8.
Your Hero's Showdown

Writing Act Three

"Endings, frankly, are a bitch."
--William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

"Writers," notes Richard Walter, "need to resist the urge to hurry as the conclusion of the script approaches" [REF].

"The conclusion is the easiest act to dissect," writes Lew Hunter, "as Acts One and Two exist only to set up Act Three. Act Three exists solely for itself. And once again we deal in increments of three. As there is a beginning, middle, and end to existence, screenplays, and lovemaking, so there is a beginning, middle, and end to your third act" [REF].

And Michael Druxman writes that "a good ending will tie up all loose story points and leave a final message or feeling about your material that will remain with the reader or viewing audience" [REF].

Druxman also warns against "dishonest endings": "Authors employ dishonest endings after they've written themselves 'into a corner,' and can't figure out a way to resolve their situation."

Although you managed to get through Act Two, which is the longest and many think the most difficult part of the screenplay to write, clearly the task isn't over. It's not as if it's downhill from here. We still have a lot of work to do.

Looking at Act Three

Again, it is helpful to dissect the third act and think of it in terms of its parts - the beginning, middle and end of this section of the screenplay (to use Hunter's terminology above). Something happened at the end of Act Two that leads the hero to a decision to act, which in turn spins into the final confrontation. Hunter thinks of this movement as preparation to act, the action itself, and the consequences (ending).

I am a bit more colorful in my description of the three parts of the final act but first let me remind you that all four parts of the three-act screenplay can be dissected into beginnings, middles and ends - and, in fact, should be in order to keep them on track.

Let's look at each of the parts of the final act in closer detail.

The Ticking Clock

Some stories lend themselves to "a ticking clock" more than others.

Where the ticking clock is strongest - in The Graduate and Chinatown, North by Northwest and E.T. - we are more on the edge of our seats, waiting to see what will happen next. I urge you to add this powerful element if at all possible.

How does one add the sense of a ticking clock? By putting a time frame around something that we don't want to happen because it hurts the hero in some way. The antagonist is on track and ready to win - unless the hero stops the action in time.

Thus Benjamin hurries to stop the wedding and Jake hurries to divert the police so Mrs. Mulray can get away. In both instances, the hero fails! - but in The Graduate, Elaine goes to Benjamin even though she has just been married, and we get the happy ending.

In Chinatown, however, Mrs. Mulray is killed and the antagonist, her father, gets to run off into the sunset with his granddaughter, a bleak and dark ending. Film noir is perhaps the one popular genre in which unhappy endings are readily accepted by the audience (in Body Heat, the "villain" also wins).

The ticking clock involves a race against time. If your story lends itself to this kind of high suspense at the end, by all means use it.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

And then there is the showdown, the moment we've all been waiting for. Again, this can be presented in a variety of setups and contexts.

If the ticking clock is an optional element in your screenplay, the gunfight is obligatory. There must be a gunfight, a climax, of some sort. That's the whole point of the movie. This is the moment everything has been building toward.

Tree people will know what this moment is before they start writing - or at least be close. Forest people probably will not, trusting the "true ending," the "best gunfight," to reveal itself to them in the process of writing.

At any rate, don't be afraid to go for broke here and make the most dramatic and "big" confrontation your story permits. It's what the audience paid their money to see.

The Hero's Growth

The best stories have a point. The hero learns something and comes out of his/her experience better than s/he went into it. The hero grows in some way.

Again, some of these moments of growth are more obvious and important than others. Always remember that the paradigm is a menu of guidelines, not a formula. How much your hero learns and how this is presented (and indeed, if s/he learns anything at all!) depend on the demands of your story.

Must You Have a Happy Ending?

Hollywood is married to the happy ending. This is a fact of life. If you have a story without a happy ending - and Chinatown and Nixon do not have happy endings! - you have a harder sale ahead of you. Be aware of it.

It's not difficult to figure out why Hollywood is married to happy endings. Because we are. Because most of us would rather go to the movies to be entertained and uplifted, rather than to be slapped in the face with depressing stories about pain and loss, no matter how true they are.

But happy endings work best, I think, when they are earned. And they are earned in the third act, when the hero faces considerable odds and still manages to reach his/her goal. The ticking clock is a wonderful device for driving the story toward the final confrontation, as we've seen in The Graduate and Chinatown. And it's even more wonderful when the hero wins, as Benjamin does in The Graduate.

Yet some stories would become artificial with a happy ending. This is why your movie's concept is so important because it is here, this early in the process, that you make decisions that will influence the ending of your story. And the fact is that in the Hollywood marketplace, the happy ending rules.

Bliss Is Typing FADE OUT

Let me write some scenes from Act Three of our continuing sample screenplay.

Writing Act Three.

Finishing Your Script

As you prepare to write your own Act Three, first see if you can create the sense of a ticking clock. If you can, this will greatly help the line of suspense as your hero moves into confrontation with the antagonist.

Next make sure that you don't fall into the disappointing trap of Jurassic Park, where "confrontation" is too much like what went before it. You have better models to follow, where there is indeed a sense of new and extraordinary action being introduced in the story's closing sweep.

Finally, ask yourself what your hero learns from all this - and show this to us rather than preach it.

These are the elements to put into your final act. Now it's your turn - and time to get writing.

An Act Three Checklist

When you have a draft of the final act, ask yourself:

From FADE OUT to FADE IN: Preparing to Rewrite

You've done it!

Listen, this is no small accomplishment - you wrote the first draft of a screenplay!

Now your work can really begin. Before it does, however, reward yourself.

And take some time off. Give yourself at least a few days, and if possible a week, before you return to your script. You want to try and get some distance from it before you begin what I consider to be the most important part of the writing process, which is rewriting.

When you come back to your script, ready to rewrite, do one more thing before you begin: read the script.

Try to read it "as a stranger." Read it quickly, from beginning to end in one sitting, and don't take any notes. Just read it.

Just read it.

Now you're ready to start rewriting.

(Cyber Film School column, The Challenge of Act Three.)

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MODULE 8: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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