Unconventional Story Structures for Screenwriters. The structure of your screenplay is essential to holding your audience's attention. Each scene serves a function of the plot, which is an extension of the leader character s goals and arc. Understanding these concepts can help you choose to eliminate unnecessary scenes that might slow your story down and make for a more engaging read.
Kevin Nelson is a writer and director based in New York City, baby. He has written and produced critically acclaimed short films and music videos with incredibly talented artists, worked with anti-human trafficking organizations in Nepal, and would rather be in nature right now.
For all the latest from Coverfly, be sure to follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and Instagram. Press enter to begin your search. No Comments. But there will always be a final confrontation of some kind between the central character and the opposition. The Showdown is the biggest scene or sequence of scenes in the movie. Number Two. The Catalyst gets the character moving.
Number Four. The Midpoint is the point of no return or a moment of deep motivation. Number Five. Number Six. The Climax or Showdown is the final face-off between your central character and the opposition.
Number Seven. Are you ready? And please note how one plot point leads naturally to another to create a logical and compelling story flow. Star Wars opens with a war amid the stars. Luke Skywalker is the central character. Even though Star Wars is essentially a cartoon on the screen, these Back Stories give the film a richness it would not otherwise have. Life is in balance.
He begins a search for Obi-Wan. The Big Event is when Luke returns home and discovers that his aunt and uncle have been slaughtered. Now he joins with Obi-Wan to fight the empire. He enters a whole new world and is trained by Obi-Wan to join the fight against the Empire. The Catalyst upsets the normal equilibrium and gets the character moving. At the Midpoint, a tractor beam pulls him and his friends into the Death Star.
This is obviously the point of no return. At the end we enjoy an awards ceremony—this is the Realization or acknowledgement that Luke and Han have become heroes. Chinatown The Back story in Chinatown is supremely important. You see, Jake Gittes used to work in Chinatown for the district attorney. While there, he tried to keep someone from being hurt, and—in that effort—ended up making sure she was hurt. Now Jake is sensitive about being embarrassed or looking like a fool.
The past hurts. As the movie opens, Jake now works as a detective who deals with extramarital affairs. A woman claiming that she is Mrs. Mulwray hires him to spy on her husband.
The Catalyst, right? Jake goes to work. He takes some photographs of Mrs. These are published in the local paper, and his job is done. He celebrates at a barber shop, where he hears a dirty joke.
Cheerfully, he returns to his office and tells his operatives the joke, but they try to stop him. Jake delivers the punch line and turns. The woman informs him that her name is Mrs. Jake has big problems now. If this woman is the real Mrs. Mulwray, who was the first Mrs. Who set him up and why?
And how is he going to save his reputation? The Midpoint occurs after Mr. The police question Mrs. Mulwray who is evasive and who gets Jake to cover for her. In fact, Jake is attracted to Mrs. In the love scene, he finally confesses to her how he tried to save a woman once, and inadvertently made sure she got hurt. This painful confession not only foreshadows the resolution of the story, it reveals the Back Story. Later, Jake finds the necessary clue that implicates Noah Cross Mrs.
He drives Jake to Chinatown where Mrs. Mulwray is waiting. Mulwray results in her being killed. As mentioned earlier, great movies are generally two movies in one. These two are the action story or spine of the story, and the relationship story, or heart of the story. The Relationship or Emotional Story usually derives from a relationship, and is generally driven by an unconscious inner need.
The Relationship Story often resolves in the growth of the central character. Each story—the Action Story and the Relationship Story—has its own turning points and structure.
One story is the main plot; the other the main subplot. In the best movies, the two plots are intertwined synergistically. Such is the case with Chinatown.
The relationship subplot is the love story—Jake and Evelyn. Do these principles apply to comedies as well? After all, comedy is drama in disguise. And Twins serves as a fun example. Earlier in the Start Your Screenplay series , I mentioned the step in the process when you start to identify plot points.
But what are plot points? How do they function? At each plot point, the character is either closer to or farther from the objective. In that way, plot points mark progress and propel the story forward. These plot points show up in most successful movies. Effective movies create a desired emotional effect on the viewer. The setup and delivery of that effect is created with careful orchestration of the story elements, including the plot points. Often, that orchestration takes a certain shape and pattern — one that is shared by other effective stories.
Some stories do take a formulaic approach: they design plot points for spectacle, mistaking the size of the event for the quality. But these stories miss the point.
To get the desired effect, you have to know the purpose of a given plot point and then design it to fulfill that function in your particular story. If you need to do it differently to get the effect you want, then go for it. Also known as the Inciting Incident. Usually occurs pages into the script. It is often the first appearance or indication of the antagonist or main force of opposition.
Occurs at the end of the first act. Often described as the event that locks the protagonist into the story, or forces him to begin to pursue the story goal in earnest. It launches the story into Act 2 by solidifying what the protagonist is going to pursue over the course of this story the objective , and showing us that he or she is starting that pursuit now. This gives the audience something to track.
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