar."

Cast Yourself a Superstar

As you write, cast your hero with a well-known actor or actress. Now in this exercise, forget about any realistic possibility that such a superstar will actually play the role in your movie. That's not the point now.

The point is this: with a superstar playing your main character, the rules change. Superstars want Big Roles. They do not like to be off screen for five, ten minutes at a time.

Moreover, the producer, who is paying the superstar millions of dollars (more than s/he is paying you!), does not want to buy anyone a free lunch. The producer wants you to work the tail off the superstar.

See what I'm getting at? You now have an obligation to construct your story so the superstar is in as many scenes as possible. In other words, your story keeps its focus where it belongs!

Try this little trick as you write Act Two.

The Rhythm of Tension

It's time to say something about pacing and rhythm. Always remember that you are building toward a climax in Act Three, where the "showdown" will occur. So you don't want to blow your wad until then. The story has to move to increased tension, not less, and toward bigger actions, not smaller.

This means there is room for release from the conflict that is built earlier in the story (before the climax). After the midpoint is a place where tension often is released, and we have a quieter scene in which the hero deals with his/her new information (the plot point). Perhaps a subplot moves forward for a moment, something to contrast the spine of the story.

In other words, before the last act, when frequently action is driven by "a ticking clock", you want to move in and out of intense moments, breaking up the high-conflict scenes with smaller scenes of reflection or contrast. This is the "rhythm of tension," which works to "tease" the audience into the unrelenting tension of our climax.

Into the Jaws of Defeat

Then we begin the slow build toward our final plot point, which is going to lead directly to the climax and final act, to the "showdown" and subsequent resolution of our story.

This movement is into "the jaws of defeat" - and this may happen to reverse what seemed like victory. For example, in The Graduate, Mr. Robinson shows up in Benjamin's room, pulling Elaine out of school and forcing her into marriage, right after it looks like Benjamin and Elaine are finally going to get together. We see a possible happy ending - and at the last minute it is pulled away from us, thrusting the audience into one final "showdown" before we get what we want.

This is consciously playing with the audience's feelings - and it's done with great skill. This is a skill you need to master.

The Second Act Plot Point

This section concludes, then, with a final plot point, that shoves the hero into his/her last big conflict.

In two of the movies above, our ending is dark - which is not the usual Hollywood ending. The Graduate is probably the most typical Hollywood movie of the examples above because here the sense of "a ticking clock" is greatest, the tension drives the last act at a frantic pace and Benjamin gets what he wants at the last possible moment, letting our lovers take the bus into the sunset.

But the burden of this section of the screenplay is clear: move the hero to his/her greatest danger yet, and prepare for the climax.

Writing the Second Act, or the Honeymoon in Hell

I'm going to wear only one writing hat now as I continue to write scenes from our sample concept. The forest person in me has finally won.

However, remember that the more successful a tree person you are, the more closely you'll be able to write all parts of the first draft of your script directly from a step outline. To a lesser "tree" degree, you can write directly from the paradigm chart.

Finishing Act Two

Finishing Your Second Act

And once again, it's your turn.

Finish your draft of Act Two. As you write, keep looking for your hero - is s/he still the focus of the story? Are you building in intensity so that by the time you finish this 25/30 page section, your hero is about as "defeated" and "down" as we are likely to see him/her?

Keep putting one foot after the other until you finish Act Two.

Then, as always, congratulate yourself!

An Act Two Checklist

After you've celebrated finishing another section of your script, go back and ask some basic questions about your entire Act Two:

If you find weaknesses in the script after going through this check list, set them aside for now. Take notes - you can go back and fix things in the first rewrite. For now, you are so close to the end, I recommend that you keep going.

The ending, after all, may take a new shape that requires much more rewriting that you now think. This is a process, remember?

Writing is a process. The First Draft is Playing God. It's the toughest part - and in my view, the quicker we are done with it, the sooner we have a complete first draft finished, the better.

Then and only then can we begin to do what is most fun: becoming a screenwright.

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MODULE 7: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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