No matter how passionate our stories are, no matter how many great scenes or ideas or emotions or characters they contain, if all the elements don't rest upon solid structures, they won't work. They won't stand, so to speak.

The Three Act Structure

Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. In screenwriting, we call these the First, Second and Third Acts. The rule of thumb is that screenplays average out to one minute per page on the screen, so we'll talk about minutes and pages here, and it means the same thing. Your First Act generally runs about 30 pages. Your Second Act about 60. Your Third Act about another 20. This makes just under two hours of screen time.

The First Act is the set-up of your story. The Second Act is the escalation of conflict. The Third Act is the climax and resolution.

     Act 1: 30 pages SET-UP
     Act 2: 60 pages ESCALATION OF CONFLICT
     Act 3: 20-30 pages CLIMAX AND RESOLUTION

Protagonist

Every story has a Protagonist. Your Protagonist is the main character, the one whose story it is, at the center of the action, the most important character.

Every Protagonist has A Goal - something s/he wants - and very Protagonist has an Obstacle, something that stands in her/his way.

Examples:

Meet the Parents
The Protagonist is Greg (Ben Stiller). Greg's goal is to become engaged to his girlfriend. What stands in his way is her father, who hates him.

Boys Don't Cry
The Protagonist is Tina Brandon (aka Brandon Teena). Tina's goal is to be a boy. What stands in her way is that she's a girl.

When Harry Met Sally
The Protagonist is... okay, this is a tricky one. Who is it? Harry or Sally? There is occasionally a rare case of "dual-Protagonists," and it could be argued that When Harry Met Sally is one of them. However, I maintain that Harry is ultimately the Protagonist, for the simple reason that he has a hair more screen time than Sally. Much of the third act, after their fight, favors his perspective. But for the fun of it, let's say that this is a dual-Protagonist movie..

While we're on the subject, in some films a case can be made for something called a "Group Protagonist," in which an ensemble of characters function together toward a single goal. An example of such a movie is Robert Altman's Nashville. One would be hard-pressed to single out one character from that film as being more of a focus than the others. Group Protagonists are quite unusual for a reason: they're difficult to pull off.

Getting back to When Harry Met Sally, and going with the dual-Protagonist theory, Harry's and Sally's shared goal is to find true love. What stands in their way is they fail to recognize it in each other.

Die Hard
The Protagonist is John McClane (Bruce Willis). What he wants is to reconcile with his wife. What stands in his way are the terrorists who take control of her building.

Premise

The Premise is simply what your story is about. You should be able to state your Premise in a single line. This is also called a Log Line.

Another way to think of a Log Line is: how would they describe it in TV Guide? The shorter and simpler, the better.

A character-driven movie usually necessitates mention of the Protagonist in the Log Line. For example, the Premise of Annie Hall is: "A neurotic stand-up comedian falls in love with a young singer, and problems in their relationship prompt him to evaluate the nature of love."

In high-concept movies, movies in which the situation takes center-stage, characters are less the focus. For example, the Premise of Jaws is: "A small beach community is terrorized by a giant shark." No mention of Chief Brody. Because, let's be honest, it's all about the shark.

Examples:

Meet the Parents
The Premise is, a young, Jewish, male nurse must survive a weekend with his girlfriend's "waspy" family.

Boys Don't Cry
A girl passes herself off as a boy in a small, Southern town.

When Harry Met Sally
A man and a woman who are lifelong friends fail to realize true love is right under their noses.

Die Hard
A lone New York cop takes on a group of high-tech terrorists when they take control of a high rise in Los Angeles.

Thematic Question

Every good movie poses a question about life, something that is universal to the experience of being on this planet.

Every good story - no matter how frivolous it may seem - poses a Thematic Question. Ultimately, it is the heart of the work. People go to the movies as medicine. They are looking for guidance. This is where your skills as a leader must come into play. Your viewers are looking to you to address problems they are experiencing in their lives, and to provide solutions. Your answer to this question, which we will touch on later in Resolution, is your statement of theme.

My experience has been that I can't identify the themes of my stories until they're finished. I follow my intuition and something truthful just comes out. Nevertheless, it's good to be thinking about it while you're writing.

The Thematic Question is broad, and is not be unique to your story. If the Thematic Question you come up with is unique to your story, then you haven't dug deeply enough. Every good Thematic Question, in fact, should apply to a multitude of other movies. By way of example, I'll list a few other stories that ask the same Thematic Question as those asked by our examples below.

Examples:

Meet the Parents
How can people from different worlds overcome their differences to exist in love?
(Others: Romeo and Juliet, Bulworth, Save the Last Dance.)

Boys Don't Cry
Must you be who society says you have to be? (or) Can you change your identity?
(Others: The Talented Mister Ripley, Seconds, Tootsie.)

When Harry Met Sally
Can a man and a woman sleep together and still be friends?
(Others: Blume in Love, Annie Hall, Moonlighting (TV).)

Die Hard
To what lengths must career couples go to bring their lives together?
(Others: Working Girl, Rear Window, Speechless.)

***

Okay. Now let's take a close look at the various checkpoints through the timeline of our scripts.

First Ten Pages/Set-up

In the First Ten minutes is where we meet the Protagonist and establish the Premise. The entire story is launched from this segment. A good way to think of it: if someone reads only the First 10 pages of the script, will they know what the rest of the movie is going to be about? The answer should be yes. Let's look at what happens in the First 10 in our examples.

Examples:

Meet the Parents
Greg attempts a dynamic proposal to his girlfriend in front of the school where she teaches, but it goes wrong, and she never knows what he intended. We learn that Greg is about to spend the weekend with her family, whom he will be meeting for the first time. Greg realizes that for the proposal to be carried off, he must win her family's favor.

Boys Don't Cry
We meet Teena in her home town, where, having been caught passing herself as a boy, is being chased by an angry mob whose sense of violation is driving them to violence. Teena's friend, with whom she lives, tells her he's tired of the trouble she's causing, and that she has to leave. So Teena departs to establish herself in a new town where no one knows her true identity, introducing herself as a boy.

When Harry Met Sally
This set-up is actually a little longer, more like 14 pages, I think. Harry and Sally meet on a long road trip from Chicago to New York. During the ride, they discuss the nature of male-female relationships. It's during this conversation that Harry states his theory that a man and a woman can never truly be friends, because the sex always gets in the way.

Die Hard
McClane arrives at LAX on his way to surprise his estranged wife Holly. In the limo, he explains to his driver that they've separated because their careers have taken them to opposite coasts. He's here to win her back. It's Christmas Eve, and McClane is dropped off at her office building, where her company is having a Christmas party.

Inciting Incident

Something happens around the first half of the First Act that sets the action in motion. The incident inflates the power of the Obstacle that stands between the Protagonist and His/Her Goal. It is the first in a series of Points of No Return. A Point of No Return is an event that, once it's taken place, cannot be undone, and things are changed irreversibly.

Here are some Inciting Incidents:

Meet the Parents
Greg destroys the urn containing his girlfriend's father's ashes. Now, the task of winning his favor is enormous.

Boys Don't Cry
Teena, passing herself off as Brandon in the new town, meets Lana and her friends in a bar, and they not accept her as a boy, they welcome her into the group. Now, the risk of being found out is boosted, as she's become involved with a group of people whom she is deceiving.

When Harry Met Sally
During their road trip, Harry hits on Sally, thereby introducing sex into their friendship, an element they've already established destroys any friendship between a man and a woman.

Die Hard
Terrorists take control of the building, and Holly is a hostage. Now, before McClane can work out the problems in their marriage, he must liberate his wife from their control.

The Hook

At the end of the First Act arrives the all-important Hook. The Hook is the next Point of No Return after the Inciting Incident. It is a surprising development that turns the story on its ear, introducing a wild new element that changes everything, inflating the Obstacle in a totally unexpected way.

The Hook usually begins around Page 27 so that the scene can wind down for three pages to close out the act around Page 30.

Meet the Parents
Greg discovers that his girlfriend's father is involved with espionage.

Boys Don't Cry
Lana recuperates "Brandon's" feelings.

When Harry Met Sally
Harry and Sally meet again in New York, and they are both engaged to other people.

Die Hard
Hans Gruber, the lead terrorist, kills Holly's boss, Mr. Takagi, demonstrating that he is willing to take the lives of his hostages to get what he wants.

Second Act Crisis

The Second Act is rough. It's an hour long! How on earth are you going to fill an entire hour??? This is a challenge every screenwriter faces, and you should all commiserate about it in the Writers' Lounge. What you put in the Second Act is: Anything You Can Think Of. Think of it as a series of developments that escalate the conflict, gradually higher and higher, until it is ready to boil over into the Third Act, when you will begin to move things toward a Final Confrontation and Resolution.

To make things in the Second Act a little easier, I like to lean on something I call the Second Act Crisis. All this is is some kind of giant, memorable sequence or event that achieves a particularly high point of energy. Something vivid that stands out. A little jolt to break up the monotony of the long act. It should be the epitome of the issues you are dealing with in the script. It usually falls at about the half-way point of the movie, i.e., around page 60.

Examples:

Meet the Parents
The volleyball game. One of the wildest bits in the film. The idea of Greg not fitting into this community is never communicated in a crisper, funnier moment in the film.

Boys Don't Cry
Brandon's and Lana's sex scene. This one of the scenes you most remember from the movie? It is the essence of the situation distilled to a single encounter.

When Harry Met Sally
Harry's and Sally's respective best friends move in together. This development represents everything that Harry and Sally are afraid of: now, they are the last two single people left on earth. (Hence Harry's startling and confounded display of anger, "You're going to argue over who gets that stupid, Roy Rogers, wagon wheel coffee table!")

Die Hard
McClane hurls a dead body from an upper window, and it lands on the hood of a cop car. The insanity of the situation - that being trapped in a high rise should isolate the characters from the world to such an extreme degree - is expressed in an explosive bit of action.

Second Act Twist

This is like a Hook for the Second Act. It is the Point of No Return that is so severe, it leaves the characters no choice but to face their Obstacles once and for all. Like The Hook, it falls about three pages from the end of the act, in this case, around page 87.

Meet the Parents
After losing the father's beloved cat, Greg replaces it with a ringer, and he's found out. His chances with the family destroyed, he leaves for the airport.

Boys Don't Cry
Brandon's true identity is discovered. Now, she must face the wrath of the community she has deceived.

When Harry Met Sally
Harry and Sally sleep together, thereby directly challenging the assertion that a man and a woman can't sleep together and still be friends.

Die Hard
Hans discovers that Holly is McClane's wife. He now adopts Holly as his personal hostage to use as leverage in overpowering McClane.

Climax/Final Confrontation

The last, big scene, where everything comes to head.

Meet the Parents
Greg is pulled into a security room, alone with his girlfriend's father, and must explain everything he's done.

Boys Don't Cry
After having been raped, Tina returns to find Lana, and comes face to face with her attackers.

When Harry Met Sally
Harry and Sally are alone on New Year's Eve, a night they've always sworn they'd spend together if both were alone.

Die Hard
McClane faces off with Hans to free Holly as Hans finally gains entry to the vault.

Resolution

As I said, this is your statement of theme. It is your answer to the Thematic Question, the lesson about life you wish to impart to your audience, which you will show through the way the story resolves itself. This could also be called a Dramatic Answer.

Meet the Parents
Be yourself. It is only when Greg is finally honest about who he is and how he feels that he wins the favor of his girlfriend's father, thereby bridging the gap between their two worlds.

Boys Don't Cry
We live in a world where we are not allowed to defy societal expectation of who we are. Tina is murdered. This meant to be a cautionary statement, a sort of wake up call. The film is saying, "Hey, folks, this shouldn't happen. We're not where we need to be."

When Harry Met Sally
The trick is, for the sex part to work, a man and a woman must first be friends. In the end, it's Harry's and Sally's long history with one another that drives each to overcome their individual issues with relationships in order to be together.

Die Hard
If a career couple is willing to tirelessly fight to be together, they can maintain a marriage in spite of the wedge their careers put between them. McClane's and Holly's tenacity in the face of the situation outsmarts and overpowers their captors, and their love is proven unbreakable.

Falling Action

It's strange when a movie reaches its Climax and then stops on a dime. That's why there's usually a little winding down at the end, some small bit to close things out gently. As an event, it's usually rather unimportant. We call it Falling Action.

Examples:

Meet the Parents
The bit with Ben Stiller talking smack to the photo of De Niro, not realizing it's a spy camera.

Boys Don't Cry
Lana packs up and leaves the town.

When Harry Met Sally
Harry and Sally are interviewed about how they got together.

Die Hard
McClane and Holly drive off in the limo with Argyle, making out.

***

As writers, we are engaged in a dialogue with the world, for this reason, it is vitally important to be able to talk about writing easily. We've got to be open about sharing our ideas. The value of keeping something private pales in comparison to the value of trying out our ideas with real people and listening to their reactions.

The quickest and easiest way to do this is verbally. Tell everyone your idea. Try saying them in all different ways. Really pay attention to how people react. You will find it useful to distill your ideas to a sentence or two. Once you have, just tell it to anyone who will listen. They'll say things, like, "Wow that sounds great!," or, "Don't quit your day job. If someone doesn't like your work, press them for details. If you can understand what went wrong for someone, you can address it at script stage. For every person whose problems you can answer to, there are a thousand people who think like them. As long as the change doesn't compromise your vision in a significant way, it's worth it. That's why negative feedback is often more valuable to writer than positive.

Better yet, they'll ask questions. The questions people ask us after we tell them our ideas are the same questions these people will want answered when they see our movies in the theater. Listen to these questions. Let the questions help to shape the stories.

Writing is listening. Then responding to what we've heard.

Now you know the basics, and you can begin to formulate a story that will make for a good screenplay and, perhaps, ultimately a good movie.